Today we travel about 35
miles southwest of Thyatira/ 50 miles east of Ephesus to a city named
Sardis. Sardis was one of the greatest
cities in ancient times. It was the
capital of the extremely wealthy Lydian Kingdom. Sardis was located at the junction of 5 main
roads making it an important city for trading.
But what made Sardis special was its location. It was situated on a plateau which was
practically impenetrable for invading armies.
The city could never be overthrown because it’s fortress sat 1,500 feet
above the main roads. There was a saying
in the days when the NT was written, “to capture the acropolis of Sardis”,
which meant to do the impossible. But,
twice in its history it was defeated.
How? Because those who were on
guard duty failed to do their jobs faithfully both times.
It’s an interesting
parallel with the church in Sardis. The enemy
of the Church was penetrating the church’s fortress. In their complacency they were not alert and
posting watchmen. They were sleeping and
desperately needed to wake up to the invasion going on. They were sleeping so soundly they were
described by Jesus as “dead” – “dead to the world” we might say.
The Holy Spirit gives life to the
Church of Jesus Christ and that is exactly what Sardis needed. He is One Spirit, but, the number 7 portrays
completeness, and Jesus said Sardis had left her deeds incomplete. This Church needed to be revived by the power
of the Holy Spirit which could only happen if they were to turn to Christ as
the One who “holds” the Spirit and gives Him.
This means there is hope for a Christian or a Church. No matter how far one has backslidden or no
matter how long one has been stuck, there is hope because of the life-giving
power of the Holy Spirit. Let’s look at
2.5 lessons from Sardis.
#1: Reputations are not always the Reality.
First of all Reputations are not
always reality. Notice verse 1, “I
know your deeds, you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead.” All is not as it seems at the Church in
Sardis. Sardis was a Mannequin church,
it looked like it was real, was dressed like it was real, but, it wasn’t
real. It appeared to be full of
spiritual life, but, it was actually dead.
Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for being “white-washed tombs”, meaning they
looked good on the outside but they were dead on the inside. Like the wax sculptures of movie stars in the
Hollywood wax museum, the church at Sardis looked like a real church but was
only a sculpture – it was only acting. A
little putty and a little paint had made it what it ain’t. One author says that Sardis could have been
named, “The First Church of the Tares”. Sardis
had a glorious reputation, but, reputations are not always the reality.
How could a church have a good
reputation but be spiritually dead? Well
notice 2 things. First, the great
reputation this church had was with men.
The good name and the good opinions were those of community around. People may have said things about Sardis we might
hear today: “God is at work in that
Church” or “God is really blessing that Church”. “They have great programs”, “Their Youth
Group is really big and cool”, or, “They have awesome music”, or, “They are so
busy in the community and do so many good things to help people”. Everyone spoke well of the church and nobody
had anything bad to say. That is not
necessarily a bad thing. But, when Jesus
doesn’t have much good to say about you it really doesn’t matter how many good
things other people say about you. That
brings us to point number 2.
Notice that it is possible for a
church or a Christian to have a great reputation with men while having a bad
reputation with God. Notice the
authority of the assessment Jesus makes, “I know your deeds, you have a reputation of
being alive but you are dead.” In
other words, God’s opinion of us is not always the same as man’s opinion of
us. Sometimes God thinks highly of us
when men think were scum, 1 Peter 4:14 says, “If you are insulted because of
the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests
on you.” Sometimes however, as
in the case of the church of Sardis, men have a high opinion of us when God’s
opinion is quite low. God told the
prophet Samuel in 1 Samuel 16:7, “The Lord does not look at the same things
man looks at. Man looks at the outward
appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” He looks at the heart of a man, and He looks
at the heart of a church. Man looked at
Sardis and said, “Here is a poster-church!”
But God looked at Sardis and said, “Here is a pretending church.”
What can we learn from this? First, live for the praise of God and not
for the praise of man. Galatians
1:10 says, “Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would
not be a servant of Christ.”
Each of us has to determine every day if God’s
praise matters more than people’s. The
praises of man are nothing. The only
praise that matters is God’s praise.
Pursue the praise of God.
Secondly, do not
live for the sake of your appearance to others. If we
make the mistake and we live for how we appear to others, then we will be
concerned with appearances only. Jesus
said in Matthew 6:1, “Be careful not to do your acts of
righteousness before men, to be seen by them.” Sometimes we want so badly for others to
think highly of us that we make sure they see or hear about all the good things
we do. We must remember that God sees
every good thing we do, and if we know that, then we don’t need others to know
it.
If we don’t pay
attention to this, it can easily lead to putting all our focus on how we look in
the eyes of others. Jesus said in Mark
7:6, “These people honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me.” Hypocrisy is one thing God is greatly
displeased with. And it is not something
only Pharisees are guilty of. We are all
prone to it. We are not to let our
outward life become a mask for our inner life, but, an expression of our inner
life. Only through regularly renewing our
minds and being renewed in our inner man and being strengthened in our spirit
will this happen. Make sure that what is
seen by others is the fruit of your true spiritual condition.
Third, assess a
church the same way Jesus does. The people in Sardis were seriously in error
in their judgment of the church there.
They thought the church was all of God, when in fact it was none of
God. Programs don’t prove life or give
life to a church. Only the Holy Spirit
gives life.
What
are we saying here? We are saying that
reputations are not always the reality.
Make sure your reputation among men is also you reputation with the
Lord.
#2: Readiness to Repent.
The 2nd
Point for us today is that as Christians we need to have a Readiness to
Repent. Notice verses 2 and 3a, “Wake
up! Strengthen what remains and is about
to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God. Remember therefore what you have received and
heard; obey it, and repent.” This
church was not beyond hope. They could
be revived and return to being a truly strong, vibrant, Spirit-filled
church. But, to do that we see that they
had a response to make. We can see a
3-fold response was necessary.
First they were
to rouse themselves. Jesus says to “Wake up!” Today we might say something like, “Hey!
You’re asleep at the wheel!” What
Jesus was saying to them was that they were spiritually lazy and careless. They were drowsy and weren’t paying
attention. The NT warns us against
this. It says we are to be vigilant, be
on your toes, and keep your eyes peeled.
For instance, turn to 1 Thessalonians 5:6-8 with me. Being asleep means not being alert, not being
self-controlled, not living by faith, not being loving, and not having an
intentional hope. Sardis was sleepy –
“Sleepy Sardis” – and it had moral ramifications. They weren’t living for holiness anymore,
they weren’t alert for the enemy’s activity, they weren’t looking forward to
the coming of Jesus Christ, faith was for the ignorant, not the intellectuals,
and immoral living was permissible for those who profess to believe in
God. They were asleep and Jesus said
“Wake up!” They needed to rouse
themselves, and whatever little still remained they needed to strengthen it.
Secondly they
were to remember. Jesus says, “Remember therefore what you have
received and heard…” He is
talking about the Gospel and all the sound doctrine that relates to the Gospel
as it was delivered to them. They had
gotten off course and were losing sight of the very teachings that made them Christians
in the first place.
It is not
uncommon for Christians and churches to get off track after starting out
strong. Like the seed that fell on Rocky
soil (Matthew 13:20-21), like Demas (2 Timothy 4:10), like the crowds following
Jesus (John 6:14, 66), like the antichrists who went out from us (1 John 2:19)
many have started out only to end up a dud.
This is one
reason why “remembering” is so important in the Christian life. Hebrews 2:1 says, “We must pay more careful
attention, therefore, to what we have heard so that we do not drift away.” Keep remembering; keep coming back to what
you heard at first. Remembering what
we’ve received means to refresh ourselves again in the teachings handed down to
us (2 Timothy 1:13-14; 2:2). Communion
reminds us of Christ’s sacrifice for our sins (1 Cor. 11:24-25), the Apostle Peter
reminded the believers again and again of things they knew (2 Peter 1:12-15;
3:1) as did Paul (2 Thessalonians 2:5).
What we have
received we are to remain in and not depart from (John 15:4, 10). Many err because they are seduced into
seeking “new” and trendy teachings that are contrary to what they have received
(2 Peter 2:1). They forget what they
received and let go of it for the errors of lawless men who have an unhealthy
interest in controversies and seek financial gain by exploiting unstable
Christians and drawing them away from sound doctrine. This would not happen if we keep remembering
and holding fast to what we received at first.
Thirdly they were
to repent.
Jesus says “obey it and repent.” Obedience
is what Jesus is getting at when He says “He who has an ear let him hear what the
Spirit says to the churches.” Hearing
doesn’t just mean your ears performed their physiological function of
registering the sounds that came into them.
Hearing in the Bible always means obeying what you are instructed to do. When a believer is not in obedience to the
commands of Jesus Christ, meaning that either his doctrine or conduct is off,
he is responsible to repent. Repentance
means to stop the disobedience in your life and start obeying right away. Jesus commanded the believers in Sardis to
obey and repent.
This 3-fold
response was the prescription to a church that was described as asleep and
dead. It was how they were to strengthen
what little remained and revive themselves to a strong, authentic, and pleasing
church before the Lord.
What if they did
not respond? Jesus warns them that He
will come like a thief in the night to them.
Everywhere in the NT where Jesus’ coming is spoken of like a thief in
the night it is in the context of judgment.
He will come upon the world like a thief in the night to judge the world
is the motif. And when He surprises the
church in Sardis it won’t be to reward them, but, most probably to remove their
lampstand, and take them out of existence as a church. They needed to delay no longer. The time for sleeping was long past. As Romans 13:11-12 says, “The
hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is
nearer now than when we first believed.
The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and
put on the armor of light.”
#2.5: The Resilient Remnant.
Notice lastly the
Resilient Remnant. God always has a
remnant. Notice verse 4, “Yet
you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me, dressed in white, for
they are worthy.”
It is possible
for a church to be filled with unsaved people, familiar with the outward forms
of Christianity and its teachings. It is
possible that there are Christians in there who are acting like the world and
not like Christ.
But, there are
always ones who remain anchored when the winds blow others away from the
Lord. Even while the wide road is packed
there will still be those willing to walk the narrow road (Matthew 7). God told Elijah that he was not the last
remaining man of God in Israel and that in fact there was a remnant of 7,000
others in Israel who had not betrayed God and bowed down to Baal. Sometimes however the remnant is down to one
man, like Lot, who was the only righteous man in Sodom and Gomorrah before God
finally erased those cities from the map.
And in Sardis,
where most of the church was dead, there were still a few who remained faithful
to the Lord. Their spiritual life was
real flesh and blood while the rest of the church was a mannequin. They kept their garments pure while many
others were defiling their garments. That
is to say, their conduct was pure and holy while others were living for the
world and their fleshly appetites, 1 Peter 1:14 says, “As obedient children do
not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance.” This resilient remnant in Sardis were worthy
to walk with Jesus in white, but, the rest were not. Ephesians 4:1 says, “Live worthy of your calling”,
which is simply to say, “Live worthy of
your Savior, who has called you to salvation.
And as one who is saved, live your life in a way that is worthy of this
most holy salvation.”
Conclusion:
Are
we hearing what the Spirit is saying to the churches? Jesus says that in ever letter to these
churches, and it causes us to realize the issues He was speaking to were both
local and universal within the Church, immediate and spanning across all time
for the Church. In other words, His
words related to this church and to us today.
Let each of us heed our Lord’s exhortations. Let our reputations be the reality of our
spiritual lives, let us each be ready to repent when sinful doctrine or conduct
enters our lives, and let us be faithful like the worthy remnant.
Comments
Post a Comment