“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.’”
(Recall that the “seven Spirits” refers to the Holy Spirit. What does it mean that Jesus has the “seven Spirits”? It is in the sense that the Holy Spirit is the “Spirit of Christ” who was poured out by Christ on the Day of Pentecost and it is His work that breathes life into our worship. The seven stars represent the churches in some way- perhaps the elders in each church. The point being that the fate of the church is in Jesus’ hands.)
“‘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.’
Ethan Cordray wrote an interesting article arguing that the recent surge in zombie films is actually an unconscious critique of our culture. He speaks of a movie “Shaun of the Dead” (which I’ve not seen and am not recommending you watch) in which one of the main gags is the fact that Shaun doesn’t realize that he is actually surrounded by zombies because their behavior hasn’t changed much at all from when they were living their normal lives. They appear to be the same vacant-eyed, shuffling their feet, mindless mass of people they have always been- and they still are driven- as always- by the drive to gratify their base appetites. Cordray says that, in movies such as this, zombies represent the appetite divorced from everything else. They are incapable of judgment, self-awareness, or self-preservation. Though they still move and act, they are not really alive. They hunger and are never filled. Without a soul to control it, the flesh is a slave to its own desires. And as our culture becomes ever more adept at amplifying our desires and our culture is obsessed with gratifying every appetite, he says, “we can see the inevitable results of that process shambling along on their rotting legs.”
The author’s critique of culture is an apt critique of much of what we see in the church today. There is an amplification of our desires (“Why settle for less than your ‘Best Life Now’?) an obsession with gratifying them, and the result is to produce a mass of people who display no judgment, no real self-awareness, no ability for self-preservation. Though they still move and act, they are not really alive.
This would be an apt critique of the church in Sardis as well.
We don’t know anything about the church in Sardis outside of what we have written here which may indicate that they did not listen to Jesus’ rebuke and their candlestick was soon removed. Rebuke is all that Jesus had for them. With the other churches thus far Jesus begins with some words of encouragement regarding the good that He sees in them before He makes His case against them. In Sardis, Jesus sees nothing but the bad- a group of people who seem to be alive to the human eye, but Jesus sees a group of people “shambling along on rotting legs.”
He says they have a “reputation for being alive.” So this is not some small church tucked away in a small town that nobody knows about. They have a reputation. It is of them being “alive” which is positive and implies this that this was a church that other churches knew about and were impressed by. You wonder if they saw the struggles in their own congregations and looked enviously over to Sardis where it appeared that the grass was greener.
But appearances can be deceiving. Jesus says of them, “though you have this reputation of vitality, of energy, of life, …you are dead.” It is interesting that Paul used this same sort of terminology when discussing the church’s care of widows. The church is to honor widows who are “truly widows” he writes in 1 Timothy 5. How can you tell if they are ‘truly’ a widow? It is demonstrated by who they trust and how they live. Because they set their hope on God they are free then to live lives of devotion to Him demonstrated by their determination to pray for others “night and day.” But Paul warns that, on the other hand, a widow “who is self-indulgent is dead even while she lives.”
And isn’t that the same with many churches? Rather than setting their hopes on God and receiving His approval, they are truly self-indulgent. There are churches that are filled every Sunday, churches that have name-recognition because the flurry of activity surrounding them, or the name recognition of the pastor, seems to be indicative of vibrant life and a move of the Spirit, but what Jesus’ eyes see is a church that is “dead even while she lives.”
Of course, the primary call on us is not to point fingers at other churches we think may fit that bill but, rather, to be sure that we never do. A lesson for us comes in the form of two commands in verses 2 and 3:
Like the widow that Paul was calling on the church to examine- she was someone based upon outward appearances to be someone they should assist, but the reality was that her humble circumstances were masking an inward self-indulgence. So it is with the church. There are many things that hide a church’s true condition from being recognized.
1) It could be the size of the church- especially if it has grown rapidly.
On the surface, that seems to indicate a move of the Spirit an indication that God is doing a great work. But it may be because that particular church is giving people “what their itching ears long to hear” (2 Timothy 4:3). In other words, the message proclaimed is one that caters to people’s wants or felt needs rather than being a simple proclamation of God’s truth. People are being told what they want to hear. And, of course, that is going to gain approval and will gather crowds, but that type of approach sends them on a path to self-destruction.
If we only tell people what they want to hear and dilute the message of the cross, we remove the life-saving power of the Gospel. If we convince people that the Christian life does not require our taking up our own crosses and following Christ in His humility while making promises of pain-free worldly success, we are those filled with a lying spirit leading people further from God and closer to their own destruction. Outwardly we look well, but the truth is that our self-indulgence leads people straight to their death.
2) We may also be fooled in believing there is life in a church when we mistake natural talents for works of the Spirit. I’ve had friends, who were very talented in business, be put into positions of leadership in churches when they were not even believers in Christ. The church was looking for efficiency, strategy, and a tightly run ship, and so entrusted its leadership to the worldly wise while not caring if they were actually Spirit-filled. The church may have run like a well-oiled machine but was it anything more than a machine? I believe Jesus would say to them, “Wake up! The church that is truly a church, is not a business, but a family. And sometimes families are messy. So it is not one that necessarily runs smoothly but one is that is indwelt by and bears the fruits of the Spirit.
Now, granted, you cannot call someone who is dead to “wake up.” So why is this what Jesus says? The church was mostly dead, but Jesus’ words are directed to the few in Sardis who were not dead yet. They were not yet zombies, but only sleep-walkers. The charge to them was “wake up….”
Here is what seems to be the scene: There are those who are true believers, who are members of this “dead church,” but they haven’t actually realized that’s the case. They had been lulled to sleep by the numbers of people, or the numerous activities, and have ceased to notice that the true gospel message was not being preached; that new believers were not really discipled in the truth but were fed nothing but milk that was of no lasting value. But then the call comes: “Wake up!” And what if they do? What now?
Certainly, one question that would be asked is- “Should we leave?” In some situations, the answer might be “yes.” But that is not a given. There are cases where God has used a small minority to bring about change within the larger whole. Sometimes the call is “get to work and see what God might do.” And so it seems here in Sardis. Jesus is calling upon the few who he has jolted to awareness of the situation to come alongside and nurture those who may had begun the race strong but, because of the context they were in, were now weak and in danger of falling in line with the rest of the zombies. The call was…”help them finish the race because there is still work in Sardis to do.” And we do need to remember that this was in the early years of the church. The church in Sardis was likely the “only” church in Sardis. In fact, by “church” this is not referring to one building among others in town. It is the gathering of the saints, likely in a home at this point.
Well, how are they to do this? Jesus puts it here: “Remember what you have received and heard. Keep it and repent.” And so it is with us. We need to be more concerned about what is being preached than with what you see. We are all familiar with those who gain influence, not by the content of their words, but by the slickness with which they are delivered, by the charisma of the man rather than by the message regarding the humble Savior he claims to serve. Jesus says, return to the simple and plain message of the Gospel and repent, returning to simple, faithful obedience. Keep that and you will live. In my years of ministry I have asked many people regarding the church that they attend and why. And how often have I heard “I go to a great church!” And when I ask what makes it great, they answer by describing their many activities for the children, opportunities for social activities for the older adults, the style of music, and even the large size provides the ability to get lost in a crowd where nobody knows who you are. But I can’t think of the last time I heard someone say, “I think my church is great, even though it doesn’t meet all of my personal preferences and though I wish there was more to do, but I think it is great because I realize that the most important thing that trumps all others is that they faithfully teach the Word of God.” This is what Jesus is calling His church to.
And the warning is dire (vs. 3) “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.” We’ve noted this several times that His threats are not empty. His promise here is to remove Sardis’s lampstand. And where is the church in Sardis today? It is no longer there. Does Jesus still do this today? Most certainly He does. If you want to see the evidence, note how many church buildings- especially in Europe- are now used as office buildings, art houses, apartment buildings and even converted into Mosques.
How do we avoid such a fate? We remember what we received and heard. We keep it. And when necessary, we repent- judging everything we do – not by appearances, not by our reputation in man’s eyes- no matter how complimentary, but by God’s Word.
There were those in Sardis who had continued to walk with Christ, whose garments were white and unsoiled. Like those we will see in chapter 7 who come out of the great tribulation having “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” So these in Sardis, because of their steadfastness to the faith, are easily identified as those whose sins had been washed white as well. Of them, we read: They who conquer will be clothed like this and their name will never be blotted out of the book of life, but their names will be confessed before the Father and the angels.”
Does this mean that we are in danger of having our name removed from God’s book of life? No, we shouldn’t take it to mean that. We will see that only those destined for heaven have their names written down in the book of life in the first place. Those who are not going to heaven are said (13:8 and 17:8) to not have had their names written down before the foundation of the world. So, it stands to reason that it would be impossible to blot out the name of someone from a book in which their names had never been written down in the first place. This should be taken simply as a way of promising that those who show themselves to be in Christ will, indeed, inherit the salvation promised to them. And what a promise this is: Jesus will confess your name to the Father and the angels!
So what is the call upon the church today? Don’t judge by appearances. Recognize that Jesus demands not “success” as the world defines it, not for us to gain a reputation among men, but faithfulness to the Word as delivered to us. That is what it means to be alive. And the call upon you as an individual is the same. It is so often that we, personally, get caught up in other people’s good reputations and our desire to have one as well. We compare the works of our own hands to that of others and it opens the door to envy which, if there is anything that will kill someone’s spirit, envy will do it. We see activity and movement and life in them and we think “I wish God was at work in my life like He is in theirs.” But the truth is that we are not very good judges of when God’s work is being done are we? One, we may be fooled by what we think we are seeing in their life. But, when it comes to our own….doesn’t Paul say “one sows and another reaps”? So should you, when you do not see the fruits of your labor, assume your labor was for nothing and that God is not working through you? Or are you to trust that God will bring the increase, it may just be someone else who gets to reap from what you have sown? That should be ok. To assume that, if you don’t see the results immediately, that God is not working through you is ludicrous and unbiblical. Experience, both personal and which we hear from others, shows that it is not uncommon for God to not allow us to see the fruits of our labors or, perhaps, to have those fruits long delayed in their coming. Why would God do that to us? Because the danger is that of our tendency to define success wrongly and to attribute our success to ourselves rather than to God. And so God says “I’m going to guard you from falling into that trap. You just be faithful and let Me worry about the results.”
In a zombie movie the fate that is worse than being eaten is that of being turned into a zombie yourself. What is at first merely an external threat, gets inside the person, turning them into another who is dead though they appear to live. Perhaps Mr. Cordray is right. Zombie movies are an unconscious critique- but not just of our culture, but of a church driven by its appetites rather than directed by the Word of God. Let us remember what we have received and heard and let us live. And for those who are surprised that I would use zombies in a discussion of Bible truths- the Bible, itself, uses such imagery. For example, if you have not come to God through saving faith in Christ, you are described as one who looks alive on the outside but who is, inwardly, spiritually, “dead” right now. Appearances are deceiving. How can you find life? Come to the One who is the giver of new life. Place faith in Christ Jesus and be “born again” to a new hope – a deliverance from death- to eternal life.
1) The issue facing the church in Sardis was that their reputation did not accurately reflect their reality. To the human eye it was “alive.” Jesus, however, had eyes to see that it was actually “dead.”
Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington is instructive here. Mars Hill was started in 1996 and, by 2013, had grown to 15 branches in five states with 13,000 visitors on Sundays. Their Sunday sermon had an average of 230,000 listens every week. Their pastor, Mark Driscoll, appeared on Nightline, preached at Seahawks stadium, threw out the first pitch at a Mariners game, and founded a network of evangelical leaders who started hundreds of other churches. Driscoll spoke at numerous church conferences including one hosted by Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest.
A series of controversies, however, revealed an inner sickness that had been hidden from outside eyes and, today, Mars Hill Church no longer exists. Paul Tripp, a Christian author and counselor who had been called in by church leadership to assist them navigate through their issues, called Mars Hill “the most abusive, coercive ministry culture I’ve ever been involved with.”
What lessons might we derive from the stories of Sardis and Mars Hill?
2) The prophet Habakkuk condemns the Chaldeans whom God raised up to judge the people of Israel. He likens them to a fisherman who “brings (the fish) up with a hook; he drags them out with his net; he gathers them in his dragnet; so he rejoices and is glad. Therefore he sacrifices to his net and makes offerings to his dragnet; for by them he lives in luxury, and his food is rich” (Habakkuk 1:15-16).
In what ways are we sometimes like those whom Habakkuk describes here (both individually and as a church)? What are some remedies to this?
4) Theologian J.I. Packer made news by leaving the Anglican Church of which he had been a faithful member all of his ministerial career. His reasoning for leaving had to do with the June 2002 decision of the synod of the Anglican Diocese of New Westminster to authorize its bishop to produce a service for blessing same-sex unions which would be used in any parish that requested it. Packer explained:
Why did I walk out with the others? Because this decision, taken in its context, falsifies the gospel of Christ, abandons the authority of Scripture, jeopardizes the salvation of fellow human beings, and betrays the church in its God-appointed role as the bastion and bulwark of divine truth.
My primary authority is a Bible writer named Paul. For many decades now, I have asked myself at every turn of my theological road: Would Paul be with me in this? What would he say if he were in my shoes? I have never dared to offer a view on anything that I did not have good reason to think he would endorse.
While Christ called the believers in Sardis to hang in there, when do you believe one is justified (even obligated to) leave a church?
