Revelation 3:1-6
Friends, Revelation chapter 3:1-6 “The Angel of the Church of Sardis.” And we have two more after this to finish this series. And then we are beginning a about a three month series on the book of Ecclesiastes, which is one of my favorite books in the Bible. Just an amazing book. And Pastor Steve is going to kick off the introduction and then I will be doing. Most of it maybe. I think Billy Morganson has one. Maybe Steven Denton has one also.
To: The Angel of the church in Sardis
From: Jesus, the Son of God:
● Who has the 7 Spirits of God
● Who has the 7 stars
Revelation chapter 3:1-6 “To the Angel of the church in Sardis, write: He who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars says this. I know your deeds, that you have a name, that you are alive, but you are dead. Big part of this issue here is that image does not necessarily equal substance. They had an image of being alive, but he said they were dead. (2) Wake up and strengthen the things that remain which are about to die. For I have not found your deeds completed in the sight of my God. (3) So remember what you have received and heard, and keep it and repent. Therefore if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come to you. (4) But you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with me in white, for they are worthy. (5) He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments, and I will not erase his name from the Book of Life. And 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.”
Father, we have physical ears at least. Let us also have spiritual ears. Let us humble ourselves before you today. Listen carefully to what you're saying to the church at Sardis and the church here today, to us individually. Let it be. Let it begin with me, Father. Let me open my heart, my ears to what you're saying. What particularly needs my focus, particularly needs me to wake up, to repent, to remember. So for each one of us, may we be helped by you in that. And so we commit our time to you. We pray
for your guidance as we think together about this letter. And we ask this help in Christ's name, Amen.
A few years ago, a friend of mine was getting married and he said, Dave, I want you to meet my fiance. And I said, great, I'd be happy to do that. And so we had a coffee shop we were supposed to meet and I got there a little early and I was sitting there and I looked down the street, and, my friend was walking with this woman and they were about 30 yards away from me when they were coming up. And I said in my heart instantaneously, oh. No, from 30 yards. I said, Oh no, now you're thinking, Dave, that's a pretty judgmental guy, aren't you? That you would. You didn't talk to this girl. You're not even met her once. Why would you say that?
Well, I would. I would say that because I've been in the people business way too long and this girl was completely about image. Completely about how she looked and how people thought about her. I could see it from 30 yards. I was right. A year and a half later, this woman had no use for my friend and she divorced him because he wasn't helping her with her image and with projecting herself out to other people and being seen as the kind of person she wanted to be. She was all about ego and image. I said that because. This is a passage about ego and image. It's a question for us as a collective body. And even for us as individuals, what am I about? Am I about how I look? To you and to others? Or am I about the substance of my heart, the substance of my relationship, the maturity in Christ? What am I about as a follower of Jesus?
And what are we about as this collective group of people?
This particular letter to Sardis felt particularly appropriate for me in this body of believers. Because there's a question here. Are we a people who are about image or substance? You know, friends, I don't know, I'm not, I'm not trying to be judgmental, but I am trying to say, let's open ourselves up to the book and say, what is God saying to us? Because we've been rocking and rolling 3 services, big deals, you know, the parking lot was full, people scattered all down their place and to a large extent still that. But are we taking pride in going and blowing? Are we people who care about our substance of relationship with God? There's an old joke in preacher circles that says if the Apostle John were still alive, I'm pretty sure our church would be getting a letter.
Now it's a great joke unless. Unless we might be getting a letter. I don't have a television, not because it's necessarily automatically evil, but because I hate it. But
I didn't see the show, but apparently a man named Ricky Gervais, a British comedian, hosted one of the award programs in Hollywood a few years ago, and all of his jokes were targeted at the Worthies and Love Lies sitting in front of him. And they started laughing. And then they started getting quizzical looks on their face, and then they started frowning. Because humor is really funny when it's true about somebody else.
It's not so funny when it's true about me. Then it becomes pretty uncomfortable. And I'm just saying, let's be willing to be uncomfortable as we think about this passage and say to ourselves, what do we need to learn as a body of believers? One of my professors used to say the Bible is designed to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comforted. And I wonder if today is not a little bit about. Let's afflict the comforted.
Let's look at who we are. So verse one to the Angel of the church in Sardis, There's a Sardis 33 miles southeast of Thyatira. We're going clockwise around the loop here, friends. One church after another. And the design was also that these letters would be read to all of them. So this is modern day Turkey, a little town called Sart, today SART, It has about 5000 people today. At the time, it was a larger town. We don't know the exact number, but they had a Coliseum, an amphitheater that could seat 15,000 people.
So obviously it was a bigger town at that time. And there were in that church a few faithful people and a whole bunch of negligent people. Very wealthy town in 95. Also a town quite famous for dye and for jewelry and for military power. Because the city was located on top of a hill, which is really more like a Cliff. And it was considered to be impregnable, like no one can get up this Cliff and get to us. And so they were very proud of their military power.
But in 547, BC A king named Cyrus the Persian conquered the city, the impregnable city, and he conquered it. And here's how he did it. His soldiers had camped around the base of the mountain, and they were trying to figure out how to get in. And
while they were camping. There they noticed a local guy walking up the face of the Cliff. Switch backing up a Cliff. He wasn't climbing, he was walking and there was a trail that you can't see from the bottom but you could walk up to the city. So they took their whole army and walked up the trail and they overran the city. They came like a thief in the night. I just read verse 3. Like a thief in the night. We would be judged if we're not paying attention. Same thing happened in 281 BC. Antiochus the Syrian walked up the same route and took the city. Because they came like a thief in the night. This is a town that focuses on the worship of nature on creation. One of their main gods was focused on the glory of the moon. And so they were trading the glory of the creator for the glory of the creation.
Now friends, creation is stunning. It is amazing. But the Creator who spoke it into existence. Is way above it and they got their worship wrong. They exchanged the glory of God. For the glory of what he had made, here's what Jesus says verse one.
This is from Jesus the Son of God. Every single letter he is giving something about himself, the two-edged sword or in this case the Son of God and eyes that penetrate and feet like burnished bronze. In fact, at the end I'm going to give a list of everything that Jesus says about him in these 7 letters and it's a pretty impressive list. So here he says I'm the Son of God.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:18 “No one has seen the Father at any time”, but Jesus has exegeted him. Our text translated explained him. The Greek word exegete means to read out the meaning. Jesus read out the meaning of God the Father even though we haven't seen him. We look in the Gospels and we see Jesus and he reads out the meaning of
the Father.
Philippians 2:1 to 11 -Even though he existed as God, he did not regard equality with God as thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, even a bond servant, humbled himself to death, even death on the cross, so that the Father exalted him after his resurrection. To the right hand of God Himself. Hebrews 1:4. Jesus is the exact representation of the Father. If you've seen Jesus. You have seen the Father, (Matthew 17:5) at his baptism. “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
Listen to him. And so the New Testament is just covered over with the fact that Jesus is the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, eternally existent. And here's some of the things the Bible says about Jesus. Creator, sacrificial lamb, sustainer, conquering king, culminator, recreator, full of grace and truth, full of compassion and wisdom, holy and perfect, exact image of the Father. He and the Father are one. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. And from Jesus himself.
From: Jesus, the Son of God:
You don't know anybody even close to Jesus. You don't know anybody like him. And wise people are satisfied in Jesus. He's the one they need. He's the Son of God, He says of himself. Secondly, verse 1, he has the seven spirits of God. Now there's only one Holy Spirit, and in my text this is capitalized. I think it's rightly capitalized, the seven holy spirits of God. The text does not mean there are 7 different Holy Spirit's. But seven in the Bible is the number of completion and perfection and so the Holy Spirit is billed here as complete and perfect. He is unbelievable. This being and I think Isaiah 11 two may have hearing on this. Here's what it says: the Spirit of the Lord, one will rest on him, which is Speaking of Jesus, the spirit of wisdom. That's 2 the spirit of understanding that's three the spirit of.
Under counsel of counsel 4 of strength 5 of knowledge 6 and of the fear of the Lord 7 He is a perfect complete being. There's nothing lacking in him. Then he says, verse one who has the seven stars Jesus possesses, holds, is sovereign over the seven pastors who lead the seven churches. He's sovereign over me, He's sovereign over you, He's sovereign over us.
One theologian said there's not one square Inch of creation over which Jesus does not claim absolute sovereignty, not one square inch. It's all his. He holds the seven stars. Verse one. Here's what Jesus knows about you. And by the way, what I also rebuke you for
number verse one, your deeds which I have not found completed in the sight of
God. You've done some things you should have done, but you didn't finish.And I
have that against you. In Sardis, there was a temple to Artemis. This very
famous God at that period of time, she was the goddess of the moon and of wild
nature, God small G of the moon and wild nature. And they had built a huge
temple for her, but they never finished it. And Jesus is kind of taking off that and saying these people never finished their temple but you. Who follows my son? Who follows me? You've not finished your work. They are incomplete.
The question becomes, are my deeds complete in the sight of God? Have I started things that I didn't finish? I started pursuing maturity and not finished it, started life group and didn't finish it, started Bible memory, didn't finish it. Started to learn how to share the gospel and didn't finish it. I mean the list goes on and on and there's all these things in our lives that are good deeds and they're great to start, but they are critical to finish as well. Last week we talked about finishing the race, running through the tape, just running so hard that when you hit the tape, when you hit eternity, you're just exhausted. You gave everything, you left it all on the track and here he is saying I want you to complete the things that you have started. There are some of your deeds that need to be finished.
Verse 1, “I have this against you also. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. You are duplicitous. The reputation is that you are wonderful spiritual people, but inside there's a spiritual deadness to us.
To be a person of integrity means to be a person of singularity, integrity, integral one. To be the same person on Sunday morning that I am on Friday night, and as a church to be the same people on Sunday morning as we are on Sunday night. To be one person and it doesn't matter where you see me, that I will be the same person. If I'm projecting spiritual life, I will actually contain spiritual life. If I'm projecting maturity, I will actually contain it. A speaker named Doctor Vance Havner, died decades ago. He said spiritual movements go through 4 stages. A man: a movement, a machine, and a monument, (a gravestone.)
And he's saying to these people, I'm afraid you're at the gravestone stage. You're not integrated. You're not the same people. You and I could sit down and think of 100 famous preachers who look like there was something, but they actually had something going on that wasn't what they were projecting. But the question is not about 100 famous preachers. The question is us. The question is me. Am I an integrated person?
Re: What I, Jesus command you:
Verse 2.
One single process with a whole bunch of commands. The first command is wake up. It means to watch, to give careful attention, to be conscious, cautious, to be active, to take heed so that something doesn't come upon you with calamity that you haven't seen. It's to be awake. It's to be spiritually, constantly alert. Because a lot of stuff overtakes us when we're sleeping, when we're coasting, when we're drifting, when we're not engaged.
Eastern Airlines flight 401 coming from Philadelphia down to Miami and they get about 200 miles out of Miami and this light comes on. That is a warning light that one of the landing gears hasn't come down. And so the pilot puts the plane on autopilot and both pilots and the navigator start focusing on this one light trying to figure out is our nose gear really down or not? And they're just obsessed with that. But what they didn't know is that the autopilot was broken and they were circling ever lower and they went down from 2000 feet, crashed in the Everglades. 101 of 167 people were killed because they weren't flying the airplane.
They weren't focused on the right thing. The question for us is, am I? Am I flying the plane? Am I focused on the right thing? Hilarious YouTube clip of a woman walking down a mall really fast texting and she hits the edge of a fountain and falls face first into the fountain. She was text walking. It's a little different than sleepwalking, but it's just as being distracted.
Am I distracted from the things that I should be about in life? Matthew 24:42, “Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know the day in which the Lord is coming.” Wake up, strengthen, strengthen, make strong and stable. Make firm the stuff you have. It's the idea that something is really strong, but you need to strengthen it. You need to work on it. You can't ignore it. There is so much Scripture, friends, that relates to the question of ongoing diligence. I passed by the field of a sluggard, by the vineyard of the man lacking sense. Behold, it was completely overgrown with thistles. Its surface was covered with nettles, its Stonewall was broken down. When I saw, I reflected upon it. I looked and received instruction. A little sleep, a little slumber, a
little folding of the hands to rest. And your poverty will come as a robber, and your want like an armed man, just ignore something a little bit for a little while and it's going to come apart. It's a powerful passage. It'll come like an armed man. Stuff that I don't focus on will deteriorate, he says to us first rate. Remember, call to mind. Keep in mind, remember the important things you received and you heard. Don't forget the stuff you learned shored up. Strengthen it. Then, he says, keep it. Attend to it very carefully. Keep very great focus on it to keep gaining something does not equal to keep it.
To gain something does not equal to keep it. Am I keeping this stuff I gained? And then he says #5 repent. We've talked about this word three times in this series. Metanoia, Change your mind at a heart level about what you've been doing.
Confess to God, this is wrong. I confess I've been doing the wrong thing. I confess I've been coasting. In this case, they were coasting. Stuff was deteriorating.
I had a friend who has been a pastor for 45 years. The 1st 40 years he was diligent, focused and about God's work and about a year 40 he got tired. And he decided he was entitled and he just sort of started coasting. Five years later he got fired because he didn't keep what he had gained. Keep what you've gained.
Re: Here's what I, Jesus warned you about. Verse 3. “If you don't wake up, I will come like a thief.” When you do not expect I will come like a thief. I mean, if we knew when the thief was coming, we'd be there. We'd already have called the police. We'd be ready. But a thief comes when I wasn't thinking he would, when I wasn't ready.
Friends, I had security training about 10 years ago for my work as a missionary. Went to a place in North Idaho called Fort Sherman Academy. It was 11 days of lecture and role play the very first morning. 8:00 We have this lecture on what to do when you suffer a shakedown by armed people and they, they went through all this stuff and we all wrote it diligently, our notes and then the instructor said OK, we're going to take a 15 minute break and then we'll be back. And when he said the word back, all 8 doors of the room burst open masked men burst in the room firing blanks at the ceiling and
screaming at us get on your face, get on your face don't look at me, put your.
Behind your head. We're all lying under our desk with our hands behind our head thinking, Oh my goodness, what's going on? We had no idea it was coming. We had no idea it was coming. Now, it happened a lot in those 11 days, so we kind of got clued into it, but it gave us a lecture on what to do in this situation. And that hit situation happened right there. We didn't know it was coming. There's a real danger that stuff can happen that we don't know what's coming.
Re: Here's what I, Jesus commend you for.
One thing. You have a few people who are worthy and have not soiled their garments.
You have some people who stayed faithful to me in a Pagan society when their fellow believers were coasting. These are the people like Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and Babylon. These are the people like Noah, when everyone's marrying and giving in marriage and thinking nothing about God. These are the people like Lot. Lot is commended for when he lived in the city of Sodom, that is. Heart was struggling with the immorality around him. These are the people like Ruth and Boaz and Naomi
living at the time of the judges when everyone did what was right in their own eyes. It is possible to live for Christ in a broken world. It's possible to live for Christ if the people around me are not. And he said, I commend you for that. Ephesians 4:1&2. “I implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called. With all humility and gentleness with patience, showing tolerance for one another and love being diligent to preserve the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.”
This whole word, this metaphor in Ephesians, there is walk worthy and it's the picture of the scales. Remember the old scales that would have a pan on each side and you put some weight on this side and you have to counterbalance it exactly. And this picture is on the one side. You have your calling in Christ. That's pretty heavy. You have your calling in Christ, you have all that Jesus did for you, and on the other side, you have your lifestyle and to be a worthy person means they balance out. And he's saying to us in that passage, I want you to be a person whose life is worthy.
Of the calling, of the sacrifice, of the amount that was paid for you.
Re: What I Jesus promised you, who overcomes and who are worthy.
Here's what's going to happen for you. If you're an overcomer, if you're not coasting it when everybody else is, if you're if your lifestyle is matching your calling, here's what you're going to receive. I will walk with him. Fellowship with God himself walking, I will clothe him in white. We will have a garment that says the righteousness of Christ credited to our account, and at that point even our behavior will match our image completely.
Enrollment times, friends, if Caesar won a great battle, they would give everybody the day off and they would have a parade and everybody would dress in white and they would walk. And the people who were the most favored would walk with Caesar himself. And so you've got this long train of people in fellowship, all of them dressed in white, all of them relating to each other. And what he's saying is. There's coming a time when you who persevere are going to walk with the Lord Jesus. Clothed in white and wonderful fellowship with Him. This is what I'm promising to you. He's also promising #3 I will not erase their names from the Book of Life. It's a double negative. God will never ever in any way erase their names from the Book of Life. Problematic verse. Friends, let me say this, To get in the Book of Life, I've got to put my trust in Christ. There's only ever been one way to please God.
Trust. Faith. Without faith it's impossible to please God, for those who come to Him must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Hebrews 11 verses one and six.
Genesis 15. “Abraham looked up at the stars. God said, Even though you're childless right now, and you and your wife are about 90, even though you're childless, your descendants will be as many of the stars. And Abraham looked at the stars,
Genesis 15-6 and he believed in God.”
And the text says there and in Romans it was counted to Abraham for righteousness. How was Abraham made righteous? He believed God, he trusted God, so I gained righteousness. You, anybody gains righteousness by understanding I had a sin problem. I'm separated from the holy God of the universe because of my sin. I can't fix it. But God in his amazing mercy and compassion. His son in my place instead of
mine, on my behalf on the cross.
Jesus paid for it. And it will be credited to my account if I trust Him, if I put my hope in him, if I put 100% of my hope of forgiveness in heaven in what Jesus did, and 0% anywhere else, I will come to faith in Jesus Christ. Now here's the problem. This verse appears to say that you could lose your salvation. I don't think that's exactly what it's saying. In fact, it was saying at all.
Whenever you have a problem verse in the Bible, the basic principle is use the clear verses to interpret the unclear verses. And there are trainloads of clear verses that say you're secure in Christ, you won't lose your salvation. Some of those verses, and I put a handout on the back table if you want it this morning about the question of our security in Christ. The first thing I would say is Ephesians 2:8 and 9. “For by
grace are you saved through faith and not not of yourselves. It's a gift of God, lest anyone should boast, not as a result of work.” The entire salvation process is initiated and carried along by God. It's neither initiated nor carried along by me.
And if I'm saved by God, how do I then gain the power to lose myself #2 Ephesians 1:13 and 14. We are sealed by the Holy Spirit. It's a ministry of the Spirit that specifically says you are secure and you will not be lost. You will come to the end safely. God promises through his Holy Spirit, we're sealed, we're given eternal life.
If I trust Christ today, I have eternal life. Two weeks. I renounce Christ, I reject Christ, I do something horribly evil. And I lose my salvation. It wasn't eternal life, it was temporary life, and God lied to me, but God's not capable of lying.
If he said I gave you eternal life, then he gave you eternal life #4 the metaphor of being born again. I think this is so incredibly important. This metaphor was chosen.
John 3:1. “Speaking to Nicodemus, he said you must be born again.”
You can be. You can be born and you can die. But you cannot be unborn. That cannot
be reversed. And I think this metaphor is so intentionally chosen. John 10:29, “No one will snatch you out of the Father's hand. “John one first. John 5:24, “These things I have written that you may know that you have eternal life. I know I don't have to be anxious. I don't have to spend my life saying, am I good or am I bad? How was my week? I confess again. I know that I have eternal life. There's a handout on
the page.
You may get tired of me beating this drum, but I don't get tired of it. So #4 he says. “I'll confess their names before my Father in heaven.” If you, if you stay the course, if you're worthy, if you don't throw your garments, if you're, if your life balances out, I'm going to confess you before my Heavenly Father. I'm going to say that's my child, that's my boy, that's my daughter. It's going to be the happiest moment of our lives, friends.
My brother was in high school. He was a state champion wrestler twice in Arizona. I went to see one of his matches. And he pinned his opponent in 11 seconds from the whistle. To the takedown, to put him on his back. To the three second count, 11 seconds. I wanted to jump up and say that's my brother. I was too embarrassed to do it. I should have done it. I told you that to say, because you're going to stand before God with the righteousness of Christ on you and Jesus and God is going to say that's my child. Be the happiest day of your life, friends. It Was the happiest day of my life.
God will proudly identify with us when we keep the faith. So verse 6,” Listen, Sardis.
He who has ear listened to what the Spirit says to the churches,” listen up, pay attention. If you were going to listen to anything Sardis FCBC, listen today.
I played trombone for three years in junior high. I was horrible at it. But I was in a band and one day we were playing, rehearsing a piece of music and the instructor stops us and said this is ¼ note here, play. This is 1/4 note. We didn't. The next time he stops us, play this 1/4 note. The third time he stops his play. This quarter note. The 4th time when we still messed it up, he stopped us. He went to the board. He was fuming, angry. He drew on notice. I saw how old I am. We had chalkboards with regular chalk and he drew on. Board 1/4 note and he said this is 1/4 note, I've stopped you three times to play this as 1/4 note. And then he turned and threw the chalk and we had a huge three story room and it went up and hit this wall, bounced off this wall, hit the top wall and came down a shower of dust. Still remember today he had my attention. He had my attention.
The Holy Spirit does not get angry, lose control, or throw chalk. But he wants our attention. Here's what he says to FCBC. We must absolutely, unquestionably abandon any commitment to image. It's not about our image. What he says to us is we need to obsess on the pursuit of substance, both individually and in our corporate life. We need to be obsessed with the pursuit of substance and character and integrity.
Wake up!
It's not about image, it's about who we are. There was a funeral in this church a few years ago for a man whom I don't know if any of you know, he didn't go to this church, but he's a believer who'd been 50 years in ministry. I came to the funeral because I knew him. He had died of COVID, sadly enough. And it was a very, very good thing for me to be at because there were 12 people standing on this platform right here and talked about this man. And 11 of them cried. 11 of them couldn't even keep it together. And they talked about this man as a person who had loved them and cared for them. Or he had LED them to faith. Or he had he had confronted them
when they were in sin, or he had walked with them when they were struggling in their marriage or he had baptized them. And I mean, he just had a legacy of discipling other people. It was an amazing story of what happened. I walked out of this building, walked across the parking lot.
And said, “I am also a man in the Christian faith compared to this guy. It was an amazing testimony. I told you that story to say this one thing. One of the men who spoke about this man said, “He never spent one minute of his life worrying about his image.” Direct quote. He never spent one minute of his life worrying about his image.
The Spirit is saying to us today it's not about image. It's about substance. It's about genuine personal relationship with Christ, with gaining what we can, keeping what we gain, remembering, focusing, not coasting in our Christian life. Let's pray, friends.
Thank you so much, Father, for this book. Thank you for this letter. We do believe we got a letter and we read your letter and we thought about your letter, and now by your spirit, let us be people who wonderfully and powerfully apply your letter. We trust ourselves to you. We entrust our day to you. I pray, Father, for each person in this
body of believers. I don't know what's going on. Individual hearts or minds, families, relationships, finances, health. But you know Father. You know and I know that you care about us, and so I pray for your mercy. Or I do know about John and Marcy Fury today, that they're both in health struggles and I lift them up to you. I ask for the doctors to be skillful, but above that, I pray for your personal hand of touch on them. Beyond that, I pray you would touch them. Let us be a body of believers who come around them with meals and prayer and love and care, and we entrust them to you.
Thank you for this good day, for this good body of believers, and for this great book. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.