The Lifeless Church (Sardis)

Good morning! I’m pastor Bill Connors, and I’d like to welcome everyone to Family Worship with Eastern Hills today, whether you’re in the room or online.

If you’re a guest of the Eastern Hills church family this morning, I’d like to welcome you to our Family Worship service, and I’d also like to invite you to text the word “welcome” to 505-339-2004 at some point during the service. You’ll get a text back that has a link to our digital communication card, and we’d appreciate it you’d fill that out so we can drop you a note thanking you for being here today. If you’d rather fill out something more physical, you’ll find a communication card in the back of the pew in front of you. You can just drop that in the offering boxes by the doors as we leave the service later on, or you can bring it down to me afterward, because I’d really like to meet you and introduce myself personally, as well as give you small gift to thank you for being with Eastern Hills this morning.

Announcements

Rich Hansen Celebration of Life Tuesday 6/27 at 4pm

Men’s Ministry Casual Archery Tournament 7/1 at 9am; no prizes, just bragging rights if you win.

Independence Day picnic 7/2 immediately following Family Worship. Plan to wear picnic clothes if you’re comfortable with that. Bring desserts or chips & dip to share, and the church is providing the hot dogs or (Joe) chili dogs.

Commissioning of high school mission trip team.

Opening

We’re on the downhill side of our study through the messages to the seven churches of first century Asia Minor in Revelation 2-3, and what those messages mean as words to the church today. These seven churches, in a way, represent all Christian churches regardless of location or time, because they faced issues that all churches will likely face at one time or another, and the words of Christ in these messages speak into those issues, with each message calling for anyone who has ears to hear to listen to what the Spirit says to the churches.

I have a MAP of the path that these messages would have been delivered, in the order that they appear in John’s apocalypse. We are this morning “visiting” the church at Sardis. We have considered The Loveless Church of Ephesus, The Persecuted Church of Smyrna, The Distracted Church of Pergamum, and The Worldly Church of Thyatira. Keep in mind that I addressed things common to all (or most) of the messages in the first three sermons in this series, so you might want to go back onto the website, YouTube, or Facebook and listen to those if you missed any. Today we hear the Lord’s message to The Lifeless Church in Revelation 3:1-6:

Revelation 3:1–6 CSB

1 “Write to the angel of the church in Sardis: Thus says the one who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars: I know your works; you have a reputation for being alive, but you are dead. 2 Be alert and strengthen what remains, which is about to die, for I have not found your works complete before my God. 3 Remember, then, what you have received and heard; keep it, and repent. If you are not alert, I will come like a thief, and you have no idea at what hour I will come upon you. 4 But you have a few people in Sardis who have not defiled their clothes, and they will walk with me in white, because they are worthy. 5 “In the same way, the one who conquers will be dressed in white clothes, and I will never erase his name from the book of life but will acknowledge his name before my Father and before his angels. 6 “Let anyone who has ears to hear listen to what the Spirit says to the churches.

PRAYER (Riverside Baptist Church, Albuquerque, Pastor Jerry Minor)

One of my favorite movies of all time (not sure if it’s top 10… but it’s close) is the 1987 film The Princess Bride. In humorous fairy tale style, this movie tells the story of the true love between lowly stable boy Westley and beautiful Buttercup, essentially saying that true love will overcome any obstacle.

In the movie, Westley is captured and tortured by the evil Prince Humperdinck, who wants to marry Buttercup, and so ultimately kills Westley because of the true love that Buttercup and Westley share. Westley’s corpse is retrieved by his unlikely brothers-in-arms, the swordsman Inigo Montoya and the giant Fezzik. They take his body to the hut of Miracle Max, hoping against all hope that Westley can be revived. I’ll let Miracle Max explain:

Max: “Where’s that bellows fan? He probably owes you money, huh? Well, I’ll ask him.”

Inigo: “But he’s dead. He can’t talk.”

Max: “Ooo oo oo… look who knows so much, eh? Well it just so happens that your friend here is only mostly dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Please open his mouth. Now: mostly dead is slightly alive. Now, all dead… well, with all dead, there’s usually only one thing that you can do.”

Inigo: “What’s that?”

Max: “Go through his clothes and look for loose change.”

The church we’re looking at this morning reminds me of Westley in that moment. Westley was dead, but not quite all dead. The church at Sardis received what is the second most stern condemnation of all of the churches, in my opinion (apart from Laodicea, the seventh, which we will look at in two weeks): that they were “dead.” It turns out that they were, like Westley, actually mostly dead. There was still hope, but much would need to happen if they were going to survive.

The city of Sardis was ancient even in the first century. It had been founded around 1200 BC (that’s before King David’s time), and was the capital of the Lydian kingdom for centuries. It was an extremely wealthy city for three reasons: 1) its location for trade, being at a crossroads of sorts; 2) the gold that was found in the Hermus River as it flowed through the valley part of the city; and 3) the fact that the main part of the city was built on a hill with near-sheer cliffs on each side of it, so that attacking it meant coming from only one direction. “Taking Sardis” in a military campaign was actually a byword for doing the impossible at one point.

But it did happen: twice. The first was by Cyrus of Persia in 549 BC. A smart soldier in Cyrus’ army noticed that the city didn’t set a watch anywhere but the main entrance to the city during the night, as they didn’t believe anyone could take it any other way. He climbed up the cliff face, over the wall, and opened the front gates so that Cyrus’ army could take the city. The city changed hands a few times after that through other, larger political events, but when Sardis joined in a revolt against Rome and emperor Antiochus III in 218 BC, they were again defeated in the same way: a group of soldiers climbed the cliffs into the city, and let in the invading army while the city slept in what they thought was peaceful security.

Later, Sardis was also destroyed by an earthquake (which also destroyed Philadelphia, as we will see next week) in 17 AD, and was rebuilt by Tiberius Caesar, but most of its glory lay in its past.

By the end of the first century AD, Sardis was a Roman city through and through, with its own temple to Artemis, a temple to Cybele, and slightly later, an impressive gymnasium with an attached synagogue (the largest ancient synagogue discovered so far), which gives us some indication of both the size of the Jewish population in Sardis (which was large, perhaps 1000), as well as the extent to which the Hebrew people in Sardis had acclimated to the cultural setting there.

I remind us again that each of the seven messages to the churches would have meant very clear things in their particular historical contexts, and that learning and seeking to understand that context can help us make application of these messages to our own lives.

Our outline for this message is slightly different than the one we used for Ephesus, Pergamum, and Thyatira, but it starts with the same point: who Jesus is.

1: Christ (v 1a)

The message to Sardis begins with Christ’s declaration of His authority over the churches:

Revelation 3:1a (CSB)

1 “Write to the angel of the church in Sardis: Thus says the one who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars: ...

Each of these indicators of the identity of the One speaking comes from other places in Scripture, usually from Jesus’ self-identification in Revelation 1. The message to Sardis takes this identification from two places. The first is verses 4 and 5:

Revelation 1:4–5a (CSB)

4 John: To the seven churches in Asia. Grace and peace to you from the one who is, who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits before his throne, 5 and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead and the ruler of the kings of the earth.

The thing that’s really interesting to me about this passage is that we see a clear Trinitarian reference: We see the Father: the One who is, who was, and who is to come; the Holy Spirit (“seven spirits” would be in Hebrew thinking particularly the “complete” Spirit, as seven was the number of perfection or completeness); and Jesus Christ. Each Person of the Trinity is involved in the giving of the message of the apocalypse. So Jesus “has” the Holy Spirit in all of His fullness, because as the Father is God and the Spirit is God, so Jesus is God.

And the idea in the message to the church at Sardis is that it is Jesus who sends the Spirit, as He said in John 15:

John 15:26 CSB

26 “When the Counselor comes, the one I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father—he will testify about me.

Jesus also says that He has the seven stars. In giving his description of the glorified Christ, John wrote in Revelation 1:16:

Revelation 1:16 CSB

16 He had seven stars in his right hand; a sharp double-edged sword came from his mouth, and his face was shining like the sun at full strength.

Jesus would explain to John in verse 20 that the stars represented the angels, or divine messengers, of the seven churches, which I tend to see as the pastors or head elders of those churches. You can hear my explanation of this in the sermon on the message to the church at Ephesus. The pastor of the church at Sardis was in His hand, and Jesus had the authority to send the Spirit on a rescue mission for this mostly dead church. Only by the work of the Spirit can the church of Sardis recover from its decline.

And following this identification, we would expect to see Jesus’ commendation to this church. Instead, we find the opposite:

2: Condemnation (v 1b)

This is where the letter takes a surprising turn. In each of the four letters we’ve looked at thusfar, in fact all five of the other letters that contain a commendation of some kind, the commendation comes right after the identification. But for Sardis, Jesus launches into his condemnation of the church at the end of verse 1:

Revelation 3:1b (CSB)

1 “...I know your works; you have a reputation for being alive, but you are dead.

The One who walks among the golden lampstands knows the situation of the church, so He is both correct and justified when He condemns her. In the case of Sardis, the church had a good “reputation” (literally, a “name”) for being alive, but the reality was that they were dead.

This is harsh. The fact that they had a reputation means that they had really had something going in the past, which is a lot like the church at Ephesus. But they had become, as Chuck Swindoll put it, “a morgue with a steeple.” Essentially the church at Sardis was a zombie church. Not alive, but not exactly dead, either.

Notice the biggest difference here between this message and the others we’ve looked at: In all four of the other churches so far, the problem was a problem from without, coming in and causing problems. But with Sardis, there’s no mention of enduring hardships for Jesus like in Ephesus, no mention of Satan as in Smyrna, no warning about the Nicolaitans and Balaam as we saw in Pergamum, and no Jezebel prophetess teaching like in Thyatira.

The fact that there is no mention of these things is telling. The problem with the church at Sardis was a problem from within. There was no difficulty, no persecution, no cultural pressure, and no risk. What we have to ask is, “Why?” It’s probably because, given what Jesus says about their works in verse 2, they weren’t actually doing much of anything that they should be doing.

Revelation 3:2b (CSB)

2 ...for I have not found your works complete before my God.

Daniel Akin, in his commentary on Revelation, said this about this phrase from verse 2:

“Though the quantity of their works was deficient, it is more likely that it was the quality of their works that was most lacking. They had grown content with a mediocre, halfway, comfortable, and convenient Christianity. Their faith was not radical; it was almost invisible. The lost among whom they lived, worked, and prayed saw nothing different or unique about them. The culture did not oppose them; it simply ignored them as of no real consequence or significance. They were so weak in their confession of Christ that they bothered no one.”

—Daniel Akin, Exalting Jesus in Revelation

Maybe at one time, they had an active and vibrant ministry in the community, sharing the Gospel and seeing people come to faith, making a difference in the lives of those they came into contact with. But now, they didn’t impact the culture around them at all. They didn’t speak the truth anymore. They didn’t tell others about Jesus.

It’s like they were riding on the coattails of their past successes, assuming that they would always be alive because they had been previously, much like the city. As I said in my intro: the glory of Sardis lay in her past. And likewise, the glory of the church at Sardis lay in the time that she was alive.

Eastern Hills will celebrate our 60th anniversary as a church next February. Sixty years. And some of us might look back and remember what we might consider to be more of the “glory days” of Eastern Hills. But the reality is that we cannot simply “go back” and recapture a past time. We must go forward. Our goal in Christ should not merely be to exist, not merely to survive, but to thrive as a church family! But I can say that I truly believe that Eastern Hills is striving right now to be the church that God wants us to be where He has us, and that He is preparing us for something that He’s going to do. We’re low on drama in the church family. We’ve got a great general sense of community. God is working. Things are happening. We’ve had a few baptisms this year. Eastern Hills has signs of life. But we haven’t arrived, and we’re not done. We’re just getting started. And we have to see ourselves this way, church.

While I don’t believe that we’re in the same position as this church, I think that we can still wisely apply the cure to us that Jesus gave to the Sardians.

3: Cure (v 2-3)

Jesus’s cure for the church in Sardis, and by extension us, is a list of five commands, followed by the warning of what will happen if the cure is not applied. For the moment, just the commands:

Revelation 3:2–3a (CSB)

2 Be alert and strengthen what remains, which is about to die, for I have not found your works complete before my God. 3 Remember, then, what you have received and heard; keep it, and repent.

The five commands are: Be alert; strengthen what remains; remember what you have received and heard; keep it; and repent. We won’t spend a ton of time on each of these imperatives, but they are important for us to understand and apply.

A: Be alert

The first command that Jesus gives as the cure to the church at Sardis is that they “be alert.” This could literally be translated as “be awake!” The history of the city of Sardis is reflected in this first command. Twice in her history, the supposedly impregnable fortress of Sardis had been overcome because of a lack of awareness of the reality of her situation. They were literally asleep to the threat that faced them as those soldiers climbed the cliffs in order to sneak into the city and open the gate from within.

Similarly, the Sardian church was asleep, completely unaware of their peril. They had neglected to be watchful of their devotion, their doctrine, and their direction. They had drifted aimlessly, and had become more of a thermometer than a thermostat: they reflected the temperature of the culture around them instead of impacting it.

Since this series is called “Seven Words to the Church Today,” we must consider this command for ourselves and our context, both individually and as a church body:

Are we asleep, just kind of drifting through life, assuming both that God is with us and that we are living lives pleasing to Him just because we aren’t “bad?” Are we unwittingly allowing the world around us—its values and priorities—determine what is “right” or “best?” Are we slipping into a kind of entertainment coma, inoculating ourselves against the truth of God’s Word through a steady diet of lies and deception? Are we offering our uncritical devotion to people or things that are not God, nor even particularly godly, in the name of power, popularity, or politics?

While the command to be alert in the context of Sardis isn’t regarding Jesus’ second coming (I’ll explain that in a moment), His return is something that we are called to be watchful for, and Jesus issued the same command to “be alert” to His disciples, and by extension us, when He spoke of His return in Mark 13:

Mark 13:34–37 CSB

34 “It is like a man on a journey, who left his house, gave authority to his servants, gave each one his work, and commanded the doorkeeper to be alert. 35 Therefore be alert, since you don’t know when the master of the house is coming—whether in the evening or at midnight or at the crowing of the rooster or early in the morning. 36 Otherwise, when he comes suddenly he might find you sleeping. 37 And what I say to you, I say to everyone: Be alert!”

Our calling, church, is to be alert: both for His return and for His command to act in whatever way He calls us to, remaining true to Him above everything and everyone else.

B: Strengthen what remains

The second command is related to the first: strengthen what remains, which is about to die. We could take this in one of two ways: 1) strengthen the few faithful who remain (v 4); or 2) strengthen what little orthodox belief and practice the church was still holding on to, being mostly dead. I believe that because of the connection to “be alert,” Jesus means the latter: that they are to strengthen the little orthodoxy that they still hold onto, because even their grip on that is about to die. Remember that Jesus said that He had not found their works complete.

It goes back to the illustration from the city’s history: if the city had done what was prudent and right by reinforcing the watch in the appropriate places, then the city would not have fallen to the cliff-climbing invaders.

So the church needed to reinforce what little spiritual strength they had left so that they might be healed, restored, and effective again. God was calling them to discipline themselves, before He came to discipline them Himself. The author of Hebrews wrote in this regard:

Hebrews 12:12–13 CSB

12 Therefore, strengthen your tired hands and weakened knees, 13 and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated but healed instead.

Likewise, we must look to those areas of our obedience that are being eroded from beneath, those areas that may be about to die from our mindless neglect: our prayer life; our participation in the fellowship of the church family; our devotional life and intake of Scripture; our willingness to give our time, talents, and treasure for God’s purposes and glory; our desire and readiness to share the Gospel; our attitude for serving others in the love and name of Jesus; and our desire to reject sin are all things to consider.

Recall the past two messages: The church at Pergamum was distracted. They didn’t realize trouble was in their midst. Being distracted about sin leads to toleration of sin, like in the church at Thyatira. And tolerating the minor things will nearly inevitably lead to major things, which will ultimately destroy our peace, our witness, or even our lives, like here in Sardis.

C: Remember what you have received and heard

The third command to the Sardians was that they “remember what [they] have received and heard. What had they “received and heard?” Simple: the Gospel.

Paul wrote to the Corinthians:

1 Corinthians 15:3–5 CSB

3 For I passed on to you as most important what I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve.

What they had received and heard was that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, because of God’s great love for mankind, came to earth and lived a perfect life without sin, and then laid down His life by dying a criminal’s death on a cross. He did this because we all have sinned, and have not lived up to God’s perfect standard. We have rebelled against His Lordship, and have gone our own way, and as a result, we deserve to be cast away from God’s loving presence forever, eternally separated from the One who gives life. The Scriptures tell us that the wages of sin is death, so Jesus paid the penalty that we deserve because of our sin, dying in our place so that we could be forgiven through belief in what He has done, surrendering to Him as our Savior and Lord. He then overcame death by the power of the Spirit of life, rising from the grave so that if we belong to Him by faith, we receive eternal life with Him. And He is coming back to set the world right again, as I’ve already mentioned.

If you have never trusted in what Jesus has done to save you—how He took your place in the death you deserve because of your sin, and beat death in your place so that you could have eternal life—then you are still in eternal death. Stop running from God and surrender to Him in faith, and receive the gift that Jesus bought for you: salvation.

The church in Sardis was to remember, literally they were to, “keep on remembering” the Gospel. Daniel Akin put it this way:

“Again and again, daily, they needed to preach the gospel to themselves. Again and again they needed to remind themselves of what Christ had done for them through His bloody cross and glorious resurrection. He lived the life they should have lived. He died the death they should have died. He experienced the wrath of God that should have been theirs. He paid the penalty for sin that they should have paid. And He gave them the gift of eternal life they do not deserve and wrote their name in the book of life where it can never be erased.”

—Daniel Akin, Exalting Jesus in Revelation

We too must constantly preach the Gospel to ourselves. We must remember what we have received and heard, retelling ourselves over and over what Jesus has done for us. We must never find the Gospel as boring or old news, because there is no news as important as the Gospel, the good news. And we must tell others about what God has done for them in Christ.

D: Keep it

The next command that the Sardians received was that they “keep” the Gospel that they had been commanded to “remember.” To “keep” something in this context means to “guard” or to “watch over” or to “obey.”

There had been a time that the church of Sardis had been what they were supposed to be. But they had failed to guard the truth of the Gospel of life and had drifted away toward error and death.

The reality is that, spiritually speaking, we never passively drift toward anything useful. We don’t accidentally slip into truth. We don’t inadvertently grow closer to God. We do not trip and fall into holiness. Instead, we fade from truth into error. We drift away from God as we neglect our relationship with Him. We stumble into moral compromise and sin.

We are commanded, along with the church at Sardis, to keep the Gospel. And when we don’t, we are given the fifth command:

E: Repent

The church in Ephesus, having a similar problem to this church (having failed to continue in what they started with at first), was given a similar cure to the one prescribed to the Sardis church:

Revelation 2:5a (CSB)

5 Remember then how far you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first.

As I said in the sermon on the Ephesian message: Repentance is reversing course. It’s seeing you’re going the wrong way and taking the necessary corrective steps to go the right way. The Dictionary of Bible Languages defines it as “to change one’s life, based on complete change of attitude and thought concerning sin and righteousness.”

Examine your life. Where have you fallen asleep, allowed your spiritual life to become weak and useless, forgotten the wonder and beauty of the Gospel, or walked in disobedience, drifting into error and sin? The call to all of us who find ourselves identified here is to repent. To change our attitudes about sin and righteousness, submit ourselves to God through faith in Christ, and thus have our lives reworked from the inside out. Agree with God about your sin, turn away from it, surrender to Him, and start anew in Christ.

This brings us to the warning that accompanies the cure in each letter. In this case, the warning again points back to the city’s history.

Revelation 3:3b (CSB)

3 If you are not alert, I will come like a thief, and you have no idea at what hour I will come upon you.

The church is informed that, unless they make the necessary changes, Jesus would be like the thief, like the soldiers who sneaked into the city when it was unprepared, leading to its destruction.

This is Jesus promising a visit for their judgment and punishment, not His second coming. We know this because this warning to the church at Sardis is conditional: “If you are not alert...” In other words, if they make the changes, the visit would not be necessary. Jesus’s return to set the whole world right again is a guarantee. It will happen.

However, Jesus did speak of His second coming with the same kind of terminology in Revelation 16:

Revelation 16:15 CSB

15 “Look, I am coming like a thief. Blessed is the one who is alert and remains clothed so that he may not go around naked and people see his shame.”

Jesus will provide the garments to the saved, as we will see in a moment. But if you have never surrendered to Christ, you may think that you have all the time in the world. But when Jesus returns, that will be it. If you don’t belong to Him before He comes back, it will be too late. Trust in Jesus to save you today, right now even.

These commands are for all of us, that we would be the disciples that God wants us to be. And it is to those few in Sardis who were living that out that Jesus gives His commendation:

4: Commendation (v 4)

Some commentators don’t even take this as a commendation, but I disagree. It is a very positive statement about the faithful few, who likely were the last vestiges of obedience in the church.

Revelation 3:4 CSB

4 But you have a few people in Sardis who have not defiled their clothes, and they will walk with me in white, because they are worthy.

There were a few who had not “defiled their clothes.” This remnant of the faithful in Sardis were those who had not drifted, and had not soiled their lives through accommodation to the culture like the rest of the church. Interestingly enough, they were not called to flee the lifeless church, but instead to continue to walk (a euphemism for living) with Jesus. They would walk with Him in “white” because they are worthy to wear the clothing of holiness, purity, and victory, because of their faithfulness to Jesus. It’s not that they earned their salvation. It’s that they hadn’t allowed the world to stain their lives, much like what James said:

James 1:27 CSB

27 Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

Staining as over time? Picture of drift? We, like the faithful in Sardis, are called to live our lives worthy of the Gospel as well, both individually and corporately:

Philippians 1:27 CSB

27 Just one thing: As citizens of heaven, live your life worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or am absent, I will hear about you that you are standing firm in one spirit, in one accord, contending together for the faith of the gospel,

This brings us to our last point, the challenge to conquer:

5: Challenge (v 5-6)

The church at Sardis essentially had those few within her who had overcome the drift that had overtaken the church as a whole. But now Jesus called the entire church to overcome and be like those faithful few:

Revelation 3:5–6 CSB

5 “In the same way, the one who conquers will be dressed in white clothes, and I will never erase his name from the book of life but will acknowledge his name before my Father and before his angels. 6 “Let anyone who has ears to hear listen to what the Spirit says to the churches.

Like those who hadn’t soiled their clothes, those who truly belonged to Christ, and so overcame the draw of the world by the power of the Gospel would be given white clothes to wear.

But also, Jesus said that He would never erase their names from the book of life. You might be thinking, “Does this mean that their names might have been erased, as in, they could have lost their salvation?” Certainly not. Only those who belong to Jesus will conquer, only those who conquer will be will be dressed in white, and only those dressed in white have their name written in the book of life. Jesus is simply saying that once a name is recorded in the book of life, He will not blot it out.

The issue with the church at Sardis was that they had drifted so far that they were mostly dead. So it appears that the “church” was made up of the faithful few and the lost many, who only thought they were saved because of their participation in the church, not because they believed in the Gospel. That’s how far the church had drifted from its beginnings.

The reality is that the people in churches everywhere are a mixed bag of saved people and lost people. Being here this morning or having your name on the membership roll doesn’t make you saved. Being given a new life through faith in Christ is what makes you saved. The one who has been given that new life will never forsake it, because they are the ones who conquer. Since they conquer, they can never be erased.

At the end of the apocalypse, John recorded the result of the book of life:

Revelation 20:12–15 CSB

12 I also saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life, and the dead were judged according to their works by what was written in the books. 13 Then the sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them; each one was judged according to their works. 14 Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. 15 And anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.

Do you belong to God through faith in Jesus? It is only the one who does that Jesus will “acknowledge…before the Father and His angels,” which Jesus spoke of in Matthew 10 during His earthly ministry:

Matthew 10:32–33 CSB

32 “Therefore, everyone who will acknowledge me before others, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. 33 But whoever denies me before others, I will also deny him before my Father in heaven.

There is no better time to believe the Gospel, turn from your sins, and surrender to Jesus as Savior and Lord than this morning.

Closing

Like Westley in The Princess Bride, the church at Sardis actually experienced new life following this warning. Her second-century bishop (pastor), Melito, was well known, and there are archaeological ruins of Christian churches in Sardis from as late as the 6th century.

This is how we should respond to the message to the church at Sardis as well: to come alive through the power of the Gospel.

I’ve already called on those who have never trusted in Jesus to surrender this morning. The band is going to come down in a moment, and during their song, I’d like to invite you to come and share with us if this morning you’re giving up going your own way and trusting in Christ to save you.

Repentance for the church family.

Prayer

Offering

PRAYER

Closing Remarks

Bible reading (Job 5)

Pastor’s Study tonight

Prayer Meeting Wednesday

Instructions for guests

Benediction

Matthew 24:42–44 CSB

42 Therefore be alert, since you don’t know what day your Lord is coming. 43 But know this: If the homeowner had known what time the thief was coming, he would have stayed alert and not let his house be broken into. 44 This is why you are also to be ready, because the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.