Sardis: Dying, and Nearly Dead

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We’re going to be in Revelation chapter 3 this morning. Revelation chapter 3. I’ve already mentioned to some of you that we took the kids on a little road trip yesterday.

I like taking them on road trips. Those are some of my favorite memories that I have of growing up with my dad is when he’d take my sister and me on road trips, try to do that with the kids. And we’ve just been so busy trying to get moved and trying to get settled and starting live here that we really haven’t had time to do that.

So we said we were going to do that. We did that yesterday, took a family day and said we’re going to take the kids on a road trip. One of our favorite things to do is to go bison hunting.

And I don’t mean going and shooting them. I mean, we go try to find them and look at them because the kids like to watch them. And so we did that yesterday.

We drove up to Pawhuska, which is a pretty good drive, even from here. It’s a little closer than driving from the city there. We drove up there to look at buffalo, bison.

Sorry, a very emphatic guide at the Nature Preserve lectured us one time for several minutes about how they were called bison, not buffalo. We went and looked at bison, watched them and all that, and looked at some of the scenery as we went, because we’ve never gone from Seminole up there before, and we kept noticing, I can’t remember exactly where the first group was, but we noticed on the way there, there’s a group of trees that stretched on for several miles, and it’s hard to tell much about the trees during this time of year, because nothing is in bloom except evergreen trees and red cedar. It’s hard to tell if a tree is alive or dead, but we were seeing these trees that stretched on for miles along the highway that just looked different from the other trees that were dormant for the winter.

They looked like they might be dead. And it’s when we started really focusing in on them that we realized there had been a fire. I mean, it was not readily apparent as you drive by.

They just looked like trees that didn’t have foliage for the winter. But when you really started looking closely, you could tell that they’d been burned. And I told Charlie, I said, that is the weirdest looking thing because I’ve watched wood burn in a fireplace.

I’ve seen where houses burn and fall to the ground. I’ve never seen a whole forest of trees that was killed by fire and they were all dead and they were just too dumb to fall over. They were all standing.

And some of them, you could tell, were totally black. Some of them looked like they were just in hibernation. We went a little further, and when you go across the Arkansas River down there in the floodplain, there were trees that again were, just like all the others, they were stripped of their leaves and such, but they looked funny.

And when you started looking at them closer, you could tell they had been through some kind of flood, some kind of catastrophic event that had killed them. But again, they were dead, but they were too dumb to realize it and fall over. And folks, there are churches that look like they’re standing on the outside, I’m not just talking about the building, but there are churches that look like they’re standing on the outside, but spiritually they are dead and they’re just too dumb to fall over.

They don’t realize it. And the church at Sardis is one of those that Jesus wrote to and said, you are very close to being dead beyond repair. He said, you are spiritually dead and you just haven’t fallen over yet.

And so if you haven’t turned with me there yet, let’s turn to Revelation chapter 3 and look at the church at Sardis. Look at these churches that are like those trees where clearly they’re dead. I mean, they may look good from a distance.

They may look like every other tree from a distance. But when you get up close, they’re dead and they just haven’t fallen over yet. There are churches like the one at Sardis who are like those trees.

Chapter 3 verse 1 says, And unto the angel of the church in Sardis write, These things saith he that hath the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest and art dead. Okay, a couple of things to caution you about here.

The seven spirits of God does not mean that there are seven spirits of God. I’ve heard of a so-called Bible teacher in northeast Oklahoma who is now teaching that instead of a trinity, there is a ten-member Godhead because there’s Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and then the seven spirits of God. And that just seems like the worst explanation of the Bible I’ve heard in a long time.

If you know much about numbers in the Bible, the number seven represents completeness, for starters. It represents perfection, completion. And another way of translating this, the seven spirits of God, could be the sevenfold spirit of God.

Meaning that the spirit of God is complete. The spirit of God is completely God. The spirit of God is able to bring us to completion in Christ. But also, it refers here to, he’s talking about seven churches.

And each of those seven churches had the Holy Spirit within them. If you’re a believer, if you’ve been born again by faith in Jesus Christ, then you are indwelt today with the Holy Spirit of God. You need to understand that.

The Holy Spirit of God, the third member of the Trinity, lives inside of you. And for each of those churches, that was true as well. There were, you know, we’ve talked about these churches and realized there were some people in these churches who probably weren’t believers in the first place.

But in each of these churches, there were believers, and they were indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God, and that means that the Holy Spirit was within that church. And yet, just because the Holy Spirit is in me, that doesn’t make him any less capable of being within you. And he can be within all of us, and that doesn’t mean that because he’s here, he can’t possibly be present at First Baptist or wherever.

The Holy Spirit, just by being in us, has not diminished in his power from being in all other believers at the same time. And so when he talks about the seven spirits of God, the sevenfold spirit of God, whichever way you want to translate that, he’s talking about the completeness of the Holy Spirit, the perfection of the Holy Spirit, but also tying that into the seven churches and saying each of you, each of you are possessed by this spirit of God, or he indwells you, and that it was Jesus who sent them, sent the Holy Spirit there. He said that unless he left, he could not send the Comforter to be with us.

And so Jesus went back to the Father so that the Holy Spirit could come and indwell all believers. So he says, these things saith he that hath the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. Again, the seven stars are the churches and their leaders.

And he holds these churches in his hands. It’s a reminder to us, guys, that no matter how big we think we are as a church, oh, we’ve got this going, we’re self-sufficient, we’ve got all this money, we’ve got all these programs, we’ve got all these things going on. God is still in charge of that church.

And God can either build it up or he can take it away. And it doesn’t matter how big we are. You never get too big.

Hear me on this. You never get too big for the Father to turn you over his knees. And God holds the churches in his hand.

Now, that’s also a comforting thought that no matter how small you get or no matter how weak or how powerless you feel, God is still in control of this thing. I love the example Brother Terry gave yesterday at the men’s breakfast of the Alamo. Those men were out gunned and outmanned and they knew it and still they fought bravely.

And we as a church can be outnumbered and outmanned and outgunned by the world outside and yet we fight on bravely because we know that no matter how small we are or no matter how big the enemy is, we know that God is still in control of it. God’s in control of the church at Sardis. God is in control of all the other churches that we’ve read about up to this point, God is in charge of Trinity even this morning.

Okay, that’s not something for us to vote on or decide on. He’s in charge of us whether we like it or not. It’s just something for us to get on board with because it’s fact.

And he said, I know your works. Again, he said this to most of the churches up to this point. I know your works.

I know the way you live. I know the ins and outs of your lives. And he says that thou hast a name that thou livest and art dead.

Now, unlike the others that we’ve seen so far, here Jesus really starts out with a rebuke. He doesn’t start out by saying, this is what you’re doing well, and hey, keep going, and then we’re going to talk about what you’re not doing so well at. He just jumps right into, hey, you got problems. And he says, I know your works, and that can either be a good thing or a bad thing, but I’m assuming in this case it’s a bad thing.

I know your works, and that you have a name that you live and are dead. Sounds confusing, but what he’s saying here is, I know that you have a reputation for being a living church. I know that you have a reputation for being a strong church.

I good reputation in the community. I know what your name says about you. I know what your reputation says about you, but I also know that you’re dead on the inside.

And so what he’s pointing out here is that to the outside world, and maybe even to the rest of the churches around them, maybe in the perception even of the church members themselves, they looked around and thought, hey, we’re doing pretty good. I don’t know exactly what the circumstances were at the church at Sardis. Maybe they had lots of money and thought they were in a good financial position.

Maybe they had lots of people. Maybe they had lots of things going on. Maybe they had the right people in town as a part of their church.

Whatever was going on, they had a good reputation among the community around them and probably among themselves that, hey, we’re a good, strong church. And Jesus looked at them and said, I know you have a name that you live, but I know you’re really dead. And that’s where I tied into those trees yesterday, looking at the forest from a distance and thinking, Those are, you know, that’s a forest full of strong trees that are just dormant for the winter.

And then getting closer and seeing those trees are dead and just haven’t fallen over yet. You know what? There are churches probably the same way in America.

We see it all over Europe today. And the sad part is churches in America tend to follow behind the churches in Europe in terms of the things that we believe, the things we teach, and then the roads we go down. Churches all over Europe today look great from the outside.

Oh, that’s St. So-and-so’s cathedral. You go inside, there’s nobody who’s part of the church anymore. Lots of these churches that look great from the outside in terms of the building, in terms of the reputation they’ve had historically, you go in and they’re just dead.

Not only is there nobody there, they are spiritually dead because they are teaching things that are contrary to the Word of God. And many of these buildings are being turned into libraries or mosques or nightclubs. Can’t imagine somebody wanting to go party in an old cathedral, but they’re being turned into other things because the church looks great on the outside and has a great reputation.

It’s historically, it’s just one of those good churches and yet it’s completely rotted out on me. So he says, I know, I know how everybody else sees you, but I’m telling you what I see and I see deadness on the inside. And he said, be watchful and strengthen the things which remain that are ready to die.

For I have not found thy works perfect before God. Yeah, church at Sardis, you’re probably doing a lot of things. I see your works.

He said, but your works are not perfect before God. He said, your works are not complete. You’re not doing all the things you’re supposed to be doing.

I don’t know that this church was necessarily drowning in wickedness like the church at Thyatira or the church at Pergamos, but kind of like the church at Ephesus, they had just kind of lost something along the way. We’re going along in the same rut and we’re just going to keep doing what we’re doing. Meanwhile, we forget why we’re doing it.

We forget the love of Jesus Christ. We forget the love for Jesus Christ that’s supposed to drive these things, and we’re just going to do it because that’s what we’ve always done. And he says, he looks at that and says, I see your works, but they’re not perfect, they’re not complete before God. In other words, you’re not doing everything you’re supposed to.

And folks, that doesn’t mean that God’s going to give them, that Jesus is going to give them a checklist and say, you just need to do this, this, this, this, and this, and you’ll be all right. Part of their works before God, part of what was commanded of them is to love God. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.

And folks, if we forget those things, if we forget those things, if we forget to love and honor and obey God, and we forget to love our neighbor as ourselves, it doesn’t matter what good religious works we do on the outside. It’s just, so he says, your works are not perfect before God. Your works are not complete before God.

And so he tells them, be watchful and strengthen the things that remain and are ready to die. even in the midst of these dead churches, these churches that are by and large dead, there is still a remnant inside the church at Sardis that is alive. There’s still part of the tree that is alive.

And what he says here is be watchful and strengthen those things. He says there’s still hope. Now God can resurrect a dead church.

You know what we see in the scriptures, God can resurrect a dead anything that he wants, right? Jesus rose again from the dead. He raised Lazarus from the dead.

We’re talking about those who came out of their graves at the time of the crucifixion. It’s God can raise up anything he wants to raise up. And yet Jesus is telling them at this moment, not a matter of I can’t, but a matter of what I’m telling you to do.

You need to, your church, what’s left of the faithful remnant in this church is on life support. And you’ve got to do something to strengthen what remains while it’s still there. And I don’t think it’s a matter of God couldn’t resurrect the church at Sardis once it was completely dead, but he’s saying, I’m not going to.

You need to be faithful. You need to be watchful. You need to pay attention to the things that I’ve called you to do and strengthen them while there’s still some foundation left to build on.

If somebody’s on life support and all the systems are shutting down and science has just come up with a cure for the disease that is slowly killing them and all you have to do is inject it into their IV, are you going to wait until the patient is completely dead? Or are you going to take that little bit of a heartbeat that’s still left and work with that? Say you’re better off working with what you got.

You’re better off. A little strength is better than none at all. And Jesus says, what remains, strengthen that.

Don’t sit around and wring your hands about, oh, we used to be great. We used to be wonderful. What about the good old days?

I wish we could get back to that. He says, take what you’ve got. Take what you’re doing right now.

Take the things that are still working, the things that still remain. Take the places where you’re still faithful, the places where you’re still serving. Take that foundation that you’ve got and build on that while there’s still time to build on it.

And he says, remember therefore how thou hast received and heard and hold fast and repent. You know what? We’ve heard this before.

This is the same advice that he gave to the church at Ephesus. Remember where you’ve fallen, where you’ve fallen from and repent and go back and do the things that you started out doing. Folks, it’s the same, the same advice.

It’s the same advice. Remember and repent and return. Go back and do the things that you used to do and not just so you’re doing the right things, but go back and do the same things with the same love for God that you used to have.

And this sounds like a harsh message, but Jesus could have just easily said, you’re done. I’m done with you. It’s over.

Knock the trees down. But instead, Jesus says there’s still time. There’s still a chance.

Some things still remain. Build on those. Remember, therefore, how thou hast received and heard and hold fast and repent.

Now, part of their problem, I’m convinced, and the reason for them dying was not, oh, we’re running short of members, we’re small, we’re this, we’re that. I think that they had gotten away from the teaching of the truth of God’s word. I think they were buying into the pagan philosophies of the world around them.

I think they were probably teaching things that were contrary to the gospel that had been handed down to them by Christ and the apostles. And that does, over time, lead to sin. But we don’t see him reproving them for the same things that were problems in Thyatira and Pergamos, where the people were just, I’m going to do whatever I want, and God’s okay with it.

Idolatry and fornication and all these things. What he’s talking about here is you’ve wandered away, you’re spiritually dead, because you got away from the teaching of the gospel. It’s quite possibly that the church had turned into a country club where we’ll just teach each other to be nice.

Now, be nice to each other is an important part of the Bible, but you can’t divorce it from the rest of the teaching of the Bible that we can’t really be nice on our own. You know, if we could be nice, what was the point of the cross? If we could be good, what was the point of the cross?

Jesus Christ suffered and bled and died on that cross because you and I had sinned against a holy God, and we couldn’t stop sinning, and we couldn’t do enough good to right the wrong that had been committed. Doing the right thing didn’t erase the sin that was there. We couldn’t be good.

And a lot of churches today are in the mindset of, well, let’s just teach the message of people need to be good. Do the right thing. Be nice to each other.

You know what? I hope you leave out of here each Sunday thinking, I need to do the right thing. But folks, I hope there’s more to it than that.

I hope it’s realizing that there is hope and there’s transformation through what Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross. If you leave out of here thinking, I can be forgiven by God. I can be okay with God.

I can go to heaven. If I can just be good enough, then I have not done my job. The message of this church or any church or the church at Sardis is the very real truth that Jesus Christ died as the only hope for sinners, of which all of us are.

And they had gotten away from their foundational principles. Whether they had embraced a false gospel of saying you can just be good enough or follow the law or any of those other things, or whether they had just gotten lazy, or whether they had just gotten tired or whether they just even forgotten the reason they were there in the first place. They’d gotten away from their founding principles.

They’d gotten away from their entire reason for existence. And because of that, Jesus points out you’re spiritually dead inside. The church has just rotted away.

It’s not even church there anymore. There’s a little bit of faithful remnant to build on that. Remember, therefore, how thou hast received and heard.

That’s what makes me think it was a problem in their team. Because whenever Jesus or the apostles talk about the things that they’ve received or heard, it’s the message of Christ. It’s the gospel and the teaching of the apostles, the teaching of scripture. And for him to say remember that makes me think they’ve gotten away from their principles, their reason for being there, their teaching.

And so he says remember those things. Remember the things you’ve been taught and hold fast. Cling to them like they are your only hope. Because quite honestly, and I’ve said this before, I will say it again.

Jesus Christ and the message of forgiveness through what he did on the cross is our only hope. This morning, you need to realize that you’ve sinned against God. And I don’t tell you that to be mean to you.

I’ve sinned against God too. It’s not a matter of the preacher’s opinion and he thinks I’m a sinner. It’s a matter of what God said.

He said we all have sinned and fallen short of his glory. We’ve all sinned against God. We’ve all disobeyed him.

And God could have easily written us off and said, you’re done. I’m sick of you. You know, if you want to be separated from me in hell, go enjoy that.

He could have done that and he would have had every right to do so. And yet he loved us for some reason. He loved us enough that he sent his son.

He sent Jesus Christ to willingly come and die on the cross for us. And he lived a perfect life. So he wasn’t paying for his own sins.

He was paying for ours. He took our sins. He took responsibility for our sins.

He was nailed to the cross. And he shed his blood. He died so that we could be forgiven.

And sitting here this morning, you need to realize you’ve sinned against God. Just as I’ve sinned against God. But you also need to realize what he did on the cross is your only hope.

Again, that’s not my opinion. That’s God saying that. That’s Jesus who said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes unto the Father but my man.

You need to realize that if you’re trusting in how good you can be, if you’re trusting in, well, I go to church every once in a while, or maybe I go to church every Sunday. If you’re trusting in, well, I give money, I help the poor, I’m nice to people, I do more good than I do bad. If you’re trusting in any of those things, if you’re trusting in anything other than what Jesus Christ did on the cross, you’re trusting in something in which there is no hope.

You’re trusting in something that cannot save you, that cannot bring you peace with God and cannot bring you to heaven. And so, yeah, he says, remember the things you’ve been taught and hold fast. Cling to that like it is your only hope. When we hear the message of the gospel, when we hear that Jesus Christ died for us, the only response that helps, the only response that helps is to look at that message of what Jesus Christ did on the cross as a life preserver being thrown to us as drowning men and grab onto it for dear life like there’s no to it.

He says, remember the things you’ve heard and received and hold back. Grab onto those, he says, and repent. I’ve said this several times in this series because he keeps telling these churches to repent.

Repent doesn’t mean clean your life up and come to God. Again, if we could clean our lives up, if we could be good enough, if we could be perfect, Jesus wouldn’t have needed to die on the cross. He died on the cross because we couldn’t clean our lives up, because we couldn’t be perfect, because we couldn’t be acceptable.

Repentance means something different from that. Repentance means changing your mind. Literally, the Greek words mean a change of mind.

In our natural state, we sin and we wallow in that sin and we love it. And we don’t care what God says. And repentance says, I’m going to change my mind, or rather God’s going to change my mind.

I’m going to agree with God. I sin and I wallow in the sin. And rather than loving it and rather than not caring about what God says, I hate this.

And I realize it’s wrong. And I realize God’s right about it. And I ask him to change me.

and then he cleans up my life. Repentance is a change of mind about our sin. Do we wallow in it and love it and disregard what God says, or do we realize it’s wrong and realize God’s right about it and realize we’re sinning against it?

That’s where repentance is. So when you hear repent and think, well, I’ve just got to get my life cleaned up and then I’ll come to Christ, repent means no such thing. Repent just means agree with God, admit that your sin is wrong, and ask him to do something about it, and then God.

. . So when he tells them to repent of their wrong teaching, The first step was to realize they were wrong about what they thought.

I will admit that is not an easy thing to do. I’m an opinionated person, if you don’t know me real well. I have opinions about everything.

Almost everything. I mean, stuff that you wouldn’t think people could have an opinion, I have an opinion on. Charlie and I have debated about the Oxford comma, which means whether, in a list of three things, whether there should be a comma before the final thing.

I have opinions about everything, including commas. Politics, biblical doctrine, it doesn’t matter. It is hard to convince me that I am wrong.

Now, I will admit when I realize I’m wrong, that it’s hard to convince me, and it is gut-wrenching for me, when I realize I’ve been wrong. But you know what? There are some things that I’ve been wrong about.

There are some things. Fortunately, it’s never been anything that’s affected anybody’s salvation. But there are some things in the Bible that I’ve just grabbed onto.

My mother says my mind is like a steel trap, like a bear trap. Just grabs on and doesn’t let go. There are some things that I had in my mind, and that’s just the way it was.

And God and some wonderful, gracious, gentle brothers who knew how to approach it just the right way began to change my mind about something. And you know what? For me, the hardest part was changing my mind.

So I realized repentance can be a hard thing to go from, hey, I sinned and there’s not a problem with it. I live this way. I love it.

Who cares what God says? To suddenly realize I’ve been wrong all this time. I understand that’s not a good feeling.

But he tells this church, you’ve been wrong in your teaching. You’ve been wrong in what you’ve been doing. And the first step in doing something about it is to change your mind about it.

Not to say, well, we’re going to do something different, but we still think the old things. No, you’ve got to change your mind first. Remember the things that you’ve heard and received. Hold fast and repent.

If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I come upon thee. See, at some point, we talk about God’s grace and mercy. God forgives.

We talked about this last week with the church at Thyatira. Some of them thought, you know, we’ve gotten away with it this long. God’s not going to do anything.

No, no, no, no. Don’t mistake God’s mercy in giving you time to repent with God saying, oh, it’s just okay. And so Jesus was telling them, at some point, I’m going to come and deal with it. You repent.

I’m giving you space. I’m giving you time to repent. But at some point, your party’s over.

At some point, it’s judgment time. And for a believer, that doesn’t necessarily mean judgment thrown into hell. That means I’m going to come and I’m going to, don’t make me come back there.

I’m going to come and there’s going to be discipline there’s going to be correction for the world that doesn’t trust Christ as their Savior there comes a time of judgment he says I will come upon thee and you won’t know what hour I’ll come as a thief in the night you know if you knew what hour the thief was coming you could be prepared you could sit by your kitchen window with a shotgun if you knew part of the problem with the thief in the night is you don’t know what hour or what day he’s coming so you’ve got to constantly be on guard he says I’ll come and deal with it if you don’t deal with this I will come and deal with it when you least expect it verse 4 Hard to believe we’ve only gotten through three verses. Verse 4 says, Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments, and they shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy.

There were still, still in this dead, dying church, dying and nearly dead church, there were still some who were faithful. He said, They shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy. You know what?

What God is really looking for from a church, from individuals in that church, what He’s really looking for is faithfulness. Not for us to conquer worlds, not for us to charge hell with a squirt gun, Not for us to do these amazing things that we think, oh, if I was really serving God, I’d be able to accomplish this, that, and the other. What he really wants is faithfulness.

What he really wants is obedience. I have a friend who’s a pastor. He was my pastor when I was real young.

And I’ve traveled with him some when he’s preached revivals, just to go and be with him and hear him. He’s come back from revivals at different times, or preaching here, or preaching at a camp, or something. And he’s come back and just seemed discouraged or exhausted.

And I’ve asked before, well, how’d it go? Well, I was obedient. Sometimes that’s the best we can muster.

And you know, that’s what God asks from us, is obedience and faithfulness. Not that we do miraculous things, but that we just simply follow through in what he’s called us. And he looks at those faithful few in Sardis and said, you know what, they’re going to walk with me, robed in white, because they’re worthy.

They’ve been faithful. Verse 5 says, He that overcometh the same shall be clothed in a white raiment, and I will not blot out his name in the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels. People wonder what this means about blotting out in the book of life, where it says, I will not blot out so-and-so’s name.

So you’re going to blot out the others? This is not what he’s saying. He’s not saying because he makes a promise to one group of people that automatically the opposite is true.

Oh, I’m going to blot out your name if you don’t do exactly the right thing. He’s talking about overcoming. Again, understand in this series, overcoming, according to the Bible, is faith in Jesus Christ. Whether you have victory over the world or not, whether you make Satan cry over the defeats he’s incurred or not, overcoming is being born again through faith in Jesus Christ. And so he says to them, to those who overcome,