Max's Weekly Musings
Vol. 9, No. 31, for the week of August 27 - September 2
Revelation 3- Sardis  

A fairly quiet week in the world, unless you lived in Baghdad where the sectarian violence continues almost unabated.  I struggle to understand what can be gained with the massacre of innocent lives.  For the most part, these are individuals who are unarmed and who are merely going about the daily efforts to survive.  Men standing in an employment line.  Women and children in a crowded market.  Men coming from worship at the mosque.  Why are these targeted?  What kind of statement is made by their deaths?  To me, it is a very negative statement.  The radicals there in Iraq, and elsewhere for that matters, fail to understand that it is possible to live in a society where ideologies can be different - sometimes very different - and yet dialogue and not violence is the key to establishing a healthy society. 

The cease-fire between Lebanon and Israel is still holding.  The captured Israeli soldiers have not yet been returned.  Political unrest is present in Israel.  The Lebanese Prime Minister said he would never made a peace-treaty with Israel.  And the UNIFIL forces are slowly coming together.  Behind the scenes both Syria and Iran continue their supply of weapons for Hezbollah with the Lebanese army and the UNIFIL forces turning a blind-eye.  Can the coming of the Lord be far away? 

We open our study this week with the fifth of the seven churches - Sardis.  It is described for us in Revelation 3:1-6.  This is one of two churches about which God has nothing positive to say.  It is a message that we must heed today.

I.  Sardis: A description of the city

    A.  Physical Description

          1.  Located thirty miles south of Thyatira
          2.  Was the capitol of the province of Lydia
          3.  Lay at the unction of five major roads and was a leading center for trade and for the military
          4.  City set on a rock fortress some 1500 feet above the main roads and was thought to be impregnable, but Cyrus had defeated it by using a secret passage that led to the city
          5.  By New Testament times, the city was just a shadow of what it had been in the past.

    B.  Spiritual Description

          Main religion was that or Artemis - a nature cult based on the ideas of death and rebirth.

II.  Strengths of the Church

          If we had walked into this church we would have noticed a church that prided itself on its history, on its past.  At one time, this was a church that had stood for something.  But now, God has not one good things to say to this church - not one!

III.  Weaknesses of the Church

      A.  Its lifeless profession - here was a church that was dead inwardly

          1.  No doctrinal problems here as in Pergamum or Thyatira
    
                a.  Here was a church that refused to think!
                b.  William Barclay, in his commentary on Revelation, writes of this Church: Heresy is always the product of the searching and the seeking mind.  Heresy is, in fact, the sign of a church that is vitally alive.  Heresy is the sign that a man has at least tried to think things out for himself.  Heresy is usually an unbalanced stressing of one side of the truth.  If we overstress the divinity of Christ, we run into that Docetism in which Jesus Christ is a divine figure disguised in what is only a seeming manhood.  If we overstress the humanity of Christ, Jesus Christ becomes nothing more than an heroic figure, the best of good men.  If  we overstress law, we run into the legalism which kills; if we overstress grace, we may run into the antinominainism which believes that grace is so great that sin does not matter.  But the fact remains that heresy is the characteristics of the man and of the Church which is not content with a second-hand faith, and a conventional and unthinking acceptance of orthodoxy, but which is compelled to think things out for himself and for itself.  There is nothing worse than a state in which a man is orthodox because he is too lazy to think for himself. 

              c.  As believers it is easy to adopt the Reader's Digest mentality - let the pastor and the teachers do all the studying for us and then just condense it.  Many believers do not want their minds stimulated or challenged.

          2.  No persecution here as in  Smyrna

              a.  Basically, this was a church no one knew existed.  It didn't rattle any cages in the community.  It didn't upset any "apple carts." 
              b.  Here was a church that affected no one!
              c.  Warren Wiersbe, in his book on Revelation titled, Be Victorious, writes of this church: The impression is that the assembly in Sardis was not aggressive in its witness to the city.  There was no persecution because there was no invasion of the enemy's territory.  No friction usually means no motion!  The unsaved in Sardis saw the church as a respectable group of people who were neither dangerous nor desirable.  They were decent people with a dying witness and a decaying ministry.

              d.  Sardis is the perfect example of the inoffensive church.  It did nothing to change the evils of society around it and its light was so dim that it did not disturb the darkness around it.  The only message this church had to offer was its past history.  Vance Havner stated that spiritual ministries go through four stages: a man, a movement, a machine, and a monument.  Now a monument is erected to something that is dead.  Sardis was a monument.

    B.  Its incomplete works

          Here was a church where people quit on God.  Some people retired from God's service.  Some people started to serve but never finished.  Some people never started.  Some people just sat there and criticized.

IV.  God's recovery plans

      A.  Wake up (verse 2) - "Get out of your grave clothes" (John 11:43-44)

     B.  Remember what you have heard (verse 3) - "Get back into the Word " (2 Peter 1:12-15)

     C.  Keep it (verse 3) - "Obey what the Word proclaimed"

     D.  Repent (verse 3) - "Alter your lifestyle to be consistent with what God's Word had to say"

Thoughts to Ponder: Reputations are a part of who we are.  Reputations are those representations that we have before others.  Reputations are based upon the perceptions which either we have of ourselves or what others have of us.  Reputations can be deceiving.  It is easy either for others to have a wrong understanding of who we are, or for us to begin to misunderstand our own selves.  And the latter is worse than the first.  Such was the problem at Sardis.  This church had a reputation as being alive and vibrant.  But such a reputation was a deceitful sham.  Alive they were not; dead they were.  When we begin to see ourselves as God sees us, all of our flaws are exposed; all of our warts appear; the dirt upon our faces become manifest; our reputations become realistic.  When God appraised this congregation their feelings of somethingness became the reality of nothingness.  Yet, such truth about themselves could, if heeded, set them free to be reinvigorated with the presence of God and re-energized with the power of God.  Our reputation is a reflection of who we are.  How we need to make sure it is an honest one.

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK: God often permits us to be perplexed so that we may learn patience and so that we may better recognize our dependence upon Him. (T. J. Bach)

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