Time To Wake Up

When I was 36 years old, I went for a physical examination.

It was the first one I had had in several years. And I probably wouldn’t have made the appointment even then if my mom hadn’t been trying to get me to go.

And they did the blood work and all that and I came back for my follow up. I was expecting to hear: “Well done, thou good and faithful servant. You’re the picture of health.”

Instead, the doctor said, in effect, “you’re not as healthy as you think you are.”

“We need to talk about your cholesterol.”

Basically my bloodwork showed that the way my cholesterol forms and binds with the other elements in my blood greatly increased my risk for a heart attack later in life — if I didn’t start cholesterol medication right then.

I was glad for that, but to be honest, the whole thing blindsided me. “I’m 36 years old. I’m not extremely overweight or in poor health.”

Have you ever been blindsided by something like that? It could be health-related or something else. You’re going along fine and you think everything’s great. And then something blindsides you and you’re forced to realize, “Maybe things aren’t as good as I thought they were.”

It makes you feel vulnerable and at-risk. Maybe it even makes you feel like you’ve been a fool to not see it coming.

But here’s the thing — when that happens, t’s a chance to do something about it.

Our text this morning addressing this question from a spiritual perspective. What if you and I are not as spiritually healthy as we think we are? What does that mean? How can we know? What can we do about it? What are the consequences of staying that way? What are the rewards and blessings that come from doing something about it?

Notice with me first, the diagnosis.

#1: The diagnosis: What if you aren’t as (spiritually) healthy as you think you are?

Maybe a good question to start with is, how spiritually healthy do you think you are? How would you answer that question?

How would others around you answer that question?

How would the person sitting next to you this morning answer that question?

[SLIDE: TWO QUESTIONS]

Two questions:

How spiritually healthy do you think you are?

What if you aren’t as healthy as you think you are?

That second question is important because it’s possible to not be as well-off as you think. Look at the second half of verse 1: “I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead.” The NIV says “you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead.”

That means it’s possible to fool others. That means it’s possible to fool yourself. You know who we can‘t fool? The One who purchased the church by His blood and now walks among His churches. “I know your works.” He looks past the spiritual masks and costumes we put on and sees straight through to the heart, to who we really are. That’s what He means when He tells John to write, “I know your works.” “I know you inside and out, He says. I know the true condition of you heart. You’re fooling those around you because you know how to say the right things. But you’re not fooling me.”

It’s true — Jesus sees us as we really are, and He still loves us. Thank you Jesus that you love us despite what you see in us. But when we came to Christ, He made a commitment to us that He would never make peace with our sin, and that He loves us too much to settle for anything less for us than perfect holiness and godliness.

How do you get into a place where you’re like the Christians at Sardis? Something declines and dies if it is not maintained.

We bought a house a year and a half ago. My parents used to tell me that when you own a home there is always something needing fixing. You can invest the money and time in fixing it. Or you can let it decline and rust and fall apart.

If you don’t take care of your health, you’ll most likely die sooner than if you did.

If you don’t change your oil, you’ll eventually blow your engine.

If you don’t tend to your marriage, you’ll grow apart.

If you don’t read your Bible and sit under the preaching of the Bible, your mind will be shaped more and more by the forces that are opposed to God.

If you don’t gather regularly with your church family, that muscle you use to get up early on Sunday and drag your family here and sit through an other one of my sermons again — that muscle will atrophy, and with each Sunday that you miss it becomes weaker and weaker, so that eventually coming to church just seems like this tremendous ordeal — to much to handle.

If you don’t pray, your affection for God and your sense of closeness to Him will grow cold.

All of this leads to spiritual apathy.

So, are you as healthy spiritually as you thought you were? And what if you aren’t? What then?

The diagnosis. Next, the cure.

#2: The cure: Wake up and repent

One of them things I love about the word of God is that it always wounds us in order to heal us. It shows us what’s wrong and then tells us practically how to fix us. Same here in Revelation 3. So, what is the cure? The cure is repentance.

But look how he describes repentance, verse 2: “wake up!”

It was quite a wake up call. In a similar but much less weird way, Jesus issues a wake up call to the church at Sardis. He is warning them. He is saying, wake up and realize the danger of your spiritual apathy. What is that saying about you? He is saying, consider the implications of remaining spiritually dead and never coming back to life. The Bible indicates that if we backslide and become apathetic and go to sleep spiritually and never wake up, it may be a sign that we never had the life of Jesus within us to start with. Heb 6:1-8

Let’s talk about churches. What about churches? How do you know if a church is spiritually dead? Perhaps a better question is, how does a church get that way?

There was a study done by the president of Lifeway Research a few years ago. They looked at a lot of churches that had closed their doors. Out of all these different churches that died and closed their doors, do you know what the common thread was between all of them?

“The most pervasive and common thread of our autopsies was that the deceased churches lived for a long time with the past as hero. They held on more tightly with each progressive year. They often clung to things of the past with desperation and fear. And when any internal or external force tried to change the past, they responded with anger and frustration. ‘We will die before we will change.’” [Rainer, Autopsy of a Deceased Church, p18]

In other words, the “golden age” became the idol.

Please, please do not misunderstand me. I am not saying there is anything wrong with the people who built this church and every other church. I’m not making any judgment on the quality of their faith. In our case, many, many people who are now with Jesus built this church, and we stand on their shoulders. They did it right.

But as time passes, our world changes, and in order to reach the people around us, we adapt.

We do not adapt our message. We do not adapt the gospel. We do not tone down or water down the Scriptures. I am not that kind of pastor.

The Bible is true and infallible.

Sin is real, and it is our biggest problem.

Hell is an actual place where actual people will go who haven’t trusted Christ.

The gospel of Christ crucified and risen for our sins still is the power of God unto salvation.

None of that will ever change, and if anybody were to ask me to change those things, that’s a non-negotiable, and I would have to go.

But how we dress might change. The songs we sing might change somewhat.

How we do outreach might change. We’ll have to start going into the community more and drawing them here rather than asking them to come first to us.

[SLIDE: HOW DO I KNOW IF I’M DEAD?]

So how do you know if you need to wake up?

How do I know if I’m dead?

Your affection for God has waned

Your patience and love for people has waned

You feel burned out spiritually, and you’re doing nothing about it

You talk about spiritual growth in the past tense

You’ve stopped trying to avoid sin

Now church, if that’s you, don’t despair. And don’t give into guilt. Instead, commit right now to do something about it. Shoot off a quick prayer to your Father, “Okay, I see it now. That’s me. I need you to help me.”

So what do you do?

Look at the second part of verse 2: “Wake up, and — here it is — “strengthen what remains and is about to die”.

Jesus is assuming that there are signs of life in your heart. Like what? Well, maybe you’re apathetic, but at least you’re here now with your church. You may be apathetic, but you still want to live for Jesus. You may be apathetic, but you believe God’s word is true.

Those are the signs of life, “the things that remain”. Jesus also says these are the things about to die. And He says we are to strengthen those things. t is not too late . So put a stop to the decay. Arrest that process of death now. How do you do that?

That’s the diagnosis, the cure, and now notice with me, the prescription.

#3: The prescription: Go back to basics

Look with me at verse 3: “Remember, then, what you received and heard. Keep it and repent.” Three actions: remember, keep, and repent. Repent we’ve already looked at. The prescription is the following two actions: remember and keep.

First, remember.

Raise your hand if you find it hard to remember things and easy to forget them. lt is so easy to forget.

I find that my weeks are so busy and there are so many tasks crowding my mental bandwidth that sometimes I can’t remember right away what I preached on last Sunday. It’s like all the information I put into my head to prepare my sermon pushed all the other information from the previous sermon out of my head. On top of that, I tend to be forgetful in general - I manage my life with calendars and reminders and notes. I know what it’s like to forget.

[SLIDE: “REMEMBER WHAT YOU RECEIVED”]

Remember what you received:

Remember when you received the gospel message (1Cor 15:1)

Remember when you received Christ (John 1:12)

But sometimes forgetting is costly. That’s why Jesus tells us to remember. Remember what? He tells us, verse 3: “Remember, then, what you received and heard.” What are we to remember? What we have received and heard. That means that Jesus wants us to remember a message. What message?

Track with me for two minutes, ok? If this is the prescription for our apathy, we need to pay attention. These two words “receive” and “heard” there in verse 3 very often refer to the gospel message. “Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand...” (1Cor. 15:1 ESV). But the Bible says we didn’t receive a message; we received a person, Jesus. “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12 ESV).

Remember the day you heard the gospel message, the good news of free pardon by by faith in Christ and the promise of eternal life. Remember the time you received Christ as Lord and Savior and began a relationship with Him.

Do you remember that day?

Fix it in your mind. Remember your experience. How did you feel? How did your life change? What things got easier? What things got harder?

But don’t just remember the gospel message. That’s just the first step. Having remembered it, keep it. Keep the gospel message front and center in your life. Grasp ahold of it. Don’t let Satan use the cares of life steal it away.

Why do believers need the gospel? I thought the gospel was a message for unbelievers who need to be saved. It is, but the gospel remains good news all your life. When you mess up and fall into sin, the gospel reminds you you’re forgiven and persuades you to repent. When you get sick, the gospel reminds you this life is not all there is and that death is the doorway to true life with Christ. When you bury your precious mother or father, or God forbid, your child or grandchild, the gospel reminds you there is hope because Jesus rose again and conquered death.

Remember the gospel and keep it. That is the surest way to come back from spiritual death and apathy to life and victory and joy.

We’ve seen the diagnosis: things are not as good as we thought. We’ve heard about the cure: wake up from sleep and repent. We’ve seen the prescription: remember the gospel and keep it. Notice with me, finally, the prognosis.

[SLIDE: #4: THE PROGNOSIS]

#4: The prognosis: judgment or victory?

Look at verse 3, the second half: “If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what I hour I will come against you” (Rev. 3:3b ESV).

[SLIDE: IMAGE OF SARDIS]

It was dangerous to live in the ancient world. Cities had large and high walls to keep out enemy armies. Something really cool about the city of Sardis was that it was considered pretty much untouchable, for several reasons. For one, the city of Sardis was located on top of a high mountain. The walls of the city came right up to the edge of the sheer cliffs of the mountain. Below, at the base of the mountain, was a river. They felt invincible and for the most part, they were.

Their invincibility led them to be careless. One day, a soldier at the top of the walls of Sardis dropped his helmet over the edge and it landed at the bottom of the cliff. The soldier needed his helmet, so he carefully worked his way down the rock face of the cliff, retrieved his helmet, and carefully worked his way back up.

While he was doing that, someone was watching. An enemy army was encamped at the base of the mountain, and one soldier watched as this guy worked his way down and back up the cliff, something they previously thought was not possible. The soldier watched and made mental notes of exactly how this guy was able to go back down and then climb back up. And that night, a band of Persian soldiers worked their way up the cliff and found the city completely unguarded. And that was the downfall of Sardis. [W. A. Criswell, Expository Sermons on Revelation, 1981, p150]

“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” (Rev. 3:3b ESV).

Church family, Jesus is coming back. “Concerning that day and hour, no one knows”, Jesus said, “not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only…Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and one left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one left. Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming” (Matt. 24:36, 40-42 ESV).

Look at how Jesus describes that coming: “you will not know at what hour I will come against you”. Jesus means business. We do not want to be caught in a state of apathy when our Lord comes back. Let’s hear his warning once more: “Remember, then, what you received and heard. Keep it, and repent” (Rev. 3:3a ESV).

What’s the prognosis for our condition? Life, joy, peace, victory — if we will wake up.

We know the diagnosis.

We know the cure. It’s repentance.

Here Jesus gives us the prescription. Remember when you received Christ. Keep the gospel foremost in your mind.

Will we take it?

The doctor I saw that day seven years ago got my attention. I was all-in. I started the medication and a month later all my numbers were perfect and they have been pretty much ever since. We’re blessed with life-saving medications that work, they get the job done. But we all know people who all of a sudden get convinced they’re healed and they stop their medications to their own harm. The thing about a prescription is that it only works if you take it and keep taking it.

Will we pursue the cure to our condition by taking the prescription? Our answer to this question determines whether our prognosis is life or death, judgment or victory.

Call for response

Jesus will reward us. He promises to more than repay us. Rev 3:5 “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” (Rev. 3:5 ESV). Everlasting life is our reward. Unspeakable joy is our future. Eternal security is His pledge to us.

This is a call, church, to commit yourselves to Jesus again. Come back to Him today. Jesus

Some of you are doing well. You have my deepest admiration. Jesus talks about those in the church at Sardis who are excelling. “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.” You’re not worthy by your own works. You’re worthy because He made you worthy by His grace. Keep up the good work.

“The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments...” Others of you need to be able to step up and conquer. Maybe you wonder whether you should even try. You’ve made so many new commitments and yet here you are, in the same place again. Jesus is holding His hand out to you this morning, offering to help you up. He asks you, Are you ready to try again?

You know the prescription. Remember what you received and heard. That’s the gospel. Preach it to yourself every day. Make notes to remind you of it. Memorize good gospel texts like John 3:16 or Rom. 3:23-24. Write them on note cards and look at them throughout the day. Screenshot those verses on your phones and make them your background or lock screen. Saturate yourself with the gospel.

And then fan the flame into a fire. Read good Christian books. Not enough time to read? Read 10 minutes a day. You can read a whole book in a few months that way. Get into your Bible. Come to Bible study. Why do you guys not come to that? You need it. Sunday morning is not enough. You need to study God’s word in the context of your faith community. Just do it. Strengthen that muscle that is about to die.

And He will help you. He is able. He is the One who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. He is the One who purchased His church with His blood and now walks among His churches.