The Seven Lost Churches of Revelation
11/07/2004 - Wake Up
War. Terrorism. Surprise attacks are nothing new. They've been going on for years. Long before Pearl Harbor and 9-11 another city, not Honolulu, not New York, suffered a devastating sneak attack. The city was one of the most powerful cities in the world at the time, ruled by one of the wealthiest men in history. It was located on a majestic mountain top 1,500 feet above the valley below. It was a prestigious, sophisticated city that experts believed could never be conquered.
The city's name was Sardis. Its ruler was King Croesus. And the date was 549 years before Christ. From high atop the capital city of Sardis, Croesus ruled the vast empire of Lydia. But like so many rulers he wasn't content with his domain. He wanted more. And so he went to war with Cyrus, the King of Persia. But before he did he consulted the oracle of Delphi, a Greek fortuneteller, who was believed to have the power to predict the future. And when Croesus told her of his plan to cross the Halys River and attack Persia, the oracle said, "If you cross the River Halys, you will destroy a great empire."
Hearing those words Croesus was convinced that he would win the battle with Persia and destroy its empire. So with his troops he boldly crossed the River Halys only to discover that the great empire to be destroyed was his own. After a fierce battle that saw piles of dead bodies on both sides Croesus retreated back across the river and scurried up the mountain to the safety of his castle high atop Sardis. There he was confident that he would never be overcome.
For two weeks King Cyrus and his Persian army surrounded the city in the valley below hoping to find a way to gain entry. But they couldn't. The city appeared to be impregnable. Finally, an exasperated King Cyrus gathered his men and offered a handsome reward to anyone who could find a way up the mountain and into the city.
Then one day a Persian named Hyeroeades heard a noise. It was the noise of a helmet that a Sardian soldier accidentally dropped from the top of the wall. Hyeroeades watched carefully as the solider slowly climbed down the sheer cliff to retrieve it. He memorized the handholds and the footholds and later that night took a group of soldiers, retraced those steps, scaled the mountain, and found the walls completely unguarded.
Sardis had fallen asleep. And the city was easily captured. The same thing would happen two hundred years later. This time it would be the Greeks not the Persians who would conquer the city. And the scenario was the same. A Greek by the name of Lagoras did exactly what Hyeroeades did. He climbed the steep cliffs and once again found the walls unguarded and the city fast asleep. How does the saying go? "Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me." Sardis was put to shame.
And now what had happened twice to the city of Sardis was happening to the church in Sardis. It had fallen asleep and Jesus comes along and says, "Wake up or I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you."
Some churches need a wake up call. Some churches get complacent and fall asleep. They forget what their mission is. They forget why they're here. Sardis did. They needed a wake up call. Does Valley View? Do you need a wake up call? Let's find out as we look today at the church in Sardis.
This morning we continue our series called The Seven Lost Churches of Revelation with a teaching I've called "Wake Up!" If you have a Bible turn with me to Revelation 3:1-6 and follow along as I read.
Revelation 3:1-6, "To the angel of the church in Sardis write: These are the words of him who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your deeds: you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. 2 Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God. 3 Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard: obey it, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you. 4 Yet you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy. 5 Those who overcome will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out (erase) their names from the book of life, but will acknowledge their names before my Father and his angels. 6 Those who have ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches."
Sardis is the fifth of the seven lost churches of Revelation. We started a few weeks ago by looking at Ephesus, a church that had lost its first love. And to them Jesus said, "Repent and do the things you did at first. Get back to the spiritual disciplines that keep your love alive."
Then we went up the coast to Smyrna, a church that was about to enter a savage season of suffering. And to them Jesus said, "Be faithful. Don't be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I will be with you."
Next we climbed a steep, 1,000 foot mountain to visit Pergamum, the city where Satan lives. Like Smyrna, it was also a hostile place to call yourself a Christ follower. A church member had been killed there. The problem in Pergamum was compromise. The church was caving in to false teaching that encouraged believers to blend in with the crowd so nobody gets hurt. And to them Jesus said, "You better change your ways or I'm going to fight against you with the sword of my mouth."
Then last week we visited the industrial center of Thyatira. And in his longest letter Jesus also warns this church about the high cost of compromise. Like Pergamum, compromised teaching was leading to compromised living, only in this case the motivation wasn't life or death it was job security and maintaining membership in the local union. And to them Jesus said, "Time's up! I'm going to take some people out and repay you according to your deeds."
Now today we enter Sardis, a city about 30 miles south of Thyatira. A few years ago I visited Sardis and discovered that parts of the ancient city were built in the valley and parts on the hill. There are some temples there, but Sardis wasn't known for its temples. Sardis was known for its wealth. One historian says, "Sardis was dipped in gold, its river shimmered with gold dust washed down from high atop Mount Tmolus."
The first gold coins ever produced were minted in Sardis stamped with the image of King Croesus, who literally invented money. He was the first person to develop the idea of stamping his image on a uniform piece of gold. And under his rule Sardis reached its zenith. But now times had changed. Croesus was long gone and so was the splendor of Sardis. When this letter was written Sardis was no longer a wealthy, financial center. It was a city on the decline. It was a city whose best days were behind it.
And what had happened to the city was also happening to the church. The church at Sardis was in the same condition. Its best days were behind it. It was a church that was living in the past. The believers there weren't being threatened by persecution. Satan didn't live there. They weren't caving into compromise. They weren't listening to false teachers. They weren't doing much of anything except going through the motions.
This is the only church about which Jesus has nothing positive say. At one time they had a reputation for being alive, but no more. Now they were dead. What does a dead church look like? Does a dead church look like some dilapidated old building, all boarded up sitting on a plot of overgrown grass. Is that what a dead church looks like?
I can remember the very first time I saw a dead person. It was grandfather, my father's father. I was thirteen years old at the time. In fact, it was on my thirteenth birthday that we went to the funeral home for the viewing. And I didn't know what to expect. My parents tried to prepare me, but I was nervous. I didn't know if I was going to cry or be scared or pass out. I didn't know if I was going to be looking at a skeleton or what grand pop would look like. And I can remember seeing my grandfather lying in the casket all dressed up in a coat and tie, freshly shaven with his hair combed thinking, "He looks pretty good. He looks better dead than he did the last time I saw him alive. He just looks like he's asleep." But he wasn't asleep. He was dead. He was gone. There was no life there.
And dead churches can look that way too. They can appear to be alive on the outside with lots of things going on, but be dead on the inside. A dead church is not a church that's stopped meeting. That would be no church at all. The building is not boarded up. It could be a busy place, but there's no life there.
After all, that was Jesus' critique of the Pharisees, the religious leaders of his day. They looked good on the outside, but were dead on the inside. He put it this way in Matthew 23:27, Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean.
Notice how Jesus describes himself to this church. We've learned to pay attention to his descriptions because they're unique for each one of these churches. Here he describes himself in verse one as he who holds the seven spirits of God. The seven spirits can also be translated sevenfold Spirit which many believe is a symbolic way of describing the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus wants to bring the Holy Spirit back into this church. Somewhere along the line the church in Sardis had ditched the Holy Spirit and didn't even know it. They were doing everything in the power of the flesh. Maybe they had substituted machinery for mission as we talked about on Vision Sunday. It's so easy to lose sight of the mission. Perhaps they had committees for every thing and spent hours wrestling over issues that had very little to do with the mission that God had called them to. We don't know. But we do know that the Holy Spirit was not welcome there. His presence and his power were gone. But hardly anyone even noticed because they were just too busy doing church.
Somebody once said, "If the Holy Spirit left your church would anybody even know it? Would the church be any different? Or would it just keep chugging along, business as usual." That's a frightening thought. But dead churches can be filled with activity, yet have no life. The church at Sardis needed a fresh dose of the Holy Spirit. I am he who holds the seven spirits of God.
And so Jesus comes to this church with five commands. First he says, wake up in verse two. "Get a grip. Your city fell twice in its history because you were asleep and thought everything was fine. Everything is not fine. You're proud and arrogant and your faith is flabby. You're going through the motions and if you're not careful I will come like a thief in the night."
All of us need a wake up call every now and then. I know I do. It's easy to get complacent. It's easy to drop our guard. There are always two places where we're most vulnerable to Satan's attack. The first place is where we know we're weak and feel exposed. We need to guard that place for sure. But the second place is where we think we're strong, where we think we'll never fall. That's what happened to Sardis. They thought they could never be conquered. We all need to wake up and be on guard against the attacks of the evil one in both those places. Wake up, Jesus says.
Second, strengthen what remains. Not everything was lost. There were still things happening at this church. They were still meeting and worshiping and observing the Lord's Table and praying and teaching the Word of God and staying active. But they needed to do all those things in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Maybe some of them didn't know the Lord in a personal way. They went to church out of habit or a sense of duty or for their kids, but they didn't know Christ. They needed to embrace the truth of the gospel and receive the Holy Spirit for the first time. It's possible to attend church gatherings week after week and not really know the Lord. Do you know Christ personally? Have you trusted him alone as your Savior?
Perhaps others who knew the Lord needed to stop going through the motions. For them church had become routine. It's what they did on Sundays. They just showed up and filled a seat. Maybe they even put a gift in the offering plate. But they had long since lost the joy of giving and the joy of worship and the Word. They needed to think and pray and ask God to fill them fresh with the Holy Spirit. Maybe they needed to pay attention to the words they were singing or the teaching they were hearing. Maybe they needed to listen for themselves and not for their neighbor. Maybe they just needed to let themselves feel again.
Perhaps those who were serving the church needed to ask for God's help before they gave a teaching or led a small group or taught a Bible study or chaired a committee meeting or sang on the worship team or served in the kid's ministry. They had been doing it so long that they thought they could just show up and make it happen without God's help. That's convicting for all of us who serve. It's easy to try and do the job without leaning on the Lord. And if we're not careful we can look alive, but be dead. Strengthen what remains, Jesus says.
Third, Jesus says remember what you have received and heard. "Go back and remember what your life was like before you received eternal life. Remember how you felt when you were first overwhelmed by my amazing grace. When it dawned on you that there was a God who loved you and who knew your name, a God who sent his one and only son to die in your place so that you could be forgiven and receive the free gift of eternal life. Remember how relieved you felt to finally be delivered from a world of fear and superstition, haunted by the hundreds of gods that you could never please or satisfy."
Those of us who have slipped into autopilot in our spiritual lives need to remember what we have received and heard from the Lord. We need to revisit that sense of unworthiness that we once had that almighty God would love even someone like me. We need to thank him for air we breathe and the clothes we wear and the car we drive and the home we live in and the family we have and the job we hold and the school we attend and the church we're apart of and everything that he has given us. Remember what you have received and heard. Get back to being grateful again for the cross.
Fourth, Jesus says obey it. To the church at Sardis and to us Jesus says practice what you preach. Don't just listen to sermons on Sunday. Live them. Someone has said, "I'd rather see a sermon than hear a sermon anytime." I agree. And I'd rather be a sermon than preach a sermon anytime. Live the truth. If you're going to talk the talk then walk the walk.
And finally, Jesus says repent. Literally, "do it now." Because if you don't Jesus says I'm going to come like a thief in the night. This is not a reference to the second coming of Christ. This is a reference to judgment that could fall anytime on this sleepy, dead church.
This five-fold command to the church at Sardis is also a warning for Valley View. Like Sardis we could easily fall asleep. We could easily slip into routine and business as usual. Maybe some of us already have. We could easily become proud and self-reliant and kick into autopilot and forget all about the adventure of relying on the Holy Spirit to do the impossible. Dead churches don't see miracles. They've stopped looking miracles. And at that moment the Persians could scale the cliff and climb the wall and destroy what God is doing here. So to us Jesus says, "Be watchful. Stand your guard. Stay alert."
Yet, in every assembly there are always those who do stay awake, those who are very much alive. Jesus addresses them in verse 4, Yet you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy. 5 Those who overcome will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out (erase) their names from the book of life, but will acknowledge their names before my Father and his angels. 6 Those who have ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches."
To the faithful Jesus makes three promises. First, he promises to dress them in white. In the ancient world white robes were a symbol of victory. When a Roman triumph was celebrated, all the citizens would dress in white and the city itself would be called "the city in white." The Bible also uses white robes to describe the righteousness we have in Christ.
Second, he promises that their names will never be erased from the book of life. In Bible times a king would keep of register of all his citizens in a book. And when a man committed a crime against the state or when he died, his name was erased from that book. But no believer will ever have their name erased from the book of life, especially those who stay faithful to Christ.
Third, Jesus promises to confess our name before his Father and his angels. What a commendation that will be! To hear Jesus boast about our commitment to God the Father and the angels of heaven is something worth living for.
Are you alive today or are you dead? Are you awake or are you sleeping? If Jesus would give you a wakeup call what part of your life would he want you to strengthen?
This week I read that there are at least 14 living persons who names appear among the 58,175 dead and missing names inscribed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Apparently, their names got on the memorial because of errors that clerks made when they were entering wrong serial numbers into the computer. One of the fourteen, a man named Eugene J. Toni, said that, "when I saw my name etched in the black granite stone it was kind of scary ... like seeing your own name on a tombstone."
It's one thing for the federal government to tell you you're dead when you're really alive. It's another thing for Jesus to tell you that. Wake up. Be vigilant. Stay dependent on the Holy Spirit and live.