Letter to Sardis
Pastor Zach Pummill • July 19, 2020
Sermon Overview
REVELATION 3:1-6
Jesus’s letter to Sardis was to a dead church. Something went wrong and the church had fallen into the deadness of nominal Christianity. How does this happen to us? What can we learn from Jesus’s letter about he we fall into nominalism and be restored to a vibrant faith?
Sermon Transcript
It's a humbling moment when you realize that you are not something that you thought you were. Certainly, that had to be true for this church in Sardis. Imagine showing up for church in Sardis, at this very church on Sunday morning. Perhaps it's Easter morning, even. And you show up ready to have a powerful worship experience, ready to hear a positive uplifting message of hope. And you even hear that a letter from Jesus arrived in the mail this week, and you're ready to go. "Dear Sardis, I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you're dead."
Now, perhaps the local news headlines ran something like this: “Jesus eviscerates local church.” “Jesus excoriates church in Sardis with brutal take-down piece.” But that's not what's actually going on here. Jesus actually loves them, and he loves them because he wants them to see the truth. He wants them to stop operating by pretense, and remove the veneer and see what lies beneath the surface. And see who they really are. And sometimes the truth hits hard, and Jesus tells them that they are not what they think they are. "You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead." And Francis Schaeffer said it best: "Most churches die long before they cease to exist."
And so what happened to this church? How did they get into this situation, where they are dead? Well, this letter is the most direct of all of these seven letters, as you could probably already figure out. But it's also the most vague, of these seven letters. Notice that it doesn't provide a lot of detail, or context. It doesn't bring to light any specific issue within the church. It just tells them their condition. It doesn't bring up any of those things. Jesus doesn't talk about suffering, or persecution. There's no mention of a Jezebel, or Balaam, or Nicolaitans. There's no mention of good works, you don't see any of that. Instead, you see nothing, and that's precisely the point. Jesus, doesn't talk about any of those things because they aren't there, there's nothing.
And Jesus is pointing out the fact that there's nothing going on, that he actually values. Why? Because they're dead.
What we're looking at with this church in Sardis is perhaps the first recorded church, that had fallen into nominal Christianity. We're looking at a church, that's a cautionary tale of what can happen, when a church fits all to comfortably within its surrounding culture and being a Christian cause, absolutely nothing. There's no hardship to overcome. There's no suffering to perk to purify them. They're just a comfy people, going through the comfy Christian motions. They’ve become a religion of formalities, they become just people that do the things that you do. And there's no sense of counter-cultural edge to their faith anymore, and they no longer are aware of the overarching universal purposes, mission and agenda of God. And so nominal Christianity is whenever you adopt Christian ideas and you adopt Christian practices, but you don't adopt Christian purposes.
Nominalism is having a belief in God, or having a Christian worldview, but there's no sense of urgency to bear witness. It's knowing how to use Christian vocabulary and Christian lingo, but not having a lifestyle that lives any of that out. It's assuming our children will grow up and be saved and converted by virtue of growing up in a Christian environment, instead of actively engaging them with the gospel. Nominalism is using Christianity as a means by which I can become the best version of myself. Instead of being transformed by participating in the universal purposes of God. Nominalism begins every Saturday night, with the conversation, "Sweetie, do you feel like going to church tomorrow?"
And you put all of that together and what that does is it creates a church that lives as though it's already living in eternity. All things have been made new. There's nothing left to do. There's no pain or sadness or sorrow to enter into. Every tear has been wiped away. There's no powers of darkness or spiritual war going on around them, everything is just fine and dandy. And that's the church that Jesus calls dead.
So how does the church get to that place? What's the recipe for this kind of dead nominalism? Well, Jesus gives us two things. He brings two things to light, that were going on in Sardis.
Number one, as they were focused on their reputation, and instead of facing reality. Says in verse one, “You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead.”
This church had at one time a thriving body of believers, so much so that they gained a reputation, for being a vibrant church. So maybe they had a season of profound revival, where people were coming to know Christ as their Lord and savior, turning away from their idolatry and becoming Christians. Maybe there is a season in which the church gave so sacrificially, to the poor, to the orphan, to the widow, in the name of Christ that their reputation grew. But whatever it was, that was the end result, is that their church grew and renown, grew in their reputation for their devotion to the things of God.
But by the time they had received this letter, something had changed. They still had the reputation, but that reputation was all they had. Their reputation, no longer matched reality. And so they were dead because they were no longer looking for God in the present. They were only focusing on what God had done in the past.
So for instance, have you ever spent time in a church, that just talks about the good old days, right? The church that they talk about those glory days, about the way that things used to be, how we need to get back to those days, 'cause that's the kind of people, that we are. And the people are always reminiscing about, ways they can give back what they feel like they lost, trying to recreate some notion of what God did in the past. But the effect of that is that it really only communicates a deadness, does it not? Because you wanna follow that up with the question, yeah but what is he doing now? Do you have any sense of what God wants for you, in the here, in the now, and in the present? They're so focused on what God did in the past that they don't think about what God might have for them in the future, and they assume that what was true all those years ago must still be true now. And they focus on their reputation.
What might that look like here, if we became that type of church at Rockwell Pres? Where over the course of time, we began to be focused on our reputation and this started to play out among us. You probably look like this, it started off something like, "Yeah, a year ago we raised $50,000 for our partnerships in South Asia, 50,000 as we built churches, we dug water wells. We are investing in this church planting movements in the deep forest. We, are a church that's about missions, and the great commission." Someone say, "Yeah, wow, that's incredible. But then a little bit of time goes by, and that starts to become something like this. "Yeah, three years ago we actually raised her weight. Oh actually it was, it was five years ago. Oh, you know, time flies either way. Five years ago, we raised $50,000 from missions. We're a great commission kind of church." Then a little bit of time goes by and we say, "Oh yeah, 10 years ago, we raised a lot of money from missions, we are all about the great commission here at Rockwell Pres. It's like, really? It doesn't seem like it. It seems like you actually have no clue what God wants for you now, here in the present. No sense of where he's taking you.
Now don't get me wrong, any church needs to celebrate what God has done, and tell their story. Absolutely, and we wanna do that well here, at our church. It's a part of bearing witness. But, a church can easily move into a place of nominalism and deadness. Because what God has done in the past, no longer compels them to ask God to do more in the future. They stop asking God for more. What God has done in the past are shaping their imagination for where he might wanna take them. It stopped shaping their excitement and creating a hunger for seeking more of what God might have for them. So there's no sense of saying, "Look at all that God did in the past, what might he have for us next?" There's no hunger and thirst for the things of God.
So a dead church in the end is essentially one, that no longer asks God to do anything. It's a church that no longer asks God to move, a church that no longer asks God to have more of him and they're dead, because having more of him, doesn't ignite the passions and desires of the heart. And so, a dead church has one that focuses on their past and is unwilling to seek God in the present.
Secondly, in Sardis, they operated by appearances, instead of authenticity. And we have to dig a little bit deeper to see this. But if you just think about Jesus's earthly ministry for a second, who was it that received his harshest criticism? Well, there was the Pharisees. They were the ones that operated by appearances. They did things to be noticed by others. They did things to receive the applause, the praise, and the affirmation of others. And they were all show because their underlying motivating concern was how they appeared in the eyes of others. And it wasn't out of an authentic desire to please and honor God, which is why when Jesus teaches, he always tells everyone, if you wanna know God, then do the complete opposite of what you see the Pharisees doing. I mean, how would you like to be that guy that does the negative example in Jesus sermons? “Everybody look at Jeff, don't do what Jeff does if you wanna know God.” And that's exactly what he does, with the Pharisees. He tells him the same thing that he tells Sardis as he says, “You're whitewashed tombs. Things are pretty on the outside, but on the inside you're rotting.” And so their concern was about their reputation before men, instead of their reputation before God, which is why they have a preoccupation with keeping up appearances.
And that should give us a clue as we consider this church in Sardis, and why they received Jesus' harshest criticism in these letters. Because they are focusing on appearances. Jesus says in verse 2, he says, "For I have not found your works complete, in the sight of my God." So it's the issue is not that this church in Sardis isn't doing anything, it's that their works are hollow and empty. There are churches filled with all sorts of activity, but none of those activities actually stir their heart and affections towards God. And the reason they got to this place is because, they had compromised their values. If you look at verse four, Jesus says that “there are still some, that haven't yet soiled or stained their garments.” So he's implying that the rest of the church is in this condition because they have stained their garments.
And James uses this language whenever he talks about the purity of religious devotion. And what that actually looks like. And part of it, is that we keep ourselves unstained from the world. So this is a very biblical idea that Jesus is bringing to light for this church in Sardis. And he's bringing to light that their values are staying because their values have been shaped by the values of the world. And so it's a powerful image thinking about these garments, because here this church is every Sunday, they get dressed up for church. And yet all they do is only arrive, covered in the values of the world, around them. And so they don't come looking for an opportunity to sing their hearts out to God.
They don't come looking to unload their burdens in confession and receive the forgiveness, that comes from Christ alone. They don't come looking to be strengthened in their faith at the Lord's table. There's no sense of approaching God with humility and a humble reverence in the presence of the living God.
And instead, they come looking for something else, they come looking for entertainment. Maybe they just love the music, and they don't actually come looking to experience the presence of God. They value materialism. And so, they love being a part of a church that has a beautifully adorned building, yet, they don't have any value for a life that is adorned with the beauty of good works and humble service. And so operating by appearances easily gives the impression of devotion. But on the inside, it lacks authenticity, because there's no real, genuine passion and love for God.
Jesus is really just bringing up an old problem. It's as old as the hills, so to say. Because you see this all throughout the Old Testament, when the prophets address this issue time and time and time again with Israel. Isaiah says, “That these people draw near to me with their mouths. They honor me with their lips yet their hearts are far from me in vain, do they worship me." And Amos says, "I despise your festivals. Your gatherings are a stench to me, a way with the noise of your songs."
And at each of the moments that God deals with this appearance driven people that don't actually desire him. He always follows that up with the same thing and he says, “I am going to come to you. And I am going to remove all of it from you. I'm going to come and take away all of those things.” Why? Because I'm going to expose the nominalism within my people. I'm going to expose that their devotion was all pretense and there wasn't really ever a desire for me.
So what that tells us, if you want to have any sense of where nominalism exists, all you have to do is introduce a little bit of suffering, and you'll see it clear as day. And this is why Jesus warns them the way he does, in verse three: "If you don't wake up, I am going to come like a thief." I'm gonna take away all those appearances, all those things you glory in, And I'm going to get you down to your baseline. I'm going to purify my church. And for the people that actually want me, then taking away those things will be fine, because they will still have me. But for those that glory in those things, when I take them away, they will not have me at all, because they never wanted me in the first place. Jesus will purify his people.
So how can we apply this passage to us? One of the things I've heard from many of you is that these letters to these churches in Revelation, it's amazing how prevalent these issues are even to our day. And certainly this letter is no different. So much of it rings true for our time, and in our place because nominal Christianity is a reality on so many different levels. And we exist in a time in which so much of it is actually being exposed, right in front of us.
If we take a step back for a second, just take a wide-angle view of the world. My personal belief, is that we exist at a rapidly changing pivotal moment, tide turning moment in history. Something is going on. Something is happening. And that's about all I can tell you. Let's pray, I'm just kidding. But I think we know it and we feel it, do we not?
Let's take that wide angle view for a second. Right now, over 80% of Americans, which is a record high are saying that they are simply unhappy. That's blown away the previous record by like 20%. 80% of Americans are saying that they are unhappy. And so if there's anything that's receiving bipartisan agreement right now, it's that we are all unhappy, right? And then on top of that, you have a country that's divided on every possible issue under the sun. And we are seeing landmark Supreme Court decisions handed down on gender and sexuality. We've reached a tipping point on conversations about race, cultural unrest, anti-authoritarian sentiment. We're facing economic uncertainty, market instability that's only having increasingly significant global repercussions. And all of that's happening inside an election year. And all of that is happening inside a global pandemic. Normal left in March. And we have to recognize that. Whatever we are at the end of all of this, is not going to be the same as it was before.
Take the global pandemic for a second, because we have to recognize that the soil is shifting beneath our feet. And we are now at a place where, you know, what we hope for in March is just no longer in the cards. What we hope it only lasts for a few weeks. Well, that's off the table now. COVID-19 is a part of life. COVID-19 is here to stay. At least for the time being. There's no avenue in which we can go to where we can pretend like it doesn't exist. It's here. It's a part of life. And it seems to be here for the long haul. And everything, it's causing, everything to have to think about ways to do things differently and what it means in every avenue of life, and even the church. And the effect on the church has been utterly significant. And that's an understatement. Because even right now, even this week, churches have said that they will no longer be reopening for the remainder of the year. And more churches are gonna follow suit. The rest of 2020 they're not gonna meet. And they're assuming that it's gonna be better in 2021.
And I'm not looking to cast judgment in any sense, cast judgment on our brothers and sisters. That'd be foolish and ridiculous. But we do have to wrestle with the fact that as the church is making these decisions, it's getting us down to a sense of what is necessary and what is essential. And I think that in light of everything that's going on, we have to seriously wrestle with the question of whether or not the Church will ever get her people back. Because right now the reality is that she cannot keep her people now. BARNA just recently released a study, they've been doing this series of the State of the Church in 2020. And they just released a study that said that now up to this point, as a result of the pandemic, one-third of practicing churchgoers no longer participates in either in-person or online worship services. One-third of the church is gone in four months. No longer participating in worship of any kind, gone just like that.
Perhaps God is exposing our nominalism right in front of us. Maybe he's exposing the nominalism that lurks in our hearts, and he is purifying his church. And if we don't keep an ear to the ground, we're gonna miss it. If we just think, “We just want to get back to normal.” I don't think that that's where we're going. There's nothing in the cards that says it's just gonna be over and done with. It's not the way the world works. And yet we serve a sovereign God, do we not? We serve a God that actually sends pandemics. Look at, in 2 Chronicles, He doesn't tell Solomon, “Hey, if a pandemic ever happens.” He says, “when.” He says, "When I send drought, when I send pestilence and disease." If comes whenever, how based on how his people respond. He says, "If my people humble themselves, I will hear them. My eyes and my heart will dwell with them." So I think here we are, right?
And at some point the church is going to have to stop thinking politically, economically, and socially, and start to think theologically, about everything that's going on. We need to start, you know, giving up on campaign promises and think about the promises that God gives us, In his scriptures, right? I mean, we have to get to a point where we start asking deeper questions. What is God doing in all of this? What does God require of us? What is God asking for us to do? But in order to find those answers, it requires that a church is willing to reject any notion of wrote ritualistic dead nominalism. It requires a church that hungers for MORE. Capital M, capital O, capital R, capital E, more. I have to be unsettled by what we've experienced before and say, what do you have in store for us next? And let us not pretend as though God is as confused as we are. We have to desire More.
So how does that actually happen? How does the Church get rescued from nominalism? Well, look at what Jesus offers this church, In verse one, "He says, he's the one that has the seven spirits of God, and the seven stars.” And the seven spirits is how he introduces himself. It's me, Jesus. The one who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars." And the seven spirits is just Revelation’s way of talking about the one Holy Spirit. And we know from previously that the seven stars are these spiritual bodies, these angels over the churches.
And then he tells the church to remember what they were given, to keep it, to strengthen what remains. And then at the end, he says, "Are you listening to what the Spirit says to the churches? Listen to the Spirit. And I am the one who holds the Spirit." So what's he doing?
He's reminding him of the fact that Jesus did not create a materialistic, appearance-driven kind of people. He created a spiritual people, engaged in spiritual realities and he invites them to wake up and remember what they were given. They were given the Spirit, and it's the Spirit that raised them from their spiritual deadness. They were born of the Spirit. They were filled with the Spirit, and he tells them to hold fast to that, to keep it, and strengthen what remains. And start living by the Spirit, walking by the Spirit, worshiping in the Spirit, praying in the Spirit and be transformed in the Spirit.
He wants them to wake up and invite God's presence back into their church and invite God's presence back into their marriages, their families, their communities, their cities, and to be a people that are Spirit-filled and Spirit-sent, and 100% devoted to the mission of God in their time and in their place. He wants them to be a people that desire More.
And that invitation still stands 2000 years later. During a season in which there is so much unknown and in a season in which there are so many things that are trying to lure the church to sleep. We have to be careful not to get stuck in a rhythm and a pattern where we settle for less, instead of hungering for that More than it's available to us. And so my desire is that we would not put the mission of God on hold during this season and just wait for everything to go back to normal. But instead, we would consider how is it that we can bring the mission of God to bear in this new time, this new place, and these new circumstances.
Because it's God who placed them upon us. And it's God who placed us in them. And we can go to him and begin to ask those deeper questions.
And so here's what we're gonna do, in a few weeks, we're gonna start a sermon series on prayer. And we're gonna unite our church together in prayer. We're gonna pray corporately. We're gonna pray in our Community Groups and we're going to seek the face of God in the midst of everything that's going on. And we're gonna ask God to fill us, to shape us, to use us and to send us. And sometimes when we think about that in the midst of all the unknown, we don't really know what to even pray for, or where to begin. Which is why we're going to use the Scriptures to shape our imaginations in prayer, use the Scriptures to shape our imaginations for who, and what we are called to be, and begin to pray for those very things with which God is willing to give, which is boldness and courage, and courage and opportunities to go out, to bear witness and recognize that when you ask that of God, He is willing to make your path straight, to make the high places low and to raise the low places so that you have good works prepared beforehand to walk in, instead of waiting around. Because I think with everything going on, we can at least stop and recognize this: Is that what this has done, is it's given us an opportunity to have a future that's far more shaped by prayer than it probably would have been otherwise. We just would have gone on, done things, did what we always did.
Instead, we have that opportunity to wake up and be rescued perhaps from the nominalism that exists within us. And ask God for how he could wake us up, to what he is doing, and how he might use us.
And in addition to that, we're gonna lay out some plans for this fall in the coming weeks, about what life's gonna look like here at RPC. And one of those things is that we are going to provide resources to our parents, so that we can be a church that owns the faith of our children. And we can reject nominalism in our parenting. And we're gonna offer resources for husbands and wives to be able to come together for a short amount of time each and every week, to learn, to lay the scriptures over their lives and to pray together. To pray into these very things and reject nominalism in our marriages. And we're developing a plan right now with our Community Group Leaders to go into the surrounding blocks and cross the street by first laying a foundation of prayer and asking God to stir our hearts, and our affections and open up opportunities for what? For us to find the suffering in our community.
And if we go with that kind of prayer, we can be certain that we will find it. And to pray for the boldness to minister and to bear witness to it in the name of Christ our Lord.
And what will the result of all of that be?
I have no idea. I guess we'll see when we get there, but I do know, that I want us to be willing to put ourselves in a position where the Spirit promises to work, and ask for More.
Let's pray.
