©1998 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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3/15/98
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Image is Everything - Sardis
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Rev. 3:1 "To the angel of the church in Sardis write: He who has the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars, says this: ' I know your deeds, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead.
Rev. 3:2 'Wake up, and strengthen the things that remain, which were about to die; for I have not found your deeds completed in the sight of My God.
Rev. 3:3 'So remember what you have received and heard; and keep it, and repent. Therefore if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come to you.
Rev. 3:4 '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.
Rev. 3:5 '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.
Rev. 3:6 'He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.'
Our study of the last book in the Bible,
the book of Revelation,
has brought us to the first 6 verses
of Revelation chapter 3.
These 6 verses were written to
the 5th of the 7 churches that Christ specifically addressed
in Revelation 2 and 3,
the church at Sardis.
Sardis was a wealthy city.
It’s affluence was generated by
its prosperous industries in textiles,
dyes, and jewelry.
It was also a deeply pagan city,
with prominent religious cults
that promoted a kind of worship
that involved orgies
and sexual immorality
as a regular part of their religious routine.
It was not an easy place
in which to be a Christian,
and it was certainly not an easy past
from which to find
God’s path to freedom.
And it my have been
those same type of thoughts
that brought this church
to the place it was at
when Christ made these comments to it
at the end of the 1st century.
This is the first letter or message
in which Christ does not begin
with a word of encouragement
or affirmation
or praise.
He says simply, "I know your deeds, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead."
This church at Sardis
could have been among the Lord’s
greatest trophies of His Grace,
a place that proclaimed
the redemptive power of God
as few other churches could have done.
But they had allowed compromise,
rationalization,
and drift to dictate their future.
It is clear from the Lord’s opening comments
that they had chosen to invest
their efforts,
their energy,
and their emotions
into building an external image
rather than establishing
an inner strength and stability in Christ.
I know your deeds, that you have a name that you are alive...
They had kept up the external image.
They made sure they looked good
to the other churches around them.
They looked prosperous,
and successful,
and full of all sorts of programs
and projects...
...but you are dead.
At any given time
every one of us has
what I’m going to call a "focal point" in our Christianity.
That "focal point"
will determine everything else that results from our Christian experience.
This church at Sardis
had selected a focal point
of creating and maintaining
a good external image.
That was the center of their thinking,
the heart of their Christian life.
That focal point
then wrote the script
for everything else they did.
It determined what type of things
they talked about between themselves.
It determined what topics
were acceptable
and unacceptable in the life of the church.
It determined what they prayed about
and what they didn’t.
It determined how they handled their money,
both personally and as a church.
Each of us here this morning
have a focal point to our faith, as well.
Sometimes our focal point is known to us consciously.
I believe I know what mine is
at this point in my Christian life.
Sometimes it is easy to recognize
if we just ask ourselves the right questions.
Sometimes our focal point
is of such a nature
that we cannot see it ourselves
and we need someone else
to point it out to us.
For some of you
your focal point right now
is a desperate longing to find peace with God.
Most of all
you just want to know what it is
to really experience
a point of peace and rest with your Creator.
For some of you
your current focal point concerns
finding deliverance
from some form of bondage
that dominates your life.
It may be physical pain.
It may be emotional pain.
It may be finding freedom from some
physical or emotional addiction -
alcohol,
drug use,
sexual perversion,
depression,
fear, anxiety...
As you sit here this morning listening to me
two questions keep going through your mind -
"Does this guy understand? And Does he have any answers?"
For some of you
the focal point of your Christian life
may parallel that of the church at Sardis -
your chief concern is not who you are
or how you’re doing,
but rather how you look to others.
What do they think about you?
How is your image in their eyes?
If I were to ask you what your focal point is,
you would ask yourself, "What answer
would impress him?
What answer would make me
look good in his eyes?"
And then you would probably respond
by saying something like,
"I just want to be faithful to my Lord."
or "I just want to be of value to others
in any way I can."
or, "I just want to let God live through me
in any way He chooses to."
But you would say those things
not because your deepest longing
really is to be faithful,
or to reach out to others,
or to allow God to express Himself through you,
but rather because you think
those answers would make you
look good to me.
For some, your focal point
is figuring out how you can use God
and the people of God
to get something you want.
Maybe its money.
Maybe its a respectable image.
Maybe its just the belief that you’re handling this "God thing" OK
so that you can be sure He’s there
in case you get into a tight spot
and need to call on Him.
The potential points of focus
in our relationship with our Creator
are endless.
As I have grown and developed
I have seen my own point of focus
change several times throughout my Christian life.
I believe Peter even prescribes
a number of healthy points of focus
in that passage we have spent so much time with in the past
in II Peter 1:5-7 where he talks about adding to our faith...
moral excellence,
knowledge,
self-control,
perseverance,
godliness,
brotherly kindness,
and love.
My point with all of this
is that the point of focus we have selected
will determine whatever grows out of our Christian experience at any given time,
because that point of focus
will determine where we invest
our efforts and creative and emotional energies.
When Christ spoke to the church at Sardis
He began His comments
by pinpointing the heart of their problem:
for them image was everything.
I know your deeds, that you have a name that you are alive...
This was the same poison
that ran through the veins
of the Pharisees and Sadducees
in the gospels.
It was a poison that had to be removed:
Rev. 3:2 'Wake up, and strengthen the things that remain, which were about to die; for I have not found your deeds completed in the sight of My God.
Rev. 3:3 'So remember what you have received and heard; and keep it, and repent. Therefore if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come to you.
As I read the Lord’s comments to Sardis
it also occurred to me
how differently we view local churches
from the way Christ views them.
We as a society,
and I think even within the Christian community,
tend to view just the existence of a church as a good thing.
If we move into a community
and notice several churches in the area
we look at that as a plus.
But our Lord looks at these local churches
from a completely different perspective.
His whole focus
is on what’s happening within those churches.
And repeatedly throughout these letters
He tells them that,
unless they once again return
to the purpose for which He established them,
He will remove them altogether.
In other words, Christian facade,
Christian image
is of no value to the King.
From His perspective
it is better to have nothing in a community
than to have something
that claims to be Christian in name
but that is not operating
under the headship,
authority,
and daily leadership of Christ.
You see, Christ came to present Himself
as the great alternative
to everything this world has to offer.
But when the statement of our lives
either personally
or corporately
ceases to reflect anything different
than what is happening in the world around us,
we become the greatest
and most destructive lie there is.
The Lord’s statement that He would,
...come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come to you..."
was not a threat of judgement,
it was an action designed to preserve hope for the human race.
There is no desperation,
no helplessness and emptiness more real
than that which a person experiences
when they come to what they believes to be the truth
and discover that
what they have come to
is just a Christian-coated version
of the same emptiness
and confusion they came out of.
Our study of the Lord’s comments
to these seven churches
has had a far more profound effect on me personally
than I had ever anticipated.
I think some of you
have probably seen that effect
in my teaching.
I think some of you
have come away from some of our mornings together
saying to yourself,
"I don’t know this Larry.
I’ve never heard him teach like this before."
If I were to try to put it into words,
I would say that,
as a result of what I have seen in our Lord’s comments to these churches
I have realized as never before
how much we matter to Him,
and how much what we do
and how we live
affects what He is seeking to accomplish
in our world right now.
We cannot change ourselves.
We cannot transform our lives for Him.
But the heart of the true message of the Grace of God
is that our union with Him
and the presence of His Spirit within our lives brings about a healing
and a transformation at the deepest level of our being.
It is a transformation
that begins at the heart level,
but a transformation that,
if it follows the pattern God intends,
will gradually infiltrate every aspect of our lives.
The great dividing line between religion
and the true Christian faith
is the change true faith brings about
in the way we live.
Paul created a special phrase for this change
when he wrote his letter to the church at Rome.
In that letter he talked about,
Rom. 1:4-5
...Jesus Christ our Lord,
through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for His name's sake...
The obedience of faith.
He is talking about
changes that take place in us
not because we cower in fear at His wrath,
but rather because, for the first time in our lives,
our faith in Christ has allowed us
to know His love in a way
that gives us a longing to please Him.
There are all sorts of things
that have the ability to cloud
and corrupt that vision of Him -
satanic lies that cause us to doubt Him,
powerful sin patterns from our past life
that continue to war against us -
but the heart of these 7 messages
given by Christ to these churches
is the strong affirmation that
this battle for true, healthy life in Christ
matters more than anything else in our lives.
It matters more than everything else in our lives.
And even with this church at Sardis,
that had so blatantly sold out its calling,
our Lord concludes His comments
with words of affirmation
and encouragement
to the few within the church
who had remained faithful.
Rev. 3:4 '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.
Rev. 3:5 ' 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.
Rev. 3:6 ' He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.'
One of the things about that passage
that screams out at me
is something I mentioned last week
in the context of Christ’s comments
to the church at Thyatira.
Do you remember in that passage
where Christ said,
Rev. 2:26 ' He who overcomes, and he who keeps My deeds until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations;
Rev. 2:27 and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, as the vessels of the potter are broken to pieces, as I also have received authority from My Father;
In that passage
Christ took a prophetic promise
made about HIM
and He applied it to us.
In Psalm 2:4-9 it says:
Ps. 2:4 ¶ He who sits in the heavens laughs, The Lord scoffs at them.
Ps. 2:5 Then He will speak to them in His anger And terrify them in His fury, saying,
Ps. 2:6 "But as for Me, I have installed My King Upon Zion, My holy mountain."
Ps. 2:7 ¶ "I will surely tell of the decree of the Lord: He said to Me, 'You are My Son, Today I have begotten You.
Ps. 2:8 'Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Your inheritance, And the very ends of the earth as Your possession.
Ps. 2:9 'You shall break them with a rod of iron, You shall shatter them like earthenware.'"
But then, here in Revelation,
Christ allows us to share in that prophecy,
placing the rod of iron in our hands as well.
The same type of thing happens
here in Christ’s comments to the faithful ones at Sardis
when He uses that phrase they are worthy.
This is not man saying to God, "You are worthy",
it is God saying to His people,
"You, my child, are worthy,
worthy to walk with Me in white..."
Why? Because we lived flawlessly?
No! For there is none righteous in action but God Himself.
But worthy because we have allowed Him
to set the agenda for our lives,
choosing the battles we fight,
and trusting Him to show us
how those battles can be won.
In the terms I’ve used today,
allowing Him to determine our focal point
one day at a time.
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.
Rev. 3:6 ' He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.'