The Church of Sardis
Tom Shrader teaches on the church at Sardis from Revelation 3:1-6, which had a reputation for being alive but was spiritually dead. He diagnoses the symptoms of spiritual death in churches and individuals: worshiping the past, valuing forms over life, loving systems more than Jesus, and prioritizing material over spiritual concerns. The remedy involves being watchful, strengthening what remains, remembering God's faithfulness, obeying His Word, and repenting.
“The tradition is to be a foundation, not an anchor.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: What Christ Says to the Church (Revelations)
Recorded: 2004
Duration: 39 min
Themes: spiritual, death, awakening, repentance, watchfulness, obedience, revival, remembering, struggling with complacency, church leader, experiencing spiritual dryness, pastor, elder, feeling spiritually dead, new believer, longtime christian
Scripture: Revelation 3:1-6, 1 Corinthians 16:13, 1 Thessalonians 5:6, 1 Peter 5:8, Acts 20:31, James 1:22, Psalm 121, Colossians 2:6, Philippians 2:12-13
Theological Themes: ecclesiology, church health, spiritual death, sanctification, biblical authority, repentance, spiritual warfare, perseverance
Full Transcript
Let's get after this. Open your Bibles, if you would, to the book of Revelation and chapter 3, and we look at what my heading says is the dead church—the church at Sardis. So let's read the passage, then I'll come back and we'll break it apart.
"To the angel of the church at 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. Wake up, and strengthen the things that remain, which were about to die; for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of My God. 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. 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. 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. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches."
I'm going to stop along the way and remind you of the general pattern. So we have the recipient, and then the author—this is Jesus. Typically now there's the recipient, the author, then the strengths, and here's what you're going to notice: there aren't any. This is one of those letters where there's none of those listed, but it goes right to weaknesses.
The Pattern and the Exception
The general pattern holds with a giant exception, and the exception being that there's no strengths listed. The terminology is kind of a little bit confusing, because He's saying the church is dead. So for the sake of discussion, I'm going to say maybe corporately, but within that there's some individuals who are still breathing or doing okay, some better than others perhaps.
What we said when we started this—it'll be the fifth time we've talked about it, we'll talk about it all seven times—is we want to look at this and see if there's something we can learn about the church we're in, but for us in this discussion, probably more importantly, about our own lives. We said these seven churches represent seven churches for all time, seven characteristics. Churches are made up of people, so these are different people, different character traits.
When we looked at Ephesus, we saw the loveless church—lots of doctrine, no love. We got to Smyrna, we saw that it was the suffering church. Every once in a while I will meet somebody and it's like it just comes and comes and comes upon them. They'll just be one tragedy after another tragedy after another tragedy.
I was talking to a girl, really a cool gal, and she was just talking about life and this happened and this happened and this happened. In the midst of this, she became a believer and then this happened and this happened, and all of a sudden she's saying, "Okay God, I don't understand all this, but at least I have my health." And then all of a sudden came this bladder infection and now she's in the hospital, and so she finally, after a couple weeks, gets out of that. She goes, "Well at least I have my dog," and then that night she ended up putting her dog to sleep. So I always suggested that was the blessing in the middle of it, but that's a different story. And she's going, "I don't know," and she said at that point, she just said, "I just sat and laughed, didn't cry, just sat and laughed and said, 'Okay God, I must have more. Whatever it is You want, You're doing what You need to do.'" So that's that suffering church.
The Progression of Churches
When we got to Pergamum, we saw a church that was compromised, and then when we got to Thyatira, we saw a church that was corrupt. So remember, these churches are all on a road—it would be a highway heavily traveled—and now there's that progression: compromised, corrupt, and now the dead church.
The recipient of the letter is the angel at the church of Sardis, so that would be the lead pastor or the one reading the letter. Sardis is kind of a cool city. It was the capital of Lydia in the 6th century BC. The oldest of the Asian churches, in many ways considered to be the greatest of the cities, splendid for its day. We can tell that as we look back and we see the ruins.
It was a natural fortress. I don't want to make too much out of this, but the imagery is rich. It sits on a 1,500-foot plateau with really only one way in. So when I say natural fortress, that's exactly what it was. You're going, "Boy, this is something—we're pretty safe here."
The Repeated Defeats of Sardis
Yet, this is important, they were conquered by the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans—and all three times in the same way. What happened was some very gallant, brave soldiers would go not through the gates, but around through these areas, these ravines and these hills that nobody could ever come in. They would go through those, attack the city when they didn't expect it, and defeat them.
Again, you would think—let me just help you here—you would think after the first one of these, you go, "Wow, maybe we ought to examine this as an option." And then it happened the second time, they didn't, and the third time. So again, this would be one of them—all I want to do is just make a point here, and the point would be, it becomes a metaphor, I think, for a lot of lives. We find ourselves doing the same stupid things over and over and over again.
The problem is, that sounds like a lot of work, and I don't know I have that much to say. So, I'd like to co-write them, and my contribution would be my name. But if I were to, here's what I think would be a great book: that life is a rerun. It's just the same thing over and over again.
The same issues you faced when you were 15 are essentially the same issues you face at 25, and then the same things you start to see at 35, and the same things you see at 50. By the time you get to the age that most of you are—what is that, 84 or 85—by the time you get to the age most of you are, you kind of go, "Geez, I've seen this before." Now, the challenge is to be able to identify that and go, "Oh yeah, I remember, if I do this, it ends up bad." So, that's what happens to them.
The Wealth and Decline of Sardis
They had legendary wealth. This was the first city in the world that we know of where coins were minted. It became a medium of exchange. They had a trade in the wool and dyed fabric carpets. When they were conquered in 548 BC—I don't know how they figured this stuff out—they're saying that Cyrus the Conqueror took 600 million dollars worth of valuable coins from them. It was destroyed by an earthquake in 17 AD and rebuilt within a decade.
Here's where this now gets into the church. Sir William Ramsey writes this: "Nowhere was there a greater example of melancholy contrast between past splendor and present decay. Sardis was the city of degeneration." And R.H. Charles adds, "Like the city itself, the church had belied its early promise. Its religious history, like its civil, belonged to the past."
It was a city who, as they gathered together, would talk about the good old days. Within that city, there was a church that, rather than battle against this decay and darkness, the church just took on the personality of the city.
The Cultural Decline Around Us
There's always that tension. We campaign within the Redemption churches and within Poverty Living—everything we do—we campaign to say, resist the natural tug, which is to look at the culture we're in, and it's just really, really, really bad. You see a demise. I'm rereading George Washington's thoughts on civility, which sounds kind of weird, but it came out of the last time I was at Phoenix Country Club.
The last time I was at Phoenix Country Club in the men's grill, I'm sitting there, and I must have heard the F-word 200 times by guys that are supposed to be civic leaders—bank presidents and running companies. I'm just going, "Really?" That just strikes me as odd, that you just sit here and blow these things out in this public setting.
Now, let me tell you why it's that way. Women, it's your fault. I'll get there. Here's why: because a guy used to talk like that, and then there would be shame attached, and he would go, "I'm sorry. Excuse my French." I always like that, because I'm apparently bilingual and didn't realize it, because I understood every word of that. But what's happened now is you women talk like longshoremen, so the bar's fallen so far that everybody talks this way.
I'll be out in some setting—the way women talk blows me away—and those are civic leaders. Bank presidents, people that we look up to. Well, all of a sudden, that's gone. Does that mean much? I don't know. It's just the decay of everything around us.
Everywhere you go. Phoenix Open—you got a fight in a parking lot really to get in there. For what? I mean, unless you're going to the Bird's Nest, what's the point? It's everywhere you go. It's the Friday after Thanksgiving where you're killing people to get in a 50% off on something you don't even need. It's just everywhere.
The Christian Response: Engage, Don't Retreat
Well, here's the thing. Here's the Christian thing. Now the Christian thing at that moment tends to be retreat, when in fact it needs to be engaged. So like Sardis, what they did is the church just became like the city, rather than going to the city and say, "No, let's revive the city, the culture, whatever is going on here." And the answer, of course, will be Jesus.
It's the world around us. One of the paraphrases of Philippians chapter 2, verse 12-13, something like that, is be salt and light in the midst of a bunch of crooks and perverts. Sounds like where you work or where you live or the gym I go to. So Christ calls us to engage that city, not withdraw.
The night before He dies, this is what He prays: "Father, just as You sent Me into the world, I'm sending them into the world." So places like church—our place where we come and encourage one another, worship, hopefully learn—but it's not a place where we hang out. Our hangout is out there, out there in the world. The church is a place to come encourage one another, be safe, be equipped, so that we can now go in and engage the world around us.
When Churches Live in the Past
But what had happened to this church at Sardis, like the city itself, is they got together and they said, "Do you remember what it used to be like? Do you remember how great it was at one point?" There are great examples. This could be interpreted as criticism—it just isn't, it's just observation. All you have to do is drive around the city and you can see great examples of churches that had their day.
So you'll see these churches that can seat three, four, five hundred people that have thirty people in them. Then you see young dynamic churches that have five, six, seven hundred people, but they can't find a place to meet. If it wasn't for letterhead and property and ego—and I get it, by the way—those churches should be accommodating the other churches.
But the thirty people sit around and say, "Do you remember when Billy Graham came to Sun Devil Stadium in 1965? Do you remember how we had three buses that went down there? Do you remember that? Wow, stuff's happening here." That kind of idea.
Jesus' Message to the Dead Church
So here's what Jesus says: "He who has the seven spirits of God, seven stars." So it's that perfect number seven.
The Dead Church
It's His power. Was omniscience is His life-giving ability seven stars of the churches. He says here you go chapter 3 verse 1: "I know your works. You have a name that's alive, but you are dead."
Remember what we said - now we're looking at churches, but we want to look at individuals too. So I'll go ahead and make points about churches, but we can make them about you. John Stott writes we can sing hymns led by choirs and bands and orchestras. We can recite creeds and say confessions and join in prayers where our minds wander and our hearts are far from God.
So these churches are apparently going through the motions to some degree, but they've lost any sort of life sign. On top of that they've lost any sort of influence within the community. Here's one of the old poems talking about a church like this: "Outwardly splendid as of old, inwardly lifeless, dead and cold. Her force and fire all spent and gone, like the dead moon she still shines on." So they just exist.
Mild-Mannered Churches
I love this mild manner speaking of these churches. Let's get the church out. Maybe it's you. I've even come into this thing whatever it is now for 15 or 20 years. Here are essentially the same illustrations with essentially the same points, chalking it off as something to spiritual growth. This may describe you: mild-mannered people meeting in mild-mannered ways, striving to be more mild-mannered. Just the same thing.
The way to revive this - because here's what we do - let's beat up the denominations for a second. So what do they do? They see shrinking numbers, primarily because in a lot of places they've lost the fundamental idea of teaching the Word of God and letting God's Word speak, and that's the problem. Rather than repent there, they look at the culture and try to figure out how to be more like the culture to attract more people. Even if you get them, they're never going to hear the gospel when they get there. Now that's a generalization because it's generally true, and I do think God uses churches and people for a while and then He's done with them. He doesn't build this giant thing around a person typically.
The Problem with Program-Based Solutions
The answer is not a program. We're just talking about it. Let's talk about it with the just about churches. It's like we just keep recycling the same stuff, and I'm for that. But the answer always has to be driven by what does the scripture say, because that becomes the answer to everything.
So here you go. Here's how you'll see it oftentimes - this sounds cynical, I don't mean to be, just observation. So you'll see a church and they go, "We want to grow." So here's what they'll do: eight week series on sex. That's what they'll do, and I'm for sex. I like it. Amen, all over it. I think it's a big deal. God's got a lot to say about it. I think He's more liberal than most of you about it. That would be my deal: single celibate, married celebration, not many rules, go for it tiger. That's what I think God would say. He'd probably word it differently, but I think that's what God would say.
I get that and I have no problem with that. But it has to be taught within the context of God's Word.
Learning from Men's Conferences
The way I haven't done any men's conferences for a long time. I used to do a lot. One year I did 27 - think about that in the course of the year, 27 out-of-town events. That's a lot for me to still be doing private life, still be doing a church, and still having young kids. So I used to do a lot of men's conferences, and the last two or three I found the people to be extraordinarily disappointed with me. Here was the complaint: "You're not talking about marriage and you're not talking about kids."
So I would say - and this is why I did the last one - I said, "You know, some of you guys want to talk about marriage. Let's do this. Help me understand. We'll talk about marriage. What do you think God would have to say about marriage? What would that be?" "Oh yeah, we need to love her." I mean, I had this list. I mean, it took them like - they've been in church all their life, you know, conceived in a baptismal almost. So I want to go through this. I want to go really. After about three minutes we had this long list, and I'm going, "Why do I need to talk about that if you already know it?"
To me the issue is not what to do. It's why aren't you doing it? And so fundamentally is you don't love God enough.
The Root of the Problem
I'll give you general advice if you're single and you're looking for a mate. If it's a guy looking for a girl, number one thing you want is you want a girl who loves Jesus more than you. If you're a girl, you want a guy that loves Jesus more than you. Now I think there's a whole bunch of other things that go with that, but that's what you want.
So when I'm doing the men's conference, I'm going, "Okay, I'm going to help you be a better husband. Let's talk about Jesus. Let's talk about God. I'm going to help you be a better dad. Here's when I'm the best dad: when I love Jesus. Here's when I'm a crummy dad: when I'm not loving Jesus. Here's when I'm the best husband: when I'm loving Jesus." Now there's some techniques and all this, but honestly, how many more books do I need on marriage? Are you kidding me? How much is there to say? The institution's been around forever, and every generation needs to hear it in a new way. I get all of that stuff.
But I'm telling you, at the last time I did a men's or women's deal, they brought me in. "Well, how does a man think?" Okay, really, you need a course on that? You don't understand that? My answer always to that is watch "Everyone Loves Raymond" for a month. You don't know how a man thinks? That's all you got to do. It's very simple.
The Same Pattern with Women
So you don't need me to tell you. Here's what I did the last time in a women's conference. I had one day, women. I said, "Ladies, help me out here. What do you think a man needs? What do you think your role in marriage is?" They did the same thing. Had a whiteboard, in five minutes we had everything there, and I said, "Okay, if you know what he needs, why aren't you giving it to him?" Here's what I did...
The Question of Spiritual Vitality
There in that I can't... I got to find my notes and get a tape on this because it was really good. I said, "I'm just going to ask you questions." So the first question I asked was, "Okay, those of you that are married, would you want to come home to you? Let's start with that. What do you look like? What do you smell like? What have you done for the day?" Okay, because we're not talking about him. We'll talk about him another time, but it's you. We can't fix him. We can fix you.
Well, it's the same thing here with this church. What do we do? We don't get gimmicky. We may need to look and say, "Okay, we may need to freshen it up a little bit," but the message never changes. I'm really super sensitive to this because this whole process can really fall on the guy at the front.
The Danger of Empty Performance
John Stott again writes that pastors are particularly vulnerable. We can lead a service with little awareness of the greatness of God that we are professing to worship. We can preach rather to display our learning and eloquence than to exalt Christ. All Christian activities, if they're not an expression of love for God, are a hollow mockery and empty pantomime.
I'm just telling you that's for sure all around church. So with our music people, we want them to not be awful. Okay, don't want them to be awful. Don't want people to go, "Oh my gosh, oh my god, that's terrible." We don't want to see the chairman of the elder board's six-year-old playing the clarinet. I don't want to see that. But I don't need him to be professional either. There's a fine line between practicing, rehearsing, and performing.
But the same thing is true for me. The same thing can be true for you. How would it look for you? You carry around that big honking Bible, you got your smart device, whatever it is, you're taking a bunch of notes, you're quoting a bunch of scripture, but the heart's not penetrated. And that's what needed to happen in this church. "I know your deeds, that you have a name, that you're alive"—that's the word on the street—"but the reality is you're dead."
The Comfort of a Sheltered Existence
And there's no mention of the persecution or the suffering or any of those things that we saw at Smyrna. One of the authors writes this: "It may be that this church had not suffered disturbance from the outside, and that its troubles stem from a comparatively sheltered existence. The temptation for shelter is always to take things easy."
So, don't know how we figure this: Christians in China, about 10 million. The communists take over, shut it down, and now they'll say—how they know this, I don't know—this is 120 million. I don't have a clue if that's true or not, but isn't that interesting? They did the whole thing without one of us sending anybody there. That's interesting. All they had was a Bible.
By the way, here you go, give you a great kind of no-brain-but-a-lot-of-fun read: Randy Alcorn's "Safely Home." Any of you read that? Wonderful little book, great book. So, you ought to read a novel, but you got churches that have not Bibles, but like pages of the Bible. This thing like growth—hmm, that tells me something. We were talking about it before. Jesus made disciples without the internet or a book.
Spiritual Lethargy and Disengagement
So, this church, apparently, they're just inbred. They don't want to go out into the community, but rather than encourage each other, they disengage. A church which is so lethargic, William Barclay writes, so lethargic as to fail to produce heresy is mentally dead. I love that. They can't even make up false doctrine.
I'm in this thing right now—my life goes in cycles, I bet yours does too—where you see this issue over and over again. So, I have two things right now that seem to be overwhelming me. The love of God on one, and then practically the men—they're not men, boys in the church 20 to 30.
A Generation of Spiritual Immaturity
And so, here's what we're finding. We got girls 20 to 30 in our church that are awesome. They know Christ, they love Christ, they're critical thinkers, they can slice and dice. And the boys, by and large, the boys in the church, the little boys in the church, 20 to 30, are pathetic.
I told one of them the other day, and this will give you a little bit of my heart, but I told one of them the other day, "You are so pathetic that you can't get enough energy up to lust." I don't understand that. I'm almost to the point where I'd be happy—I think it's Martin Luther's line—"sin with vigor." I'm just telling you, this is a pathetic comment, and we got girls that can knock it out of the park, and now they're trying to find guys to breed with. And they can't even find—all they can find are these guys that play games. The girls are solving problems and starting businesses, literally, and the guys are playing video games and trying to work at Starbucks and complaining about the economy.
It's that church that's going on here. They do a couple things.
Autopsy of a Dead Church
Let me do the autopsy of a dead church, and then I'll give you the remedy that He has here. So this is from Barclay, and these are his observations—that's my term. So here's a dead church. For sake of illustration, let's get the church out of it. Here's the autopsy of a spiritually dead Christian.
Number one, it begins to worship its own past. So you begin to talk about, "I'm saying, is God working in your life?" "Oh my golly, you won't believe it. 1975, at Christmas, it was jammed at the mall, and I was in a hurry, and we prayed for a parking spot, and there was one by the front door. God is good." Okay, and God is good, and I believe those are blessings God gives you, but 1975, that's a while ago. Have we seen Him do anything since then?
And so you see it in a church, and it's the natural flow. Our church, we were like two years old, and I'm in a meeting, and they're talking about changing the logo. I'm totally ambivalent. Couldn't care less. Get it on. Let's go. Can you put it at the end of the agenda, and I can go. Until one of the guys said, "I don't think we should do that." Okay, I'm open to that. "Why?" "Because we've always had this other logo." At that point, it became an issue. I'm going, "Gosh..."
We can't do it because we're two years old, and we have our past? In the course of the redemption stuff, we've talked to a variety of churches. Some have contacted us. We've contacted others. We're interested in what you're doing. We'd like to join you.
We're sitting down with a church, and so they're talking about, maybe we could merge this, and I said, well, we don't do mergers very well because it's a total—and I don't mean it because we do that. It doesn't matter, and they said, you know, I said, well, in a relationship like that, everybody brings a strength. What do you bring? And they said, we bring our 50-year tradition, and I'm really very kind, and so I didn't say anything, but I thought it's your 50-year tradition that has you calling us.
So do I like tradition? I love tradition. I do the same thing, same place, the same way over and over again, but this is really important now for you, or for your business, or for the church. The tradition is to be a foundation, not an anchor. So it's wonderful to go, we got these ten things we do, and we've always done this. That's really good if we can build on it, but if it's an anchor, if all of a sudden your whole relationship with Christ is you're going, do you remember when this is what we did? These were the good old days?
When Forms Become More Important Than Life
Here's the second thing. When it's more concerned about forms than it is with life itself. So business now is more sophisticated, maybe, than it was in the old days, but in the old days, and particularly vulnerable was Ma Bell, but you would deal with them, and you would hear, or it was always associated with them as, but this is the way we've always done it. You wouldn't say that anymore, but all of a sudden you have this system.
So I'm in this church. This is a great story. I'm in this church, guest preacher, He's amazing, we're done, walking out, guys all mad. I said, that was good, honey. He said, that was awful. I said, really? I said, I thought he was really good, better than the guy that's here normally, honestly, and he said, not that. Every Sunday, we say the Lord's Prayer. He didn't say the Lord's Prayer. The rest of that entire worship service, I could not focus because we didn't say the Lord's Prayer, and I said, that one that begins with Jesus saying, don't do meaningless repetition, that one is the one you're talking about? Really? That's the one you wanted to have him pray?
Well, all of a sudden, I like tradition, and I like form, but that form—it's like quiet time. I have my quiet time. I read the Bible. What did you read? That's what we always did with our kids when they're small. What happened? What do you do in Sunday school today? And then they would spit out whatever they taught. What does that mean? I don't know. They didn't learn anything. Maybe they hide that word in their heart, and someday God uses it. So you're going through quiet time, quiet time, quiet time, checking off boxes. I did this. Form dominates, leads to death.
When Systems Matter More Than Jesus
Here's the third thing. It loves systems more than it loves Jesus. Very similar to the second one. So man's rules become more important than a broken and a contrite heart. In a structure, the rules dominate, and we serve the rules or the form.
So I was talking to somebody in their business. It happens to be a big publicly run organization, and they were talking about people within their staff, and they say, we got this one person on staff, and everything is a rule. This person sees themselves as the enforcer of the rules, and it gets in a way with relationships and all. It's not to say rules aren't important, but it's to say the rules are there to serve us, not us the rules.
When Material Things Dominate Spiritual Things
Here's the last thing. When they're more concerned about material than they are spiritual things. When the temporal dominates the eternal. And again, that can be true as an organization. That can be true individually.
Give you a church illustration. Some of you in churches, I'll bet you've said this, so hopefully they'll be just like hot coals dumped on your head at this moment. I don't know why we're so concerned about buildings. We're about people. We're not about buildings. If you're a little younger, you want—I want that first century church. That's what I say.
Let's do August without air conditioning. See how that works for you. Well, not that. Well, what do we mean? And the buildings get in the way. We have two campuses right now where we're renting. We're trying like mad to buy these churches. If we can't, we are now a nomadic church with no place to go. That's fine. Maybe that's what God has planned for us.
But let me tell you what, if you don't have—now we can argue about building. We can argue about that. Like when they redid this room, this looks great. Those are great lights. I'll bet I can get cheaper lights than that. I don't know that, but I bet I can. I'll bet I could just dangle a bulb there. That would be cheaper. But there's a judgment made in that, and it looks nice, and it's comedy. I love it, and I think it has value, but all of a sudden, you can become hypercritical.
On the other hand, you can go on, no, this is what's really important. It's really important how it looks, and it's fine to me to go, it's really important how it looks and to be comfortable, so they're a tool to facilitate the hearing of the Word and the preaching of the Word.
The Personal Application
It's the same thing in your life. If your life is mired in these temporal things, all of a sudden, you are so hung up. This is why, since day one, one of my go-to in-the-wheelhouse messages has been contentment, because I can become so focused on meeting more legitimate needs—food, clothing, shelter—and I've cranked that up to such a level that I spend all my energy supporting that lifestyle rather than doing the things that God would have me do.
I'm not against nice stuff, but I'm saying, when your head hits the pillow at night, what's the last thing you're thinking about? These are great
Wake Up and Watch
When those things begin to take place in a church or individual, we've got to go, warning. What's my action? Chapter 3, verse 2, be watchful and strengthen things which remain. Verse 3, remember, therefore, what you've received and hold fast.
If I'm in this situation where I'm dead, or where I'm dying, what are those steps to revival? I pull five of them out of this text.
Five Steps to Revival
Number 1, be watchful. Wake up. 1 Corinthians 16:13, watch. Stand fast in faith. 1 Thessalonians 5:6, therefore, let us not sleep, but let us watch and be sober. 1 Peter 5:8, be sober, be vigilant. Paul says goodbye to the elders at Ephesus. Chapter 20, verse 31, therefore, watch.
Be on the alert. Look at things around you. Look at the world, not just from a human perspective, but from God's perspective. What do I watch? Be vigilant. What am I even looking for? What are those things in life that are important? I'm going to find them in this word.
It's so important. Anybody that knows me knows I'm not a great student. I'm not a great reader. My attention span is gone already. I listen and learn better than read. The first book I ever read in my life was my junior year of college, and it was a book on Muhammad Ali. So it's not like I'm cracking out the classics here. But when God saved me, He gave me a desire to read because I wanted to know Him more. The only way to do that, or big way to do it, is to understand what He wanted to say to me.
I was in a meeting yesterday, and this guy has been, God has told him, as close to an audible voice as you can, for four things in a row, none of which worked. So either God's confused, or this guy's not listening well. Here's what I do know. I do know some of what God wants me to do. God wants me to not steal, to run away from immorality, to guard my heart. If I'm married, to love my wife. If I'm a kid, to obey my parents.
Watch, watch for what? Watch in this battle. Watch for the adversary. He'll come. How am I going to know what Satan's doing, what it's all about? I don't need to study him. I just need to know what God has for me.
Strengthen Yourself in the Lord
The second thing is, be strong. Get back on track. In that process, be doers of the word. James 1:22, not hearers of the word. All of a sudden, I began to understand that. I stand firm. How do I strengthen myself? Strengthen yourself in the Lord.
We're at staff meeting on Tuesday. Tim was leading, and he said, let's take Psalm 121, you read it around the tables, and you guys discuss it. Basically, it's God saying, don't look to the mountains, look to me. I'm your strength. I am in and of myself very weak, but I have a power that's a huge power. It's the power of the gospel, what's ignited in me by the power of the Holy Spirit. You are not just a person out there fending for yourself.
The Power of Remembrance
Here's the third thing that He mentions. Remember. Love that. Love that idea of remember. There's some things we want to forget, probably need to forget. Paul even says, I forget what lies behind, but at least at Redemption Churches, once a week in every service, we'll stop and say, here's what Jesus says. Do this in remembrance of me.
When God's communicating to the nation of Israel, to the Jews, He'll go, hey, remember. Remember when you were in Egypt? Remember how you saw God work? Remember how you saw God deliver you out of this? Remember how two million of you are moving, and the Egyptian army's coming, and you come to the Red Sea? And Moses, what did Moses do? He didn't do anything. What did God do? Parts the Red Sea, you get through. Remember that?
We had a gem that we dropped in last week's message. I don't know if you got it. I tried to make a point on this. Love leads to service. Faith leads to perseverance. If I remember what God's done, all of a sudden I go, He'll be faithful.
Some of you, maybe even this week, are going to encounter things beyond anything you can imagine. If you sat here now, you go, I could never get through this. But the reality is, when you stop, you go, wait a minute, look what God did. Look how God sustained me. At the end of this, you'll hear people say over and over again, I would never choose to go through this again, but I wouldn't trade it for the world. Why? Because God taught me in the midst of that. So what I need to do is remember. Remember that I love you. Remember that I care for you. Remember how I've protected you.
Obey and Repent
Here's the fourth thing that kind of runs together, is obey. Colossians 2:6, so as you therefore receive Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in Him. Obey. And with it, let me put the fifth thing, is repent. So I change my mind. I change my direction. I look around, I go, I'm in real trouble here.
What do I do? Well, I get watchful. I look at God's Word. I examine my own life. I see the things in it that are sinful. I correct those. I understand what God wants me to do. I begin to do them. It's as simple as that.
Now, it's simple to diagnose. It's difficult to do, because you have an enemy, and you have the world system, and you have your flesh, and you have all these things around you that are trying desperately to destroy you, but it's as simple as that.
The Warning and the Promise
And then kind of the customary warning here, you know, if you don't repent, I'm going to come like a thief in the night. He who overcomes, there will be this promise. There will be this end to life, and this presence with Christ forever. The overcoming there is not your own effort. It's the one who perseveres to the end, because the Holy Spirit is dominating that, dominating that life, and driving that life. So He says, be filled with the Spirit.
Don't be controlled by wine, but be filled with the Spirit. So the way that booze would control you, direct you, and guide you, let the Spirit do that. To the churches that are dead, or the individuals that are dead, or maybe comatose, He comes along and says, "Listen, take a look at this. What's going on there?"
I will just tell you, I think it's the natural course of any relationship. Husband-wife, parent-child, work. Just think sports. Think Joe Torre. Great example. Joe Torre's a great coach with the Cardinals, but you run your course. You go with the Yankees, you run your course, go to the Dodgers, you go, "I'm just tired." These guys have to take Joe Paterno out of it. I know in the Big Ten, the longest tenured coach in the Big Ten outside of Joe Paterno was Kirk Ferentz at Iowa. Everybody's grumbling about Kirk right now, and all that. There just comes a time where people get tired, and you just do new things.
When Spiritual Weariness Sets In
That's going to happen to you. When you feel like the oomph is gone, the way you charge that is to go, "Okay, where did I lose that? How does God strengthen me in that? Am I obeying Him? Is there sin in that relationship?"
Now, two more churches. The church at Philadelphia, you can kind of guess what that's going to be, and then the church at Laodicea. It's not radically different than this, but it's one that demands that we look at it as well.
Let me remind you, please, I'd love it. I mean, you can be very helpful to me, is drop those questions. All you have to do is put the questions on the music stand here, and I'll work my way through them. We'll do that in two weeks, but that'd be really helpful.
Let's pray. Father, thank You for the amazing truths that You give us. Thank You for Your word that's true and real. God, that we sometimes are just, we just get tired, and we get weary. God, remind us that the strength and the way back to that is to examine our life, to be strong in You, to obey what You have for us, and God, then we listen as You begin to speak into our life, primarily as Your Spirit applies Your word to our heart. God, we pray that to You in Christ's name, amen.