Sardis: Dying, and Nearly Dead

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⟦Transcript⟧ Turn with me to Revelation chapter 3. Revelation chapter 3. This morning we come to the fifth of the seven churches that Christ speaks to in Revelation.

And as I read about the church at Sardis, I thought about how, and I am going somewhere with this, I promise. I thought about how so many of you lived the majority of your lives under the threat of communism, under the threat of the Soviet bloc, the idea that they could, you know, we had enough bombs to take them out and they had enough bombs to take us out and we could all take each other out at the same time and there’d be nobody left. And the fear of just the Soviets dominating the world and threatening America as we know it.

And many of you lived under that shadow, that fear for decades. The country, you know, at the time the communists took over Russia in 1917, that, you know, they were just a very small group and nobody anticipated that they would become the threat that they later on would become. Then later on we had the Cuban Missile Crisis.

There was the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and my goodness, how quickly this small group of Bolsheviks in St. Petersburg had gotten out of control to the point that they could threaten America even though we were separated from them by two oceans. Now by the time I was born, I was born in the mid-80s, and I won’t tell you the exact year, although I think I’ve told you before the exact year, but I won’t tell you again today.

I was born in the mid-80s, and I believe I remember watching the fall of the Berlin Wall on television. It could be, you know, I was young enough. It could have been I saw it later on television.

But I didn’t grow up under that same shadow that the rest of you did. For me, the Berlin Wall was something with ugly graffiti on it that they had a piece of in the Oklahoma City Museum. That’s what the Berlin Wall was for me.

and then teaching years ago to children in children’s church and using it for an example and talking about the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union. They had no idea. They had no idea what the Berlin Wall ever was.

But the world that I grew up in and the world that these kids have grown up in, all of us since the fall of communism, is very different from the world that you all grew up in, most of you. I know not all of you are that much older than me, but some of you are. And we won’t stop and pick out who’s who.

But it’s a very different world before and after that event. And what the Western world didn’t know at the point in the late 70s and through the 80s was just how unstable Moscow really was. See, even in the 80s, it was thought of as this evil empire that could overrun the West at any given time.

What we didn’t realize, what we as Americans, what we in the West didn’t realize is that it was an empire on the verge of collapse. The economy was in a shambles. The military, you know, they were on the verge of mutiny from time to time.

There was chaos. We’ve all seen pictures, I think, since of the bread lines and people waiting in line for hours and hours just for a part of a loaf of bread. And incidentally, communism said it was going to fix that, and they were doing that in Tsarist Russia, too, before the communist revolution, waiting in bread lines for hours and hours.

We didn’t realize, Americans didn’t realize how fragile the Soviet Union was, how fragile the Eastern Bloc was until it fell. It was this massive cloud that hung over our civilization, threatening us at any moment, and we didn’t realize it was already dead. The collapse was already imminent.

Well, some things that look the most alive and the most foreboding are sometimes the most dead, aren’t they? The Soviet Union in the 80s couldn’t have done a whole lot to us, and yet they looked like it. It was only after the Soviet Union finally killed over that the West realized how fragile it had been for the last 10 or 15 years.

Folks, sometimes the thing that is the most dead can look the most alive. The same was true of the church at Sardis. The same was true of the church at Sardis.

It looked alive. It looked like a church where good things were going on. This is a little different from what we talked about last week with the church at Thyatira, where it looked like a good church, but it was rotten to the core with sin.

The church at Sardis outwardly looked good, but it wasn’t overwhelmed by sin on the inside. It was overwhelmed by spiritual deadness and decay. The church at Sardis, as Jesus will tell us in just a minute, had a reputation for being alive, but it was on life support.

It was barely alive. And he actually says the church there was dead, but he indicates there was a remnant. There’s always a remnant within the church.

He indicates there’s a remnant inside the church that’s still alive, but folks, just barely. He says to us in Revelation chapter 3 verse 1, 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. We’re going to stop right there for just a minute.

Do not take from this the idea that there are seven holy spirits. And before you laugh and think, well, that’s ridiculous. Why would anybody think that?

There’s actually a church not far from here over in eastern Oklahoma that protests a lot of things. They’re not the same people that protest the funerals and things, but they protest a lot of places. And one of the teachings of their founder is that there are nine members of the Godhead because there are seven holy spirits.

And I tried to think, what would that be? You know, if Trinity from tri is three, it’s the Trinity. The prefix for nine is non, so all I could come up with was non-entity.

This nine-headed Godhead doesn’t exist. We know from studying the Bible that there are three persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They’re not three separate gods. That’s why you’ll hear the objection sometimes that Christianity is illogical because you have 1 plus 1 plus 1 doesn’t equal 1.

Well, that’s true. But then again, we’re not talking about three separate gods. We’re talking about one God who reveals himself in three equal and eternally distinct persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And you know what? A little trick to math is 1 times 1 times 1 equals what? 1.

Now, I don’t know if that mathematically proves the Trinity, but it makes me feel better. No, there are not seven Holy Spirits. And people differ as to what this means.

Some people will tell us that seven being the number of completion in the Hebrew numerology that they would have understood means that he holds the completeness of the Holy Spirit. Sounds like an acceptable answer. Others refer back to Isaiah chapter 11, I believe it is, that talks about the seven ministerial aspects, the seven ways in which the Holy Spirit ministers.

That could be an acceptable answer for me as well. Either way, whether it’s talking about the completeness of the Holy Spirit, the sevenfold spirit, or whether it’s talking about the sevenfold ministry of the spirit, what Jesus is saying is that he has the Holy Spirit, that there’s no division here between him and the Holy Spirit. And this is important that he’s talking to this church about the Holy Spirit because we’ll see in just a minute, the church as a whole didn’t have him.

Now, I won’t say they weren’t indwelled because we know that as believers, we’re indwelled at the moment of conversion with the Holy Spirit. And he’s a comforter that was sent here and left here by the Lord Jesus Christ, and He’s not taken away from us. The Bible calls Him the earnest on our redemption.

I didn’t know what that meant until we bought a house. But earnest money means you’re serious. Well, calling Him the earnest on our redemption means that He was left here as proof to us, as evidence to us that the Lord Jesus Christ is serious about our redemption and that He will come back for us one day.

We don’t lose the Holy Spirit, but as far as we’ve talked about this before, the difference between the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the gift of the Holy Spirit that we receive at the moment of conversion, And then there’s the filling of the Holy Spirit when it’s just the Holy Spirit is in the driver’s seat and in control of us. And folks, they did not have that. So it’s important that he talks about being the one who has the Holy Spirit.

And not just the Holy Spirit, he talks about the seven spirits of God. And whether that’s Hebrew numerology or whether that’s the sevenfold ministry gifts of the Spirit, in either case he’s talking about the fullness, the completeness of the Holy Spirit. He has the Holy Spirit in abundance, which was something they were lacking.

And he tells them that he has the seven stars. Well, if you’ll recall back to chapter 2, and I mentioned when we talked about Ephesus, back to chapter 1, the seven stars are the seven angels or messengers to the seven churches. Those would be possibly the bishops, the pastors, or it could be whoever God had appointed to take this message from John back to the churches.

But even these people who had been tasked with the sharing of God’s Word, which incidentally is imparted by His Holy Spirit, He held them right in His hand as well. And so what we see here in just a moment is a church that is essentially dead. It’s devoid of a love and a passion and a zeal for the truth.

It’s devoid of any measurable filling of the Holy Spirit. It’s devoid of all of these things that a church should have. And Jesus presents Himself as the answer to the lack that they have.

And I hope that we’ll pay attention especially to this church at Sardis today. And as I’ve told you before, I don’t believe that any of these churches completely encompass what our church looks like. If we were the eighth church of Revelation, if, I’m not saying we are, but if we were, if we were the eighth church and Jesus were to send a letter to us, I don’t believe it would be a carbon copy of any of these.

I think we might see elements from some of the different churches here. But I hope we’ll pay attention to this one because the church at Sardis and the church at Ephesus, the first one we talked about that had lost its first love. In circles of conservative churches, and theologically we are a very conservative church, just look around you.

In conservative churches we don’t tend, and I say tend because there are exceptions, but we don’t tend to have as much problem with the things like what they dealt with at Pergamum and Thyatira, where they were dealing with the churches being eaten alive by immorality. Now sometimes that’s not true. Even conservative churches can fall into sin and temptation.

We don’t tend to have the same exact problem with false teaching that some of those churches dealt with. But folks, conservative churches can very easily become complacent. In our love for the truth, and folks, the truth is important.

The truth matters. What we believe about things does matter. But we can get so attached to our truth and forget the love behind it for the one who is the truth.

And so there’s a danger, our church being the way that we are. I believe we are more likely to face the problems faced by the churches at Ephesus and Sardis than we are, say, Pergamos and Thyatira. And so it would be to our benefit to pay attention to this letter and what he says.

Again, not that we are a dead church, but I think that that would be for us and churches like us all over the country, that would be the greatest threat. It’s just dying and not realizing we’re dead. We’ve got to be on guard against that as the church at Sardis had to.

He tells them that what they lack, He has. Whether it’s the Word, whether it’s the filling of the Holy Spirit, He has it. And He says, I know thy works.

And as I’ve told you before, He says this to every church. He said it to every church so far. I know thy works.

And to some of these churches, it has been a matter of great comfort to tell them that I’ve seen and been with you during the things that you’ve gone through. All the suffering, all the persecution, all the trouble, all the heartache, when you felt like you were most alone, I’ve been there with you and I’ve seen it all. And I’ve noticed.

Folks, to the church at Sardis, I think this would have been surprising to them because as we’ll see in a minute too, they probably thought they were doing all right. And Jesus says, I know thy works. And I just imagine, again, this is just my imagination, but I picture them when they receive this letter and they’re reading it aloud for the first time, hearing, I know thy works, and they’re probably thinking, we’re about to get some compliments here.

It says, I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest and art dead. And I imagine the hearts at Sardis sunk. What?

But we’re doing so well. Well, that’s exactly what he says. Thou hast a name that thou livest and art dead.

When Jesus says, I know thy works, to them, that was not a compliment. I know thy works that thou hast a name that thou livest and art dead. What he basically tells them is that they have a good reputation as being a church that is good and alive and doing the right things, but inside they were dead.

That’s where it ties in with the Soviet Union in the 80s. They had a reputation over here that they were big and tough and scary, and we didn’t realize the decay and the deadness that was going on the inside and how close they were to imploding. We didn’t realize.

Folks, to the outside, the reputation that they had on the outside and the reality on the inside were not the same thing. He says, thou hast a name that thou livest and art dead. Now, today we’re going to talk about a dying church.

You may say, but he said they’re dead, not dying. We’re going to talk about a dying church, not a dead church, because there was a remnant within the church at Sardar that was still alive, but barely. Just as in these other churches, there was always, whatever the criticism, whatever the problem was, there was always a remnant.

There was always someone who was still being faithful to God. There was still some little spark left in the church that Jesus could deal with and turn things around. He tells them they look alive.

They sound alive. People think they’re alive, but they’re really dead. And I remember the illustration that my pastor in Oklahoma gave for years and years, talking about chickens with the heads cut off or wrung off, that for a while, and my mother has even talked about seeing this growing up, and it just disgusted me as a small child.

But she would talk about, and he would talk about, the chicken that has had the head removed in whatever fashion will still continue to run around. That’s where the phrase comes from, running around like a chicken with their head cut off. The chicken will continue to run around for a little bit because the head’s been removed, but the nervous system doesn’t realize the chicken’s dead.

And my pastor said for years and years, the headless chicken will look for a little while like the most alive thing on the barnyard, but it’s the most dead. And that’s true. And that’s true, unfortunately, excuse me, of a lot of churches.

They can look like the most alive church you’ve ever seen, that they can be dead. What’s it mean that they’re dead? I don’t believe it means that they are lost. You know, we talk about before our conversion, before being made alive in Christ, we are spiritually dead.

I don’t believe that’s what he’s talking about here. I believe what he’s talking about are believers who have somewhere along the way faded away spiritually. There are no signs of spiritual life within them.

Does that mean they’ve lost their salvation? Not necessarily. I don’t believe you can lose your salvation.

But some of them, there may have been people within the church who’d never really been saved and were spiritually dead for that reason. There may have been people in the church who spiritually were flatlining and needed the defibrillator. That is the thing with the paddles, right, Brother Phil?

Okay. I want to make sure I use the right term. They were flatlining spiritually and needed a jump start.

I don’t believe this is talking about anybody that’s lost their salvation, and I don’t believe by and large he’s saying that the church at Sardis was lost. But the church, there was no power. There was no clear presence of the Holy Spirit. There was none of these things that we would look at a church and say they’re really alive.

There may have been the appearance thereof, but inside it was dead and cold. And so he tells them, he says, this is a problem. As I said with the church at Ephesus, we might get to a point where we think that’s just normal. Oh, you lost your first love.

Oh, you got saved and you’re excited. You’ll calm down eventually, we all do. Folks, we should not accept that as normal. And at this point, you may be thinking, because I did for a little bit when I read this, why doesn’t he just address one letter to Sardis and Ephesus?

If you’ll notice at Ephesus, he talks about all the things that they’d been doing, And there was still something that was going on in the church. There was still some sort of spiritual movement, some sort of spiritual filling in the church of Ephesus, but they had wandered away from their first love a little bit. And as I told you last week, that Thyatira was what would happen to Pergamos if left unchecked.

That eventually they’d go from a church, a good, solid church that had people in it that were teaching sinful ideas, and they would progress to a church that was full-blown teaching immorality and just had a faithful few in the church, where the majority had flipped and the church had flipped. Folks, by the same token, Sardis, I believe, is a continuation of what Ephesus would be if left unchecked. If you walk away, if you wander away from that first love long enough, things are going to grow cold and dead inside.

So I believe Sardis could have looked back a few years prior, and where they would have been is where Ephesus was now when Christ wrote the letter. And Ephesus, if they didn’t remember from where they’d fallen and repent and do the first works in a few years would end up like the church at Sardis. The difference is Ephesus was still trying, but they’d lost sight of the reasons why they were trying.

The church at Sardis had pretty well given up on trying. So he tells them, similar to what he tells the church at Ephesus, he tells them, be watchful and strengthen the things which remain that are ready to die. In his description of them being dead, this is important to take into consideration.

The church as a whole may have been dead, but there was still this small remnant within the church that was alive. But that portion of the church spiritually was on life support. There was a heartbeat there.

It may have been faint and quiet and distant, but there was a heartbeat there. And there was still something that could be done to turn things around. As long as that heartbeat was there, there was still something that could be done.

And he tells them, be watchful and strengthen the things which remain. that little bit of life, that tiny spark of life, that tiny glimmer of hope that still existed in the hearts of some in the church at Sardis, he said, grab onto that, strengthen it, and grow that. Pursue that.

Be watchful and strengthen the things which remain. And he doesn’t present them with the impression that you’ve got a few years down the road to go. You’ve got a little ways to go before you have to get serious about making this decision.

There’s a sense of urgency about what he tells them that you need to now be watchful and strengthen the things that remain, he says, because they are ready to die. Yes, there’s still that faint heartbeat. There’s still that faint spark of life within the church, but it’s about to go out if you don’t do something now.

It’s ready to die. Be watchful and strengthen the things which remain that are ready to die, for I have not found thy works perfect before God. The things that they had done, he says, are not perfect before God.

The church at Sardis very likely thought that what it was doing, it was doing very well. But he said, your works aren’t perfect before God. And knowing from verse 2, I’m sorry, from verse 1, the reputation that this church had, it probably thought very well of itself as well.

So I would imagine all of this would come as a big shock to the church. Hey, we’re not doing as well as we thought. You know, why wouldn’t it happen with churches?

It happens with people. If people tell us enough, hey, you did a good job. Hey, you’re a good singer.

Hey, you’re a good artist. hey, you’re a good cook, we can eventually start to think these things about ourselves. There’s nothing wrong with thinking it if it’s true. But somewhere along the way, if we get complimented enough, we can get a big head about it and get a swelled head and start to think we’re even better than we really are.

Why couldn’t it happen with a church? Oh, that church is so wonderful. Oh, that church is so spiritual. Did you hear about what that church did?

Did you hear who goes to that church? Did you hear how much money that church brought in last week? And folks, a church, if complimented, if given a good reputation, and I’m not talking about a good reputation from God, but I’m talking about the applause of men, if it gets it for long enough, a church, just like a person, can start to think better of itself than it really is, get an inflated sense of ourself.

And we at Eastside can think maybe we’re doing better than we really are. And again, I want to make it very clear that I’m not addressing any particular problem that I know about here. If the church was completely dead, there’d be no use in talking to you about it, because I’ve been there.

Not here, but I’ve been there. If the church already was on life support, I’d probably be hollering a lot more than I am. Not that I’m hollering, but for me, I’d probably holler a little bit, try to get through to us.

I’m not addressing any specific problems that I know about, but we as a church could get to the point where we think, we’re doing just fine, and what happens when we think we’re doing just fine? we start to coast a little bit. And we rest on our laurels and think, I can sit back and rest. I accomplished all of this back here.

I knew a man at Peniel, the first church I pastored. And I won’t name names, not that you’d know him anyway. But there was a man at Peniel that we used to ask, would you help with this?

Would you help with that? And it’s not like we were trying to work him to death, but he’d been a member there for a while. And say, would you help with this?

no, no, I’m not here to get involved in doing a bunch of stuff. Excuse me, do you know who you’re talking to? At least most people with the pastor at least have the decency to pretend they want to do things.

He’s telling me, I’m not here to get involved in a bunch of stuff and do a bunch of stuff. Now, he was there three times a week whenever the doors were open. He didn’t want to do anything.

And his reason for that, he said, was he had been in church for most of his adult life, and he was probably in his 70s at that point, but he still had vitality about him, and he’d get out and he could outwork me when it came to the yard work. So it’s not like he was tired and frail. But he said, you know, I ran a bus route for 30 years, and I worked with the youth, and I did this, and I did that, and I knocked doors, and I’ve done my time.

And trying to be the diplomat that I sometimes try to be, I just left it at that and thought we’ll talk about it another time, and I’ll talk to my wife about it later. And one day, God loved my wife. She said something to the effect of, haven’t you heard my husband say from the pulpit, if you’ve still got a heartbeat, God’s still got work for you to do?

I said, thank you. Somebody’s paying attention, even if it is my wife. Somebody’s paying attention.

Folks, we can as a church, just as easily as individuals, get into the mindset of saying, I’ve done my time. I worked in ministry, you don’t even know how many years. You don’t know what I used to do.

I used to run bus routes, and I used to do all of this, and now it’s just time for me to sit. Baloney. Can I say that?

That’s ridiculous. As long as there is a heartbeat in your chest, as long as there is breath in those lungs, there is something you can do for the kingdom of God. He’s left you here for a reason.

East side. He’s left us here for a reason. I’ve talked about the story that was shared with me about how the church nearly died, what, 20 years ago?

If God didn’t have a purpose for east side, he could have let it die 20 years ago when it was Wood Avenue. But God had a purpose for this church. God has something for us to accomplish.

As individuals, God has something for us to accomplish. As long as there’s a heartbeat, as long as there’s breath, there’s something for us to accomplish. And we can’t get to the point where we just rest on our laurels and coast the rest of the way and say, well, we’ve done our part, we’re all right now.

And no, I’m not saying you have to go out there and wear yourselves out. Because I know some of you have health problems where you’re not able to get out and do the things you used to do. But there’s always something that we can do.

There’s always something we can do. And this church at Sardis had gotten to the point where they said, we’ve done our part. At that point, I believe they just began to sit and the church rusted out instead of dying out or instead of burning out.

It died out either way. He says, remember therefore how thou hast received and heard. Had to read this a couple times.

He doesn’t say remember what thou hast received and heard. Folks, I believe in terms of their teaching, this church was still faithful. I think this is a picture of a pretty typical theologically conservative church throughout our country or anywhere in our country.

In terms of their teaching, he didn’t have to remind them of what they’d been taught, of what they’d received and heard. They knew. I believe they were still faithful in what they believed and what they taught.

But he says, remember how thou hast received and heard. Remember the power of the things that you’ve been taught. Remember how the Holy Spirit has taught you.

In this day, they didn’t have the New Testament written out necessarily, the whole complete thing. Couldn’t have because he was still writing part of it to them. And so they had prophets in the churches.

People would prophesy. People would speak in tongues and do various other things through the power of the Holy Spirit to instruct the churches. And they were taught by the Holy Spirit and they were led by the Holy Spirit.

He’s reminding them of the power of the Holy Spirit of God when God spoke to them and they knew it and they heard it and recognized it for what it was. And He says, remember how thou hast received and heard the manner in which it happened and that it happened at all. Remember how God led you at the first. And hold fast, he says, and repent.

These are almost identical to his instructions to the church at Ephesus. To remember and to hold fast and repent and go back to what you were doing before. If therefore thou shalt not watch, still in verse 3, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.

And this is not saying that he’s going to come and steal everything from them. It’s a reference to what Jesus had said himself in the Gospels, that the Son of Man comes as a thief in the night. We won’t know the date or the hour when he comes.

sorry to those who try to predict it. And that’s not saying that only if they won’t repent and turn back will they not know, and that if we’re faithful, we’ll know. No, it’s a warning to them that they can pretend like everything is just going on smoothly, and they don’t know when He’s coming back.

We’ve seen signs from time to time that say things along the lines of, Jesus is coming back soon, look busy. Better said, Jesus is coming back soon, be busy. Thou hast a few names, verse 4, even in Sardis.

Even in Sardis. You have a few names which have not defiled their garments, meaning they’ve not compromised with the world, they’ve not bought into the sinful practices and teachings. It says, and they shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy.

He that overcometh, if you’ll recall, we’ve talked about this every week, the ones who overcome are the ones who have believed by faith that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that He died for them. It’s faith in Christ. We overcome the world by believing in Christ as the Son of God. He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment, and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will countless.

. . Sorry, it doesn’t say countless.

I’ve underlined in here, and sometimes the underlining runs into the letters. But I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels. It’s important to note what the passage says and what the passage doesn’t say.

The passage says, it gives a promise to the faithful at Sardis, that those who have overcome will not have their names blotted out of the book of life. it does not say that those who fail to overcome will have their names blotted out. This is not a threat that somebody is going to lose their salvation.

To see that in there is to see something that’s not there. This is not a threat. I believe God says what He means and means what He says.

If He was saying, if He intended by this, I will blot your name out, He would say, I will blot your name out. Folks, I have to believe that. This is not a threat of losing their salvation.

This is a promise of eternal life to those who believe in Jesus Christ. Now the warning is still there through all of Scripture. Those who reject Christ will spend eternity in hell. But this is not talking about someone who was saved and then lost their salvation because they didn’t overcome by works.

It’s talking about those who overcome by faith. It’s a promise to them. You don’t have to worry about your name being erased out of the book.

But I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. We have just a brief momen

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