Sermon Tone Analysis

Revelation 3:1-6

   

If you were to take your next vacation in London, and you could visit the Metropolitan Tabernacle… The tour guide would tell you that this is the place that the great Charles Haddon Spurgeon used to preach.

He would tell you that the 5,000 seat auditorium there was never large enough…they packed it to overflowing Sunday after Sunday in Spurgeon’s day.

He would tell you how on Sunday nights, they would actually ask church members to stay home because so many visitors wanted to come and fill the building.

\\ Today, that church is only a shadow of what it used to be.

If you were to visit the Metropolitan Tabernacle, basically what you would hear would be  wonderful stories of “the way it used to be.”

The good ole days…

 

Friend… CRCC could be the very same way.

The oldest of the Christian Churches in the State of Washington…157 years old.

This congregation has outlived many, many others… In the years that this congregation has been in existence, literally thousands of people have been influenced to come to know Jesus Christ as Savior through the various ministries right here in Castle Rock; Through the missionaries who have gone out directly and influenced people for Christ; Through individuals who have shared their faith; Through the years of doing Sonlight, Good News and Pioneer Club, The hundreds of kids who have been in our Youth Groups and some even going on into Ministries of their own, The dozens of kids we have sent on Missionary trips through the Academy of Teen Mania…What about the people who have been touched by those who have gone to Honduras, India, China, Egypt and other countries….How about the people that are touched every other  week at the Villager and the monthly trips that are spent preparing and serving food at Community House?

And now I have even heard of several who listen to these sermon messages over the internet from our web page.…but that is no reason to sit and soak up our past or even our “present”.

Such is the case with the church at Sardis in Rev. 3. At one time they had a reputation for being exciting, alive, and vibrant ~/ on fire for God!

When our Lord, Jesus writes to this church in Sardis, they were all reputation …and no reality.

They were all form, and no force.

They were glorying in past splendor, and ignoring their present state.

They focused on Past Reputation, rather than Present Reality.

[[v.1 NIV |bible: Rev. 3:1]]  /I know your works.

You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead/.[1]

Do you see what the Lord is saying to this church?

He is saying, you have a reputation for being alive, on fire for God, your past has some high marks…but I know the truth…you’re dead as a doorknob!

Looking at church history, in correspondence to the seven churches we now coming to the Reformation.

The age of when Medieval Catholicism became so dark that when Sergius III became Pope in the 900s /(A.D. 904–A.D. 967/), he ushered in what history calls the Rule of Harlots, during which time his mistress publicly accompanied him to the papal palace.

Sergius’ grandson, John X, continued this legacy until he was actually murdered in his own bedroom while committing adultery.

/(WOW…What a legacy for a Pope!)/

 

Next came Benedict IX, who assumed the position of Pope at the age of 12 through the practice of simony—the selling of positions within the church to the highest bidder.

Benedict IX was so corrupt that the citizens of Rome drove him out of the city, replacing him with Clement III, who was appointed by Henry III.

Clement III was not a Roman because, in the words of Henry III: /“I appoint no one from Rome because no priest can be found in this city who is free from the pollution of fornication and simony.”/

The times were dark, diabolical, and depressing—which caused some stirring to take place in the hearts of good Catholic people.

In 1330, a giant of the faith named *John Wycliffe* was born in England.

As an Oxford scholar and Catholic priest, he began to write about the need to get away from papal edicts and get back to the Bible.

He began to publicly question doctrines such as transubstantiation and continual sacrifice so much so that he was excommunicated by the powers in Rome.

Although he himself was safe at Oxford, his disciples—men like John Hus and Hugh Latimer—were burned at the stake.

But their deaths caused a spark of Reformation that would burn throughout England.

A glorious move took place, culminating in the year 1483 in Saxon Germany, when a coal miner and his wife gave birth to a baby boy they named Martin.

/“This boy is not to follow me into the mineshafts,”/ said Martin’s father.

So, Martin enrolled in the university to study law.

While walking on campus one day,

a thunderstorm arose unlike anything he had ever seen.

Petrified, Martin cried out to St. Anne, the patron saint of coal miners, “If you save me from this lightning, I will become a monk.”

Spared, and true to his word, Martin Luther enrolled in seminary.

After 2 years, he earned his Doctorate, but the more he studied theology, the more he knew he could never be righteous enough to earn God’s favor.

Because of this belief, he regularly beat himself… slept outside in freezing temperatures… and fasted for long periods.

Still not experiencing the reality of God in his life, he decided to take a journey to Rome for an audience with the Pope.

On his way to Rome, however, he contracted a dangerous fever.

While recovering in an Alpine monastery, one of the monks, sensing Luther’s struggle, told him to read the Book of Habakkuk.

Why Habakkuk?

Habakkuk was also one who wrestled with issues.

Luther took his advice and when he came to the 4th  verse of the 2nd  chapter,

 

/[[Habakkuk 2:4, The just shall live by faith” |bible: Habakkuk 2:4]]“  /—he finally understood.

“That’s it!” he cried.

“If I’m going to be just, it’s not because of what I do or who I am, but by faith in what God has already done and who He is.”

Let me just back up for just a moment and read to you what it says in the book of Habakkuk.

This will blow your sox off…Who says prophecy doesn’t work?

Habakkuk 2:3-4

Then the Lord replied: “Write down the revelation and make it plain… /[who does that remind you of?]/

/“Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it.

3 For the revelation awaits an appointed time; It speaks of the end And will not prove false./

/Though it linger, wait for it;  It will certainly come and will not delay.

4 See, he is puffed up; his desires are not upright-but the righteous will live by his faith…/ NIV

 

Well… upon arriving in Rome, with his heart full of excitement, Luther was shocked by the abuses and hypocrisy he found there.

Returning to Germany, he realized he had to take a stand.

So in 1517, he nailed a parchment poster,  containing 95 theses or statements challenging the Pope to the university door in Wittenberg.

Three and a half years later, Rome answered back, “Retract or die.”

After burning this response, Luther was summoned to Rome.

In 1521, the Diet of Worms was convened, at which the Roman Catholic Church realized, that due to his popularity, they had a problem in Luther.

“We’re giving you a second opportunity to recant,” they said—to which Martin Luther gave his classic reply: */“Here I stand.

I can do no other, so help me God.” /*Luther’s stand gave rise to the birth of the Jesuits—a Catholic Order dedicated to enforcing papal power no matter the cost.

Meanwhile, the Reformation swept across Europe.

Luther in Germany, Zwingli in Switzerland, Knox in Scotland all of which called for a return to the Bible—which strengthened the determination of the Jesuits to stand by the Pope and stem the tide of what they perceived to be heresy.…Of

the 4 million people living in Bohemia in 1600, 80 % were “Protestants sympathizers” of the Reformation.

2 years later, the population of Bohemia numbered a mere 800 thousand.

Austria and Hungary were also early hotbeds of the Reformation.

Today, when we think of these countries, we think … Catholic.

Why?

Because the worst bloodshed in history took place in the wake of the Reformation—even worse than the persecution of Christians under the Roman emperors and the holocaust of Nazi Germany under Hitler.

This upheaval and bloodshed was so far-reaching that the seeds of the events in Bosnia and Northern Ireland today have their roots in those terrible, brutal times.

[2]

 

Even our roots within the Christian Churches beginning in the early 1800’s with Thomas and Alexander Campbell and Barton Stone, men who saw the sectarian, non-biblical approach to Christianity founded in the Presbyterian Church at that time were forced to re-think the Bible and begin a Christian Movement call the “RESTORATION MOVEMENT.”

A movement of people and thought that was to call all Christians back to unity.

Barton Stone would say… “Let every Christian begin the work of unity in himself.”

Thomas Campbell would say about the Church itself… /“The church of Christ upon earth is essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally one./”

And /“Where the scriptures speak, we speak.

Where the scriptures are silent, we are silent.”/

These men and many others since…  have struggled to help shape men and women’s minds to be as committed to Christ and His Church as much as possible.

But just as the Reformers of Luther and Calvin and others so also I believe is the fate of the Campbells and Stone.

These men were great beacon-lights during their time, but men and women grow tired of hearing the truth …so they take steps to create mis-truth (as our media puts it).

And factions begin, squabbles start, petty nit-pickers begin to pick their nits.

And you end up with a Church like Sardis.

The situation is nothing new.

The Church has faced secularization centuries before the 1800’s, 1700’s or even 1600’s.

It all happened in Sardis.

But in Sardis, no one rose up to confront it.

Jesus Christ Himself had to meet it head-on, and He did so in His letter to that church.

His words to the Christians Believers in Revelation 2 and 3 apply just as much now to those congregations and individuals who appear to be spiritually alive, but inside are spiritually dead.

So, let’s turn to the Bible and see what Jesus had to say to the believers in this rich, prosperous, yet problem- plagued city.

What’s the Problem?

!

I.  The Problem [[3:1 |bible: Rev. 3:1]] …

 

Notice the text in this letter is different from all of the other letters we have looked at so far.

In this letter there is NO COMMENDATION.

Jesus has NOTHING GOOD TO SAY—he begins with the bad news, the problem, the weakness, and then moves to  the fatal flaw!

Their reputation was superficial.