Message to the Churches - Sardis

We've been going through the churches in Revelation 2 and 3, because those messages are very important to all of us. Not just the messages to Laodicea or Philadelphia. And as I said, when we finish this up, I'll talk about church eras. But the most important thing to understand about this section of Scripture is to look at it and realize that we are told to read and listen to every message to every church. And so every message to every church is very important. First of all, we spend an entire sermon just going through the letter or the message to the Ephesians. The Ephesians church has a very important message for us, where we saw how it was formed.

We went through the book of Acts, showed how they were formed, and then they had a problem that they had heresy come into the church. Paul himself formed that church. He spent a lot of time there, more than most any other church.

He wrote a letter to them, so we understand a lot about their problems from that letter. We also have 1 Timothy, where here he writes to Timothy and he says, you stay in Ephesus because there are so many problems there, I want you to stay there. And Paul had a very special attachment to the church in Ephesus because he had spent so much time there.

Many other churches he would go, he would form a church, and he would lead very quickly. But there he had spent time with those people, and he had a very close attachment to them. So the Apostle Paul started the church. It grew. It had an enormous impact on society. It preached the gospel in Ephesus, which was a major city, one of the biggest and most important cities in the Roman Empire, and then had its problems with heresy. And so what we find when John writes to them in the book of Revelation, he says, you stood up against those who said they were apostles and weren't.

And so they had actually resisted the heresy that had come along. And now we know from history that John actually ended up being there at the end of his life. And so you have the Apostle Paul starting this church, and the Apostle John was there at the end of it.

There were very few churches that had that kind of influence, apostolic influence. And yet they had lost something along the way. And as I said, each one of these churches has a whole different set of problems. And theirs was they had the doctrine right, but they had no love. They had lost their love for God, and they had lost their love for each other. And so here's a church that he says, you did right. You stood up and kept the doctrines correctly. But in the end, in the end, you lost something. And he tells them, you need to get that back, or he was going to reject them as a church.

Which shows us that we must have the right doctrines, but we have to have something more than that to please God. We went through the church of Smyrna, which is one of the few churches that nothing very negative is said about it, except that the state that they were in. Here was a group of people that was in absolute utter poverty and tribulation. They were a persecuted church. They were an absolutely poor church. They had no strength at all.

They had no impact on society. They were just a group of people that met and had very little money, very little anything of value. And he says, but you are rich. They were very spiritually rich. Now, none of us have experienced living for a long period of time in a congregation where everybody was destitute. Because that's what the word means in Greek.

They were destitute. And yet spiritually, he says this was a very special congregation. Totally different in Ephesus, where Ephesus had money. They lived in a multicultural society. Ephesus was a totally different experience than the people who were at Smyrna. And yet, they're maybe 30 miles apart.

These congregations are that close. And yet, they have totally different experiences in how they formed. And then we talked about Pergamos. Pergamos was a congregation that had persecution from the outside. And yet, they had two major problems. The teaching of the doctrine of Balaam, we went through that and showed what that was.

And how what it is, is that they had an attitude of appearing to obey God, but they were always trying to find a way to get around God's ways. So they appeared to obey God. You would have walked into the church of Pergamos and probably felt fairly comfortable with those people. And yet, the whole atmosphere of the church was that they were always trying to get around God's ways. They were always trying to find a way to manipulate it.

There was also a great amount of sexual immorality there. So when you start looking at trying to get away, move around God's ways, what happens? There's going to be a lot of sin. And so they had a problem with lawlessness there. They had accepted the Nicolaiatans and other teachings. So they had a lawlessness that was there. They would claim to obey the laws of God.

But in the lifestyle, many of those brethren did not. Now when you go through each of these churches, you'll also find out that there are some people there. And each of those congregations who aren't that way. It's just that the majority are that way. And so there are some that aren't that way. And so even in Pergamos, there were some that obeyed God in a congregation that wasn't obeying God. Now we come to the two next churches, which are two of the churches that are highly condemned in Revelation 2 and 3.

Let's go to Revelation 2. And it's easy for us to read through the history of these two churches and say, well, okay, that really doesn't apply to us. We're not like these two groups, you know, and move on. But we need to really look at these two churches because the message to these two churches is very, very important. Just like I said, Ephesus teaches us that we must fight for right doctrine, but we must have more. Pergamos teaches us, Smyrna teaches us that poverty is not a measure of righteousness. Now, there's wealth is not a measure of righteousness.

They were people in poverty, and they were one of the most righteous of all these churches. Pergamos teaches us that lawlessness and trying to compromise with God's way in order to get what we want, we will be rejected by God. What is the message here to this next church? If you had your map that I handed out the first time, you could follow and find out where Thyatira is on the route, the mail route.

Revelation 2, verse 18. And to the angel of the church of Thyatira write, These things, says the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and his feet like fine brass.

It starts with Jesus Christ describing Himself, or Paul describing Him, and saying, here's who's giving you this message. Remember, Jesus is the head of the church. All these messages come from Him through these messengers, these angels to the churches. So the resurrected Jesus Christ sends this message, I know your works, love, service, faith, and your patience. And as for your works, the last are more than the first. In the history of this congregation, He said, what you did towards the end of your congregation is actually greater than what you did at the first of your congregation.

And I want you to notice what He says they have. Because when we look at what they don't have, it's absolutely amazing. And yet they still had something in the midst of a church that had moved into apostasy, had moved away from God. These people still had works. They did good things for other people. They had works. They had love. These people cared for other people. Unlike Ephesus, who had the doctrines and didn't have love, we're going to see that Thyatira was a church that had love and no doctrine, or had false doctrine.

It says they have service. These people served. They were dedicated to service. They had faith. They trusted God to a certain extent. Probably in Thyatira there were healings. In other words, you still see God working in some of the people in this church, and yet this congregation was in such a state that you and I would say, wow, we wouldn't even want to be in that congregation.

That's true. But there's a message about what we can become if we're not careful. And their patience. They had a patience with God. They had a patience with life. They persevered. They kept moving forward, in spite of persecutions and other things that happened to them. Let's pick it up in verse 20 now. Nevertheless, I have a few things against you. Because you allow that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce my servants to commit sexual immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols.

And I gave her time to repent of her sexual immorality, and she did not repent. Indeed, I will cast her into a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of their deeds. And I will kill her children with death, and all the churches shall know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts, and I will give to each one of you according to your works.

Now, once again, as we go through each of these churches, you see that there's a message to a church that exists when this book was written. But there's a prophetic message, too. There will be, at the end time, there will be congregations, and there will be attitudes of Thyatira among the people of God. And He says He will put them into tribulation. So we need to know what this message is. We need to know because this attitude, this approach, will not be blessed by God, and will end up in the tribulation. What is the problem with this church? It says that you allow the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce my servants to commit sexual immorality and things offered to idols.

So we have two problems here. Sinful lifestyles, in other words, people just sinned. Sinful lifestyles, number one, and number two, they're compromising with paganism. They're literally compromising with paganism.

So you have two issues here. They allow paganism into the church, pagan customs, and it's not that these people would say that there is no sin. I mean, we understand that there's sin, but they compromise with it. Sort of like the church at Corinth did. Now, the word Jezebel, this person is very interesting. Now, I don't know if there was an actual person in Thyatira named Jezebel.

I don't know. There was a woman that was a prophetess or claimed to be a prophetess. So this woman had become a leader in this church. The word Jezebel, though, may not actually be her name. It may be a reference to the Old Testament Jezebel. Because there was a leader, there was a queen in ancient Israel, who her and her husband did great damage to the nation of Israel. And just like when he said, you do the doctrine of Balaam, when we went back and looked at what Balaam's life was like, we learned about that church.

We learned about what their problem was in Pergamos. When we go back and look at Jezebel in the Old Testament, we understand a little bit about what was going on in Thyatira. Let's go to 1 Kings 16. Leave a marker here, because we'll come back, obviously, to Revelation. Let's go to 1 Kings 16.

1 Kings 16 and verse 29.

In the 38th year of Asa, king of Judah, Ahab the son of Amri became king over Israel, and Ahab son of Amri reigned over Israel in Samaria 22 years. Now Ahab the son of Amri did evil in the sight of the Lord, more than all those who were before him. So this is one of the kings who did the greatest evil in the history of Israel.

And under his leadership, Israel became a nation that absorbed pagan customs, did away with the teachings that God had given to them, to a great extent. They kept part of it. Remember, they always syncretized things. They would take the teachings of paganism and the teachings of God and mix them together. And they had a great compromising attitude toward sin.

Oh, it may be wrong, but God understands. He came to pass as though it had been a trivial thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat. And he took as his wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbael, king of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal and worshipped him. So he married a woman who was not an Israelite, but she brought into the Israelite culture the worship of Baal. And of all the queens that are mentioned in the scripture, very few are actually mentioned. She is mentioned more than almost any other queen. And the reason why is the damage that she and her husband did to Israel. And when you look at what she's known for, she's known for sexual immorality and witchcraft.

This superstition and participation is sort of a mystical idea of what religion is. Look at 1 Kings 18.4, just one comment that's made about her here.

I'll give you an idea of what this woman was really like.

1 Kings 18.4, So it was when Jezebel massacred the prophets of the Lord, that Obadiah had taken one hundred prophets and hidden them fifty to a cave, and had fed them with bread and water.

She literally tried to do away with the real ministers of God, the real prophets of God.

And so there's no reason to believe that that's not exactly what happened in Thyatira. There was a suppression of the truth and a suppression of anyone who stands up for the truth.

I always find Obadiah very interesting when he came up to Elijah, a little later in the story. And Elijah says, I'm the only one. I'm the only one. And Obadiah says, what are you talking about? There's me! And I have to serve with the king. You're out here hiding, Elijah. And I'm serving with the king. I'm facing getting killed every day. Besides, I have a hundred and fifty other prophets hidden in the caves.

And Elijah kept saying, no, I'm the only one. Obadiah has a very important part he plays here in standing up against Jezebel.

What would you find if you attended the Thyatira church? It was sort of the New Age church of its day.

You would have gone in and they would have read from the Bible. They would have had the scrolls. They would have read from the letters of Paul.

By this time, you know, in the 90s they had all the gospels.

They would have read from Matthew and Mark and Luke and John.

But what they would have done is they would have mixed biblical truth with a message about freedom and grace.

And in doing so, they would have become a very tolerant group.

A very tolerant group.

I'm going to talk about that more in a minute because you have to understand there's a statement here made in Revelation that helps us really begin to grasp what was the problem in the church. But we have two problems. One, and many historians see this, one of the problems would have been that Thyatira was driven by its guilds or its trade unions. Thyatira was not, you notice I didn't say much about the city. I talked about the Ephesus, when I talked about some of the other places, I told you about the city because the city was important. Thyatira was a big city, a big marketplace. It was not known for any culture. It wasn't a seat of government like some of the other places were.

But it was a place of business.

Now, to do business in Thyatira, you had to belong to a guild or a trade union. Now, they've done a lot of excavations in Thyatira and they have found trade guilds for everything you can think of in that city.

I mean, everything from wool manufacturing to slave dealers to bronze dealers to, I mean, everything you can think of that was part of the marketing system and the manufacturing system of the day. It was in Thyatira.

And to function in that society, you had to belong to one of those guilds. Literally, the city was managed by trade unions.

It was managed by trade unions.

And to participate in business, you had to belong to one of those trade unions.

And they determined all kinds of things when your business was open, when it was not open.

They would determine, you have to understand, trade unions also had religious functions because every trade union had its own god that it prayed to or goddess that it prayed to. So to go, to put it in a modern context, if you were in a town where all the business people were masons, and the only way you could have a business is you had to become a mason.

Well, if you study masonry, it's a religion, and it's a false pagan religion.

So to function in Thyatira, in a business, you would have had to become part of a trade union that was also a religion.

And so the people of Thyatira would have been very involved. If they were business people, they would have been very involved in both paganism.

You know, and of course the idea would have been, oh, come on, I know when I go to their, we go sacrifice to Zeus or Jupiter, we're not really doing that.

I'm just going along because business is business. But it's what you would have to do to survive.

So you have a business compromise here, a compromise with honesty, and a compromise actually with religion.

It's very interesting when we go and we look at Jezebel. Jezebel was a person who would do anything for profit.

In 1 Kings 21, there's a situation where Ahab wanted to buy a man's vineyard. He wanted to buy his vineyard, and the man said no.

And Ahab became depressed. I mean, here's the king who can have whatever he wants, and he literally wants to steal someone else's property.

Because this man had a real nice vineyard. And it just bothered him, and it bothered him, and he got depressed.

And Jezebel said, oh, come on, this is so simple. There's a religious answer to the problem.

So what she had was the elders that lived around where that man was called a special fast.

And they were all to come together to worship God in this special fast. And this is how religion and business gets mixed together sometimes in the world.

And we have to be careful not to do that.

And so what happened was they all came together for this fast, the worship of God.

And Jezebel had bribed some men to make a false accusation of blasphemy against the man who owned the vineyard.

And so the elders of the group dragged him out and stoned him to death.

And then she had them confiscate this man's vineyard and give it to the king.

And you know, she said, this was a simple problem. This was a simple solution.

All we had to do is mix a little business, a little religion here, and a have you got what you wanted anyways.

There is an important message for us here.

And realizing that we can't compromise our business practices and somehow believe that that's somehow a different world than our Christianity.

What we are in business is what we are in anything. We either act in a Christian way or we don't.

Now, if we go back to Revelation 2.

Revelation 2. Now, I want you to notice in verse 24.

Revelation 2.24. Now, the messenger to the church of Thyatira says this, and John writes it down.

He says, Now to you I say, and to the rest of Thyatira, as many as do not have this doctrine, who have not known the depths of Satan, as they say, I will put no other burden.

But hold fast what you have till I come.

Till I come. See, the message to every church is about Christ's return, not just the last two churches.

And he tells the people of Thyatira, he says, you've got okay, you've got some love, you've got some service, you've got a few things going for you, but you've really messed up in doctrine.

You live in apostasy. You have this make money mentality. You're all caught up in materialism.

So what was their apostasy? What was the doctoral problems they had? And the key here is this phrase, the depths of Satan.

We already know that 50 years after this, there's a whole set of, well even 30 years after this, there's a set of Gnostic teachings that talk about the concepts of the depths of God and the depths of Satan.

So we have a pre-Gnostic idea here. And it goes into the idea that when you understand the depths, the real depths of the knowledge of good and evil, and it's a very complicated process they go through, but it comes out a very simple idea.

Then what you do is you realize that you go to God, you accept His grace, and He gives you His Spirit, and from that point on the depths of God are in you, so you just trust your heart. There is no need at all for the law of God.

The depths of Satan was, once you understand the depths of evil, then you understand the depth of God.

And so literally what this is, when you study through the Gnostic idea and how this developed, it is a belief that there is no law, that the grace of God covers everything, and there is no such thing as law.

The law of God has been totally done away with. And we are all just to follow our heart because that's where God is. God is in our hearts, and we just follow our hearts. I'm going to read from a book, a very interesting book, Criment of Christianity and Crisis. It was written by, I think he's a member of the Church of God, Seventh Day. He talks about this depth. He has a degree, I think it's from Columbia University, in religious studies.

He did a lot of study on the Gnostics and what they taught, and he looked at this writing in Thyatira and he says, I understand this. This is exactly what 30 and 40 and 50 years later the Gnostics were teaching. So what were they teaching? Now listen to this. And you'll understand the heresy, the apostasy that was in Thyatira.

He says, the depth represents a state of spiritual perfection and rest in Christ. So you have the depths of Satan, so called. Now, the Gnostics said you had to know good and evil. You had to have secret knowledge. So you had to understand all evil.

We have a different approach, don't we? The more we want to know God, the more we want to not know evil. But for the Gnostics, you literally thrived on the concept of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In fact, that was good. God wanted us to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He wanted us to.

He wanted us to experience good and he wanted us to experience evil and to know the depths of God and the depths of Satan.

So the depth of God represents a state of spiritual perfection and rest in Christ. Christ Himself came forth from the depth. The purpose of His coming was to reveal the existence of the depth and the potential for man through Him and the Father's sweet grace to enter it and thus be regenerated spiritually. The depth offers a spiritual rest based on God's non-judgmental love and salvation by grace and faith alone. The Father is pure love and sweetness. He is not an angry God, neither judgmental nor demanding like the God of the Old Testament. He does not place conditions on entering into His rest. You say, well, oh, that's sort of strange. How many times have you heard an evangelical say, come just as you are? God accepts you. Jesus accepts you just as you are. That's a Gnostic idea. And the people inside Thyatira would have recognized that because that's what they believed. You come just as you are. You're accepted just as you are. God gives you His Spirit. You immediately are regenerated, which means you have eternal life. No matter what you do from that point on, you have eternal life. He goes on, connection to the depth is maintained by turning inward, listening into and heating the Spirit within. Possessing the depth in this manner produces a guaranteed salvation that cannot be lost. Sound familiar? That is the main course of mainstream Protestantism today. You can't lose it. All you have to do is receive God's Spirit. All you have to do is go and say, I want your grace, accept me as I am. I've read tracts that say exactly that. Say this prayer, accept me just as I am, give me your grace, and when you do, I am now regenerated, and therefore I am guaranteed salvation. In the name of Jesus Christ, thank you. And I repent. And it's amazing they use the word repent in there because they have no concept of what it even means. In Thyatira, they would have felt very comfortable with that. Thyatira was sort of Protestant. A little paganism mixed in. They would have felt comfortable with Christmas and Easter. He goes on a brief, paternal-depth theology means accepting God's unlimited love, entering a mystical heavenly relationship with Him through Christ by grace alone. It means spiritual regeneration imposed exclusively by God without effort on man's part. It means turning away from any external law and yielding yourself completely and exclusively to the private interpretation of the Spirit. The spiritual depth and self-sufficient spirituality imparted in you. This is what it means to learn to know the deep things of Satan. This is the essence of paternal-depth theology that this primitive Christian church of Thyatira had absorbed from their Gnostic Christian neighbors. He goes on to say it's also the basic teachings of the present-day Gnostic Protestants.

And so we have a church here that you and I would have actually recognized. See, we read through this and we think, boy, that's sort of weird. I wouldn't have understood what they're talking about, the depths of Satan, Jezebel. Yes, you would have. You would have gone to a church where they would have said we... You would have heard a really good sermon about prayer. You would have gone to a church where you would have heard a really good sermon about how Jesus died for your sins.

And you would have said, boy, I agree with that. You would have heard a lot of truth. But mixed in with that was... Now, remember, mixed in with that was a twisting. No amount of law-keeping can save you. But we all know that's true, don't we? We know that you can't earn your salvation.

And then they twist it. Therefore, law-keeping is not required. Only listening to Jesus in your heart, that's all that's required. And so everybody had their own spiritual interpretation, everybody driven by their own... What they consider Jesus inspiring them and driving them. It is important we don't fall into this trap, because this is very similar to mainstream Christianity today. So they will preach that divorce is a sin, but everybody divorces.

They will preach that being dishonest is a sin, but everybody is dishonest. I'm not talking about an event. We all sin. I'm talking about lifestyles. Lifestyles of sin. So they will preach that homosexuality is a sin, but not really. God accepts you just the way you are. How many times have you seen the commercials? We accept everybody here. There was a commercial that was here in San Antonio not too long ago.

Have you been pushed out of your church because... and shunned by people because you're a homosexual? Are you pushed out of your church and shunned by people because you're a single mother? And are you pushed out of your church because of this, that, and the other? And they showed pictures of people. Obviously, you felt bad for the people. And then their message was, we include everybody here. So you come here and you will find the love of God.

And it doesn't matter what you do. We don't care if you do those things. Because here we have the love of God. That's Thyatira. And bring your checkbook because we're going to ask for an offering. Because money is a big thing. Materialism is a big thing. And so, you know, we meet in rented halls. They build the rented halls. They build the halls. They build the big mega churches. And that's the things they do. That's Thyatira. That's what it would have been like to be there.

The teachings of Thyatira are very similar to something that Paul told Timothy to be aware of. There was a problem he was already having in the church in the 50s and 60s AD. 30 years before this was written. Let's go to 2 Timothy 3. You see, Thyatira reflected the society they lived in. They lived in the ultimate...we think...we call it the New Age?

No, we're just back into first century paganism. That's all the New Age movement is. That's all it is. It's first century paganism. 2 Timothy 3. Here we have a group of people that Paul is saying, this is the type of person that's come into the church and we've got to stop this. This would have been the type of person in Thyatira. Chapter 3, verse 1. But know this, that in the last days, perilous times will come. For men will be lovers of themselves. People will be absolutely driven by selfishness. Everything will be about how people treat me, what people do to me, how people love me, what I get.

That will be the motivation. Lovers of money. Now we get that trade union problem they had. Boasters. Proud. Just people are just proud all the time. Blasphemers. Disobedient to parents. Unthankful. Unable to really be thankful to God about anything because all they want is more, more, more. Sound like a little bit of society you and I live in? Welcome to Thyatira. They were actually a decaying society at the time, but there was lots of money.

There's no culture in Thyatira. None of the good things. At least Ephesus had some culture. Unholy. People have no holiness. Unloving. Unforgiving. Just unable to forgive anybody. Of course not. Everything is about what people do to me. What people do to me and I demand, everybody always say they're sorry to me. Instead of being concerned about forgiving others, they're only concerned about being... and surely they're not concerned about the offenses they give to others. They're only concerned about payback. You've got to measure up to me.

Slanders, which of course is just part of our society. We slander, we don't even think about it. Without self-control, brutal, despisers are good traders, headstrong, haughty. Lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. But notice verse 5, you think, wow, those kinds of people we sure would be able to see, wouldn't we?

Having a form of godliness. Like I said, if you went to Thyatira, you would probably hear a really good sermon about prayer. You might hear a really good sermon about marriage. There would be certain subjects you'd say, wow, that's good stuff.

Because there was some truth in Thyatira. But their whole concept of how you live life and what God is doing was based on a wrong idea. The grace erased law. And that everybody was motivated and followed their own hearts. Having a form of godliness but denying its power, from such people turn away.

From this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts. In other words, these people are always involved in some way of tricking people to get what they want. Always learning. Always learning. Now, he's talking scripturally here, biblically. These people are always learning biblically but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. They're never able to break out of... Jesus is following my heart here. Jesus is in my heart.

And that's all I have to do. And so they never come to the actual knowledge of the truth. But they're always learning. They can quote scripture.

That's Thyatira. They were people who were caught up in making money. And in some ways, seemed... Remember, He says you have faith, you have love. They had certain things that were right. But in the end, they compromised with paganism. They had heresies in the church. And they had sinful lifestyles. Let's go back to Revelation 2, then, and finish up the message here to Thyatira. Revelation 2, 25. But hold fast what you have till I come.

He's telling them, you better hold on what you have, because you don't have much left. And he who overcomes, the person who changes, the person in Thyatira who repents, he who overcomes and keeps my works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations. So even in Thyatira, there's some who change. There's some who overcome. And shall rule them with a rod of iron that should be dashed into pieces like the potter's vessels, as I have also received from my Father.

And I will give him the morning star. He who is an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. So John writes, or the messenger from the angel from God, and John writes this down to the church of Thyatira, is when I come, very few of you will actually be received by Christ. Those who do will be the ones who overcame, who resisted society. It's an important message for us. He who has an ear to hear, let him hear.

Now there's one other church I want to go through here today. And then next week we'll go through the last two. And as is the church of Sardis. Revelation 3, verse 1. And to the angel the church of Sardis write, These things say that he who has seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your works, that you have a name, that you're alive, but you are dead. He says you're a church of God, but as a group, now there's individuals who aren't, but as a group you are dead. Wow. He didn't even say that about Thyatira. And Thyatira is a place of heresy. He said, you're just a dead church. There's nothing to you. They are then told, verse 2, be watchful and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die.

He says, you know, there are a few things you have left, but even those are dying. Those things are dying. For I have not found your works perfect before God. Sardis is an interesting city in that the word is actually plural. It'd be like saying San Antonio's. And the reason why is the city was first built on a bluff about 1,500 feet high. And it outgrew the area, so another city formed at the bottom of the hill and grew out from there.

So there were two, there were sardusts, sardusts. There were two of them. It was one city, but it was like two parts. And so the name is actually plural because there were like two cities. Even though they were one. Sardis was an old city when they wrote this. It was already 700 years old when John wrote this. Now you think about that. 700 years old. Now you can go to Europe and find cities 700 years old. You can't find any city in the United States 700 years old. Even close to that.

So you have a city that's been around a long time. The United States has, you know, this is almost three times longer than the United States has existed. So sardusts, you know, anybody in the world would have known about sardusts because it was an old, old, old city and it was a large city. It had been famous for its wealth, so much so that it was constantly getting conquered. Cyrus mentioned in the Old Testament the King of Persia. He conquered Sardis. That's how old it was. Alexander the Great, he conquered Sardis.

The Romans, of course, took it too. It was a wealthy place. It was a great place to go loot. And so Sardis was conquered over and over and over again. Now, by the first century, it's still a wealthy city, but it's a city in decay. It's a city that's not modern anymore. There's some slums in Sardis. It's just not the city it used to be. It's still a large city. Still lots of people there. Still a certain amount of wealth. But it's decaying. I guess you could call it the Detroit of its day.

It's a decaying city. And so it's interesting that in this decaying city, you have a decaying church. That he says, you are dead. And then he tells some of them, he says, some of you still have a little bit, but it's dying. Your whole church is dying. As I read through this, I think, what causes a church to die? Let's look at verse 2 again.

He says, Be watchful and strengthen the things which remain that are not ready to die, or 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. Therefore if you will not watch, I will come upon you as a thief, and you will not know the hour in which I come upon you.

Now you think about that statement, and you think about the prophecies in the New Testament. Those statements are about the second coming of Jesus Christ. I am coming to you and you won't even know it. As a church you're so dead, you won't even know it when I come.

Twice he tells them, so you better watch. You better watch. So what causes a church to die? Let's go ahead and read through the rest of this, and I want to answer that. I want to go through some of the things that are symptoms of a dying church. He says, You have a few names, even in Sardis, who have not defiled their garments, and they shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy. 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 his angels. And he who is an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

He's telling these people this is a salvation issue. You may be blotted out of the book of life. So remember, these are all churches of God. Thyatira, you and I would have walked out of. You and I would have walked into Sardis and said, This is a meaningless place.

But they were a church of God. And he's saying, if they don't repent when he comes, they're in danger of their names being blotted out of the book of life. How does the church die? Well, the first thing is what he just says here. They don't watch. We're to watch many things. One of the things we're to watch is we're to watch the world in relationship to the returning of Jesus Christ. Look at Luke 12. I know I'm taking a lot of time on each of these churches, but that's because he who has an ear to hear, let him hear what the message are to the churches.

And we have to ask ourselves, What kind of Christians are we becoming? All the churches is a congregation of people. It's a group of people who congregate together. And all a congregation becomes is the composite of the people who attend. That's all a congregation is. It's a composite of the people who attend, who come together.

Each of these groups were groups of people who just came together in that city and they congregated. And as you can see, over time, in many cases, they moved away from what God wanted them to be. Luke 12, 35. Let your waist be girded and your lamps burning. In other words, be prepared. Be clothed. You're not asleep. You have your clothing on, your lamp, which symbolizes God's Spirit, that oil, and it's burning. In other words, it's being active. God's Spirit is active in your life. Now, what's funny, if you would have walked into Thyatira, they would have said, Oh, God's Spirit is active in my life because Jesus is in my heart and I'm fine.

Brother, what's wrong with you? You sure put too much emphasis on the Sabbath. You put too much emphasis on this law. You put too much emphasis on, you know, the Holy Day, eating pork. You act like that's important. Now, in Sardis, I don't know what this church would have been like. They just were dead. He says, And you yourselves be like men who wait for their master.

This is the life that you and I are to live. Every day we're waiting for the return of Jesus Christ. Everything we do that day, everything we think that day, everything... How we act that day, how we treat other people that day, is motivated by Jesus Christ as coming back, and I must be prepared for that. Today I am being prepared for the Kingdom of God. It is to know about the Kingdom of God, to know about the return of Jesus Christ, to know about the millennium, to simply know that is not enough.

We have to be prepared for it. Because you can know it and not be prepared, and Christ says He comes back and His servants are going to say, Look what we did in your name, and He's going to say, I don't know you. You're not prepared for this. I don't even know you. You who practice lawlessness. So He says, You yourselves be like men who wait for their master when He will return from the wedding, and when He comes and knocks, they may open to Him immediately.

Blessed are those servants whom the master will find watching. Blessed when they come will find watching. You and I need to be watching what happens in the world in relationship to prophecy. Shortly I say to you, though He will gird Himself and have them sit down to eat, and will come and serve them. If you should come in the second watch or come in the third and find them so, blessed are those servants.

But you know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into. Therefore, you also be ready. He just doesn't say, watch. Once again, we can know all the prophecies. We can know and be watching all the prophecies. We have to be ready. That daily interaction with God, your prayer, your Bible study, your fasting, your obedience, your doing what's right, your thinking what's right, your actions.

You have to be ready. In Sardis, everybody came to services. They were there. Nobody was ready. Nobody cared.

This is a church that just doesn't care. They're just dead.

And they weren't watching. Twice, he tells them, you must watch. When you go through Paul's writings, it's amazing how many times he says to the church, wake up, it's like you're asleep.

And these were churches that hadn't hardly formed. Some of these churches were five, ten years old, and he's writing to them, and he's saying, wake up! You people just fell asleep.

You're not watching anything. So you're not ready. If you're watching, you're concerned about being ready. You're concerned about living the way you're supposed to live. You're concerned about your relationship with God.

So a church begins to die when people stop watching.

And they no longer feel a need to be ready. They just don't feel a need to be ready.

And they lose the prophetic message.

When you lose the prophetic message and you no longer feel a need to be ready, you lose doctrine.

And you just drift through life.

A second way a church dies is when we get so caught up in the world that we act just like everybody else. In other words, we're no different than society around us.

This is a message that was similar to Thyatira. The difference is, at Thyatira, they were very energetic about their worldliness. In Sardis, they just don't care. I mean, I suppose if you asked someone in Sardis which is worse, ignorance or apathy, they would have said, I don't know and I don't care.

They're dead.

And so they acted just like the world. Their lives were no different. And we have to ask ourselves these questions. Have we stopped watching? Because this message is for us too. Christ comes for this church just like He comes for Thyatira. Are we watching? Are we so caught up in the world around us that we act just like the world around us? That your neighbors don't know any difference between you and the world except you go to church on Saturday? Other than that, you're just like everybody else. A third way a church dies is when Christianity stops being a way of life and becomes an intellectual debate. At that point, what we do is we don't talk about the Bible much. We do argue about it a lot. We don't share the Bible with each other. We don't come to services to talk about Scripture or Bible. We don't go to each other's houses and talk about Bible. We don't really interact with each other much in a biblical sense except when we don't agree and then we argue. So we argue the Bible, but we don't talk the Bible. We don't share the Bible with each other. And we don't share the Bible with the world, although we do like those times when we can argue the Bible with the world. Christianity ceases to be a way of life and simply becomes a set of knowledge. When that happens, we begin to die spiritually. And as you die spiritually as a person, a whole congregation, they begin to affect each other and everybody begins to die spiritually. A fourth way a church dies is people begin to see little value in having close relationships with each other and fellow members of the congregation. You might come to services, and you're here right before and you leave right after, and you might talk to two or three people. They're the same people you always know. But you have no desire to have a relationship with anybody else. That's the symptom of a dying Christian in a dying church. When that happens, that's the symptom of a dying church. When we only want to associate with those just like us, the people who sit next to me every week, but the people that you don't know that they're not here. You know, it's always amazing to me, and this has happened with me. I'm running back and forth and going to different churches and doing this, that, and the other, and I'll find out there was a person who wasn't there for a month, and I'll call him, and they'll say, No, I haven't come for a month and nobody cared, so I'm never coming back. In my 30 years in the ministry, I've seen that happen a couple dozen times. A person just never came back because no one even cared. Now, I don't blame that entirely on other people. That's partly their fault, too.

But we do have an issue of, once we just see other people, or we don't have a desire for relationships, we're in a dying church. This is what Sardis was like. And you know what happens in that? Once you enter into this, you don't desire relationships. What you usually do is spend your time condemning and talking about other people in a negative way.

You have to ask yourself. This is something you need to ask yourself. Do I seek relationships, or do I seek to just gossip about people? What am I seeking? When I talk to people, am I seeking a relationship with that person, or am I seeking an ear so I can gossip about somebody else? That is a symptom of a dying church.

When there is no actually concern for each other, there's just a desire to put down somebody else.

Look at Ephesians 4. I wasn't going to go here, but let's do this. Ephesians 4, 29. Because this is related to what we're talking about here. Ephesians 4, 29. Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good for necessary edification that may impart grace to the ears. Wow. I have to admit, I don't do that verse very well. Everything come out of your mouth before the good of the person you're talking to.

That's what it says. That's an instruction, a commandment in the Scripture.

Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, just complaining and evil-speaking be put away from you with all malice, and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God and Christ forgave you.

That's a living church. That's living people who do that. Spiritually living people. A dying church, the members don't do that. That's not what they do.

Remember, a dying church, those people felt somewhat religious at times.

But it had no impact in their lives. There was no power in anything that they did.

Another reason a church dies, and these all sort of come together. It's not one reason.

There's a lot of reasons that come together for a church to die. When people begin to see the church as a social club and not a place to preach the gospel and make disciples, every congregation is responsible for being a light to the world, and every congregation is responsible that when new people come in to help them become part of it and become disciples. Disciple-making is part of what all of us are part of. And when a congregation no longer sees preaching the gospel as important and being a light to the world, and when a congregation no longer sees making disciples as important, that congregation begins to die.

We either accept new people and bring them in and teach them and have them become part of us, or we don't. And if we don't, they leave.

And your church not only dies spiritually, it dies physically.

The sixth reason is when people begin to see no value in the church when they come together as a place of worship or a place of learning.

This is a place where we come together. You are the church. The church is the people.

When the people come together, especially on the Sabbath, but in any situation. But on the Sabbath and Holy Days, we come together to praise and worship God. This is a time of reverence.

How much of the Sabbath do we destroy through our attitudes? I've seen people literally leave over the years because they got to the place that the Sabbath was a burden. They hated the Sabbath. The problem wasn't the Sabbath, it was how they were keeping the Sabbath.

It's how they were observing the Sabbath.

This is a place of worship.

We are before Almighty God. This is a place of praise.

Of thankfulness. If it is not. If we don't come together in an attitude of thankfulness and praise and worship of God, then we are breaking the Sabbath.

As a church.

Because that's why we're here.

Sardis didn't understand that. They came together, sang a few songs, slept through most of the service.

Which the service didn't mean much. A few scriptures are read. There's no real message given.

And they all say, let's hurry up because we've got to get home and watch the gladiator fights.

Football of the day.

That's what we've got to do. Sabbath keeping wouldn't have meant much. These people would have shopped on the Sabbath and, you know, looked like Sabbath keepers because they went to church on Sabbath. But they weren't Sabbath keepers.

Sabbath was just another day that you took a little time and went to church on.

It's a dead church.

What happens when we begin to see no value, when we come together as a place of worship and a place of learning?

Now, you say, well, I've heard all of it before. There's no sermon or sermonette that's going to give me anything new. You know, this is the this is the word of life.

If we can't get excited about this anymore, we can't get excited about anything. We're dead.

If we can't get excited about the Word of God anymore, then we're dying.

We're dying. And so we become so complacent.

You know, when that happens, two doctrine breaks down. Doctrine really doesn't mean anything. I imagine in Sardis they had, you know, people could talk about doctrine some, but they had no real deep understanding of anything.

They just become a dead church.

And then the last thing that happens, the seventh point that happens in a dying church is then people begin to become complacent about sin.

It's not so overt, maybe, as in other places.

In Thyatira, where they would have been quite proud about the grace of God. Look how much mercy we show over this sin and that sin.

But there would have been just a complacency about every their whole lifestyle, how they lived their lives.

When people begin to take on these characteristics, we begin to spiritually die.

When enough individuals in a group begin to take on these characteristics, they begin to die.

We have to make sure that if we want to be part of a live congregation, that's not happening in our lives.

See, in Sardis, everybody would go home after a sermon like this and say, That's a pretty good sermon. I hope everybody got it.

But there'd have been no personal impact on their lives. Or, boy, that was long.

Man, he should have gone through one church, not two.

And I'm sure glad I don't live in Thyatira or Sardis.

But I don't really care.

And then it would be gone.

What was taught today will be gone.

If we have this kind of attitude. It'll be gone within a couple hours. It won't even be part of your life anymore.

You just hope somebody else got it. Those people who really need it.

So we've looked at now five of the seven churches.

We've looked at a church that faced heresy and held on to the truth. But then lost its love.

We looked at a church that was poor and persecuted and yet remained faithful.

We've looked at a church that had compromise with lawlessness.

We looked at a church that had works of service.

It had become so morally and doctorally corrupt that Christ condemns it.

And we've looked at a church that absolutely died.

Except for a few that were still dying. And Christ says, I repent.

I want you to come back.

I don't want you to go where you're going.

Or I will remove you from the book of life when I return.

Christ is coming back.

We have two more churches to talk about.

And those two churches are more important for us in many ways than all the other churches we've talked about.

Although every church is important.

So next week we will talk about the message to the churches in Philadelphia.

And the churches that lay in to see you.