Church of Sardis Pt 1

It wasn't really big, but I am going to talk about that because when you talk about something that looks alive, normally, well now that you brought it up, let's think,

I call it the three B's, but I'm going to have to thank the

Better Business Bureau, but I'm just going to be honest.

Every church I've ever been to, this is how they determined if something, these three B's, and when I get to them, you'll understand why.

This determines the life of the church, okay? Sybil and I were at First Baptist Downtown.

I don't mind saying this. We were at First Baptist Downtown for a little while, and they do their, have their missionary come in.

You might remember this. Their missionary would come in, whoever they were, their cooperative program, this guy came in, him and his wife, three weeks in a row, he came in.

They were in an undisclosed place that nobody knew in the Middle East. He says, look, we're trying to raise money. We've got to get back to finish what we were doing.

This man got up there the first week, said, hey, it's $300 ,000. The next week he got up, they didn't even come close to that amount that they needed.

This man, two weeks in a row, cried in tears. I'm willing to die over there for the cause of the gospel, and he could not get $300 ,000.

The following week, after those three weeks, this is no kidding, they decided that they were going to, they wanted to refurbish the sanctuary in there.

They need a new wall cover. There's no problem with a wall cover in there, they just wanted new, and they wanted to raise up the platform where the orchestra people played, and they wanted to put some new carpet in the building, and there was nothing wrong with the stuff that was there.

In one week, to polish up that building, $1 .2

million. My wife wanted to crawl under the chair. I'm in the balcony.

This is on a Sunday morning, and I stood up and I said, you've got to be kidding me. This man cried to go die for the gospel, and y 'all want to polish up bricks and mortar.

I was friends with the executive pastor at the time. Needless to say, me and him had a long conversation in his office about that, and he agreed with me.

Here it is, you have a guy that's willing to go die for the gospel in the Middle East, in a hostile environment, and you can't get enough money to send the guy back, but you can add money to polish up a building that was really unnecessary.

But by all means and purposes, that would have looked like a lively church.

Why? Because it's all about bigger buildings, bucks, no offense, but this is how

I've always, buts. Sorry, that keeps my three

B's going, alright? You could have said bodies. Okay, are you going to gush out better? Let me do that. But it doesn't rhyme as good.

You can't see what we saw, brother. Alright. I can't do that. I can't take it now.

Bucks. I stand corrected. Buildings, bucks, and bodies.

Don't even sound right. Don't even sound right. Because bigger the buildings, the more buildings you build, it looks like life, doesn't it?

The more money you bring in, man, you can get a bigger budget. And the bigger budget you get, the bigger what you can do.

The more stuff you can do. Now, I'm all for if you can raise your budget to take the gospel to other places.

I'm all for. I'm all for every time we do the budget, we always try to look to see if we can get more money to Scott, don't we? Always. But the more money you raise, if it's to polish this, wrong.

If it's to take the gospel, always should do that.

Always should look for how can we get the money that we get to the people and places where the gospel can be preached.

And I am more so not going where another man has laid a foundation. Me and Andy and Keith are more concerned about taking it like Scott's doing and taking it to places where the gospel has never been preached, where the name of Christ has never been proclaimed, so that people can hear that there is a

Creator, that He has sent His Son into the world, so that they can be saved from the wrath to come.

That is our conviction. That is our position at this church. That's where we're going to invest our money. Now, we're not saying, hey, if somebody comes along and says, hey, we're trying to further something that we wouldn't be open to that.

But not at this moment. That's not where. Yes, sir? Isn't it crazy to think that this day and age that there's places in the world that hasn't heard the gospel?

Yeah. It's not hard when you talk to Scott and go, hey, man, these people are still running around naked in the woods with gourds on them.

If y 'all know what I'm talking about, get on this website. You'll know. Yeah. I mean, when he walked into that place, they had never seen a white man in their life.

And here it is. He walks in and he said, man, they're naked. They're running around naked. I mean, think about those, that guy a few years ago that thought he was going to land on that uninhabited or that uncivilized island.

As soon as he got up on there, man, them bugs speared him to death. They speared him to death.

They were going to try to get vaccines and all kinds of stuff in there. And people said, no, man, they're throwing spears at helicopters and all.

So when he said, the further you get into the jungles, obviously the further away from where they are, these people have never heard it.

Now, what's the goal? The goal as the body of Christ, local and universal, local and global, is to make sure that the gospel is taken to the farthest reaches of the world.

That is the great commission, to go to the uttermost parts of the world. And I believe that that should be the goal of the church, is to put men and women in places who are willing to go, to put them in those areas where they'll be willing to die for that.

Scott's been there for something like 22 years now. You got a hand raised? No. So remember, bigger buildings or more buildings, bugs, bigger budgets, man, that place has got to be alive.

There's more money coming in. Man, I just don't sound right. Bodies. More bodies.

As a pastor, elder, and anybody in here, Andy, Burt, Keith's not in here, everybody likes to see more bodies.

Okay? Nobody likes to see empty seats. Okay? But I would rather have 30 people that are wanting to hear the word of God and worship

Him in spirit and truth than 300 that sit there like dullards. Okay?

One, what you're preaching and teaching them, they're hearing the incorruptible seed of the word of God is being implanted in their heart.

Their desire is to be conformed more to the image of the Son, and then they leave and then applying that to their life.

If all it is is, hey, we're going to check a box, we're going to show up today, we're going to sing some songs, raise our hands, and then leave, well,

I mean, the reason for coming was wrong. You know, there's many places, hey, well, the church doesn't offer this for me.

It ain't about you. It's about coming and worshiping the Creator of all things.

Actually, it's not just worshiping the Creator, the one who bled and died that you, okay,

I'm not condemning you, but you are supposed to have worshiping Him because He has changed your heart, because you love

Him, and you've been willing to serve Him till the day that you die. That's why you come to church.

That's why you should worship Him. I've actually heard people have discussions about going to a particular church, deciding on a particular church, should

I say, depending on what they have to offer. Sure. I mean, you know, some websites, and it says that.

Now, let me clarify something. I think there should, that the church should have ministry, okay, to its people.

Hey, if you're going to a church, and you're saying, hey, I want them to offer me good biblical teaching, there's nothing wrong with that.

Hey, but if you're looking for a Ferris wheel, and you're looking for, I mean,

Disneyland for the kids, that's not church, okay? It's just not church. So, this looks like life.

This looks like life. And, even in Sardis, based on what we do know in history, too, their church life did look alive.

It looked very much alive. Hey, I would even say, go so far back, even before the coming of Christ, the

Jewish culture in Sardis, because of what we know from Josephus, Antiquities, I think, yeah,

Antiquities Book 14, I think it's around Section 250 -260. Somebody can check if they want.

That's probably around where it's at. He talks about the decree that came from Julius Caesar for the

Jewish people to go back. Hey, go back to Sardis. You have religious freedom. Build you a synagogue.

You know how big of a synagogue that had been built? It was uncovered, and they date it, its last edition of it was to the 4th century

AD. But it was, it had been built long before that, held somewhat of a thousand people.

Synagogue. That's a huge, that would have been the largest synagogue in the known area.

Okay? The largest one in the known area. But, they also, what they found in that synagogue is that there was

Christian memorabilia on the walls in there, Jewish memorabilia on the walls, and pagan.

Syncretism at its best. You may know what syncretism is, where you take all these, or ecumenism, it's where you take all these beliefs and we're going to put them all on one roof.

That's what was happening there. And as we get to the end of this letter, the

Jewish, my understanding of it, it's a, Jesus makes a poke at the

Jewish synagogue here, if we get to it today. So, he is showing that, hey, what you think's alive, ain't alive.

Hey, the place was rich. The place had lots of gold, had a reputation of being a wealthy, impregnable city, had a city that had only been conquered twice and it was because the watchman had fallen asleep, and he's saying, look, but let me tell you what you are, you're dead.

Now, is this saying that everybody in that local church was unconverted?

No. When Jesus speaks to these churches, he primarily is speaking to the church as a whole.

He actually, he, this is one of the churches that gets no commendation, meaning there's nothing good that Jesus says to this church.

Absolutely nothing. Now, he does get some encouraging words to the people in there, because there are some people that are there that haven't stained their garments and we'll get to that point, but by and large he's saying, look, man, everybody in this church is dead.

Spiritually dead. What causes a church to look alive, but be dead?

Just think about just a couple of things. False worship. Embracing the culture.

Okay, yep. Let me, I don't know if I'm going to erase good.

Nope. Yeah, because I think this is important for us to look at.

Both of what you said is true. Embrace, what'd you say? Embracing the culture.

You said false worship? Yep. Anybody else? Bad theology.

That's where I was going to that's actually all these and whatever else we put down here comes from a wrong teaching of that.

Look, if we have a wrong worldview, because we're teaching wrongly about God and teaching wrongly about the doctrines that are listed out in Scripture and to be, we're going to engage the culture wrong.

And if we look at the synagogue that was over there that has been on earth and look at everything, because they begin to have a wrong view of God and a wrong view of the right doctrine, they begin to have

Jews and at the time after Christ remember this is the 60's you had the

Jews and the Christians coming together, worshipping together. Something's wrong with that. Look, when

I was over in Israel down at the Wailing Ball and me and the guy, we were talking to those people waiting for the

Messiah to come. You'd have a conversation, you'd be surprised how many people could speak English over there. It really was I was shocked.

It's like anybody you talk to can speak English. And ask them why are you doing this?

What's your goal? Do you think you're doing any good? And you bring up Jesus and it becomes a barrier.

They don't really want to talk. By and large, every one of them said yeah, but we believe in the same

God. And I had to say countless times well no we don't.

Because the New Testament says if you reject the Son, you have rejected the God of the Old Testament.

Because it was moving forward to a culmination of the Son of God, who was the embodiment of God incarnate, and he was the one who came and bore the sins of his people, including the sins of the nation of Israel, so that men and women could be saved.

And immediately nope, don't believe that. Okay. You reject the Son, you've rejected the Father. Therefore, you can't worship together.

You can't. Well, in Sardis, that's what was happening. Then, because you had a once you embrace, well we can be a little loosey -goosey on who

God is and all that, then you can embrace any other type of cultural paganism, which wound up being in that unearthed synagogue as well.

Which once you embrace the false culture, the false God, Richard, false worship.

What looked like worship, don't get me wrong, they were probably raising their hands and singing and whatever they did back then, chants or whatever.

I'm not saying any of those are wrong, but those, so on the outward perspective, that church would have looked like it was worshiping in spirit and in truth.

It may even have been a little lively. I ain't saying they had smoke and lights and all that. But then probably it was a little lively.

But no matter how godly it got, no matter how faithful they thought they were being or how tolerant they were being to those who didn't quite believe the same way that they were, but were trying to be tolerant of their neighbor.

That's loving your neighbor. No it's not. Loving your neighbor is pointing out the error of what they were doing.

Not being a jerk, but pointing out the error and the danger of that. And all of those led to the downfall of that city becoming dead.

It was a dead church. And here's, remember every one of these churches has a historical thing connected to it or something about the life of that city.

Here's Jesus. Wake up! How was the city conquered? In the night.

In the night because the watchman was asleep. Because he was asleep.

Now when it says, does anybody else say anything other than wake up? Be constantly alert.

Okay, that's the idea. When Jesus took his inner circle into the garden of Gethsemane they were to watch.

Could you not watch and pray? Could you not watch and pray? What does watch mean?

Don't fall asleep. What did they wind up doing? They had full bellies. They had just eaten the Passover.

What did they do? Fell asleep. And what happened when they fell asleep?

The thugs came to get him. And Jesus says, the time of the son of man and the time of the hour of darkness is here.

Jesus says here, wake up. Look, that means there's some of them that aren't dead.

There's some of you that just have fallen asleep. In other words, you have become ... I've got to be careful how to use the word complacent because complacent does have a good connotation.

They had become lackadaisical. They had become maybe even in a euphoric state of how alive their church appeared to be.

Jesus says, wake up and strengthen that which remains. So that means there were some people in that church that were on the verge of when

I say dying, I don't mean losing salvation. I mean on the verge of becoming useless.

Useless for ministry. Useless for the purposes and work for which the church was created.

He says, wake up and strengthen those things which remained and are about to die.

I have not found your deeds completed in the sight of my God. Now we're getting an indication of He's looking at their past deeds.

Remember, this church when it began had to be a thriving church. Why? Because it was growing. When Paul sent whoever out, whether and we'll talk about this, whether it was a papyrus or whoever or Timothy, when he went to Ephesus, wherever he was, he sent out that these were thriving churches because they were growing.

Now he's saying, look, I'm looking at your deeds now and they're incomplete. Though a

Greek word there is plurao and it actually means to not be full, to not mature.

But as I begin to look at the domain of that word, there's one that actually says it but it's not a direct meaning of the word but it said fall short.

Fall short. What does it mean to fall short? That's a sin. So look what

Jesus is saying. Your deeds are sinful in my sight. Look, if there's a goal and here it is.

But man, what is sin? Missing the mark. If this is the goal and Jesus says, hey, your works are to be complete and you fall short of that, you are,

I don't care if you go 99 .9%, you don't reach to the end like he required, you have fallen short.

You have incompleted your task. He says, your deeds are not complete in my sight or in the sight of my

God. God had through his, raise your hand. Yes, sir.

I think you got that lackadaisical lackadaisicalness you were talking about.

The fact that they were, they missed the mark but they didn't see it as I think that's the true sin right there.

I'm just being like, okay, well, you know, hey, there was no. They thought they were okay. Yeah, there was no acknowledgement of, you know.

I do believe there was self, that they were deceived. Hey, what's the, even back, if you remember when we started in Ephesus, we were looking at all the things in their life that looked like they were a loving church and I said, hey, you and I know, on the personal level, if we've let something creep within our life and Christ is not our first love.

We know that. I mean, dude, we can just look at those who are married. You let something creep into your life and you look at your marital and you go, okay, man, something's been more important than her or in her case more important than the man.

You can, you know when that happens. Well, in church life, when you get busy doing all of these ministry things, that what looks like we're doing what's good because we're checking all the boxes.

We're doing this. We're teaching. We're preaching. We're doing all of these things from the externals.

We're going, man, we're doing what is right. Well, Ephesus, I think, was deceived. They didn't know.

In this case, I believe the same thing you're saying. They didn't know. But why do you think the Son of God has come to tell them, look, what's the worst thing about being self -deceived?

You don't know it. Like taking a frog, putting it in that water and turning it on.

Or even a crab. Crabs don't start flipping around. If you put them in boiled crabs in water, they don't start flipping around until it gets too hot.

Same thing for the frog. The frog just begins to simmer in his own juices before he knows that he's... Well, this is the same way.

They did not know. They didn't know. Remember, every church doesn't start off as a failing church.

Churches that are planted start out with people that love the Lord, love His Word, love the

Gospel, and want to see disciples made. That's how churches are birthed.

Now, we don't all want to use Paul's model, which is go in, start a riot, and dip, okay? But, because that's

Paul's method. Hey, let's go in, we'll make all the Jews mad, get beat up, and then there's a church that's born.

Okay? But we do know that all the churches that were ever started were started with faithful men that loved the

Lord. Think about Thessalonica. We gotta wrap up. Think about Thessalonica. How long was

Paul there? Anybody remember? Three Sabbaths, right? Three Sabbaths. We'll just say 21 -24 days.

And he had to leave those people with baby Christians. And he left them.

And he had concern for them. And he did send people back and all that, but he left them with people that had been converted.

And when he left, they loved the Lord, they loved his word, and they wanted to see other people saved. That's how every church is to operate.

Let's see. Why don't we stop there because we've got just a couple of minutes.

Do we got any questions? Go ahead.

I see it. I see the wheels turning. Just a question about the reputation of being alive and you were dead.

So I get what you're talking about. The self -deceived. At what point...

It's not like the relevance of the question matters a lot, but at what point would you say that there is spiritual death happening in the church?

So there's obviously deception. They think that they're alive and are dead. Their works are not completely forgotten.

But at what point... That's obviously in sin as you said because as we'll go on to read it says repent.

So you can't repent of something that's not in sin. But at what point do you think that has the spiritual negation on their actual salvation?

Well, I think the church was filled because this was all... Because this was not done correctly.

All of this led to unregenerate church membership. That's my conclusion.

Look, if you have a church full of people that are unregenerate because they're coming because they like the atmosphere.

Hey, we obviously... No, I'm sorry. We should always be examining ourselves against this.

Yes. And praying for discernment. Sure. But that... And you're right.

If on the personal level people continue to examine themselves, then the church body, the church life as a whole would be better.

Keep in mind. It would be. That's true. That's true. That's true. I do believe they would have had some of the writings of Paul because when we get to Laodicea, we know that there was a circular letter that was going around.

We know Ephesians was going. There might be some differences in how we think there was a letter to Laodicea.

Some people think there was not. I think there was. We don't know. But those were letters that were circulated.

So they had the writings. Even if all they had. Let's just say all they had was the

Old Testament. Paul said that's enough. Paul said that was enough.

Even if all they had was the Old Testament. They knew you don't invite paganism into the worship.

And the church at Sardis had done that based on what we know from the synagogue that fell. But I do believe it was filled with unregenerate church membership.

Why? The church wasn't persecuted there. We have no indication that church was ever persecuted. We do know that place had a place of being alive.

I mean, we just, okay, it had been conquered twice. It had rebuilt. Never got to its glory days, though, of the way it was with the

Lydian Empire. But it always was a place of distinguishment. And even in, I just remembered this, in AD 17 major earthquake went through there.

It basically levitated Sardis. And Tiberius said, you know what?

I'm going to not have y 'all pay taxes for five years because y 'all are actually a very important city to this region.

No taxes for five years. Get up and running. And they did. Man, when we get to, not only was

Sardis hit by it, Laodicea was hit by an earthquake. And we get to the Church of Philadelphia, that poor church, that's all that ever happened to that church.

If you look in history, these churches were built on a fault line. You know, so when

Sardis was hit in 17, they were able to rebuild that city with government money, basically.

Basically like right now you got whatever's going on over there in the communist state of California.

Burning down. The government's going to send in money to help them rebuild. Just like they're doing in Asheville.

You had a natural disaster. The government sends money. That's what Rome did. They said, look, they didn't send them money.

What they did is say, you don't have to pay. The money that y 'all are paying in taxes, Sardis rebuilds. So they had a, not only did the church have a reputation of being alive but was dead, but the city, the city had a reputation of, man, just look at the constant downfalls that happened.

Hiccups in history, and they continued to thrive no matter what.

Jesus is saying, yeah, but you're dead. But you're dead. But to answer your question, yeah, I think unregenerate church membership.

Not examining those who were coming into the body and going, hey, you say you believe in the

God of Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but you're rejecting the Son of the Living God. You can't worship here.

You can't worship here because it's idolatry. Now that you asked the last question, you can praise him.

Oh, I'm sorry, Ben. No, it was pretty much just kind of going in line with his question, and I think you asked it.

But when you start putting your doctrine, when your doctrine isn't above all those things, then all those things will end up being on top of the doctrine won't matter.

This begins to dictate what you believe about this. I always look at it this way.

If you put

God and man on the teeter -totter, one, they're never level because he's the creator.

If you elevate God, you put man beneath him, your anthropology, your belief about God will begin to be correct.

Look, we all won't come save knowing everything. We learned. We learned of the day we died. But anytime this goes up, he goes down, wrong every time.

This should always be, if you have a right view of God, your anthropology, meaning the study of man, will be correct.

If you have a wrong view of man, I mean a high view of man, you will always have a low view of God.

Look, we're created in his image, but we ain't God's. You'll pray for us? Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time that we can spend in your

Word, we can spend studying and being taught. Lord, we just ask that you would give us the grace in this church to be alive for you and that we would guard our hearts and examine ourselves, that we would keep those garments white and pure in your sight.

Lord, we just ask for the coming time of worship that you would be with us and help us to worship you in spirit and truth, in hearts that are full of gladness for what you've done for us.