To the Church in Sardis — John Blanchard

I think this is a classic case of wanting to begin by saying something good and gracious and warm. Like good gracious it's warm in here. I really don't know what the solution to the problem is. Maybe there is none other than that we evacuate the church and hold the meeting out of doors.

That would meet with wholehearted approval from all the fans tonight. Not my fans, the fans that I can see everywhere. I thought for a moment this was Tokyo and not Aberystwyth. I know it's Aberystwyth.

The spelling is easier in Tokyo, but I imagine that if we did move outdoors that would confuse all the arrangements and so we must stay where we are. No apology must be made for the heat, but I realize that it's distressing to you and it's no less distressing here, I assure you.

I'm not sure how long ago I was invited to speak at this particular service, but I do know that the correspondence in preparation for tonight has been carried out meticulously and courteously by the secretary involved.

I want to read to you three things that he said in his last letter about the rally tonight. The first was that there would be a congregation of a thousand or thereabouts. Now in that I understand he's told the truth.

We have just under a thousand in the sanctuary here. The television room, the overflow room as I understand it, is completely filled and for all I know there were those therefore who were actually turned away tonight, so at least we know that that part was correct.

The second thing he says is this, a large proportion are usually under 30 years of age. That's the most interesting phrase when you think of it. I thought that once you reached 30 years of age you'd had it, but apparently those here are usually under 30 years of age.

Maybe it all depends what kind of meeting they want to get into and then they revert to being under 30 years of age. Maybe what he really wants to say is that a large number of people here are under 30 years of age and that obviously is true.

I want more interestingly to tell you the third thing that he says in this letter. In a congregation of a thousand there are always quite a number of nominal Christians and so in the course of the correspondence I was very specifically mandated to bring an evangelistic thrust at this particular rally, but let me go back to that phrase.

In a congregation of a thousand there are always quite a number of nominal Christians. Let me just explain to you what that word nominal means. It has to do with having a name. It means there are a number who have the name of being a Christian, but the inference from the letter is that they are not.

And as soon as I read that my mind went to the letters to one of the churches in the book of Revelation where precisely that was said of one of these congregations of people. It was said that they had a name or as we have it in the New International Version, you have a reputation of being alive, but are dead.

Nominal Christianity and the Church in Sardis

And it is this matter of being nominal or having a name or having a reputation of being a Christian that I want to link with that particular phrase in Revelation about the alternative which is this. You have a name or a reputation or a label if you like that you are a Christian, but the fact of the matter is that you are dead.

And in our prayer earlier in the service we were warmly reminded that that is the alternative. That the alternative to being a Christian is not merely to be a non-Christian. It is in fact to be spiritually dead.

To be separated from God not only essentially and really now, but unless there is a miracle of divine grace in the heart of the person concerned to be separated from God in hell forever. So it is a matter of tremendous importance that we address ourselves tonight to those who according to this letter and in fact are nominal Christians.

Now the gospel is a glorious thing to all the people of God and there is therefore a sense in which the message tonight is to everyone. It is to them in the sense that it will be preached to everyone, but there is a deeper sense in which it is for, it is specifically and definitely for those among you both here live in the sanctuary, there in the overflow room, maybe listening to this message by tape or watching it by video who are at this very point in time even as I speak nominal Christians.

You have a name that you are a Christian. You came perhaps with a group of young people from an evangelical church. You're a member of the youth camp. You're mixing in all of these Christian activities.

You're joining in Christian devotions. You're singing Christian hymns. You're listening to the preaching from the Christian's Bible. You are surrounded by Christian words and phrases and activities. But deep in your heart where there can be no pretense, you know even as I speak that there is something essential that is missing and that is that you have the name, you have the label of being a Christian, but the reality is not there.

And for you Christianity is a performance and not an experience. And it is to you very particularly that I want to address this message tonight. And I want to do so in this way. I want to ask whether there is a way in which we can, as it were, boil down, concentrate this matter of what it is to be a Christian, can we reduce it to a minimum number of statements so that in looking at that statement we can say this, if these things are true of you then you are a Christian.

If these things are not true of you then you are not a Christian whatever else you may be. And I've thought about that a very great deal and I've come to the conclusion that we can reduce this matter of being or not being a Christian to this irreducible minimum which I'm going to give you in the way of tests if you like.

They're not tests of ability or of mental agility or of performance or of morality, but they are nevertheless tests. And if we hold with that word test for a moment, but don't use the word pass, we may say this, as these tests are applied to you, I want you to answer yes or no to the questions that are stated in them.

And here is the first. They are all of course connected with the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. If I put them for a moment in the form of a statement and then in the form of a question you'll see exactly what I mean.

Christ’s Uniqueness in Conception and Teaching

In the first place, a Christian must be convinced about Christ. He must be convinced about Christ. You see, Christianity is based not on philosophy, not on a collection of religious ideas, Christianity is based not on philosophy, but upon history, not on ideas, but upon events.

And those events centered in the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And as we survey all the billions of people, if we could conceive of doing that, who have ever lived on planet earth and then had before us the person and the work of this man, Jesus Christ, we would have to come to this conclusion, that in all the vast parade and cavalcade of humanity, this man, Jesus, was unique.

Now there is a sense in which grammatically we must not add any other word to that. You cannot have very unique or especially unique or particularly unique. Unique is unique. One only, no other like him in the whole of history.

Let me mention some areas in which he was unique. He was unique in his conception, not incidentally in his birth. As a matter of shorthand, we speak about the virgin birth, but as a matter of fact, as far as we understand it from the scriptures, the birth of Jesus was no different essentially from yours and mine.

He was ejected from his mother's womb by exactly the same biological and muscular processes as you and I were. Let me put it to you this way. What makes Jesus unique is not how he came from the womb, but how he entered it.

And Jesus entered his mother's womb, not by any human sexual activity, not even by an activity properly conducted within the bounds of marriage. Jesus entered the womb of the Virgin Mary as the result of a miraculous operation of God the Holy Spirit.

The power of the Most High overshadowed that beautiful young woman and the thing that was conceived in her was of the Holy Ghost. He was unique in his conception. He was unique in his life and in so many areas of his life.

In his words, for instance, in a nation that was spilling over with rabbis and gurus and teachers of religious faith in one degree or another, there were those who, having heard Jesus speak, said this, no one ever spoke like this man.

And on another occasion, this man spoke as one who had authority. He had authority. He was not like one of the other teachers of the law with derived authority. And the very best that they could do would be to thumb around religious documents and come up with statements and seek to expound them.

Jesus spoke as one who had authority. Indeed, he was even to take the Old Testament in his hand and the interpretation given by religious leaders in the other, and to say this, now you have heard it said, but I say unto you.

And the inference was clear. It really doesn't matter who the teacher was, what his interpretation was, what his school of thought was, what his own ideas were. You have heard it said, but I am telling you what the word of God means.

I have authority to do so. He was unique in his miracles. Of course, there were miracles before Jesus came. There were miracles in the Old Testament. There were miracles before and after Jesus in the New Testament.

But the difference, the difference when we come to the miracles of Jesus is this, that there was in the life, in the miracles of Jesus, a wholesale onslaught on the forces of evil. And that onslaught carried out in his own strength, by his own will, in his own name, when he chose to do so.

It seemed that the working of the miracle was a matter of his decision, of his choice, of his volition, and of his power. He was unique in his character. There is no one else in the whole of humanity of whom this could be said.

He was tempted in every way, just as we are, yet was without sin. Now, that is an axiomatic statement of the Christian faith. Of course, it's one thing to say that a person is sinless. It's another thing to prove it.

It's one thing to claim that one's hero is without sin. It's quite another thing to produce the evidence. Now, what is the evidence for the sinlessness, the perfection of the man called Jesus? Let me give you just four pieces of evidence, and they're all very remarkable.

Evidence for the Sinlessness of Jesus

In the first place, his enemies admitted it. Those who statedly, or by their own lifestyles or actions, showed themselves to be the enemies of Jesus Christ, in the few hours surrounding his death, were unanimous in substantiating his own claim to be sinless.

The judge, Pontius Pilate, said, I find no fault in this man. The judge's wife said, have nothing to do with that just man. Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him, said, I've sinned, I have betrayed innocent blood.

The Roman centurion in charge of the execution squad says, this was a righteous man. The dying thief, admitting his own guilt and accepting what the law had to say about that, told his fellow criminal, we receive the due reward of our sins.

But this man has done nothing amiss. His enemies admitted it. His followers believed it. People like Saul of Tarsus, who at one stage went around with authority given to him from the ruling religious powers, authority to find Christians wherever he could, to root them out of their homes, to fling them into prison, and if necessary, into the grave for naming the name of Christ.

This man, Saul, of whom someone has said that he packed one of the keenest human brains ever to exist on the human earth into his skull. This man, Saul of Tarsus, was eventually so arrested by the evidence that he was able to write, he did no sin.

And followers who were to pay with their own lives because of their adherence to Christ, were prepared to die rather than to change their minds about him on the evidence that lay before them and on the experience that they had had of him.

His closest friends noticed it. And if to get evidence of goodness and certainly of perfection from your enemies is an extraordinary source of such evidence, then to get the same evidence from your closest friends is even more remarkable.

If you meet someone casually and for a brief moment or so, a day or so, perhaps a holiday acquaintance, one can at times feel that one has met someone so beautiful and lovely, and I choose those words carefully, or handsome, or intelligent, or all of those things together if the sun gets really warm and you feel that you've met someone of such surpassing beauty and wonder and loveliness and intelligence and handsomeness and all the rest of it that you fondly imagine there can't be anything possibly wrong with them.

And it's only when you've celebrated your 25th wedding anniversary with them you find out. You see, it's the people that we live with and spend time with who know most about us. And the very people who lived and moved and walked and talked and worked and rested with Jesus, who saw him in the time of popularity, who saw him under oppression and opposition, who saw him when he was lonely and alone, who saw him when he was surrounded by the crowds, these very people said, we have never found a single fault in him.

Peter says, he did no sin. Now, that's really enough. You can't add anything to that, but Peter does. Peter says, he did no sin, neither was there guile found in his mouth. Now, why did Peter add that?

We are not told. Can I give a sanctified guess? It is because the tongue is so ready to trip us up. It is with the tongue that we so easily make a mistake. There are people of whom we might say, well, their actions basically are just fine.

They behave so well, but just occasionally there's a word, a slip of the tongue, a slight exaggeration, a half-truth. And Peter nails that one and says, before you say, I'm sure he said something wrong just once, not even with his mouth.

His closest friends noticed it. If that's a remarkable piece of evidence, the last piece is even more remarkable. He himself claimed it. He himself claimed it. I don't know how much Christian biography or autobiography you've read, but if you've read a great deal, I'm sure you will have discovered this, that the godlier a person appears to be, the less godly they claim to be.

I remember passing a church on one occasion and seeing one of these wayside pulpits outside. Some of them are very clever. Some of them are abysmal. This was about halfway between the two. This is what it said, great men never think they're great.

Small men never think they're small. And I drove along there having an identity crisis in the car. Let me add something to that. Godly men never think they're godly. Godly men never think they're godly.

And it doesn't matter which part of the Christian church you read. If you read Thomas Akempis on the one hand or John Wesley on the other, George Whitfield, you would find them all saying the same thing.

I feel so wretched and miserable and soaked in sin. And we would hold them up, I choose the word carefully, we would hold them up as holy men of God. I know of only one exception in the whole of autobiographical comment among religious men in the experience of humanity, and it's Jesus of Nazareth.

He lifted his eyes to his father in heaven and said, I do always those things that please my father, always. I always do what pleases God. There's nothing I ever do with which God is not totally and completely satisfied.

I have the smile of God upon every thought that passes through my mind, every action that occupies my body, every word that I speak. I do always those things that please my father. Do you know of anyone who could say that?

He looked at the world around him and said, which of you convinces me of sin? Which of you convicts me of sin? Now you are a religious people and you read the scriptures and you have some conception of the holiness of God and you can sniff a sin out a mile away, particularly someone else's.

Which of you has found a fault in me? Nobody said a word. And then as it were, he peered down into the depths of hell and said, the prince of this world has no effect on me. The devil has no effect on me.

All of his blandishments, all of his temptations, all of his allurements, all of his attacks, they don't have any effect on me. None whatever. They haven't left a single stain on my character or my conscience.

My friends, let me ask you. Do you know of anyone who could look up to God and say, everything I do pleases God? Who could look around his contemporaries and say, which of you can find a single fault in me?

And can peer over and look into the face of the devil and say, and you have no effect on me, whatever. The man we are speaking of is Jesus of Nazareth. His life was unique. His death was unique. It was unique because it was a voluntary death.

Jesus is the only person in all of history to have volunteered to die. You say now, wait a moment, that's just slightly exaggerated. Because for instance, the soldier who goes to war volunteers to die.

The person who commits suicide, you may say, volunteers to die. But you're wrong. The suicide doesn't volunteer to die. He chooses the day, the date, the time, the place, the method. But he doesn't choose to die.

He doesn't have that choice. You and I don't have the choice to die. Though we may take the law into our own hands and choose the day and the method and the time. But we cannot choose to die. We have many choices to make in life.

So many young people here tonight with many of the major choices yet to make. But one of the choices that you do not have to make, because it is not yours to make, is the choice whether to die or not to die.

You don't have the liberty of weighing up all the evidence and saying, well, I've heard so many things about dying and it seems to be so painful and so harrowing and it hurts so many people, I think I'll opt against that.

And choose not to die. You don't have that liberty. But Jesus, the scripture says, became obedient unto death. He said on another occasion, no man takes my life from me. I have power, and the word means authority.

I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. But no man takes it from me. I am specifically volunteering to die. Here's the second thing that made his death unique. It was not only voluntary, it was vicarious.

If I can put it in a startling way, Jesus was a vicar. Because the word means one who acts in the place of others. The Bible teaches us that death is the result, the inevitable result of sin. That it was by one man that sin came into the world and death by sin.

Before sin came into the world, there was no such experience as human death. When sin came into the world, there could be no other human experience except death. Death is the inevitable result of sin.

But here we have a conundrum. Here is a man without sin. Here is a man without that cause of death, if you like. When I left school, I went to work in the Registrar General's office in the Channel Island of Guernsey, place where they recorded all the births, marriages, and deaths on the island.

It was a wonderful place to work. It saved you buying a newspaper. You knew everybody's business. And I can still remember at this long range, the very first time and the hundreds of times afterwards that I wrote a death certificate.

It was an unnerving experience. It really was. So much so that how many years afterwards, 30 years afterwards and more, I can remember, I can remember the words that I wrote in that column, cause of death.

The certificate began with the serial number, then the date of death, then the name of the person, then the age of the person, then the parents of that person, their home address, and then that awful, awful column, cause of death.

And I can still remember it. I can remember some of those long, complicated medical terms all of those years ago. Arteriosclerotic degeneration of the myocardium. I can remember that as if I wrote it today.

And a strange sensation went through me when I wrote that. Because although here was a human being, someone who two or three days ago was alive, maybe not as fit as I am, but was alive, may be able to speak and converse, and now they're dead.

And the thing that has brought them from there to there is this. But there is a deeper sense in which the thing that brought them from there to there was not that long medical term, but a much shorter biblical one, and that is sin.

Because at the end of it all, it was sin that brought into the human frame disease and decay and deterioration and ultimately and inevitably death. But here was a man with no sin. And yet here is that same man experiencing all the horror of death.

Both physical death and spiritual death. That is to say, separation from God. So that there upon the cross he can cry, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? What a conundrum. Impossible of solution.

That the man without sin bears all the consequences of sin. Impossible of solution except for this tremendous biblical statement. Christ died for our sin. He was unique in his death. He was unique in his resurrection.

The Uniqueness of Christ’s Resurrection

Now there were those who were raised from the dead in the Old Testament, and there were many in the New, both before and after the resurrection of Jesus. I'm sometimes bemused by the statement that says, and I paraphrase, that the bodies of many Christians who were in the graves arose after Jesus' resurrection and went into the city.

And having been in Jerusalem many times, I must say that my imagination runs riot at the thought of people coming out of the Damascus Gate on a Monday morning and being met by crowds of people that they buried in the previous 10 years.

And apparently that is the sort of thing that happened. Then what is unique about the resurrection of Jesus? Let me give you one example of a resurrection before his. The widow of Nain's son. Here he is being carried to the cemetery.

And Jesus comes, stops the procession, speaks the word. The man is raised to life. Now listen. What is the very first thing that young man or that man does? What's the first thing he does? Let me tell you.

He begins to die all over again. Can I try to illustrate this? Here he is, perhaps in the fullness of life, and he totters and dies. And he's being carried along to the cemetery. Jesus speaks and he rises up and is alive again and begins to die.

I don't mean he keels over straight away or that he died 10 minutes later or the next day or the next month or the next year. We're not told. But one thing is absolutely certain. There is now a grave in Israel containing the body of that man who was raised from the dead.

He was alive, he died, he was raised from the dead and he promptly died all over again. And that is true of everyone who was raised from the dead except one. And he being raised from the dead dies no more.

Death has no more dominion over him. He's alive. He's alive. And we are here not in the name of someone who lived 2 ,000 years ago and is dead. We are here in the name of someone who died 2 ,000 years ago and is alive.

He's alive. He's alive. And we are here not in the name of someone who lived 2 ,000 years ago and is dead. We are here in the name of someone who died 2 ,000 years ago and is alive. His resurrection is unique.

Christ’s Claims to Be Lord and Savior

His claims were unique. I am the light of the world. He who follows me will not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except by me.

I am the water of life. I am the bread of life. Who else could make claims like that? And above all, there was this stupendous claim when someone came to him and said, Show us the Father and that will be sufficient for us.

Can I just fill in a tiny bit of background? I'm sure in that questioner's mind was this. You've spoken about the kingdom of God and the love of God and the power of God and the law of God and the beauty of God and the wonder of God.

But you see, we're practical people. If you could show us God, that would clinch it. And Jesus said, Have I been with you for so long and you don't know who I am? If you've seen me, you've seen the Father.

Now, what do I mean by saying you must be convinced about Christ? Jesus said, If you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins. My dear friend, I want to ask you tonight.

Are you convinced about Christ? Let me read you this statement by C .S. Lewis. You can shut him up. That is Jesus for a fool. You can spit at him and kill him as a demon. Or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God.

But let us not have any of this patronizing nonsense about him being just a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. Let me ask you before I go on to the second statement much more briefly.

Are you convinced about Christ? Not merely that he was born of the Virgin Mary, that he lived a perfect life, that he repulsed all the attacks of the enemy, that he died in the place of sinners on the cross, that he rose again from the dead.

But are you convinced that Jesus Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords? Not only as fully man as if he were not God, but as fully God as if he were never man. Are you convinced about Christ? If you are not, then you are not a Christian.

And if you are, you're one third of the way to being one. Let me say a second thing very much more briefly. You must be convinced by Christ. You must be convinced about him. Forgive me, you must be convicted by him.

Conviction of Sin Under God’s Law

You see, the biography at which we've looked not only tells us something about the life of Jesus, it says something about your life and mine. And essentially what it says is told us in a verse that perhaps everyone in the auditorium knows tonight, and it's this, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

I used to think that this phrase about the glory of God was a very, very nebulous kind of phrase, very difficult to pin down. What does the glory of God really mean? Well, I believe that in this connection and in this context, we can take a biblical phrase and say this, that the glory of God is revealed to us in the face of Christ.

That is in the life of Jesus. And that as we've read of that sinless and perfect life, we are seeing the glory of God manifested in a human being. And scripture's verdict is all of us have sinned and do continue to fall short of the glory of God that we see revealed here in the face of Christ.

Let me say three simple things about that statement. It's a very sweeping statement. It says all have sinned. There are no exceptions to it. It doesn't say we've all sinned in the same way. It doesn't say we've all sinned to the same degree.

It doesn't say we've all sinned with the same amount of knowledge, the same understanding of what we were doing. But it does say that all of us have sinned, that none of us can plead not guilty to breaking the law of God, even if we feel that there are parts that we're not conscious of breaking or of breaking to such an extent.

I want you to imagine that tonight, in fact, it would have been easier to give the illustration of arriving here because I've driven nearly 300 miles today and just a few minutes late in getting here and I screamed into the main street of Aberystwyth, wherever that might be, at about 50 miles an hour.

And I met at the end of the street by a charming-looking gentleman in a lovely dark blue uniform with silver buttons down the front, who stops me and says, name and address, please. And when I ask why, he says, because I'm going to book you.

And I say, what for? He said, well, you were speeding. The speed limit here is 20 or 30 or whatever it is. And I say, well, now, before you say another word, would you allow me to say something? I happen to have worked in legal circles for many years and I have a copy of the Road Traffic Act in front of me.

And I'd like to point out some of the provisions to you. First of all, it says that I have to have a valid driving license and maybe you'd like to sit, not at the back, just the front, please. And there it is.

Please don't look at what's written on the back. Some friends in Swansea have added something. Just a bit on the front. Just a bit on the front. I have a valid driving license. Clause number two says I've got to have an insurance certificate.

Would you like to see that? I've got it here. It's all paid up. Number three says I've got to have two white lights on the front of the car. Would you like to check? And two red ones on the back. Would you like to have a look at that?

And that the tread on the tires, number six, says the tread on the tires has to be a certain... Would you like to look at that? And now let's imagine that there are 100 clauses. And I go through 96, 97, 98, 99.

And I've kept all of those. Now, sir, you're a reasonable man. You're not going to book me for breaking one miserable little clause in the Road Traffic Act when I've kept 99. Do you know what he'd say?

Well, goodness. Oh, boy, oh, I'd never thought of that. That's fine. You must be the best driver in England, just... and in Wales. Just go home and forget about it. Of course he would. He would say, sir, if you finished, I am not interested in how many parts of the law you have kept.

I'm interested in the one you have broken. And in breaking that part of the law, the law stands broken. Briefly, one other simple illustration. School playground, ball goes through the window. The headmaster forbids any further football to be played in the playground.

Maybe we ought to say any further cricket to be played. We don't play that anyway. So that's probably a good kind of illustration. And one little boy just can't resist it. And a couple of weeks later, he brings the ball into the playground, goes straight through the headmaster's window.

Lovely new window, boy brought before the headmaster. And the headmaster says, do you know what the law said? Yes, I do. Do you know how much it's going to cost to repair that window? No, sir, I don't.

It's going to cost 100 pounds. And will you please go and tell your father 100 pounds to repair that window? The boy says, can I just say something? The hole in that window measures about two inches by three.

I've not even touched all of that part of the window. I make it about 57 P, including VAT. Would he get away with that? Of course he wouldn't. And you may feel tonight, well, there are things I haven't done.

I've not committed murder. I've not committed adultery. I've not robbed people. I've not been violent. I've not done so many things. I've not been antisocial in my behavior. Do you remember the reading earlier in the service of a man who felt just like that?

Marched up and down in front of the temple and said, God, I want to thank you. But I'm not like other men. They're robbers, evildoers, adulterers, or even this tax collector. And while I'm about it, let me tell you all the good things I do.

I fast twice a week. I don't really have to do that. That's beyond the call of duty religiously. And I give 10 of all of my income to religious work. I'm such a good person. And all of these bad things I have not done.

And that man was rejected from the kingdom of God. But the man who was accepted was the man who was convicted by the law of God, who would not so much as lift up his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast and said, God, be merciful to me, the sinner.

You see, it's a very sweeping statement. It's a very simple statement. All have sinned. There is only one definition of sin in the Bible. And it's this. Sin is lawlessness. That's the only definition of sin in the Bible.

It's lawlessness. It is a spirit that says, I want to do these things. There is no law in this country that says you must steal, you must rob, you must be violent, you must be impure, you must be envious, you must be jealous, you must lie, you must be dishonest.

There's no law that says we have to do those things. We do those things because we want to do those things. Because there is a spirit of lawlessness and rebellion and godlessness in our hearts by nature.