Revelation 3:1-6
I’ll turn in your copy of the
Scriptures to the book of Revelation to chapter 3. It’ll be in Revelation chapter 3 verses
1 through 6. This is the letter to the church
in Sardis. There’s two more to go after
this and then we get to the glorious chapters 4 and 5 on the throne
of heaven. So let us hear from God’s word
together. This is Revelation chapter three,
beginning at verse one. Jesus says, 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 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
out his name from 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. Amen. Well, what does the word church
mean to you? That’s a loaded question. When
you ask, what does something mean to you? The implication,
especially in today’s culture is Well, it can mean anything
I want it to mean. My experience, my view, my opinion. But we should always define things
the way God does. In fact, if we don’t, that’s
why churches like Sardis get in big trouble. Well, the church
in the New Testament comes from a Greek word that has two parts
to it. The first is ek, which means
from out of. and then the lesia, the assembly. And so the word church simply
means those gathered from out of the world, or the called out
ones, the assembly of the called out ones. If you stretch back
into the Old Testament, into the Hebrew language, the kahal,
the assembly was the assembling together of God’s people from
out of the world. Remember when God called a people
to himself, he started with Abraham. Abraham was a Pagan and Ur of
the Chaldeans and God called Abram out of Paganism. He called
him out of a Pagan religion, a Pagan way of life. And he called
him out of a Pagan land and sent him to Canaan. to establish a
people for God. And so one of the things we must
remember that as the church, as the called out ones, as the
assembly of the called out ones, we are divine, we are spiritual. And the marks of the church have
typically been this, gospel preaching, sacraments, church discipline,
the authorized ministry of the church through duly trained and
qualified people. And also the church has been
marked by suffering. And we do these things until
Christ comes. We preach the gospel. We do the
sacraments. We maintain our purity by discipline. We suffer as servants who live
in a dark and dying world, and we continue the work of the ministry
by handing it down to those who can be entrusted with it faithfully,
an authorized ministry. So what is the church? The called
out ones. But what is the church? Maybe
we’ll say the church in quotes. A church with no gospel. A church with weak preaching.
A church that, well, it has sacraments, but those sacraments aren’t safeguarded
and they’re kind of for everyone. It’s anyone able to participate. There is no church discipline.
And as a friend of mine, an elder I served with in another church
said, It’s easier to be a member of the church than it is to be
a member of the Kiwanis club. The standards have been put down. They have been dragged down in
the church often. We desire to win people, but to win them to
what? And so the church, as we call
it, the church in quotes, it has digressed. It has been snuffed
out. And as a friend of mine was relaying
to me on the phone yesterday, his congregation had a little
squabble on whether at their Sunday lunches, They should use
paper plates or styrofoam. This is real story, not made
up. Names have been altered to protect the innocent. And he
said, you know what these people need is a little white hot persecution. And he said, they’ll forget about
the paper plates or the styrofoam ones. But the church can digress. So how does a church know it’s
a church? How do we evaluate whether a
church is a real church or just a church? What are the metrics? Well, you look at some of the
metrics of successful churches in the world and are they growing
in numbers? Are people excited to be there? Well, which metrics? God’s metrics
or worldly metrics? Is it the scripture’s metrics
and measurements or Is it the way Jesus evaluates? Well, Jesus has been evaluating
churches. We’ve been through three of them.
Here’s the fourth, and now we land on Sardis, and Sardis does
not get a good report. Some of you, when the real report
cards got sent home, now I’m sure it’s electronic, but the
real report cards sent home, you dreaded that day, especially
if there was a bad mark on your report card. Well, Sardis gets
bad marks. In fact, I think they get probably
a D minus. That would be my guess of what it is. Jesus says to
Sardis, you have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Your works are incomplete. Not a good report card. Not a
good message from Jesus. Well, think with me for a minute,
if you will, about two churches, one large, one small. The large
one has everything in the world to offer its people. The small
one is simple. The large one has every amenity
possible and not just one coffee bar, but it has one for the youth
group. The other is plain Jane. It’s small, simple. The one church
offers advice. The one simpler church offers
life changing teaching. The large church has a concert
experience complete with fog machine and instruments and all
the right people with all the right gifts up front. But the
other, they worship with deeply rooted worship in the historic
Christianity. And it involves you in a dialogue
with Almighty God. Which do you think people will
view as alive? Big church, that’s the way it
always goes. You wouldn’t believe what we offer at our church.
That’s what we often hear in the barbershop or in the grocery
checkout line, or when someone eavesdrops one of our conversations. Which will survive white hot
persecution? That’s a real question, isn’t
it? James Montgomery Boyce said so well years ago, and he was
a prophet when he spoke this, I think. He says, what you win
them with is what you have won them to. We say this around our
house a good bit. In fact, today we were on the
way to Sunday lunch with family and we passed a church that had
a bouncy house. I’m not kidding, and a food truck.
And one of the kids I think said it, what you win them with. It’s
what you win them to, maybe I said it, I don’t know. But it’s a
good way to think, isn’t it? What you win people with is what
you have won them to. And so we want, as a church,
to be spirit-filled, truth-applied-to-life ministry. We want to be God-centered,
we want to be Christ-exalting. But what is the solution to a
church like Sardis? I mean, we hear it all the time,
don’t we? Sometimes maybe we listen to the Q&A seminars from
Ligonier Ministries. If you haven’t listened to one
of those, when the people at their conferences get to ask
questions, they’re some of the most incredible times. And almost
at every national conference at Ligonier Host, someone asked
this question. I go to a church that has lost
its way. The preaching is weak. The preaching
is unfaithful. What should I do? And the answer
is always the same. You need to do whatever it takes
to find a church that preaches the word. And even if you have
to drive a whole hour, you had better figure out how to get
there because the Christian life is way too important. And so sometimes there are people
who find themselves in churches, churches that we might call dead
memorial Presbyterian church of the hypocrisy. Never seen
a sermon title like that before, have you? Now churches, churches
can look alive. They have a building, and they
have a building fund, and it gets painted. And there’s a preschool
in there during the week. There’s an office staff that
maintains it. There’s enough critical mass
going on, enough money coming in, enough things going on to
give the appearance of being alive. There’s money, there’s
facility, there’s programs, and for whatever reason, people are
coming in and out of the doors. That’s probably what Sardis was
like. It was a body. It was a people. It was a building,
you might say. Maybe they had the programs.
Maybe they had this and that going on. And Jesus says, you’re
dead. In this little study of Revelation,
it’s referred to the churches as lampstands. And do you ever
think of this? How many churches are operating
as a church? But a long time ago, Jesus took
their lampstand away. And they just continue on. They
play church. They play denomination. They play music. They sing songs.
They take up money. They have a little Sunday school
class. But they’re doing all the hip things. They’re doing
all the social justice warrior things. And they’re busy, busy,
busy. They’re like little ants as God
looks down from heaven. He sees those ants scurrying
around. But there’s no word, there’s no worship, and there’s
no spiritual growth. I wonder how many churches might
find themselves in that position. That’s what Jesus is warning
Sardis of. I’m about to come, he says, and
take away your lampstand. And so he gives them several
commands. First of all, wake up. Wake up. That’s not a very
good command from Almighty God to receive. You’re asleep. You’re
slumbering. The wash of liberalism, the wake
of being socially alert has lulled you to sleep. And you are not
alive in Christ, but you are dead, though you are active. Then he says, strengthen what
remains. There’s a kernel of life left in you. You’re doing
something. Some of your works are, they’re
incomplete, but there’s something there. Strengthen what remains.
Remember what you have received and heard and keep it. and repent. It’s a little bit
like the letter to the church at Ephesus. Remember from where
you have fallen, repent and recover the things you loved at first.
We’ve talked before about how churches go through cycles. They
go through formation, they go through deformation, and then
they must go through, if God is kind to them, reformation. And so he commands them to wake
up, to remember, to keep, to repent. and to get back to being
a church. Or else, he says, or else he
who has the seven spirits, he who holds the seven stars says,
I’ll come down there. Have y’all seen those billboards?
They have a little note and it says from God. I think there’s
one of them that says, don’t make me come down there. See
it sometimes out on the highway. That’s the speech. That’s the
speech that Jesus is giving to Sardis. Don’t make me come down
there, because I will, and I’ll take away your lampstand. Here’s
the scathing report, but there’s good news. He says in verse four,
he says in verse four, there are some of you, There are a few names in Sardis,
people who have not soiled their garments. They will walk with
me in white, for they are worthy. And isn’t that like the whole
story of the Bible? Here we are at the end of the
scriptures. Here we are at the last book
of the Bible, and remnant theology still makes its way there. God
always has a people. You remember, was it Elijah’s
ministry? Elijah thought there’s no one
else, no one else on earth who hasn’t bowed the knee to Baal,
but he was happy to see there were some. God always has a people. God always has a people who have
not bowed their knee to Baal. And here we see it again in the
midst of Rome, in the midst of Sardis, in the midst of a dark
and dying world, in the midst of a dark and dying culture.
And you could say this of yourselves, isn’t it good to be in the company
of saints? And to see there are some still
that have not bowed their knee to the other gods of the culture. This is a scathing report, but
there’s good news here. There are still some who want
to be faithful to Almighty God. He says, yet you have a few names
in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments. They’ve
not sinned. And they will walk with me in white, a garment of
righteousness, for they are worthy. Why are they worthy? Because
of their faith. the Lord Jesus. Isn’t it true
that we need watchmen in the church? There’s that watchman
language in the book of Ezekiel. We watch. We want to be on guard. We want to be faithful. We don’t
want to let our guard down. We don’t want to be, how is it
always put, the frog? In the pot of water, the heat
was turned up slowly and eventually the boiling water boiled the
frog, but the frog didn’t know it. It was gradual. And that’s
the culture we live in, where we get gradually beat down. We’re
seeing major denominations. Many of us grew up in them. Many
of us have had to leave our former denominations because the frog
is boiling. Unfaithfulness to the standard
of scriptures, unfaithfulness to the definition of marriage,
unfaithfulness to standards of chastity, unfaithfulness, to
the faith once and for all handed down. And so the church needs
watchmen. The church needs those who will
be watchful because the devil is, he’s tricky, isn’t he? The
serpent is more crafty. He still hisses in the ears of
God’s people, telling them God wants us to have more fun than
we’re having. He’s telling us that we can have our best life
now and not later. And so we need watchmen. Twice
in the history of Sardis up until this point, Sardis was not watchful
and they were attacked from outside enemies and overtaken. And so
be watchful is not simply something God is saying to them that’s
unique to their religious life. It’s unique to their socio-political
life. They were attacked. They were
lulled into a sleep and outside forces came into their city and
overtook them. He says to repent, repent. He moves on in verse five, the
one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments and I
will never blot his name out of the book of life. In the midst
of an unfaithful world and even in the midst of an unfaithful
church setting, the one thing we can remember is that though
the visible church may be rent asunder, may be sore oppressed,
It may be torn by schism, it may even be weak in its gospel
witness. That does take place in this
world. We can know that in the church, the church triumphant
and the church invisible, our name is written in the book.
And so sometimes we may find ourselves in a church that has
grown unfaithful and we need to remember that God is always
faithful and that if our name is written in the book, It can
never be written out of it. And Jesus promises this, I will
confess his name before my father and before the angels. And he ends this wonderful second
chance, as it were, with this, he who has an ear, let him hear
what the spirit says to the churches. You know, sometimes I think of
this in light of the National Day of Prayer this past week. I think of some of the evangelical
efforts in America. It’s always paired up with politics. If we just get the right president,
if we just get the right people in Congress, if we get the right
judges on the bench, Christians will have it easy in America.
Well, Christians don’t need it easy in America. We’ve had it
easy in America, and I’m afraid the American church is a lot
like the church where? At Sardis. You’re busy, busy,
busy. But what does Jesus say? You’re
dead. What do we need? We need churches
with faithful preaching, faithful worship, faithful discipline,
faithful sacraments, faithful suffering. And those will know
that their names are written in the book of life. Those will
know that they will have the white garments given to us by
Jesus Christ. And so he says to us, he who
has an ear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches. Let’s pray together. Almighty
God, we thank you for words of warning. We don’t like to be
fussed at. We don’t like to be. critiqued, but it’s good to have
Jesus take a look at us. And it’s good to have Jesus give
an assessment of us. And so we pray that where we
are dead, we might be made alive. Where we are incomplete, we would
see to the finish our works. And we pray that we do it for
the sake of the glory of Christ and the good of the witness that
we have before the watching world, that we are the church. We are
the assembly of the called out ones. We do not walk in darkness
or walk in the ways of darkness, but we walk in the light. We
pray your blessing on us in Jesus name. Amen.