The Church of Sardis
Tom Shrader teaches on the church of Sardis from Revelation 3:1-6, describing a church that appears alive externally but is spiritually dead. He traces how compromise leads to corruption and ultimately to spiritual death, while offering hope through Christ's call to wake up, strengthen what remains, remember, and repent. Shrader provides practical steps for revival and warns against worshiping the past, loving systems more than Jesus, and focusing on form over spiritual life.
“There are two extremes and it seems that most of us want to camp in one of the two - hardcore doctrinally sound or open-minded tolerance - but He says no, it's a both, we need to declare the truth but we need to live the truth in love.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: What Christ Says to the Church (Revelations)
Recorded: 2010
Duration: 50 min
Themes: revival, repentance, spiritual death, compromise, awakening, remembrance, warning, restoration, spiritually dry believer, church leader, complacent christian, pastor, elder, struggling with apathy, longtime believer, church member
Scripture: Revelation 3:1-6, Revelation 2, 2 Timothy 3:1-5, 1 Corinthians 16:13, 1 Thessalonians 5:6, 1 Peter 5:8, James 1:22
Theological Themes: ecclesiology, church health, spiritual vitality, apostasy, sanctification, biblical correction, church discipline, spiritual discernment
Full Transcript
Open your Bibles to the book of Revelation. We're actually going to look at chapter 2. If you don't have a Bible, raise your hand. Whether you're here in the conference room, in the chapel, or over in the conference center, guys will come through. Raise those hands really high. When you get a Bible, go to the back of the book—the book of Revelation, the last book. We're going to actually start our teaching in chapter 3 today, but let's look back at chapter 2.
Here's what's happened here. Paul is writing this letter to John the Apostle. John is in exile in Patmos, and there are three different sections of this letter. But we're really focusing on chapter 2 and chapter 3, where Jesus addresses seven actual churches. He addresses them in the order that you would encounter them if you came ashore from Patmos. You would land in Ephesus, then Smyrna, then Pergamum, then you'd head over to Thyatira, south to Sardis—that's the church we'll look at today—and then Philadelphia, and then Laodicea.
We said each one of these churches is designed to represent a church in all of time. So there'll be a variety of these characteristics that you'll find in every church, but often you'll find a dominant culture or dominant characteristic. Here's our challenge as we look at these churches: to try to take, in our case, His Valley Bible Church and lay it across that and say, "What is God saying to us? Does that church represent us? What can we learn from that?"
Individual Application Within the Church
Here's a subset that's important for you. Just as what's true of us collectively is usually true of us individually, so within a church like ours, we will have people with personalities that represent really all seven of these traits or characteristics that Jesus identifies. So the challenge for you is to say, "Boy, that's me right there. What does Jesus recommend? What does Jesus suggest that I should do?" That's kind of the backdrop of this, and we want to do that each week.
I will tell you this up front: from my perspective—and that doesn't mean at all that it's correct, but I obviously think it is or I wouldn't hold it—the church at Sardis really doesn't represent His Valley Bible Church. But I think we can learn from the church. We certainly can pick up warnings from the church. And then I'm more than confident that there are individuals in different situations and circumstances within the church who are listening who can say, "Boy, that does represent me, and I want to hear what God has for me in that."
Review of the Previous Churches
Let's look at chapter 2. I want to give you the build-up. There's the church at Ephesus. In verse 2 of chapter 2, Jesus identified the strengths of the church of 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. You work hard. You really are discerning. You're great students of the Word. You persevere.
Now if we stopped, we would kind of go, "Boy, that sounds about right. That's the goal. That's the target." But He says, "No, you're missing something." Verse 4: "You've left your first love." So you've grown deep in your passion for the truth and for these things of God, and you persevere and you work very hard, but your heart's not right. You've become the loveless church.
The Church at Smyrna
The next church that He identifies is in verse 8. It's the church at Smyrna. He doesn't say anything bad about them. He immediately identifies with them and He presents Himself as the sympathetic Savior. Look at verse 8: "I'm the one who was dead and came to life." And then verse 9: "I know your tribulation."
He's saying this: "I was humiliated. I was beaten when I came to earth. When I left My throne, I encountered all sorts of physical pain. I was hurt. I was beat. I died, and now I'm alive. I know your tribulation. I know what you're going through." These are great words, by the way, for many of you today to know those truths: I know where you are. I know what you're feeling. I know how difficult it is. I know the challenge. I've been there. It's not that I feel your pain—I've experienced it. And I'm telling you I'm here for you.
The Compromised Church at Pergamum
In verse 12, we meet the church at Pergamum. It's the church that began to compromise. It was the church that allowed, in verse 14, some of the teachings of Balaam to come in. It said, "You know what? Listen, we've been really hard, really narrow. Maybe we should loosen things up a bit. Maybe it's okay if we have a little bit of this other teaching come in."
The Corrupt Church at Thyatira
And then last week in Thyatira, we saw the church that wasn't compromised—it was the church that was corrupt. He says in verse 19, "I know your deeds, your love, your faith, your service, your perseverance." So He had positive things to say. You're a loving church. You're a kind church. You're a persevering church.
The problem is this: you've walked away from truth. "This is what I have against you," verse 20: "You tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and teaches and leads My bond servants astray." He said, "Listen, you've got love, but you've walked away from the truth."
The Two Extremes Churches Face
Here was the point we made last week: there are two extremes, and it seems that most of us want to camp in one of the two. There's one extreme that says, "This is the Word, this is the truth"—hardcore, doctrinally sound. It's Ephesus: persevering, toiling. And then there's the other extreme that says, "God is a God of love, and we want to love, and we want to be tolerant, and we want to embrace, and we're okay with everything." So open-minded.
Open-minded is no virtue if you're looking at something that is, in fact, already been decided. If you're taking a math test tomorrow and the question is two plus two, and your open-mindedness put seven, that didn't help you—unless you're from Tucson, because you get half credit from Tucson. Just kidding.
I'm all right with Tom like I can deal with all sorts of different views. But when it comes to really basic—and I mean basic—things: Is the Bible the Word of God? Well, you're not tolerant of that discussion. Was Jesus God come in the flesh? Was He born of a virgin? Did He die on the cross? There's not enough tolerance there.
Well, here's the problem for most of us individually and then probably for institutions: we want to camp in one of those two. And He says no. It's both/and. We need to declare the truth, but we need to live the truth in love. And I will tell you this—that's very hard to do. It's very difficult 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 because the minute I dealt with the sin in somebody's life, the sinner felt as though you were attacking them. That's just—I totally get it and understand it, but that's the challenge for us. So there's a tension in there. There's always going to be a tension, and we just camp in that tension.
Now if left unchecked, the process we've 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 there.
The Letter to Sardis
So let's take a look at it. Verse 1 of chapter 3: "To the angel of the church at Sardis." He, Jesus, describes Himself: "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're 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 4: "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 said here's this dead church, but there's this 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, and I will confess His name before My Father and before His angels. He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
So Jesus identifies the recipient of the letter. It's the angel or the lead pastor at the Church of Sardis.
The City of Sardis
Let's talk a little bit about Sardis. It was a magnificent city, perhaps the greatest of the ancient cities of Asia. It was the capital of that region. In the sixth century B.C., it had a natural fortress. It was on a 1,500-foot plateau, and the plateau abutted a mountain. So it was completely guarded on one side from this mountain. As you come out to the other side, there were these giant ravines. There were just a few ways up this plateau. So it was a natural fortress.
It in fact gave the residents a false sense of security. It was considered to be a fortress that could not be defeated. But they were conquered by the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans—and all three times the same way. They would ignore those ravines, those canyons. They'd say, "Well, nobody can possibly get up there, so we don't have to defend that." In all cases, they sent in special forces who came up, who took control of the city, opened the gates, and the rest of their allies in their invading army penetrated the city.
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 B.C., his haul was reportedly $600 million. Really a rich city.
Living in the Past
Now here's the key, and this will be the focal point and a jumping off point for us in terms of just practical application. The general consensus was the best days of Sardis were in the past. When they gathered together, they didn't talk about the future; they talked about the past. They didn't talk really about the present. They talked about the good old days, the way things used to be. Within the church context, the way God had worked, what God had done. But when you said, "What is He doing now?" they were stumped.
Again, the city in a way becomes a metaphor and a comparison to the church. Sir William Ramsey writes this: "Nowhere was there a greater example of the melancholy contrast between the past splendor and present decay than Sardis." It was a city in degeneration.
And the church now—R.H. Charles says, "Now compare the city with the church. 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."
The Path to Death
I'm going to make one point: How did we get here? Well, we see this gradual erosion. These cities, remember, represent churches at different stages. So in Pergamum, we see the compromise that took place. At Thyatira, we see the corruption. The inevitable result, if you don't intervene, the inevitable result of compromise and corruption is death. And that's what's happened in that church.
And we might see it even around us today. Just reading some information this week—I don't remember any of the numbers—but just talking about the decline over the last 25 or 30 years of mainline denominations. And then they were all speculating on what's the cause of that. You know, is it because people in this culture want something that's a little more contemporary? Is it because they want something here?
But a lot of the guys that I talk to within the denominations would say, "Here's what's happened. It started years ago when we decided that the Bible wasn't the Word of God." And when we made that decision, it opened the doors for all sorts of secondary decisions. All of a sudden, we had a hard time dealing with gender issues or sexuality issues or stealing issues or truth. Nothing was true anymore. So all of a sudden, we became very—
Now speaking, became very much like the Church of Thyatira. Loving, hardworking, but not really dealing with the sinner, not really dealing with any hard issues in the midst of it.
Jesus identifies Himself in chapter 3, verse 1, and we said this always gives us a sense of what He's trying to address or going to address. He said, "These things says He," speaking of Himself, "who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars." The idea of seven is the perfect number, the spirit of God—He's talking about the fullness of God. He said, it's me who is the almighty, all-powerful, all-knowing, life-giving Jesus, the creator, speaking to the seven churches, the seven messengers, to them, but to us as well.
The Devastating Diagnosis
Now here's where He goes in verse 1, 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."
Here you go, here's our picture—they're zombies. They show some movement, some distorted way you might look at this and say it's alive, but in reality it's dead. Now remember when we read through, it's not everybody in the church, but this is His condemnation of the church itself.
One of the ancients writes this poem and applies 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 that, and many of the churches, frankly, in the area where we live and in our country, says this: "Mild-mannered people meeting in mild-mannered ways, striving to be more mild-mannered." Not harsh—these are great people. If you met them, you'd love them. You'd like to spend time with them, like to watch a ball game with them. But he said here's the difference: it started with a compromise and moved with the corruption and now it's dead.
The Problem of False Christianity
Calvin Miller writes this: "Many Christians are really Christaholics, not disciples. Disciples are crossbears—they seek Christ. Christaholics seek happiness." He said that's what's going on there.
John Stott takes it a step further and says, rather than talk about people who are coming to the church, this can apply to the staff, to the guy that's in my position, to the elders, to the worship leaders, to anyone. Everybody's vulnerable to this—to going through the motions. He writes this: "We can preach rather to display our learning or eloquence than to exalt Christ and to minister to people." So everybody, for all of us, it's a call, it's a warning.
Now that's what He's saying: "I know your deeds, I know your name, you're alive." Word in the street is, might be a good place to go, a lot of activities, hip, contemporary, kids will like it—fill in the blanks, right? But He said, "Here's what I know: I know that you're dead."
The Danger of Comfort
Again, He hasn't talked about persecution, He hasn't talked about the Jews who had come in, we've experienced that in the past, the accusations. 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 shelter is always to take things easy." And when I do, I become slack.
I've heard this from a ton of business guys, sitting here now or over the last year, looking back and saying, "We really got sloppy." This is not accusatory at all, just saying, there was enough money and there were enough things going that we just—we could have done it with 10 people but we decided to do 13 and it would make it a little easier to make it smoother. It always happens—just a little bit complacent.
See, here's that compromise, there's that corruption, there's that death. What I want you to get is, there hasn't been here a rejection of spiritual things.
The Last Days Pattern
I want to take you to a passage I go to a lot, so keep your finger right there, turn to the left. It's 2 Timothy chapter 3. So it's probably about 30 pages to your left—you'll see 1 Timothy and you go to the right, it's 2 Timothy chapter 3.
Paul's writing to his young protégé and he's talking about what he identifies as the last days. Paul's writing this several decades ahead of the time we're looking at in Sardis, but if you take it, you see the incredible insight that God's given him—he's operating obviously under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
So Paul writes this in 2 Timothy chapter 3, verse 1: "Realize this, in the last days difficult times will come." So the last days are that time—are we in them now? Yeah, they're from when Christ ascends to when He returns. And he says they will be difficult.
The Characteristics of Last Days People
And he lists them. He said men will be lovers of self. And then there's a whole list of characteristics after that. And to me, they all just kind of exegete the phrase "lovers of self." They're lovers of money and they're boastful and they're arrogant and they're revilers and they're disobedient to parents. And they're ungrateful and unholy and unloving and irreconcilable and malicious gossips without self-control. They're brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, loving pleasure rather than lovers of God.
Stop right there. To me, and I'm not a prude, but to me, that sounds like what I see on TV from like four to ten. All of the shows that are kind of—you don't really need to know this about the person but all the curiousness about what this guy did or where this guy went or what that girl did or—I mean, you don't need to know that. Why do I need to know those things?
Susan and I were watching—yesterday was a huge football day. We just had a few things to do but we watched a lot of football yesterday. Had a T-ball game in the morning, came home, showered, got ready, watched the Iowa game, and then watched—it seemed like Ohio State played—then we watched that and then there wasn't...
The downside of bye weeks is that I watched the game where they were way ahead (I assume they won), and then watched a little bit of other programming. Almost all of the time, and I'm not a prude at all, I just kept thinking these commercials are so bad. These movies are blowing people apart and busting people up, and there was something on at night. I'm going to sound like an old man here, and people will say, "Well, you don't get it," which is probably true. But there was some game where they're blowing people up and people's heads are falling off, and it's a game. You can't play that game and not be desensitized. There's no way. If your kids are playing that game, are they going to be mass murderers? I'll tell you what—they're going to lose some level of sensitivity. You can't play and watch this stuff all the time.
I said this when they pulled the miners out, and I'll give credit to the miners—they pretty much maintained the excitement, which was interesting. Like with the first miner out, everyone gathered around. By the time you got to the 27th, it was going smoothly. I'm not criticizing that. I just said to Susan when they pulled the first one out that it would be interesting to see if they could maintain this excitement. By the way, they really did, pretty much. You have space launches all the time now and we don't even know they're going on. Remember the first one? Remember Alan Shepard? Remember those?
The Spirit of the Age
So you have all these things around you. Here's what He's saying—this is what the world's going to be like. There are levels of self: self-centered, self-absorbed, selfish, self-reliance, self-dependence. Then it can take place in a variety of ways: "I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps. Anybody can do whatever they want to do." That's not true.
Let me ask you this—this is very easy to illustrate. At birth, do you believe Shaquille O'Neal and I had the same opportunity for success in the NBA? No, I don't think so. Now you can say, "If you just worked harder," but I don't know, maybe. But it's self-reliance, self-this, self-that. All of those things are somehow setting me up as my own deity.
Now here, look at the payoff in verse 4: "they're lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God." But verse 5 says, "they hold to a form of godliness, although they deny its power." Well, what's the power? The power is the cross. So you have people all around you that are very spiritual. You're in one of the most spiritual countries in the world—India would be one of those. You're in a very spiritual country, but they don't worship Christ. They create their own gods.
J.B. Phillips paraphrases verse 5 this way: "They will maintain a facade of religion, but their conduct will deny its validity." Barclay goes on and writes this: "A church which is so lethargic as to fail to produce a heresy is mentally dead." Here's what he's saying—they don't even care enough to make up false doctrine. That's a really interesting insight.
The Autopsy of a Dead Church
Well, let me do this. Barclay provides, though he didn't call it this (I'm going to call it this), the autopsy of a dead church. So I'm going to read you this—there are four stages here, the autopsy of a dead church. Remember what we said at the beginning: we're looking at churches, but we're looking at individuals. So it may be you sitting there today and you're just dry right now, or you're just dead.
Let me tell you this, because two or three things came to me while I was teaching first hour (which is always scary): you could apply this to a business as well. This is what happens if you just go with the flow. This is what inevitably inertia does.
Number one: a church is in danger of death—or a business or a person—when it begins to worship its own past. It remembers what God did years and years and years ago. Now, I'm a big tradition guy. I love traditions. I love doing the same thing the same way. I love all of that stuff. I'm a big tradition guy.
When East Valley Bible Church started, we're coming up on our 19th anniversary, so we're going into our 20th year. At the beginning, there was merely this process of survival, which you can assume. Again, I think there are great parallels (and you've got to be generous here) to a business or any sort of venture. When we started, those first two or three years were just about surviving. We started with nothing on a location. We had a good core of people, and that's what you need. You want that more than anything. Then God just blessed it, but it was a matter of survival.
Very early on—and by that I mean by year four or five—I began to focus my attention on the future. My determination was this: that as God did something, what He was doing became our foundation, not an anchor, because that's what can happen. You be very careful there. I think there are businesses and churches all around us you can identify. If you go and talk to the people and begin to ask about your advantages, they talk about, "Well, 50 years ago, here's what we did. In 1978, this was the place to be. Boy, we dominated the business." Whatever those things are, we have to be very careful there.
When Form Becomes More Important Than Life
Here's the second thing: when an institution or a church is more concerned with its form rather than its life. So it's not just "here's what we used to do," but now "here's how we did it. Here's the way we've always done it. We always prayed that prayer. We always walked that way. We always had a choir. He always wore shoes." Whatever it might be. There was always something—it was always "here's what it always was." That becomes more than our identity. It's beyond a tradition. It's become everything that we are. "We give that up, what do we have left?"
Here's the third thing: when it loves systems more than it loves Jesus.
Not to identify the business, but yesterday we wanted to pick up something because we're going to our son Timmy's house for the Iowa game. Susan said she'd drop me off, then go get it. I said, "Let's not do that. Just call in the order, we'll pick it up on the way to the kids." She said, "That's even better."
She called the order, we got there, and I said I'd go get it. She said no, she was going in to get it. There was some stuff in the trunk for me to get. She comes out a little frustrated and said they don't have any record of the order at all. Nothing but 18-year-old kids in there running it, and they don't know anything. I said I'd go in and handle it.
So I go in, and there was nothing in there but kids. I gave them the order, I paid for it, they brought it back, they wanted to charge me again. I said, "That's not going to work, I'm only going to pay you one time, here's my receipt." So I got it, and it wasn't good at all. It wasn't what I ordered. But all the systems were followed. You've had that, right? "We've always done it this way. This is how we do it." You have to be very, very careful.
When Material Concerns Overshadow Spiritual Priorities
Here's the fourth thing: when you're more concerned with material rather than spiritual things. It would be really easy in a church environment to focus on the buildings and on the systems and the material stuff than the people. I think buildings are important. Anybody that's been around for a long time, if you can remember what it was like when we were meeting at night over on Dobson in a rental facility that we had no control over and all the things we dealt with versus here, the buildings are really important. They're not the most important, that's all we're saying.
Years ago, Chuck Smith was pastoring Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa. One week, they recarpeted their worship center. This was right in the height of the Jesus movement. Smith is down on the beach and Greg Laurie's down there. All these guys are down on the beach, and coming in are these kids with sand and dirt and stuff all over. They came in the next Sunday and they just are there.
When they leave, the elders and the church officials are all concerned because look what they've done to our new carpet. Smith said, "Well, I can fix that." So he ripped the carpet out. He made a powerful statement. The statement was: we care more about people than we care about things. It's not that we don't care about things, but we care about people more.
Evangelism is more important than you necessarily being on time. I've said this before: there are some Sundays when it might be more important for you to not be at church than be in church. If you have a neighbor that comes over this morning at 8 o'clock and says, "My life has fallen apart," and you said, "I'm sorry, I can't go. I've got to go hear a sermon on the dead church," you're missing the boat.
The Danger of Institutional Inertia
Now, if you put those things together, you can apply them to the church, to an institution, to an individual. You begin to worship the past. You like the form rather than the life. You like the systems. You like the stuff. That's inertia, man. That's where it will take you.
The same thing will happen in a business. If you're running a business, you're going to quickly be, "We've always done it this way." There's nothing wrong with change. John Wooden said all change is progress, 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, the last thing I want to do in my corporate life here, and the things I would tell you in your personal life, or you in a business life, is to say we're going to cling to that past. That you have a 19-year tradition is great. But to the people walking into this place today, I've got to be honest with you: the 19-year tradition doesn't matter much.
Even as I prepare, as I do every year for Anniversary Sunday, which is November 7th, and I take that time—every year it changes a little bit—but I find myself more and more talking about the future. This year more than ever talking about the future. I want to acknowledge the past and be grateful for the past and thankful for the past. I want to make sure we understand what God's done, but there's not a moment that we can rest and say, "Okay, because God did this from 1991 to 2010, He's now guaranteed and obligated to do that in 2011 and beyond." That's not true.
So a church is in danger or an individual's in danger whenever those steps take place.
The Action Steps to Revival
Here's the action. It's verse 2. What do you do? What are the steps to revival? "Well, be watchful. Strengthen the things which remain, that they are ready to die. For I have found your works perfected before God. Remember therefore how have you received and heard and hold fast and repent."
So now what He's done is He's saying, here's this dead church, but in it there are some that are alive. Now again, I want to emphasize, I'll say it two or three times: I don't think Sardis and East Valley Bible Church have much in common, but we may have people in here who are at that place. Maybe that's you, that's me. We all need many revivals in our life.
My fear is we say revival, we think of coming to Christ and that's the end of it. I need to come—there's 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. Well, the steps to revival are right there.
Number one, be watchful. It's the scripture itself. I'm back in the book of Revelation, by the way.
Be Alert and Watchful
It's the steps, it's strengthening yourself. It's the call to be alert. There's this call all through Scripture about being alert. 1 Corinthians 16:13 says, "Watch, stand fast in faith, be brave, be strong." 1 Thessalonians 5:6 tells us, "Therefore, let us not sleep as others do, but let us watch and be sober." 1 Peter 5:8 warns, "Be sober, be vigilant because your adversary, the devil, walks around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour." There's this idea of being watchful, of being on guard.
Let me go back to that business where business was four or five years ago. It's being lean, it's not being extravagant, it's being prepared. It's being strong, it's not getting off track, it's staying focused, it's remembering. It's all those things that you find there in verse 2 and the first part of verse 3.
I'm reading a biography of John Newton, and I think I've read one before, so the fact I have to say I think is interesting. I'm struck by how he is—this is my word not his—so obsessed with his sin in his past. I made a note, a real simple note: I need to remember that I was a sinner and where I was when God saved me in His transforming power. I need to remember those things. I would go back and call those the basics.
The Importance of Basics
We had a t-ball game yesterday morning, so I try to get to the game. I help coach, but coach is the wrong word—coach implies imparting instruction. All I'm trying to do is get them back where they were before the pitch. Tyler and Brian Berger are there, and Tyler's dad's in town who is a big-time baseball coach, very successful baseball coach.
When I arrive, I always get there about five minutes before the game. They're throwing ground balls to the kids in a line. The drill goes like this: they throw the ball, they go like this, then they go back, then they get it, then they pick it up, and then they throw it over there. I mean it's the same drill every time.
I'm watching Tyler's dad, and I'm listening to him, and he's saying, "Square your shoulders." What he was saying is get the ball, pick it up, throw. It struck me as I'm watching this—this is the very same thing the Yankees will do before a World Series game. It's the very same thing they do in spring training. They hit thousands of balls to these guys making $40 million a year with the idea of proper technique: get up, get square, release.
If you go to a football game early and watch the quarterbacks, watch the drill they'll do now. They'll take the ball, they'll get it, they'll exaggerate a turn so shoulders are square, and then release. It's those basics over and over again the minute NBA teams go to camp.
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 I would go at least once a week to watch practice. Trust me, the same drills I was doing with third grade girls is the exact same drill that they were doing with the team. It was the same drill. There are those basics.
The Key to Revival
That's what He said. Here's the key to revival: it's those basic things. It's to be watchful. It's to be strong. It's to remember. Well, 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 the idea of prayer. I go back to the idea of drawing close with Him.
Obedience: Being Doers of the Word
Now the fourth thing is not just me, but it's obey. After the first of the year, we're going to study the book of James, and probably about the third or fourth week we'll be in James chapter 1, verse 22: "But be doers of the Word, not hearers only, deceiving yourself. For if you are a hearer of the Word and not a doer, it's like a man observing his natural face in a mirror. For he observes himself and goes away, immediately forgets what kind of guy he was. But he who looks intently at the perfect law of liberty and continues it is not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the Word. This is the one who will be blessed in what he does."
There is an obedience issue. Here's the problem: it's not just that I have to study the Word, but I now have to be a hearer of the Word and a doer of the Word.
We can go to two extremes. We can just hear and hear and hear and hear—Bible study and Bible study and Bible study. I'm all for Bible study. But if all I'm doing is Bible study, I ought to be able to say this is what difference this is making in my life. This is how it's working.
Moving Beyond Knowledge to Application
If somebody says to you, "How are you? How are you doing?" you say, "Fine." "How are you doing spiritually?" "Fine." "Tell me about it." "Well, I just read John Stott's Radical Disciple." That's not the measure. What did you do with that? How did God change your life with that? What has He done in your heart? How is He using you as you take this to the marketplace of ideas and to the very place where you live?
Perfect illustration—we've used it before, and I have no doubt that versions of it happen. A knock on the door that says, "Can you come and can you help me? I'm in real trouble. My marriage is in trouble." It's your neighbor one morning and you go, "Nope, I got to go to church. I got to go to church." What? To go learn that you're supposed to minister to your neighbor. There's the idea of being a hearer of the Word and a doer of the Word.
The Need for Repentance
The last step is repent. We tend to think of that word in association with somebody who doesn't know Christ and they need to hear a gospel message and then they respond to it. Repent means to change directions, recalibrate. I constantly need to be readjusting.
You watched that, but I watched a lot of it. I had a whole variety of thoughts. Some were very, very cynical. Some were, I hope, because I'll tell you what, a fascinating story will be the next five years of these guys' lives. I hope it was such a sweet moment, but all I can see are lawyers and agents and book guys and producers wanting to do movies. These guys fight. Apparently these guys already resolved that anything that happens, they're going to split. Each one gets a share. So I doubt that'll happen.
But I'm watching it, and I'm into this Chilean president guy. I don't know what he's saying, but I like him. So I said to Susan, "You know what? We ought to move to Chile." She said, "I don't think we're going to." When I moved into Chile, I said, "This guy looks cool. These people look cool. I think I want to move to Chile." So I said, "Call me when they're getting the next guy out, because I'm going to go Google Chilean real estate." So I did. I actually found a pretty cool place.
The Chilean Earthquake and Life's Small Compromises
So I'm doing a little history of Chile now. This I didn't know. I know what you're saying—there must be a point. Remember the big earthquake in Chile? What was it? How long ago? Six months ago or something? That earthquake changed the axis of the earth so that each day is now one millionth of a second shorter. You didn't know that, did you? It's that little. I didn't notice it. Did you notice it? Did you notice the days are shorter? Did you notice it's off? I didn't.
When I read that, I thought, "This is perfect for Sardis," because that's what happens in my life. I can have one little earthquake, one little dip, and I just get off a little bit, and I don't even notice it. Then another one, and then another one. So I need to repent. A word that I've been using a lot in the last four or five months—and I don't own the word—is "recalibrate." I just need to recalibrate. Repent means change directions, change mind. I need to be surveying my instruments constantly.
I do it when I drive. I look down to see what the speed is, and I'll look at the time. I look at the oil thing or whatever, and I'm going, "Whoa, whoa, whoa." I wouldn't even know what to do if it wasn't there. I don't know. I'm not going to do anything with that. The heat—if it went way over, I'd probably call Susan—but I check my gauges all the time. That's all He's saying.
A Church Product of Compromise and Corruption
Listen, this was a church that is the product of some compromise, and then some corruption, and now it's dead. But there's hope. There's always hope. There's a ray of hope. Verse three: "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." I won't mess around with this. He's not talking about the second coming.
He offers hope. Here's the ray of hope in the midst of it, verses 3-5: "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, before the angels." That's the end.
Knowing How the Story Ends
I haven't been to a movie in a theater in I don't know how long. I mean, a long, long, long time. But I said to Susan—Susan started it during the Kentucky Derby. She said, "Hey, there's a movie coming out on Secretariat." Now, I happen to think—this is my contention, you've heard it—there'll never be another band like the Beatles, though Tim Monn keeps trying to tell me YouTube, but it ain't happening. There'll never be a band like the Beatles, there'll never be a boxer like Ali, there'll never in the history of men's sports be something—I mean major sports, I'm not counting soccer or something, I mean big sports, like basketball, football, baseball—there'll never be anything like the way UCLA dominated basketball, and there'll never be a horse like Secretariat. It just isn't going to happen. Now I can't prove that, obviously.
So we went and saw the movie the other day. It was terrific. I knew the story, I knew a lot of the story. In fact, there's one great shot on Belmont Day, because the tension is so high. The story—I don't know if you know the background of the story—some of the subtleties and some of the big spots in the storyline, I wasn't familiar with the economic issues. There's some crowd shots, and I said to Susan, "Oh, that's Penny Tweedy, that is Secretariat's owner right there, and they got her in the film, it's really cool."
But there were a couple of things about Secretariat. Ultimately, here's the deal: ultimately, I knew how the story ended. So there wasn't maybe the intensity of the story that I'm unfamiliar with—I knew how the story ended. Here you go, here's what's really cool. I know how our story as believers ends. I don't know all the specifics along the way, and there's some subtleties and twists and turns I don't know, but I know how the story ends. He told you, you'll be with Him forever. Verse 5: He'll clothe you in white garments, He'll confess your name before the Father.
Words of Hope for the Struggling
Maybe you're here today, not dead, but maybe a little dry, maybe a little struggling, maybe a lot dry, maybe a lot struggling, maybe barely. These are words that are really helpful way before you need them. I was on a flight, and they're going, "Okay, I want you to take that thing out—you know, the instructions in front of you—and read along." Have you ever watched anybody read along? No. I'm sitting next to a kid, we're flying over to L.A., and he sits down, and he looks a little nervous. He said, "Take it," and this kid is studying every word of this thing. I said, "Do you fly a lot?" He said, "This is my first flight, man, I'm so scared. I would have walked to L.A. if I didn't have to be there, I am so scared."
Casually, I don't read them, do you read them? You don't read these. 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 can get 20 bucks a shot for these blue things that nobody wanted to read.
This is what He's giving you. He's giving you this. He says, be watchful, be strong, remember, obey, repent. Everything will be all right, but don't take these things for granted. And if you're in real trouble, real jeopardy, there's a solution. Retrace those steps, back to those basics.
Well, we need to respond to that. Over in the conference center, Justin will come and close the time there. But before he does, he's going to come in here and close our time of study and introduce us to the Lord's Supper and then Joel and the band will lead us in a time of worship.
So 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 that are here today who are struggling and that for all of us, You would have us constantly looking at our gauges to see how we're doing. And 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 not merely hearers Father. We pray that to You in Christ's name. Amen.