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In our text, we read a very well known passage of scripture. You probably have been preached to from this text before; most likely you will be preached to from this text again in the future! I believe there was a sermon preached from this text at youth camp, and I have preached from it or referred to it in my preaching many times. That's good because it is a good text and a theme worth preaching from. After tonight, my church will probably hear this verse once more in their lifetimes. With the familiarity comes a danger of taking it for granted that we know what it means and that we've got it down, but I want to preach to you from a slightly different slant than probably what you have heard before.

For those of you who are not familiar with this passage and for those of you who think you are but probably aren't, let me introduce you to what was going on here, and hopefully you will see why it is so important to understand. Jesus is speaking to seven specific churches somewhere close to 1,905 years ago. And in speaking to these seven churches, Jesus is telling them what they are doing right, what they are doing wrong, and what they need to do about it.

In our text, Jesus wrote to the church of Laodicea, which was a town in ancient Asia Minor and explained to them that His problem with them was "lukewarmness" and then He used a vivid picture which they well understood to convey exactly how He felt about their spiritual condition. He said that because you are neither hot nor cold, I will spue or vomit or spit violently you out of my mouth. All of my life, I have always heard this verse preached that "God wants you hot, and if you don't stay on fire for God as you should, then you become lukewarm and God pukes you up." And every preacher -- including me -- whom I've ever heard preach from this passage has ignored the fact that in context, Jesus said "I would that you were hot or cold!" In other words, both hot and cold were acceptable states but that lukewarmness was not. Cold is not used here in a negative sense. Cold in these verses is something that God wants them to be. In these verses, Cold is something that they must become in order to miss out on the wrath of God. That's why I titled my message "on fire AND on ice for Jesus." We hear a lot about being on fire for Jesus, but never about being cold for Him! But I'm here to preach to you that we must be both! At the same time!

Now that I've got your attention, let me explain that if you glance at an old map, you will see that the city of Laodicea is situated between two other cities, Hierapolis to the north, north west, and Collosse to the south, south east. Hierapolis was famous for it's hot springs and these hot springs so warmed the water so that the natives were used to drinking hot water and bathing in hot water. In Collosse were cold natural springs and the inhabitants of Collosse were used to drinking ice cold water and bathing in cold water. From each town, the water flowed toward the city of Laodicea and came together in the Macander River. Therefore in Laodicea, the water was lukewarm and tepid. When visitors from either Hierapolis or Collosse were traveling through Laodicea, and stopped for a drink of water, it was so unlike what they were used to, that they would immediately spit it out on the ground and make a horrible face. When Jesus told the Laodiceans that "because you are neither hot nor cold, I will spue you out," He was using a local analogy that they understood well.

What God was trying to get across to the Laodiceans and, through writing it down, show us today is that He wants us to live for Him in such a way that we get a right and proper reaction. My wife and I live in a home where the water pipes are rigged in such a way that practical jokes are in definite order. There have been times that I had a nice warm shower going and was busy shampooing my hair -- which takes a long time -- and my eyes are closed and I'm singing and all of a sudden my wife decides to flush the toilet on the other end of the house, not knowing that I am under the shower -- at least she claims to not know that I am there! The toilet, you see, only uses cold water, and so immediately all the cold water leaves the shower and only the hot remains which raises the temperature by about a thousand degrees suddenly, and when you are washing your hair with your eyes closed and don't see this coming, the sudden increase of temperature causes an immediate reaction usually, well, jumping around and hollering and screaming and kicking and running and a few other things. Hot water, you see, causes an immediate reaction, and when visitors first felt the waters of Hierapolis and the hot springs, their reaction was immediate: "Wow! that's hot!" and then when they finally gave in to it, they realized that there was a therapeutic affect.

On the other side of the spectrum, cold water causes a reaction as well. Our hot water heater recently went out and for five or six days, I had to crawl out of bed in the morning with the air condition cranked down and the fans all going and then step into the shower, and get nothing but cold water! You talk about a reaction! First, you get stammering lips, and then you turn blue, and then get numb and you take very fast showers! And I found that after I took a cold shower, that for an hour later, I would get the "heebie jeebies" and feel things crawling around on my skin and get the shakes until my body recovered. It was the same with people experiencing the icy waters of Collosae for the first time: "whoa, that water's cold!" And then when they finally realized the healing effect of the icy temperatures, then they realized that there was some good to it.

Not so with Laodicea. The only reaction to their lukewarm waters was disgust by someone expecting hot or cold water to drink. You didn't jump out of the bath water in Laodicea. You didn't get the heebie jeebies. The lukewarm water really didn't change anything, and so the only reaction that God could find in reference to it was the foreigners spitting it out because of the unfamiliar temperature, and God said "if you are lukewarm, then I will spue you out like that!"

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Let me preach to you now a bit! Time and time throughout His ministry, Jesus used "water" to represent the Holy Ghost coming into and flowing through a person's life. He told the woman at the well that He could give His spirit which was "everlasting water." Peter prophesied that the Holy Spirit was a fulfillment of Joel's saying "in the last days I will pour out my spirit, saith the Lord." Pour out. The Holy Ghost is like water. John said that Jesus would baptize them with Holy Ghost and with fire. Baptize means to completely immerse in and it's a reference to water. Jesus cried in John 7:

The Holy Ghost is the water that flows in us and through us. If you have never received the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in other tongues, then know that God has a gift of power for you! He wants to live inside of you and use you to change this world! And if you will repent and ask God to change your life and began to praise Him for that change, He will fill you up with this everlasting water that so impacts your life! The Holy Ghost is not tepid or lukewarm, but it is refreshing! The Holy Ghost is the "thing that missing" in your life if you do not have it! People abuse drugs and alcohol and relationships and money trying to fulfill a thirst in their soul for something more and only the Holy Ghost will quench that thirst! The Holy Ghost is the living water that flows through us!

And it is not a lukewarm water, but a water that flows into us with extreme heat and extreme cold. Some people feel the presence of God as a warm sensation. Some feel "goose bumps." Both are appropriate because the Holy Ghost is a very hot and a very cold living water.

It's hot because it baptizes us with a passion for God that we never had! It's hot because it ignites a flame burning within us that causes us to live for another cause beyond our own. It's hot because it has a therapeutic effect and helps wounds and scars to heal so that we can live without the pain of the past! And that heat causes a reaction! When the disciples first received the Holy Ghost in Acts chapter 2, they spilled out in the streets and drew a crowd. Heat and a fire burning has a way of doing that! And the Holy Ghost flows into us hot and sets us ablaze with a new found zeal for the things of God. After you got the Holy Ghost, there was a spark there that wasn't there before. There was a new reason for living. Your old friends noticed a new flame, but it wasn't a new boyfriend or girlfriend but Jesus Christ! You are excited about things that you never were excited about before! Suddenly worship becomes fun, the Bible interesting, heaven appealing, church something to be looked forward too, prayer something to be done everyday. Those are signs that the heat of the Holy Ghost is causing a proper reaction in your life!

And yet the Holy Ghost also flows cold. Because just as some areas of your life are heating up and becoming impassioned, then at the same time there are some areas of your old life that suddenly are cooling off. If you let the Holy Ghost do what it was designed to do and allow it to flow freely through your life, then suddenly your passion for that old party lifestyle begins to cool off. Your excitement and enjoyment from sinful things and worldly pleasures begins to chill. With the Holy Ghost flowing through your life, things that once excited you suddenly seem very empty and void. Things that you once were hot for suddenly don't appeal anymore and some friends with whom you used to gel, suddenly seem very distant and like you have nothing in common anymore. That's not an accident, and it's not a bad thing. It's the Holy Ghost cooling some passions that aren't like God and causing you to change in your zeal from sinful things to Godly things. It's a change in priorities, and oh, does it bring a reaction. You begin to hear from your friends that "you are a church girl now." Or "you're too religious or too serious." The persecution comes because the Holy Ghost has also flowed cold into your life and dampened some of the sinful lusts that once burned bright!

Now you understand why I began by saying that we need to be both hot and cold; on fire and on ice for Jesus! The Holy Ghost comes to do both. The Holy Ghost wants to set us on fire in some areas and yet bring a chill to our old prideful and sinful selves. God wants us to be hot or cold! And that persecution is the will of God and a good sign because it means that you are having an effect. Heat and cold cause an extreme reaction because they cause the immediate transfer of energy. That's why you dance around or shake or whatever. And it is the will of God for you to be the key to the transfer of His power and His Spirit to this world. You were filled with the Holy Ghost because intended for you to cause a reaction. You are here because God wants to use you. You are here because God wants you to change this world. God is looking for some young people who will be willing to be so radically different than this world and so hot on fire for God and so cold in reference to this sinful world that when others come in contact with you, they immediately notice a change and say "whoa, something's going on here." The scriptures say:

If you are living Godly in Christ Jesus, don't be surprised when others criticize your stand and lifestyle. Because if you are truly living as God wanted you to live, persecution is not just a possibility but it is promised! If you are hot in the ways that God wants you to be hot and cold in the ways that God wants you to be cold, then you will get a reaction and you will be noticed, and there will be some who criticize you for it! I would be more worried if I was never criticized or noticed for my walk with God. If nobody can tell that I'm a Christian, am I really Christ like? It was a penchant of His followers that they could tell that "they had been with Christ!" Jesus' disciples stood out! Because of the extreme hot and cold of the Holy Ghost flowing through their lives. Persecution for doing right is good because it means that you are impacting someone's life! It means that everything that should be hot is still hot, and everything that is cold is still cold! We need to be on fire and on ice for Jesus, and when we do the persecution will come, but when it does, understand that it is a definite sign that you are impacting the people around you with the Holy Spirit!

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It is the will of God for you to make a right reaction in the world. But hear me: it is the will of the devil for you to blend in and become lukewarm. God told the church in Laodicea "I would that you were hot or cold, but you are lukewarm." Like the waters flowing outside of their city, the saints in that church had become tepid through the mixing of two opposite elements. Their lukewarmness was caused by the blending of the two extremes of hot and cold.

Understand this because this is the point of my message. We must be cold and hot, but we cannot mix the two in an area. If you have the Holy Ghost, then God is constantly pumping in heat into the areas of serving Him, and we should be passionate in those areas. If you have the Holy Ghost, God is constantly pumping coldness into the areas of sin and things that are out of line with the Word of God. That is the two-fold purpose of God's Spirit, and you are not going to change that. As long as you have the Holy Ghost, it will attempt to do what it was designed to do.

But what happens if we allow ourselves to be hot for an area that God is trying to cool off? The Holy Ghost and the Word of God is trying to cool off this lust, and yet we are heating it up and causing it get warmer!? When that happens, hot and cold mix in our life, and the result is we become that damnable state called "lukewarm." What about when we cool off in an area that God is trying to heat up!? You know what I'm talking about. Youth pastor or pastor is preaching, and you know that he's preaching to you, but you are trying to look "all cool" or are too prideful to respond, or "just don't feel like it" that service. And so you chill out rather than responding passionately. The mixing of the heat of the Holy Ghost and the coolness of your reaction results in a dangerous lukewarm state!

Most of you put this principle to action every time you bathe. And the next time that you turn on the faucet to the shower or bathtub, and you turn a little hot and a little cold on, I want you to remember that trying to live for God and for yourself at the same time has the same result! You do that to make the water more comfortable for you. So you don't have to react violently and suddenly to the water. And that is the precise reason why the devil wants you to try to live on the fence. To be in church on Sunday but fuel and heat desires at school that you really should be cold towards. That's why so many people are on fire for God and cold towards sin after youth service or after Sunday services, and yet lukewarm by the next week, because in that time, they tried to be passionate for things of the world and cold toward the things of God and the mixing caused the normalcy. Like Laodicea, they are victims of blending the two, until both lose their potency. And the sad thing, is that through their change into lukewarmness, they cease to cause a reaction in the bystanders. Well, actually the only reaction they get is vomit and loathing and horrible faces, because nobody on either side likes a hypocrite, and even the sinner is turned off by those who claim to be on fire for God and yet are on fire with their own lusts of the flesh. Lukewarmness causes you to be rejected by men, and therefore rejected by God. Because lukewarmness is the result of fighting against the very separation and change that the Holy Ghost is trying to bring into your life!

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I'm coming back to my point because I think we need to be reminded of it. We get preached to quite a bit about "being on fire" and letting the Holy Ghost fire burn within us. But that heat will no do good if we are not cold to some things in this world. We need to be on fire for Jesus and yet we must also NOT be on fire for some things in this world. And that is the key to making it in living for God.

In our other text, we read about Daniel and his three Hebrew friends who were taken into captivity into the foreign land of Babylon. There the Babylonians tried to cause them to change so that they blended in. They were given Babylonian names. They were instructed to eat Babylonian food and drink. They were given Babylonian garments to wear and instructed in the language of the Babylonians. Catch this: the sinful Babylonians did not care that there were believers in the true God living among them if they could change the Hebrews to the point that they blended in. To their minds, if the Israelis dressed like them, ate like them, talked like them, lived like them, worshipped like them, and were named like them, then how were they really strangers!?

The world is doing the same thing to us today, young people. If we dress like the world, talk like the world, have the same appetite for things that they have, live like the world, worship like them, and have our identity like them, then how are we different? And more importantly, what difference will we make in them? Even though we have the Holy Ghost, if we are not cold to some things, then sin will permeate us and counter effect the fire of God working within us and we will be just lukewarm Christians, not changing anything and just another person who watered down the power that God was trying to let flow through them!

But somebody here needs to be like Daniel! He was just a young man when this test came and yet even as a young man, he refused to be called by his Babylonian name. He refused to eat the Babylonian food and talk the Babylonian talk. He refused to wear the Babylonian garments, and as a result of his stand, he never worshipped the Babylonians gods. When the criticism and persecution of a lion's den called, Daniel was still faithful. And he found that God was faithful! Daniel would never go back to his home and would live the rest of his life in a foreign land, but because he and his three friend refused to compromise and were cold towards the blending that the Babylonians were trying to bring in their youth, before his life was over, Daniel saw the great Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar praise the power and worship the God of Israel. He saw the plan of God and Word of God come forth to Darius and an entire new world power. And Daniel changed his world, because he refused to allow the sins of Babylon and their lifestyle to mingle with his walk with God! He was on fire in the areas that he needed to be on fire for, and on ice in the areas that he needed to cool off! And so Daniel never compromised and never lost his thrill and zeal for God, because he was first willing to chill out to some things and freeze the Babylonian customs out of his life and he refused to just blend in when he was young and that refusal to mix and compromise in his youth caused his life to be successful both in the eyes of man and in the eyes of God. It was not vomiting but praise from both the mouths of man and of God about Daniel!

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And so we come back once again to our text and the immortal words of Jesus: "I would that thou were hot or cold." We need to be hot, on fire for the things of God, and yet cool to the things of the world. We need to be on fire and on ice for Jesus.

I know that it's hard, and I know that everyday our culture is trying to get you to compromise. I graduated from public high school, not too many years ago, and so I'm aware of how constant the bombardment of their agenda is upon you. Like Delilah who continually wearied Samson with trying to find the secret to his strength, the world wants to make you normal. It does not welcome those who allow the power of God to freely work through them but rather tries to get them to become "normal." It does not applaud those who are zealous for the things of God, but tries to get you to blend it so that it does not make them uncomfortable.

I was a normal teenager and I made my share of mistakes, but I stood for Christ through my junior and high school years. I was fairly popular and for some reasons, the party animals were always friendly to me and yet my friends did not understand why on Friday night, I went to youth service rather than to their parties. On Monday, they would be talking about how they vomited and how drunk they got, and they would ask me "what happened to you this weekend" and I would tell them about somebody getting the Holy Ghost and shouting in the baptistry and how that we had a "shout down" service and how that so and so got drunk in the Holy Ghost, and they would look at me like I had fallen off of a log. And then I would remind them: "you've got a headache and you've got a hangover, and you are about to fail this test and yet I got just as drunk as you, but on the Holy Ghost and I don't have a headache, and ain't broke, and I'm about to ace this test that you are about to bomb."

Did I win all of them? No, but I did win some. Robbie came to church and got the Holy Ghost and married another girl that did the same thing and they are both in church today, involved in the ministry. Years later, I received a phone call from the local denominational pastor's daughter whose father had just contracted cancer, and she remembered me and wanted me to pray for him! That's happened more than once. My wife has received similar phone calls. Now that life has hit them, they don't want the "religious" person who went to church on Sundays and yet partied with them on Friday praying for them, but they want the ones who refused to bow, who refused to be normal, who refused to allow the hot and cold of this world mix with the cold and hot of the Holy Ghost and make them lukewarm. One of my friends, whom I many times went into the HomeEc class and made him toast and coffee to sober him up on Monday mornings so that they wouldn't kick him out of school, when he graduated, came and hugged me and thanked me for "being different." It's the will of God for us to impact our world, and yet we will not impact them if we allow ourselves to be watered down so that we become just like them!

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I don't know where you are today and which direction that you need to go. I don't know which road that you took to get to the lukewarm waters of Laodicea. It could be that you reached it by leaving the hot springs of Hierapolis and you have allowed a coolness to slip into your praise and your prayer and your devotion and you excitement and your enthusiasm. It could be that you have never sipped the hot waters that are available there and you have never received the gift of the Holy Ghost or been energized so that you were truly ablaze with the fire of His presence. If that is so, then it's time tonight to walk to the hot springs of being passionate for Him and come and be baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire! It's time to be on fire for God again!

It could be that you have reached the tepid Laodicean waters by traveling from the icy cold fountains of Colossae and that you have allowed some things that you once repented over and conquered and chilled out on, to become warm again and some old lusts that were extinguished last week or last month or last year has began to heat into the fires of lust again, and so you have moved into the lukewarmness because of allowing some sinful passions to warm up again. If that is so, it's time to return to the cold fountains of true repentance, where we not only ask God to forgive us, but we allow Him to change us and cleanse us and the refreshing chill of the Spirit extinguishes those desires that are not like Him!

Whichever direction you need to go, whatever you do don't stay at the pools of Laodicea! Because it's lukewarmness serves only to trigger expulsion and repulsion from the will of God and His presence. You were created to make a difference! Come get on fire and on ice for Jesus!