THE CHURCH OF SARDIS

THE DEAD CHURCH

THE DEAD CHURCH

THE DEAD CHURCH

Church of the Living Dead

The Message to the Church in Sardis

3 “Write this letter to the angel[a] of the church in Sardis. This is the message from the one who has the sevenfold Spirit[b] of God and the seven stars:

“I know all the things you do, and that you have a reputation for being alive—but you are dead. 2 Wake up! Strengthen what little remains, for even what is left is almost dead. I find that your actions do not meet the requirements of my God. 3 Go back to what you heard and believed at first; hold to it firmly. Repent and turn to me again. If you don’t wake up, I will come to you suddenly, as unexpected as a thief.

4 “Yet there are some in the church in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes with evil. They will walk with me in white, for they are worthy. 5 All who are victorious will be clothed in white. I will never erase their names from the Book of Life, but I will announce before my Father and his angels that they are mine.

6 “Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches.

What exactly are the signs of a dying church? Or to put it another way, what exactly is a dying church? Is it a church with declining attendance? That’s probably the simplest answer to the question. A church can become so tiny that it literally goes out of existence. In certain parts of America, especially in regions with declining population, you will sometimes see a shuttered church building that once housed a thriving, dynamic congregation.

What exactly is a dying church?

But I think the deeper question goes to issues of spiritual vitality. Is a church that has been torn by controversy for years on end truly a living church? Or what about a church that is so comfortable in its current situation that there is no place for new people? What about a church that has completely lost its vision to reach people for Christ? If a church has no zeal for the lost, can it truly be called a “living” church of Jesus Christ?

What about a church that once was great but now has fallen on hard times? What about a church whose best days happened a generation ago and still lives off the reputation of its past glories?

Do ever drive by a church and say, “I wonder if this church is alive or dead?”

It seems to me that the question is easier to ask than to answer. After all, if the church is open for business, something must be happening there. They probably have a worship service (or two or three), they may have Sunday School, small groups, a choir or a worship team, a youth ministry, and they probably have a program for children. They may even have a “Senior Saints” fellowship.

“I wonder if this church is alive or dead?”

Is that church living or dead?

Again, it is easier to ask than to answer. After pondering the matter, I have concluded that only the Lord himself knows whether a church is truly dead or alive. A church may seem dead but may have signs of life within it, or far more ominously, a church may seem to be full of life but actually be at the point of spiritual death.

A Serious Problem

Such was the problem of the church at Sardis (). When Jesus comes to this church, he makes a quick and disquieting diagnosis:

“You have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead" (v. 1).

This may be one of the most serious accusations our Lord could give to any local church. And it is a comment that only he could make.

The church seemed alive and well. It had a good reputation in the community. It was evidently not on the brink of closing its doors. Christians in other towns spoke well of the church at Sardis.

It is certainly notable what Jesus does not mention:

The church does not seem to be suffering persecution. It does not seem to be seriously infected with false doctrine. We find no mention of the mysterious Nicolaitans. There is no hint of sexual immorality in the church.

Nor is the church warned about losing its first love.

In some respects, Sardis is the most difficult church to dissect because we don’t really know what was wrong there. When Jesus speaks to the other churches, he spells out the problem so there can be no confusion. But here we are told simply that at Sardis things looked good on the outside but were dying on the inside.

Strange as it may seem, there is something that can be something as bad as false doctrine or sexual immorality or trouble in the church:

A good reputation that is undeserved.

A Shocking Evaluation

Perhaps the history of Sardis gives us a clue. Many years before the writing of Revelation, Sardis had been one of the most important cities of Asia Minor. When Persia controlled the region, Sardis had actually been the capital city but under the Romans it had faded into insignificance. Here we have a city whose best days have come and gone, a city living off a reputation of past greatness. Sardis had been eclipsed by cities like Ephesus and Pergamum. It was a town living in the past and on the past. It seems that the church of Sardis had taken on the character of the city itself.

The church at Sardis was the perfect model of inoffensive Christianity.

One writer called the church at Sardis “the perfect model of inoffensive Christianity." Evidently the Jews and the Romans didn’t bother the church because the church didn’t bother them. It was left alone because it lacked the conviction to stir the waters and make any waves. Although apparently active on the outside, on the inside it had become a “spiritual graveyard

Jesus can make this diagnosis because he can read the hearts and minds of those who worship there. Perhaps that is why he is called the one who “holds the seven spirits of God" (v. 1), a reference to the Holy Spirit who sees all things and who searches every heart. Nothing is hidden from him.

All of this ought to be very solemn to us because this church evidently looked very good from the outside. How does a situation develop where a church with a good reputation turns out to be spiritually dead? We can list a few indicators:

When the past becomes more important than the present. When keeping a good reputation matters more than a bold witness for Christ. When religious ritual becomes an end in itself. When talking about Christ matters more than knowing Christ. When convenience takes the place of sacrifice. When appearance matters more than reality. When tradition stifles every attempt at innovation. When personal comfort outweighs risky faith. When church activity substitutes for a growing walk with God.

A church that is dead will often seem quite alive.

What strikes me is that these things are matters of the heart and are very hard to spot. A church that is dead will often seem quite alive. No church would advertise itself by saying, “Come worship with us. We ask nothing, demand nothing, dare nothing, and dream nothing.” How had this happened at Sardis?

The church had come to the place where it lived before men rather than before God, more anxious in all probability about their reputation in Sardis than their reputation in heaven (G. Campbell Morgan).

A Hopeful Reminder

What can be done about a dead or dying church? We get some good news in our text from the Lord himself:

“Yet you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes" (v. 4).

God has his people in the most unlikely places. Even in a church like Sardis, there were those who loved and served the Lord from a pure heart. It reminds me of the time when Elijah in his despair felt like he was the only faithful servant of God in the whole land of Israel. God called him to action by telling him that there were yet 7000 who had not bowed the knee to Baal (). God is not limited by your small vision. This ought to give us hope for even the gloomiest church situations. You and I are as likely as Elijah to wrongly estimate both our victories and our defeats. Better to do our best and leave the results with God. He knows better than we do the lives that have been changed by our service for Christ.

God has his people in the most unlikely places.

A Divine Ultimatum

What, then, is the hope for a spiritually dead congregation?

First, the church must wake up. "Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God" (v. 2). Because it was located on a plateau, Sardis seemed secure from invasion. But twice in its history invading armies had scaled the heights during the night and captured the city. So Christ’s warning to “Wake up!” had special meaning to the church in Sardis. No doubt the congregation had become spiritually lazy

Second, the church must return to Christ before it is too late. “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" (v. 3). To repent means literally to do a 180 from what we are doing. In this case it involves turning back to the Lord with a whole heart. I imagine that nothing is more difficult than for a comfortable church to repent. Most of us don’t change unless real pain is involved. We don’t pray until we are desperate, we don’t seek God’s face until we are in trouble, and we don’t repent unless we think there is no other hope.

We don’t hear that preached much nowadays, but it needs to be spoken to our generation every bit as much as to Luther’s own generation. Sometimes we wrongly think that repentance is something we do when we first come to Christ, and then we never have to think about it again. But that wrongheaded view of the Christian life comes from a false understanding of human nature. We are so messed up by sin that we need to repent every single day. And we even need to repent of our repentance because we are worse off than we think we are. That is, we need to say, “Lord, I’m guilty and I’m even more guilty than I think I am. So, Lord, I come to you pleading for your mercy, which I need even more than I know.”

On a Guilt Scale of 1-10, we probably think we’re a 5 or 6, definitely sinful but not as bad as lots of other people. Or maybe on a bad day, we’re a 7 or an 8. But we hardly ever think of ourselves as a 9 or 10 on the scale of badness. But the sobering fact is that even our good deeds, the things we brag about, our claim to being good and upright and moral and virtuous, even the good things we do are in themselves nothing but “filthy rags” in the sight of the Lord ().

We will never get better unless we repent. Our churches will never get better unless we repent.

We can’t repent for anyone else. It’s the man in the mirror who gets us in trouble.

Like a thief who comes when you least expect him, Jesus warns the congregation to wake up or he will come and the results will not be happy for the church.

A Bracing Promise

Note the three-fold promise to the overcomers at Sardis:

First, they will be dressed in the white robes of victory. “They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy. He who overcomes will, like them, be dressed in white” (vv. 4-5).

Second, they will have their names reserved in heaven. "I will never blot out his name from the book of life" (v. 5). This is a statement of absolute assurance of salvation. The Greek form here is a double negative. “I will never, ever, under any circumstances blot their names from the book of life.” Those whom God saves he saves forever.

“I will never, ever, under any circumstances blot their names from the book of life.”

Third, they will be personally recognized by our Lord. "I will . . . acknowledge his name before my Father and his angels” (v. 5). It’s a wonderful thing to be remembered by your friends. But there is no greater reward for the believer than to be personally known and recognized by our Lord.

A Personal Challenge

As we come to the end of this message, we should ask once again, where did the church at Sardis go wrong? It was a church of the living dead. The church was a beehive of religious mediocrity, its spiritual condition made worse by the fact that it seemed on the surface to be spiritually alive. In that sense it was in as much peril as them morally compromised churches of Pergamum and Thyatira. It seemed it was even in worse condition than the loveless church at Ephesus.

It’s a wonderful thing to be remembered by your friends.

The church was lethargic because the people were lethargic. That can happen to any of us at any time. We are the church of Jesus Christ, all of us together, and each of us individually. Perhaps the Lord is speaking to you and to me, saying,

We are the church, all of us together, and each of us individually.

There are times in all our walks with the Lord that He can say to us

“Wake up!” “Shape up!” “Repent!” “Remember what I have done for you!”

The Sardis spirit overtakes us whenever we begin to take God’s gifts for granted. How quickly we can become the Church of the Living Dead and not even know it.

God still loves the church at Sardis and He still loves us as also. If Jesus didn’t care, he wouldn’t have written this letter. So wherever we are spiritually, we can say, “Lord, start with me. Do your work in me. Wake me up! Stir me up to love you and to serve you so that the world will know that I belong to you.” May God wake us up and deliver us from the Church of the Living Dead so that we become once again the Church of the Living Christ. Amen.