A Sermon Based on Revelation 3:1-6
November 1, 2009
The Church in Sardis
We are in a series of sermons in which we are looking at Jesus’ messages to the seven churches of the Revelation to John. Today we come to the fifth church, which was located in Sardis in what is now western Turkey.
The city of Sardis was capital of the ancient kingdom of Lydia. Like nearby Thyatira, its wealth rested largely on the textile industry. It had reached the peak of its wealth and grandeur in 700 B.C. The main part of the city was located on a high cliff which was thought to be invulnerable. A city or portion of a city located in such a situation was called an acropolis. Nevertheless, Sardis was captured five times, including by Cyrus of Persia, Alexander the Great of Macedonia, and Antiochus the Great of the Alexandrian empire. In the cases of Cyrus and Antiochus, their troops at night scaled the precipice on which the city sat and discovered that the city had posted no guards. In other words, the city in its complacency was asleep.
There were in Sardis, as in other Asian cities, temptations and pressures for Christians to participate in the cults of the emperor, of the trade guilds, and of the Asian Great Mother Goddess. But these are not the issues Jesus raises as he addresses the church in this town.
The city of Sardis was capital of the ancient kingdom of Lydia. Like nearby Thyatira, its wealth rested largely on the textile industry. It had reached the peak of its wealth and grandeur in 700 B.C. The main part of the city was located on a high cliff which was thought to be invulnerable. A city or portion of a city located in such a situation was called an acropolis. Nevertheless, Sardis was captured five times, including by Cyrus of Persia, Alexander the Great of Macedonia, and Antiochus the Great of the Alexandrian empire. In the cases of Cyrus and Antiochus, their troops at night scaled the precipice on which the city sat and discovered that the city had posted no guards. In other words, the city in its complacency was asleep.
There were in Sardis, as in other Asian cities, temptations and pressures for Christians to participate in the cults of the emperor, of the trade guilds, and of the Asian Great Mother Goddess. But these are not the issues Jesus raises as he addresses the church in this town.
What Jesus Said to the Church in Sardis
3:1“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. 2 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. 3 Remember, then, what you 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. 4 Yet you have still a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with me in white, for they are worthy. 5 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. 6 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’
The Sardis church has the reputation of being a strong and vital church. To the outward eye, it is faithful. But something is seriously wrong. Jesus has little good to say about the Sardis church except about a small faithful remnant within it. To the church as a whole, Jesus says, “You have a reputation of being alive, but are dead. Wake up!”
The Sardis church has the reputation of being a strong and vital church. To the outward eye, it is faithful. But something is seriously wrong. Jesus has little good to say about the Sardis church except about a small faithful remnant within it. To the church as a whole, Jesus says, “You have a reputation of being alive, but are dead. Wake up!”
Since there is no specific listing of their misdeeds, it seems that their devotion is halfhearted, that their hungering and thirsting for righteousness is never more than a vague yearning, that their avoiding of blatant sins does not lead them into daring adventures for God, that there is not enough reality and vitality to their spiritual life to make an impact for Jesus.
He warns, “If you do not wake up, I will come to you like a thief in the night, and you will not know at what time I will come to you.” Why will they not know? Because like their city historically had been, the church in Sardis is spiritually asleep. They are sleeping through the spiritual warfare of their times. As Rip Van Winkle missed the American Revolution, so they are missing the point of their Christian lives.
As Paul wrote to the nearby Ephesian church, Jesus in effect speaks to the Sardis church, “Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”
He warns, “If you do not wake up, I will come to you like a thief in the night, and you will not know at what time I will come to you.” Why will they not know? Because like their city historically had been, the church in Sardis is spiritually asleep. They are sleeping through the spiritual warfare of their times. As Rip Van Winkle missed the American Revolution, so they are missing the point of their Christian lives.
As Paul wrote to the nearby Ephesian church, Jesus in effect speaks to the Sardis church, “Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”
To What Does Jesus Want the Sardis Christians to Awaken?
Allow me to suggest some things that sleepy Christians typically do not understand. I could list dozens, but I only have time for three. Sleepy Christians do not comprehend:
1. the holiness of God and the perfection he has planned for us.
2. the wonders of the costly grace of God.
3. the power and presence of our living Lord in our daily lives.
Let’s look at these one at a time.
1. Sleepy Christians do not comprehend the holiness of God and the perfection he has planned for us. God has a perfect plan for his creation. His plan leads to love, harmony, freedom, justice, peace, beautiful variety, and endless creativity. That is not the condition of the world in which we live. Our world is filled with hatred, strife, oppression, injustice, war, ugliness, and dullness. So are our hearts, which have been filled by our world. God cannot forever tolerate our compromises with sin, the compromises by which we hold back from living the perfection he has planned for us. God cannot let sinners carry their sin into eternity. As long as sin reigns over our lives, death reigns over our lives, and we cannot enjoy God’s perfect plans for eternity.
Anyone who says, “I was brought up in the church. I was never lost,” just does not yet grasp the holiness of God, the perfect plan of God, does not yet grasp what must happen in our lives if we are to enter eternal life. Being brought up in the church and never being unbelievers are wonderful things but they are not sufficient to address our holiness gap. However, if we wake up to the holiness of God, we will know that it is not sufficient to linger complacently in our shortcomings as children of God. Something’s got to give. Let’s wake up to God’s holiness!
2. Sleepy Christians do not comprehend the wonders of the costly grace of God. The fact is that we cannot by our own efforts alone root the sin out of our own lives, let alone out of anyone else’s life. Without a miraculous and incalculably costly redemption, we are lost in unholiness, and so is everyone else. Nonetheless, God has in Jesus Christ provided the miraculous redemption; Jesus took the cost of our sins on himself; we may be saved by sheer grace—a gift we do not deserve-- through our faith in Jesus’ righteousness. He will cover us with his righteousness while the Holy Spirit works in our lives to grow our actual righteousness degree by degree. This is wondrous good news for us and for all who will believe and open themselves to the process. This is a matter of eternal life winning out over an eternal living death, of righteousness winning out over sin; it is a matter demanding our deepest response of gratitude, of joy, of celebration, and of love. It must express itself in our highest worship and in our deepest service. Let’s wake up to the wonders of God’s costly grace.
1. Sleepy Christians do not comprehend the holiness of God and the perfection he has planned for us. God has a perfect plan for his creation. His plan leads to love, harmony, freedom, justice, peace, beautiful variety, and endless creativity. That is not the condition of the world in which we live. Our world is filled with hatred, strife, oppression, injustice, war, ugliness, and dullness. So are our hearts, which have been filled by our world. God cannot forever tolerate our compromises with sin, the compromises by which we hold back from living the perfection he has planned for us. God cannot let sinners carry their sin into eternity. As long as sin reigns over our lives, death reigns over our lives, and we cannot enjoy God’s perfect plans for eternity.
Anyone who says, “I was brought up in the church. I was never lost,” just does not yet grasp the holiness of God, the perfect plan of God, does not yet grasp what must happen in our lives if we are to enter eternal life. Being brought up in the church and never being unbelievers are wonderful things but they are not sufficient to address our holiness gap. However, if we wake up to the holiness of God, we will know that it is not sufficient to linger complacently in our shortcomings as children of God. Something’s got to give. Let’s wake up to God’s holiness!
2. Sleepy Christians do not comprehend the wonders of the costly grace of God. The fact is that we cannot by our own efforts alone root the sin out of our own lives, let alone out of anyone else’s life. Without a miraculous and incalculably costly redemption, we are lost in unholiness, and so is everyone else. Nonetheless, God has in Jesus Christ provided the miraculous redemption; Jesus took the cost of our sins on himself; we may be saved by sheer grace—a gift we do not deserve-- through our faith in Jesus’ righteousness. He will cover us with his righteousness while the Holy Spirit works in our lives to grow our actual righteousness degree by degree. This is wondrous good news for us and for all who will believe and open themselves to the process. This is a matter of eternal life winning out over an eternal living death, of righteousness winning out over sin; it is a matter demanding our deepest response of gratitude, of joy, of celebration, and of love. It must express itself in our highest worship and in our deepest service. Let’s wake up to the wonders of God’s costly grace.
Brief Intermission: The Relation of Holiness and Grace
Let’s take a brief intermission before we go on to the third thing that sleepy Christians do not understand. No, this is not a time to go get popcorn and a soft drink, but to consider the relation of holiness and grace. Holiness does not cancel grace, nor does grace cancel holiness. They must be held together.
Those of you who have been reading James Bryan Smith’s The Good and Beautiful God have been giving thought to this in the past couple of weeks. In Chapters 5 and 6, Smith describes two young women who show to us the importance of grace and holiness.
In Chapter 5, he tells the story of a young woman who as a teenager had wandered away from the ways of right living and had ended up pregnant. Later, having recognized the errors of her ways, she returned to her church only to face several harsh and judgmental rejections from the pastor, not only of herself, but also of her baby. She went to a different church that graciously accepted her and her child. In time, she and her daughter ended up serving as missionaries in Africa. What a wonderful transformation was made possible by the graciousness of the second church!
In Chapter 6, Smith tells the story of a young woman thanking him for his sermon on the grace and unconditional love of God. What she had gotten from his sermon was this: “You see, I’ve been living with my boyfriend for the past six months, and I was raised in a church that said that this was a sin, and I felt really guilty. But this morning you said that God loves us without condition and that Jesus has forgiven all our sins, and then I realized that my guilt was unnecessary. Jesus paid it all! So I just wanted to say thank you for such a liberating message.”
Smith was crushed because he had no intent to say that our behavior is of no consequence. He got a second chance to talk to the young woman a few months later. He explained how important and good for us God’s holiness is. He explained that the reason premarital sex is wrong is that God designed sex to be a sacred act of intimacy within a marriage covenant, and that the reason to wait is that we are created to be sacred and special people. The young woman saw that her boyfriend was not viewing her and their sexual activity in this way. Smith advised her to cut off the sex until she was married. She foresaw that her boyfriend would leave her, but did it anyway. She was happy to spend the next couple of years discovering her sacredness as a child of God. Then she looked up Smith to tell him that she was headed into a marriage based on true and mutual respect.
In thinking about this sequence of events, Smith concluded that the young woman had to hear him affirm the unconditional love of God before she could begin to deal with his more challenging message about the holiness of God. It is a practical reality that many people will not hear a message of holiness until they have been assured of a message of grace, but it is also true that in this culture, in which the predominant cultural religion involves an imaginary teddy bear God who has no moral concerns, many people cannot really understand the significance of grace until they understand the perfect, holy standards of God and how far they have fallen short of them, and hence how much they need grace.
Holiness and grace go together. Leave out either one and the cross of Christ at the center of Christian faith has no meaning, and we have no saving, transforming, compelling message. Grace and holiness, holiness and grace, you can’t have one without the other. We must wake up to both! End of Intermission.
3. Sleepy Christians do not comprehend that we have a living Lord whose power and presence we can experience in our daily lives. In our cultural religion, God is a remote and impersonal force governing the universe toward total love and acceptance. Christian faith is quite different. The God of the Bible has specific purposes, reveals his will through inspired Scriptures, has sent his perfect Son to demonstrate his reign over all life and to deal with our sin issues. His Son Jesus was crucified, entombed, raised from the dead, and exalted as living Lord of the universe. Jesus continues to make himself known to his followers through the Holy Spirit, guiding, transforming, gifting, and empowering us, working supernatural miracles in and through us, embodying his love for the world through us. Being empowered by Jesus does not make us any more invulnerable to human suffering than he was, but it does enable us to live extraordinarily meaningful lives. Knowing that Jesus is involved in our history, in our biographies, in our daily experience of life, makes every day a great adventure.
This is my testimony. I had a dead faith until Jesus with the Holy Spirit came to wake me up and to become a living force in my life. I cannot claim to have awakened myself. Jesus did it. My part was that I had studied the Bible and was prepared by that study to recognize and to welcome what was happening when it happened. Let’s all wake up to our living Lord and to his powerful presence in our lives.
3. Sleepy Christians do not comprehend that we have a living Lord whose power and presence we can experience in our daily lives. In our cultural religion, God is a remote and impersonal force governing the universe toward total love and acceptance. Christian faith is quite different. The God of the Bible has specific purposes, reveals his will through inspired Scriptures, has sent his perfect Son to demonstrate his reign over all life and to deal with our sin issues. His Son Jesus was crucified, entombed, raised from the dead, and exalted as living Lord of the universe. Jesus continues to make himself known to his followers through the Holy Spirit, guiding, transforming, gifting, and empowering us, working supernatural miracles in and through us, embodying his love for the world through us. Being empowered by Jesus does not make us any more invulnerable to human suffering than he was, but it does enable us to live extraordinarily meaningful lives. Knowing that Jesus is involved in our history, in our biographies, in our daily experience of life, makes every day a great adventure.
This is my testimony. I had a dead faith until Jesus with the Holy Spirit came to wake me up and to become a living force in my life. I cannot claim to have awakened myself. Jesus did it. My part was that I had studied the Bible and was prepared by that study to recognize and to welcome what was happening when it happened. Let’s all wake up to our living Lord and to his powerful presence in our lives.
Conclusion
Our part in waking up is to study, pray, and be ready. Jesus will do the rest. In this letter, the one who wakes up to holiness, wakes up to grace, and wakes up the living Lord is described as one who conquers and receives a great promise from Jesus: The one who conquers will be clothed 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. That’s a good thing! Claim it! Wake up to all that Jesus can mean for your life.
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