The Church of Sardis
Tom Shrader teaches through Revelation 3:1-6, the letter to the church at Sardis, tracing how compromise and corruption lead inevitably to spiritual death. He outlines four warning signs of a dying church or individual — worshiping the past, preferring form over life, loving systems over Jesus, and prioritizing material over spiritual things. Drawing also from 2 Timothy 3 and James 1, he calls believers to revival through watchfulness, strengthening what remains, obedience to the Word, and ongoing repentance as a daily recalibration toward Christ.
“I need to repent — a word that means change directions, change mind. I need to be surveying my instruments constantly.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: What Christ Says to the Church (Revelation)
Recorded: 2010 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 50 min
Themes: revival, repentance, spiritual death, compromise, watchfulness, obedience, lukewarm faith, spiritual apathy, feeling spiritually dead, going through the motions, longtime churchgoer, struggling with complacency, pastor, elder, questioning their faith, returning to church
Scripture: Revelation 2:1-4, Revelation 2:8-9, Revelation 2:12-14, Revelation 2:19-20, Revelation 3:1-6, 2 Timothy 3:1-5, 1 Corinthians 16:13, 1 Thessalonians 5:6, 1 Peter 5:8, James 1:22-25
Theological Themes: ecclesiology, church health, sanctification, becoming holy, biblical authority, eschatology, means of grace, perseverance of the saints
Full Transcript
Introduction and Series Context
Open your Bibles to the book of Revelation. We are going to look at chapter 3 today, but let's begin by looking back at chapter 2. John, the Apostle, is in exile on Patmos, and in this letter there are three different sections. We are focusing on chapters 2 and 3, where Jesus addresses seven actual churches in the order you would encounter them. If you came ashore from Patmos, you would land in Ephesus, then Smyrna, then Pergamum, then head over to Thyatira, south to Sardis — the church we will look at today — then Philadelphia, and then Laodicea.
We have said that each one of these churches is designed to represent a church in all of time. You will find a variety of these characteristics in every church, but often there is a dominant culture or dominant characteristic. Our challenge, as we look at these churches, is to take East Valley Bible Church and lay it across that and ask: what is God saying to us? Does that church represent us? What can we learn from it?
There is also an important subset for you personally. What is true of us collectively is usually true of us individually. Within a church like ours, we will have people with personalities that represent really all seven of these traits or characteristics that Jesus identifies. The challenge for you is to say, "That is me right there." What does Jesus recommend? What does Jesus suggest I should do? That is the backdrop, and we want to work through that each week.
I will tell you upfront that from my perspective, the church at Sardis does not really represent East Valley Bible Church. But we can certainly learn from this church and pick up its warnings. I am also more than confident that there are individuals within the church who can say, "That does represent me," and I want them to hear what God has for them in this passage.
Review of the Previous Churches
Let us look at chapter 2 to build up to where we are today. In verse 2, Jesus identified the strengths of the church at Ephesus. "Your toil" — that word means working to the point of exhaustion — "and you persevere, and you don't tolerate evil men, and you put things to the test." They worked hard, they were discerning, they were great students of the Word, they persevered. If we stopped there, we would say that sounds about right — that is the goal, that is the target. But Jesus says no. Verse 4: "You have left your first love." They had grown deep in their passion for truth and for the things of God, they persevered, they worked very hard, but their heart was not right. They had become the loveless church.
The next church Jesus identifies is in verse 8 — the church at Smyrna. He says nothing bad about them. He immediately identifies with them and presents Himself as the sympathetic Savior. Look at verse 8: "I am the one who was dead and came to life." Then in verse 9: "I know your tribulation." He is saying: I was humiliated, I was beaten, when I came to earth and left My throne I encountered physical pain and hurt, I died, and now I am alive. I know your tribulation. I know what you are going through.
Those are great words for many of us today — to know that He knows where we are, He knows what we are feeling, He knows how difficult it is, He knows the challenge. He has been there. It is not merely that He feels our pain; He has experienced it. And He says, I am here for you.
In verse 12 we meet the church at Pergamum — the church that began to compromise. It allowed, in verse 14, some of the teachings of Balaam to come in. The thinking was: we have been really hard and really narrow, maybe we should loosen things up a bit, maybe it is acceptable to let a little of this other teaching in. Then last week in Thyatira, we saw the church that was not merely compromised but corrupt. Jesus says in verse 19: "I know your deeds, your love, your faith, your service, your perseverance." He had positive things to say — they were a loving church, a kind church, a persevering church. But then comes the problem. Verse 20: "You tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and teaches and leads My bond-servants astray." They had love, but they had walked away from truth.
Two Extremes
Here was the point we made last week. There are two extremes, and most of us tend to camp in one of them. One extreme says: this is the Word, this is the truth — hardcore, doctrinally sound. That is Ephesus — persevering, toiling. The other extreme says: God is a God of love, and we want to love, we want to be tolerant, we want to embrace, we are open to everything. But being open-minded is no virtue if you are looking at something that has already been decided. If you are taking a math test tomorrow and the question is two plus two, open-mindedness is not a virtue there — the answer has already been determined.
From Compromise to Death
When it comes to really basic things — is the Bible the word of God? Was Jesus God come in the flesh? Was He born of a virgin? Did He die on the cross? — there is not enough tolerance for that discussion. Here is the problem for most of us individually, and probably for institutions as well: we want to camp in one of two extremes. But the call is a both-and. We need to declare the truth, and we need to live that truth in love.
That is very hard to do. I was not a Christian very long before somebody challenged me to love the sinner and hate the sin, and I seem to always get it wrong. The minute I dealt with the sin in somebody's life, the sinner felt as though I was attacking them. I totally understand it, but that is the challenge for us. There is always going to be a tension, and we just camp in that tension.
If left unchecked, the process we have seen — the compromise that leads to corruption — will lead to what we find in the church at Sardis, and that is a dead church. Even there, let me give you the word of hope: Jesus finds a remnant. So let us take a look at it.
The Letter to Sardis
Verse one of chapter three: "To the angel of the church at Sardis 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 which remain, which were about to die, for I have not found your deeds completed 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.'"
Verse four: "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." So He identifies this dead church, but also a remnant of people who are alive in the midst of it. "He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments, and I will not erase his name from the book of life. I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels. He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
Jesus identifies the recipient of the letter as the angel, or the lead pastor, at the church of Sardis.
The City of Sardis
Sardis was a magnificent city — perhaps the greatest of the ancient cities of Asia. It was the capital of that region in the sixth century BC, and it had a natural fortress. It sat on a 1,500-foot plateau that abutted a mountain, completely guarded on one side. On the other side were giant ravines, with only a few ways up, making it a virtually impenetrable natural fortress.
That geography gave the residents a false sense of security. The city was considered a fortress that could not be defeated. Yet it was conquered by the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans — and all three times in the same way. Each invading force ignored those ravines and canyons, reasoning that no one could possibly scale them. In every case, a special forces unit came up through that unguarded approach, took control of the city, opened the gates, and the invading army poured in.
Sardis also had legendary wealth. It was the first city ever to mint and use coins as a medium of exchange. When Cyrus conquered the city in 548 BC, his haul was reportedly $600 million. It was a truly rich city.
A City Living in the Past
Here is the key point, and this will serve as a focal point and jumping-off place for practical application. The general consensus was that the best days of Sardis were in the past. When its people gathered together, they did not talk about the future, and they did not really talk about the present. They talked about the good old days — the way things used to be. In the church context, they talked about the way God had worked and what God had done. But when asked what He was doing now, they were stumped. The city, in this way, becomes a metaphor and a comparison to the church.
Sir William Ramsey writes: "Nowhere was there a greater example of the melancholy contrast between past splendor and present decay than Sardis. It was a city in degeneration." R.H. Charles adds: "Like the city itself, the church had belied its early promise. Its religious history, like its civil history, belonged to the past. Everything was gone."
How Did the Church Get Here?
So how did we get here? We see this gradual erosion. These seven cities represent churches at different stages. In Pergamum, we see the compromise that took place. At Thyatira, we see the corruption. The inevitable result — if you do not intervene — is death. That is what has happened in the church at Sardis, and we may see it even around us today.
I was reading some information this week about the decline over the last twenty-five or thirty years of mainline denominations, and there was much speculation about the cause. Is it because people in this culture want something more contemporary? But many of the men I talk to within those denominations would say this: it started years ago when we decided that the Bible was not the word of God. And when we did that —
The Church of Sardis: A Congregation in Name Only
That decision opened the doors for all sorts of secondary decisions. All of a sudden, we had a hard time dealing with gender issues, sexuality issues, stealing issues, or truth. Nothing was true anymore. We became very much like the Church of Thyatira — loving, hardworking, but not really dealing with sin or any hard issues in the midst of it.
Jesus identifies Himself in chapter 3, verse 1, and this always gives us a sense of what He is trying to address. He said, "These things says He who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars." The idea of seven is the perfect number, the spirit of God — He is talking about the fullness of God. He is saying: it is Me, the almighty, all-powerful, all-knowing, life-giving Jesus, the Creator, speaking to the seven churches, to them, but to us as well.
Dead on Arrival: The Verdict on Sardis
Here is where He goes in the last part of verse 1. No strengths are mentioned. He goes right to the weakness: "I know your deeds, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead." That is the picture. They are zombies. They show some movement, some distorted semblance of life, but in reality they are dead. Remember, as we read through, it is not everybody in the church — but this is His condemnation of the church itself.
One of the ancients wrote this poem and applied it to the church at Sardis: "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." Another author, describing churches like this — and many churches, frankly, in the area where we live and in our country — put it this way: mild-mannered people meeting in mild-mannered ways, striving to be more mild-mannered. These are not bad people. If you met them, you would love them. You would enjoy spending time with them, watching a ballgame with them. But here is the difference: it started with a compromise, moved to corruption, and now it is dead.
Calvin Miller writes, "Many Christians are really Christaholics, not disciples. Disciples are cross-bearers. They seek Christ. Christaholics seek happiness." That is what is going on there. John Stott takes it a step further and says this can apply not just to people coming to the church, but to the staff, to the person in the pastor's position, to the elders, to the worship leaders, to anyone. Everyone is vulnerable to going through the motions. He writes, "We can preach rather to display our learning or eloquence than to exalt Christ and to minister to people." For all of us, this is a call and a warning.
The Danger of a Sheltered Existence
So when He says "I know your deeds, I know your name" — the word on the street is that it might be a good place to go. Lots of activities, contemporary, the kids will like it. But He says: I know that you are dead. He has not talked about persecution. He has not talked about outside accusation. Michael Wilcox writes, "It may be that this church had not suffered disturbance from without, that its trouble stemmed from inside its comparative sheltered existence. The temptation for the sheltered is always to take things easy."
When we take things easy, we become slack. Many people in business, looking back over the last year, have said: we really got sloppy. There was enough money, enough momentum, that we could have done it with ten people, but we decided to use thirteen to make things a little smoother and easier. It always happens — just a little complacency. There is that compromise. There is that corruption. There is that death. What is important to understand is that this has not involved an outright rejection of spiritual things.
What the Last Days Look Like: 2 Timothy 3
Turn to 2 Timothy, chapter 3 — about thirty pages to the left. Paul is writing to his young protégé, and he is talking about what he identifies as the last days. Paul is writing this several decades before the time we are looking at in Sardis, but you can see the incredible insight God gave him, operating under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Paul writes this in 2 Timothy, chapter 3, verse 1: "Realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come." The last days span the time from when Christ ascends to when He returns, and Paul says they will be difficult. He then lists the reasons why. He says men will be lovers of self, and everything that follows in the list is really an unpacking of that phrase. They are lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, loving pleasure rather than lovers of God.
That description sounds like what fills television from four to ten in the evening — all the curiosity about what this person did, where that person went, what someone else said. None of that is information we actually need. Susan and I were watching — yesterday was a huge football day —
The Autopsy of a Dead Church
Almost all of the time — and I'm not a prude at all — I kept thinking about how bad the commercials were. These movies are blowing people apart, busting people up. There was something on at night, and I'm going to sound like an old man who doesn't get it, which is probably true. But they were blowing people up, heads were falling off, and it was a game. I kept thinking: you cannot play that game and not be desensitized. There is no way. If your kids are playing that game, are they going to be mass murderers? I'll tell you what — they are going to lose some level of sensitivity. You cannot watch this stuff all the time and not be affected.
I said something similar when they pulled the miners out. I'll give credit where it's due — they pretty much maintained the excitement throughout. The first minor out, everyone was gathered around, and by the time you got to number 27, it was going smoothly. But I mentioned to Susan: it'll be interesting to see if they can maintain this excitement. By the way, they really did. Meanwhile, we have space launches all the time and we don't even know they're going on. Remember the first one? Remember Alan Shepard? So you have all of these things around you, and we become numb to them.
Lovers of Self, Lovers of Pleasure
Here is what Scripture is saying about what the world is going to look like. These lovers of self — self-centered, self-absorbed, selfish, self-reliant, self-dependent. It can take place in a variety of ways. There is a perspective that says anyone can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, that anybody can do whatever they want to do. But that is not true, and I can illustrate it simply. At birth, did Shaquille O'Neal and I have the same opportunity for success in the NBA? I don't think so. You can say if I had just worked harder, but the point stands — self-reliance, in all its forms, is ultimately setting yourself up as your own deity.
Now look at the payoff in verse four: they are lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Then verse five: "But they hold to a form of godliness, although they deny its power." What is that power? The power is the cross. You have people all around you who are very spiritual. You are living in one of the most spiritual countries in the world — India would be another example. These are deeply spiritual people, but they do not worship Christ. They create their own gods. J.B. Phillips paraphrases verse five this way: "They will maintain a facade of religion, but their conduct will deny its validity."
Barclay adds a striking observation: "A church which is so lethargic as to fail to produce a heresy is mentally dead." What he means is that they do not even care enough to make up false doctrine. That is a remarkable insight into just how spiritually lifeless a church can become.
Four Stages: The Autopsy of a Dead Church
Barclay effectively provides what I am going to call the autopsy of a dead church, laid out in four stages. Remember what we said at the beginning — we are looking at churches, but we are also looking at individuals. It may be that you are sitting there today and you are just dry right now, or you are just dead. And let me add this, because it came to me while teaching the first hour: you can apply this to a business as well. This is what happens when you simply go with the flow. This is what inertia inevitably produces.
**Stage one:** A church is in danger of death when it begins to worship its own past. It only remembers what God did years and years ago. Now, I am a big tradition guy. I love traditions. I love doing the same things the same way, and I love all of that. But when East Valley Bible Church started — we are coming up on our nineteenth anniversary, going into our twentieth year — those first two or three years were just about surviving. We started with nothing, we started in a location, we had a good core of people, and that is what you need more than anything. Then God blessed it, but it was a matter of survival.
Very early on, by year four or five, I began to focus my attention on the future. My determination was that as God did something, what He was doing would become our foundation — not an anchor. Because that is what can happen. You must be very careful there. All around us you can identify businesses and churches where, if you go and talk to the people and begin to discuss their strengths, they talk about what they did fifty years ago. "In 1978, this was the place to be. We dominated." Whatever those things are, we have to be very careful not to live in them.
**Stage two:** An institution or a church is in danger of death when it is more concerned with its form rather than its life. It is not just about what we used to do, but about how we always did it. We always prayed that prayer. We always walked that way. We always had a choir. Whatever those fixed forms are — when the form becomes more important than the life behind it, death is setting in.
When a Church Loses Its Life
There was always something — some point of identity that became more than a tradition. It became everything that we are. And the question is: if we give that up, what do we have left?
Here is the third way a church loses its life: when it loves systems more than it loves Jesus. Yesterday, we wanted to pick up something to eat on the way to Timmy's house for the Iowa game. Susan called in the order, and when she went in to pick it up, there was no record of it at all — nothing but eighteen-year-old kids running the place who didn't know anything. So I went in, gave them the order, and paid for it. They brought it back and wanted to charge me again. I said that wasn't going to work, showed them the receipt, and when the food finally came, it wasn't even what I ordered. But all the systems had been followed. You've experienced that. "We've always done it this way. This is how we do it." You have to be very, very careful.
Here is the fourth way: when you are more concerned with material things than spiritual things. In a church environment, it is easy to focus on buildings, systems, and material stuff rather than on people. Buildings are important — anyone who has been around long enough can remember what it was like meeting at night over on Dobson in a rental facility we had no control over, compared to what we have now. But buildings are not the most important thing.
Years ago, Chuck Smith was pastoring at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, right in the height of the Jesus Movement. Greg Laurie and others were down on the beach, and kids were coming in covered in sand and dirt. One week, the church had just recarpeted their worship center. When those kids came in the next Sunday, the elders and church officials were upset about what they had done to the new carpet. So Smith ripped the carpet out. He made a powerful statement: we care more about people than we care about things. It is not that things do not matter, but people matter more.
Evangelism is more important than necessarily being on time. There are some Sundays when it might be more important for you to not be at church than to be in church. If a neighbor comes to your door at eight o'clock on a Sunday morning and says their life has fallen apart, and you tell them you cannot help because you have to go hear a sermon on the dead church, you are missing the point entirely.
The Danger of Inertia
When you put all of these things together — worshiping the past, preferring form over life, clinging to systems, prioritizing things over people — that is inertia. That is where it will take you. The same thing happens in a business. You will quickly find yourself saying, "We've always done it this way." As John Wooden said, all progress is change, but not all change is progress. So we have to be careful. But the last thing I want to do in my own life, and the last thing I want to do in our corporate life here, is to cling to the past.
Having a nineteen-year tradition is something to be grateful for. But to the people walking in here today, I have to be honest — the nineteen-year tradition does not matter much to them. Even as I prepare every year for Anniversary Sunday, which is November 7th, I find myself talking more and more about the future, this year more than ever. I want to acknowledge the past, be grateful for it, and make sure we understand what God has done. But there is not a moment when we can rest and say that because God did something from 1991 to 2010, He is now guaranteed and obligated to do the same in 2011 and beyond. That is simply not true.
A church is in danger — and so is an individual — whenever those steps take place.
Steps Toward Revival
Here is the call to action. It is found in verse 2. What do you do? What are the steps to revival? "Be watchful, strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die. For I have not found your works perfect before God. Remember therefore how you have received and heard; hold fast and repent."
What He has done here is identify a dead church and then acknowledge that within it there are some who are still alive. I want to emphasize again — I do not think Sardis and East Valley Bible Church have much in common. But we may have people in this room who are at that place personally. Maybe that is you. Maybe at times it is me. We all need mini-revivals in our lives.
Steps to Revival
The fear is that when we say "revival," we think of coming to Christ and that is the end of it. But there is a sense in which I need to come to Christ every day. I need to come before Him every day. I need repentance every day. The steps to revival are right there in the text.
I am back in the book of Revelation. The steps involve strengthening yourself, being alert. There is this call all through Scripture about being alert. First Corinthians 16:13: "Watch, stand fast in faith, be brave, be strong." First Thessalonians 5:6: "Therefore let us not sleep as others do, but let us watch and be sober." First Peter 5:8: "Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil walks around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour."
There is this idea of being watchful, of being on guard. Think about where a business was four or five years ago. It is being lean, not being extravagant. It is being prepared, being strong, not getting off track, staying focused, remembering. It is all those things found in verse 2 and the first part of verse 3.
The Importance of Remembering
I am reading a biography of John Newton, and I think I have read one before — the fact that I have to say "I think" is itself interesting. I am struck by how obsessed he is, and this is my word not his, with his sin and his past. I made a simple note: I need to remember that I was a sinner, and where I was when God saved me by His transforming power. I need to remember those things. I would call those the basics.
We had a t-ball game yesterday morning, and I try to get to the game to help coach — though "coach" is the wrong word, because coach implies imparting instruction. All I am trying to do is get the kids back to proper form before the pitch. Tyler and Brian Berger were there, along with Tyler's dad, who is a very successful, big-time baseball coach. When I arrived, about five minutes before the game, they were throwing ground balls to the kids in a line. The drill goes like this: they throw the ball, the kid fields it, picks it up, and throws it to the other side. The same drill every time.
I was watching Tyler's dad and listening to him, and he kept saying, "Square your shoulders." What he was saying was: get the ball, pick it up, throw. And it struck me as I watched — this is the very same drill the Yankees run before a World Series game. It is the very same thing they do in spring training, hitting thousands of balls to players making forty million dollars a year, all in the name of proper technique: get up, get square, release.
If you go to a football game early and watch the quarterbacks, you will see the same thing. They take the ball, make an exaggerated turn so their shoulders are square, and then release. The minute NBA teams go to camp, it is the same story. Years ago, when Sarah was in third and fourth grade, I coached girls basketball. At the same time, I was doing a study down at the arena and would go at least once a week to watch the Suns practice. The same drills I was doing with third-grade girls were the exact same drills that Westfall was running with the Suns. There are those basics.
That is what the text is saying. Here is the key to revival: it is those basic things. It is to be watchful. It is to be strong. It is to remember. How am I watchful? What do I remember? How am I strong? I go back into the Word. I go back into the disciplines. I go back to prayer. I go back to the idea of drawing close to Him.
Obedience to the Word
The fourth step is not just personal but involves obedience. After the first of the year, we are going to study the book of James. Probably around the third or fourth week, we will come to James 1:22-25: "But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does." There is an obedience issue here.
The problem is not just that I have to study the Word — I have to be both a hearer and a doer of the Word. We can go to two extremes. We can just hear and hear and hear: Bible study after Bible study. I am fully in favor of Bible study, but if all I am doing is Bible study, I ought to be able to say what difference it is making in my life and how it is working. If someone asks you, "How are you doing spiritually?" and you answer, "Fine — I just read John Stott's Radical Disciple," that is not the full measure. What did you do with that? How did God change your life through that? What has He done in your heart? How is He using you as you take it into the marketplace and into the place where you live?
Here is a perfect illustration. I have no doubt that versions of this happen: there is a knock at the door, and it is a neighbor saying, "Can you come and help me? I am in real trouble. My marriage is in trouble." And on the morning you were headed to church, you say, "No, I have to go to church" — to go and learn that you are supposed to minister to your neighbor. That is the difference between being a hearer of the Word and a doer of the Word.
The Call to Repent
The last step is to repent. We tend to think of that word only in association with...
Welcome to Sardis
Repentance means to change directions — to recalibrate. I constantly need to be readjusting. I watched a lot of the coverage of the miners rescued from the Chilean mine. I had a whole variety of thoughts. Some were very cynical, some hopeful, because I'll tell you — the next five years of these men's lives will be a fascinating story. I hope it was such a sweet moment, but all I could see were lawyers, agents, book deals, and producers wanting to make movies. Apparently the miners already resolved that anything that happens, they'll split it equally. I doubt that verbal contract made in a mine under duress will hold, but that was their intention.
I was watching the coverage and I became interested in the Chilean president. I didn't know what he was saying, but I said to Susan, "We need to move to Chile. This guy looks cool, these people are cool." She said, "Call me when they're getting the next guy out, because I'm going to go Google Chilean real estate." So I did, and I actually found a pretty cool place.
The Earthquake That Changes Everything
I started doing a little research on Chile, and I came across something I hadn't known. Do you remember the big earthquake in Chile a few months back? That earthquake changed the axis of the earth, so that each day is now — I'll likely get the number wrong — something like one one-millionth of a second shorter. You didn't know that, did you? I didn't notice it. Did you notice the days were shorter?
When I read that, I thought: this is perfect for Sardis. That's exactly what happens in my life. I can have one little earthquake, one little dip, and I get off just a little bit — and I don't even notice it. Then another one, and then another one. So I need to repent. A word I've been using a lot over the last four or five months — and I didn't invent it — is *recalibrate*. Repent means to change directions, to change your mind. I need to be surveying my instruments constantly.
I do it when I drive. I look down to check the speed, the time, the temperature gauge. I wouldn't even know what to do without those gauges. I check them all the time. That's all He is saying here. This was a church that is the product of some compromise, then some corruption, and now it is dead — but there is hope. There is always hope.
The Call to Remember and Repent
Verse 3 says: *"Remember therefore how you have received and how you've heard, and hold fast and repent. Therefore if you will not watch, I will come upon you like a thief in the night, and you won't know the hour."* He is not talking about the second coming here. He is offering hope in the midst of warning.
Here is the ray of hope. Verse 5: *"He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before the angels."*
Knowing How the Story Ends
I said to Susan during the Kentucky Derby — she mentioned a movie coming out about Secretariat. Now, here is my contention, and you've heard some of these before: there will never be another band like the Beatles. There will never be a boxer like Ali. And in the history of major men's sports — basketball, football, baseball — there will never be anything like the way UCLA dominated basketball. And there will never be a horse like Secretariat. It just isn't going to happen.
So we went to see the movie, and it was terrific. I knew a lot of the story already, though some of the economic subtleties in the storyline were new to me. There's one great shot on Belmont Day — the tension is so high — and I spotted Penny Tweedy, Secretariat's owner, in a crowd shot. They actually got her in the film, which was really cool.
But because I knew how the story ended, some of the dramatic intensity wasn't quite the same for me. And that led me to this thought: I know how our story ends as believers. I don't know all the specifics along the way — there are subtleties and twists and turns I can't see — but I know how it ends. He told you. You will be with Him forever. Verse 5: He will clothe you in white garments, and He will confess your name before the Father.
A Word Before You Need It
Maybe you are here today not dead, but a little dry. Maybe a little struggling. Maybe a lot dry. Maybe a lot struggling. Maybe barely hanging on. These are words that are really helpful — far before you need them.
I was on a flight once and they said, "Take out the safety instructions and read along." Have you ever watched anybody actually read along? I was sitting next to a kid flying to Los Angeles, and he sat down looking a little nervous. He took that card and studied every single word. I said, "Do you fly a lot?" He said no.
A Warning Worth Heeding
He says: be watchful, be strong, remember, obey, repent. Everything will be alright, but don't take these things for granted. And if you're in real trouble, in real jeopardy, there is a solution — retrace those steps back to those basics.
This is my first flight, and I am so scared. I would have walked to LA if I didn't have to be there. I don't read the safety cards — do you read them? Nobody reads them. But imagine if they said this: "Hey, the pilot just sent back — we're going down. You might want to pull these blue things out in front of you." I'll bet all of a sudden I could get twenty dollars a shot for those blue things that nobody wanted to read. That is what He is giving you. He is giving you this.
We need to respond to that. Justin will come and close our time, and before he does he will introduce us to the Lord's Supper. Then Joel and the band will lead us in a time of worship.
Closing Prayer
Let's pray together. Father, thank You for the amazing truths that we were lost and now we're found, and You did it all from beginning to end. God, we pray for those who are here today who are struggling, and we pray that for all of us You would have us constantly looking at our gauges to see how we're doing. God, we pray that in what we say and do, and how we say and do it, You will be glorified. God, let us be doers of the word and not merely hearers. Father, we pray this in Christ's name, amen.