Revelation 3:1-6

We study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel, and today is no different as we are continuing our study in the last of the 66 books of the Bible, the book of Revelation.

I'm Matt Pearson, for those of you who don't know me, and Pastor Jim and I decided to pull a fast one and switch places today.

And I am thrilled to get to help teach from this book.

And I want to start by giving Jim serious props.

He's been doing an unbelievable job teaching online the last few weeks, hasn't he?

I mean, the word has just flowed out of him.

So, Jim, way to go, pal.

So, this is week seven of our study of the book of Revelation, this unique book that's written in three different genres.

It's apocalyptic in the sense that God is revealing himself to us through this book.

It's prophetic.

God is inserting himself into the story.

We're hearing both, thus saith the Lord, how things are on the ground now, forthelling, and we're also hearing some foretelling, how things are going to be in the future.

God's telling us about things that will happen.

And it's also an epistle, a pastoral letter written by the Apostle John to the churches in Asia Minor.

And I love the theme that the ministerial leadership team has come up with for this book, Revelation, the hope of glory, because it rightly frames our future, ending with us on our knees together in worship of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So I'm a child of the 70s.

And for any of you that were, you know what I'm talking about.

I grew up on Hal Lindsay's The Late Great Planet Earth, which was a book that talked about all things, end of times, and it basically predicted the return of Jesus in the 1980s.

It was a book full of earthquakes, famine, war, and all the scary things, which, you know, if that's your focus, it is scary.

But that's not the point of revelation.

God doesn't reveal himself to us in order to scare us.

As Jim always tells us, what's the most often repeated verse or command in the Bible?

It's do not fear, don't be afraid.

That's what God is telling us.

And in this final chapter of the Bible, of this story made up of 66 books, this final chapter is continuing the story echoed through the whole thing, God's relentless pursuit of us and his undying love for us.

So remember that Revelation was written basically in seven parts, corresponding to the seven visions that John had.

So these seven visions are the vision of the seven churches in chapters one through three.

That's where we are right now in the book, then the vision of the seven seals from chapters four through the beginning of chapter eight, the vision of the seven trumpets from chapters eight through 11, followed by the battle against Satan, chapters 12 through 14, the vision of the bowls in the seven bowls in chapters 15 and 16, the downfall of Babylon in chapters 17 through 19, and finally the glorious vision of the new heavens and the new earth in chapters 20 through 22.

So let's take a look at this map again that Jim has been putting up on our slides every week to remind us of where we are in the world right now.

So John wrote the letter from the tiny island of Patmos in the super small white lettering on the lower left of the map.

The seven churches that John wrote letters to are located in what is now modern-day Turkey.

In New Testament times, it was known as Asia Minor, and before that it was known as the country or kingdom of Lydia.

And these seven churches are on an old Roman postal route, roughly in the shape of a horseshoe.

And so it makes sense that John wrote these letters in the order that the churches would be found on the route.

And so today our passage is going to take us to the city in the church of Sardis, the fifth city on the route.

And Sardis has a rich history, literally a rich history.

So the city, city of Sardis, lies 30 miles south of Thyatira.

And due to its location, Sardis was a junction point for highways and trade routes.

It commanded trade from the Aegean Islands, and it also commanded this important military road that wound down through the Hermes Valley.

And gold, did I say gold?

Sardis was an extremely wealthy city.

There was gold dust in the river that ran through the town.

And there was even a legend that King Midas had dipped his toe in the river, hence the gold dust.

Metallurgists in Sardis had found a way to separate and purify gold and silver.

So if you bought precious metals from a jeweler in Sardis, you knew that you were getting the best, most pure gold or silver available.

So not only was Sardis commercially prosperous, but it was also militarily strategic, mostly because its Acropolis was built high up, 800 foot high, sheer, almost vertical cliffs.

It was just impregnable.

You couldn't attack.

Except that twice in its history, the Sardians left, literally let their guard down.

In 547 BC, Cyrus the Great of Persia attacked and ended up conquering Sardis.

And the story goes that a guard up on top of the Acropolis dropped his helmet off.

And instead of just leaving it be, he went out the back door, kind of around the secret back passage to retrieve his helmet.

And a Persian spy saw what he was doing, and they snuck in the back way and attacked and conquered the city.

So by the end of the first century A.D., where we find ourselves today, Sardis is a Roman city, and it's actually kind of on its way down.

It's starting its decline.

However, it's still fabulously wealthy, known for easy money and loose living, which has had an effect on the church in Sardis.

So join me now and let's turn to our text and find out what Jesus had to say to the church in Sardis and how he might be speaking to us today out of this same text.

So, Revelation chapter 3, verses 1 through 6.

Revelation 3:1–6

And to the angel of the church in Sardis, write, The words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars.

I know your works.

You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead.

Wake up and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God.

Remember then what you have received and heard.

Keep it and repent.

If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you.

Yet you still have a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with me in white, for they are worthy.

The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life.

I will confess his name before my father and before his angels.

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

Whew, amen.

Well, okay, so each of these seven letters has a basic pattern to it.

Let's see how this letter fits the common pattern.

So the beginning of each letter, there was a city where the name of the church is named.

There's a reference back to Christ found in chapter one.

There's a commendation of the church and an accusation of the church, an exhortation to the church.

And then it finishes up with a motivating promise and the summons to hear and heed.

So our text does start out with the name of the church, obviously, Sardis, and it does reference Christ from chapter one here in verse one of chapter three.

Jesus is the one who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars.

So most Bible scholars agree that the seven spirits basically refers to the Holy Spirit.

Sometimes it's called the Sevenfold Spirit of God, sometimes called the all-seen eyes of God.

And then the seven stars refer to the seven angels, possibly the leaders of these seven churches in Asia Minor.

So typically we'd move on to the commendation of the church, but this is the first letter of the seven to break the pattern.

It starts without a commendation.

Jesus says, I know, as he does with five out of the seven churches, but this time he starts with the accusation.

And man, I've been wondering about this all week.

You know, is the Church of Sardis so bad that there's nothing good to be said about it?

There's no starting with any compliments and then bringing in the criticism.

You know, good management style always starts with the praise and then gently criticizes.

But then I started wondering, okay, what if the reason that there's no commendation is because their situation is so dangerous, so dire, so urgent that Jesus is immediately trying to get their attention.

You know, if your house is on fire in the middle of the night, you don't gently wake up your wife and say, Oh, hun, oh, I've just been watching you sleep, and you're so gorgeous.

When you sleep, your your hair is so pretty the way it falls on the pillow.

And hey, um, hun, you know that the house is on fire, so we should probably go ahead and get out.

No, you don't do that.

You roust your wife, you wake her up and you say, hun, the house is on fire.

Grab the kids.

We've got to get out now.

And that I think is why Jesus is cutting to the chase here, because things are urgent.

Things are bad enough that he is urgent.

Right?

So, okay, what was so urgent with the Sardis Church?

And we're gonna find out next in the accusation part of this letter.

Jesus says, I know your works.

And friends, whoo, that statement should always bring us to our knees when Jesus says to us, I know your works.

We immediately should fall to our feet.

But Jesus says, I know your works.

You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead.

And it's like he's saying, Bro, you look good in that Titans jersey, but you're not in the game.

Put down that stale warm beer and that dried-out pretzel and get in the game.

Verse 2 says, Wake up and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God.

And friends, Jesus always wants us to be more complete.

The Holy Spirit is working in us every day to complete the work that Jesus began.

You know, he's saying, Hey, great, friend, you got a toe in the water, but I want the whole foot, I want the whole leg.

In fact, I want all of you.

In Matthew 22, Jesus says to the lawyer who asked him what the greatest commandment is.

Jesus says, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

This is the great and first commandment, not part all.

So the accusation against the Sardis Church was that they were, they were asleep at the wheel.

They were a cardboard cutout, they were existing on reputation alone.

George Eldon Ladd, professor at Fuller Seminary, says this about the church at Sardis.

He says it's a picture of nominal Christianity, outwardly prosperous, busy with the externals of religious activity, but devoid of spiritual life and power.

Yikes.

The picture to the outside world looked like a busy and a productive church, but in reality, on the inside, they were a paper-thin shell, a facade, like a rusty gate swinging and scraping in the breeze.

The thing about this church is that it was suffering decay not from external persecution like the church in Smyrna, not from internal error or false teaching like the churches at Pergamum and Diatira.

There were no wolves at the door, no termites in the floor, just a lackadaisical approach that fit their cultural surroundings in Sardis.

The church in Sardis, they were coasting, they were drifting, they were floating wherever the current of culture would take them.

And by floating, they were dying.

So how does how does Jesus intend to remedy this situation?

Well, now we move into the exhortation part of the letter, and Jesus gives five imperatives to the church at Sardis.

The first one is wake up.

Before anything else, Jesus exhorts the church to wake up.

Being awake, being watchful is a thing that we see over and over again in Scripture.

Think about Matthew chapter 26, where Jesus takes Peter, James, and John to the Garden of Gethsemane with him to watch while he prays.

Matthew 26 · chapter mention

Three times he comes back just to find them falling asleep.

So if Jesus' closest earthly friends were prone to falling asleep, guys, the rest of the church is likely going to be no different.

And we need to listen and respond when he tries to wake us.

And next, what is what does he say?

The next impair, strengthen what remains.

So a tree fell in our backyard this winter.

Like, like many of us, we had a lot of trees come down in the tornado and that other storm tornado a few weeks later.

So sometime during the winter, this tree fell in our backyard, and I haven't had time to cut it up yet.

And we've noticed in the last couple of weeks with things greening up that the tree limbs furthest away from the trunk or the base of the tree, of course, they're dead.

They're all dead.

But then as you get closer to the base of the tree, there are some green shoots that are growing out of the trunk.

So obviously, there's some root that is still connected to the ground, just enough to add those green shoots, because for all intents and purposes, the tree is dead, but there's just a little bit of life that remains and is visible.

And I think that's what Jesus is telling the church at Sardis.

He's like, guys, your faith is barely hanging on by a thread.

You must wake up and strengthen what remains.

And so, what's the next thing that he tells them to do?

He says, remember what you have received and heard.

We don't know who founded the church in Sardis, but what we do know is that at some point they heard and received the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Loved ones, why does Jesus exhort the church to remember?

Because we forget.

We forget.

We forget.

When Jesus was instituting what we now call the Lord's Supper Communion, what did he say?

He said, Do this in remembrance of me.

And when Moses was talking to the second generation of Israelites in Deuteronomy, right before they passed over to the Promised Land, what did he say?

He said, Lay up these words of mine in your heart and your and in your soul.

Teach them to your children.

Talk of these words when you were sitting in your house, when you were walking by the way, when you lie down, when you rise.

The best antidote to the atrophy of the muscle of faith is to use it.

Remember, remind yourself.

Preach the gospel to yourself often.

I need to hear the gospel.

I need to hear it from you.

I need to hear it from my family, but I need to hear it from myself as well.

In my spiritual life, what matters is how God sees me.

It doesn't matter how others see me.

It doesn't matter even how I see myself.

Because I gotta tell you, nobody lies to me more than I lie to me about how good or bad I am.

Nobody pulls the wool over my eyes better than me, depending on the day, depending on my mood.

My inner monologue is either eloquently singing my praises to myself or loudly lamenting my faults.

And you know what?

Jesus wants none of those lies for us.

He wants me, and he wants you to hear the good news that Christ died for our sins according to scripture, that he was buried, that he was raised again to life on the third day according to Scripture.

And according to Scripture, he is one day going to return to make things right.

Amen.

So the next two imperatives in this passage, they follow right on the heels of remembering.

Jesus tells the church to take what they have heard and received, to remember it, and then to keep it or to hold it fast.

I love that.

Just like that hymn that we sing, He will hold me fast.

He tells them to hold it fast, and then once they're holding fast, use that as a launching pad to repent and return back to God.

And I love the ordered steps of this process.

If we're out on a limb, weak and wavering in our faith, the remedy is to remember, remember what we've heard and received, to hold it fast and to turn and repent, only to see the Father running as fast as he can to meet us, his prodigal son or daughter, to wrap us in the arms of forgiveness and to make it all right again.

So after the exhortation to the church comes a motivating promise.

He says, Yet you still have a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with me in white, for they are worthy.

The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life.

I will confess his name before the Father and before his angels.

In each of the letters to the seven churches, woof, it's so good, isn't it?

There's a similar promise to the ones who overcome, to the ones who conquer, there's a reward or a blessing.

And when we're faithful and obedient to follow Christ's commands, there is a benefit, communion and fellowship with him.

There seems to be a threefold reward promised here.

To those who remain faithful, we'll be given white garments suggesting victory, just like that white stone that Jim showed us in the chapter on the church in Pergamum.

Secondly, our name, it will never be blotted out of the book of life, intimating that there is indeed, there's nothing that can separate us from the love of Christ Jesus.

And lastly, like we read in Matthew 10, 32, Jesus says, So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven.

Jesus says, He will confess us before the Father and His angels.

I love this promise.

But I want to suggest an additional thought.

Parents, and I know you know what I'm going to be talking about.

If you put your kids in white clothes and you send them outside to play, exactly how long will it be before they've soiled their clothes and gotten them dirty inside and out?

We raised two boys in the country, and I know the answer to that question, not very long at all.

They can't help it.

Kids love dirt, and dirt loves kids.

So, in the same way, it's beyond our ability, even as believers, in this world, to live perfect lives.

And what is the answer?

Our soiled robes are washed in the blood of the Lamb.

Isaiah 118 says, Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow.

Though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.

First John 1 9 says, When we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and Cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

All, you hear that word, all unrighteousness.

Friends, it's never about us being perfect.

It's never been about us being perfect.

It is about Him being perfect.

It's about us remembering what we have received and heard and holding fast and repenting and returning to the Lord.

John Calvin says, We should ask God to increase our hope when it is small, awaken it when it is dormant, confirm it when it is wavering, strengthen it when it is weak, and raise it up when it is overthrown.

Woo!

Amen to that.

So the letters always finish out with a summon to hear and heed.

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

Wow.

To quote TBCer Edgar Arnold, wow, wow, wow.

What a fantastic chapter this is.

So what can we take away from this letter to the church as Sardis?

What can we apply to this odd season that we find ourselves in right now?

I'd like to suggest three ideas to which God might be calling us.

God is calling to awaken us from something, number one.

Number two, God is calling to awaken us for something.

And lastly, God is calling to awaken us to something.

God is calling to awaken us from being asleep at the wheel.

I don't know about you guys, but A, have you ever gone on a long road trip?

And somewhere during the day, you're driving, you're driving, you're driving, and you just realize I don't remember the last 20, 25 miles I just drove because I have been drifting.

I'm basically asleep at the wheel.

So three months ago, if you had asked me, actually more like five months, if you'd asked me why we were asleep at the wheel as a church, as the global church, this might have been my answer.

Affluenza.

Like the church at Sardis, things were good, comfortable, easy.

It's just too easy to coast along to drift with the current of culture.

And especially those of us in the modern West can be vulnerable to this.

But you know what?

Today, after three months of isolation, of quarantine, I'd say the answer more lies just in weariness.

Man, we are worn out.

It's a fatiguing season right now.

You know, it's it's hard to remember what day of the week it is.

You know, if you're at the beach, halfway through the week you can't remember what day it is.

That's a good thing.

Right now, if you can't remember what day of the week it is, that's not a good thing.

You know, many of us, many of us are experiencing financial hardship.

Some of us have been ill ourselves.

Some of us have had family members ill or or die from the virus.

There's just such uncertainty in our landscape right now.

And there is a 24-hour gush of bad news wherever you turn in the media, whether it's news or cable news or social media, there's just this constant fire hose of bad news aimed right at us.

You know, the the COVID virus, the pandemic, the economy, an election year, hello, politics, the ugliness of racism that we've seen in our country just this week.

Isolation, it's just all wearying.

And we can just zone out and walk around like zombies, full of fear and despair and uncertainty.

And Kristen likens it to trying to just hold on to fog.

It's just zombie land.

And that's where God stirring us up and waking us to alertness is good for us to remember what we have received and heard, right?

Okay, so God's calling us, calling to awaken us from something, but he's also calling to awaken us for something, for involvement in his kingdom now.

God loves us too much to let us slumber or sleep, or sleep walk.

Jim and I were talking the other day, and he was telling me, you know, the other afternoon when we were uh gonna try and watch that SpaceX launch, which got uh postponed, hopefully happening Saturday.

He said that Kim had wanted to take a nap, and she made Jim promise to wake him up so she could see the launch.

And because Jim loves her, of course he's going to wake her up.

He's not gonna let her sleep through it, right?

So here's a question for all of us: God loves us and wants us to be awake and alert.

How resistant are we to being awakened or stirred?

How hard does God have to try to get our attention?

In his book, The Problem of Pain, C.S.

Lewis says, pain insists upon being attended to.

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains.

It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

Okay, so I'm not insinuating God somehow is behind the COVID pandemic and all of the trauma that we've endured.

He's not behind it.

I'm saying that because he loves us, he desires us to be fully awake and engaged and involved in his kingdom now.

In his commentary on Revelation, John Stott makes the point concerning the few remaining in the church at Sardis who who remain faithful and alive.

He says, an alive and awake majority can recall.

No, sorry, let me start.

An alive and awake minority can recall the majority from death.

And think about this: God always tends to use his people as a minority.

Think of the Israelites in Exodus, think of the Christians written to by Peter in 1 Peter chapter 2.

1 Peter 2 · chapter mention

We are called to be different.

We're called to be a distinct group of people set apart in order to point to God, in order to point to Christ.

We're called to be salt and light.

We are called to be counter-cultural against the current, not against people, not against culture, but particularly and singularly for God, standing out, a peculiar people, a kingdom of priests pointing towards Christ.

Agnostic author Julian Barnes says this about faith in his book, Nothing to Be Frightened Of.

Man oh man, I love this quote.

What's the point of faith unless you and it are serious?

Seriously serious, unless your religion fills, directs, stains, and sustains your life.

Man, I love that an agnostic author gets the point of faith.

He nails it.

Our faith, it should stain us.

It should mark us as distinct so that in looking at us, the watching world sees the mark of the risen Savior, Jesus Christ, on our lives.

Lastly, I think God is calling to awaken us to watch.

He's calling us to awaken to a watch for his kingdom coming.

All through the scripture, especially the New Testament, believers are called to be awake and watchful for the return of their master.

Even to the church of Sardis, Jesus said, If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I come against you.

Fleming Rutledge says in her book Advent, the only way to be faithful is to be faithful at each moment.

Keep awake, for you do not know when the master of the house is coming.

Friends, I seek to persuade you that God is calling us this morning.

He's calling to awaken us from our adrift and sleepwalking.

He's calling to awaken us for participation in his kingdom now.

And he's calling to awaken us to be alert and watchful for his kingdom coming.

I'd like to close with this quote from Brian Hedges in his book Watchfulness, which I highly recommend.

Brian says, the final ingredient of watchfulness is expectancy.

Expectancy signals hope, not the flimsy hope of wishful thinking, but the confident expectations of promises fulfilled by a faithful God.

Amen.

Amen.