Revelation, chapter 3, again. Revelation, again, chapter 3. Now, for the first time, we've made our way through chapter 2, through four of these churches. We have three left. It's interesting, we don't normally conclude things at the same time, but this short sort of mini-series, we'll have two more Lord's Days, Lord willing, after tonight. And then after today, after this morning, we have two more in Hebrews as well. But we come tonight to Revelation chapter three. We'll read verses one to six, the message to the church in Sardis. Let's stand for this reading of God's word. This is the word of the Lord. And to the angel of the church in Sardis write, the words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up and strengthen what remains and is about to die. For I have not found your work complete in the sight of my God. Remember then what you received and heard, keep it and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you. Yet you have still a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with me in white, for they are worthy. The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life. I will confess his name before my father and before his angels. He who has an ear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches. As for the reading of God's word, you can be seated. You likely have all had that experience where you're so tired that you feel as though you can't go on. You have to sleep wherever the nearest place you can find to lie down would be. And then all of a sudden, you begin to doze off and then something happens. Maybe you're startled. You wake up very quickly and then all of a sudden, somehow, you're no longer tired. You are very much awake, wide awake. This really is what the words of the Lord Jesus to the church in Sardis is meant to do. They are described as being dead, as being asleep, as only having a name. or a reputation that actually is not true by the Lord's assessment. And here they are sleeping and he comes to them with these startling words that are meant to awaken them and lead them to repentance. I mentioned just a minute ago that the Lord speaks of their only having a name. That's the essence of what it is to be nominal. a church or a Christian in name only. This is really what we find here in the church in Sardis. They are a nominal church, and so as we consider the church in Sardis tonight, we are really going to see, we're going to find what a nominal church needs to do. And what that is, is this, that nominal churches must repent by waking from their slumber and sloth. And we're combining a lot of things here, deadness, drowsiness, nominalism. But we're putting all that together to say this nominal churches must repent by waking from their slumber and sloth. We're going to note this under four headings, so four points tonight. We'll see, first of all, the Lord's penetrating diagnosis. We'll see that in verse one. We'll see the Lord's prescription for healing. In verse 2 and into the first part of verse 3, in the latter part of verse 3, we'll see the Lord's threat to those who are asleep. And then finally, in verses 4 to 6, we'll see the Lord's promise to those who overcome. Kevin mentioned the alliteration of the sermon points this morning. We've got three out of four here, but not entirely. So the Lord's penetrating diagnosis, the Lord's prescription for healing, the Lord's threat to those who are asleep or remain asleep, and the Lord's promise to those who overcome. Let's go back to verse 1 and see first the Lord's penetrating diagnosis. Just as it is with all of these letters, it opens up with a description of Christ, really a self-disclosure of who he is, a revelation of his character, his person, and it draws on the vision, again, as we've seen this so far, it draws on that vision that John received of the exalted Christ back in chapter 1. Here we're told that this is the one speaking to the church in Sarnas. He's the one who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I was once having a conversation with a man who had told me he had come to Christ and then he had discovered that there were ten members of the Trinity because Revelation describes seven spirits of God. We know the book of Revelation is a book that is very symbolic. When we read of a description of seven, that's the number of completion or perfection. This is the, it is a brimming description of the one Holy Spirit. It is Christ who has, of course, the fullness of the Spirit's anointing. It's a full description of the Holy Spirit. That's what is meant by the seven Spirits of God. It is the Spirit of Christ who burns on the lampstands. And remember, the lampstands are the seven churches. And those seven stars are representing the seven churches as well. And so the Lord has those. He is the one who has the seven spirits and he has the seven stars. He is the one who has the fullness of the spirit, which enables the lampstands to shine and to witness for Christ. But he's also the Lord of his church. He grips them in the palm of his hand. And so this is who is speaking again to the churches. in particular here to the church in Sardis. Just as he's revealed to the other churches, so he does with Sardis in verse number one, he says, I know your works. Now, he is the the Lord who is prepared to give his assessment of the church, as we've seen with all of these And this letter does not take the form of what we said that the first one took something like a compliment sandwich where he had something commendable to say and then the criticism or rebuke and then followed that up with a word of comfort. No, here the Lord gets directly to the point. He comes at them with this rebuke. He says, I know your works and this is it. You have the reputation of being alive. But you are dead. And we started this evening by speaking of this notion of being asleep and the Lord startling us with his words, calling us out of our slumber. And we'll come to that again soon enough. But the first thing Jesus says is actually worse than them being asleep. He says, in fact, you're dead under this examination. This is the diagnosis that he gives. The penetrating diagnosis, like an x-ray, he is able to see under the surface. He says, I know your works, you have the reputation, literally its name, we'll come to that at the very end, we'll put all these terms for name together. This is what the world sees, or this is what men see. You have a reputation for being alive, but this is what the Lord sees here. You are dead. We might say, in a sense, this is an autopsy of a dead church. as the Lord gives this penetrating diagnosis. And in many ways, in this regard at least, other ways we'll point to in a moment, but in this regard, they were very much like the city of Sardis. Sardis was a city that once had a great reputation. It was once known for its strength and power, had great fame, but no longer. It was a city that had many hills and those hills were really made up of a cemetery, a city that lived off of its former reputation. Its former glory now is gone. And like that cemetery that filled its hills, it is full of death. And that is really exactly what the Lord is saying about this church. You have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Now, we don't really read about the threat of persecution here, as we do in some of the letters to the other churches. And so it seems that the situation here, maybe in Sardis, is more peaceful than, say, in Smyrna, where they're being threatened to be put to death, or in Pergamum, where they dwell, where Satan's throne is. There seems to be a relative peace here in the church in Sardis, but as someone has said, it's the peace of a cemetery. The peace has to do with their deadness here. They're described, the churches, in similar terms as the city of Sardis itself. It has a reputation, but there is no life there. And maybe that was the problem. Maybe the church, or rather the culture, had too much of an influence, and the church had become too much like the city and culture in which it found itself. It has a reputation. It has a name. but it has no life. Name only. That is the definition of a nominal church. And just like, of course, a great cemetery can be filled with headstones, can be filled with headstones with names all over them, so a dead church can have plenty of names on its roll and yet be full of dead men's bones. But with this penetrating diagnosis, we also find now the Lord tells them what they're to do. This is the Lord's prescription for healing. As we move on now to verses two and three, wake up, he says, verse two, wake up and strengthen what remains and and is about to die. Now the Lord's assessment of them is really the exact opposite of Pergamum. If we go back to Pergamum, you see in verse number 13 that there were those who, it was not verse 13, he said of the church in Thyatira, verse 19, I know your works, your love, your faith and service and patient endurance that your latter works exceed the first. Thyatira was a church that, things went better as they matured, they developed as they went along, but look at the church in Sardis here. Wake up and strengthen what remains, this is verse 2, it's about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. They're the opposite of the last church, the church in Thyatira there. They somewhere had deviated from the path of faithfulness. They had lost their zeal. They had become slothful. They had gone off the course in order to take a nap. And it's time for them to wake up, to remember, to repent. He says, remember, verse three, what you received and heard. Keep it, repent, strengthen what remains. And yet, as we read of this being, this church being dead in verse one, we might say in the words of the princess bride that they were only, mostly dead. Because if you look at verse two, he says, strengthen what remains and is about to die. So it wasn't completely dead. There's still hope in other words. And then in verse four, he says, you, you still haven't few names in Sardis. Those who have not soiled their garments. This is, this should be really encouraging here. It's a remarkable thing. that dying churches still have hope through repentance. Many times when we see churches that are dying and as we think of our own denomination and the mainline from which the PCA broke off from and how that mainline church has been declining for years and years and years and years. of steady decline. Yet, this could strengthen our prayers, just as in our 50th anniversary this summer, 50th General Assembly, the PCA wrote again to its mother church, calling her to repentance. Typically, when we see doctrinal infidelity, when we see things like this, we write them off, and yet the Lord is still holding out his hands to this dying church. It's quite remarkable that there is still hope through repentance. This is akin, though, to a physician, as we used the analogy of an x-ray earlier, stating a diagnosis and telling you there is a treatment, but the treatment is urgent. He is saying, wake up, strengthen what remains, and it's about to die. Here's the problem. You are dead and dying, and if you don't repent, I'm coming to judge you, he will go on to say, we'll get to in a moment, in verse three. But this is the treatment. You're sure to die from this if we don't operate. And what is that treatment? Well, what is the treatment for, well, it's always a treatment for spiritual sickness that's leading to death. Again and again, it's repentance. It's turning away and taking a new course. It's not enough here to mourn. Mourning is part of repentance, of course. We ought to mourn over our sin. But they aren't just to mourn the fact that, well, we started off well, but we did not continue. They're not just to mourn the fact that they have a reputation but they're just a nominal church. No, they are to actually repent. The understanding of their condition is to be followed by action. That's what repentance is. It's a change of mind that leads to a change of course. That's the path to recovery. That path is not going to be overnight. Of course, it can begin immediately, but it's going to take time. The path to repentance may be long, it may be arduous, there may be difficulties, surely there will be difficulties along the way, but it must begin now, when he says, wake up. It's time to wake up. Strengthen what remains, remember what you've seen, what you've heard, what you've received, keep it, repent. Sinclair Ferguson said that symptoms of spiritual sickness require radical spiritual surgery. And here this church is it needs to submit itself to the great physician, the one who's given this penetrating diagnosis and is telling them what the remedy is so that they might be truly healed and restored. It is to repent. But what will happen if they don't? What will happen if they continue to sleep? Well, he tells us now in the latter part of verse three, we've seen the Lord's penetrating diagnosis, his prescription for healing. Now we see his threat, the Lord's threat to those who are asleep. Verse three, remember then what you've seen, what you've received and heard, keep it and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief and you will not know at what hour I will come against you. So the Lord's calling to them like an alarm. It's time to get up. It's just like when that alarm goes off tomorrow morning on Monday morning. Um, and you want to hit the snooze button, but you know, you've got to get up. Well, this is, this is, there are those in Sardis who may be like that. They prefer their sleep. He says, if you won't wake up, the Lord's calling to them and they're just hitting the snooze button again and again. He says, if you will not wake up, then he's going to come against them. They're putting themselves under this liability, which is the Lord's visitation. And as we've seen in the previous instances, in the previous churches, in the previous letters, that the Lord's visitation is not a pleasant one. It's not a pleasant one here. He says, I will come like a thief and you will not know at what hour I will come against you. This is a threat. This is as we prayed earlier, these are the things that we are to tremble at that should lead us to repentance. He's coming against them. Now, when we see this language of coming like a thief in the night, that is to say that it will be unbeknownst to them. If they're going to remain asleep, then they're going to be unaware when he comes in, just like a thief breaking in when the master of a house is asleep. And of course, our minds go to the Gospels, right? We think of Christ when he spoke of his coming in this way. And while we do think of his final return, yet We've already said this, but these comings, these visitations in chastening, they're harbingers of what is to come on the last day. In the resurrection of Christ and his ascension as king and judge of the earth, there's a sense in which that end time judgment has already begun as the judge is enthroned. And he judges at times. And all of those are harbingers. It's an inaugurated process that is going to come to completion at the last day. But again, as we said earlier, just like with their name and reputation, there seems here to be a likeness to the city of Sardis itself. Sardis in its stronger days was thought of to be an impregnable city. Well, at least almost. Cyrus, the Persian king, in 549 BC, it surrounded the city, but he could not penetrate it. So he offered to his soldiers a reward if anyone could figure out how they could get inside the city wall. And a particular soldier was watching the wall, and he noticed that someone from within the city jumped over the wall. And so they went and investigated that spot, and sure enough, they found, as they inspected that site, they found footholds along the wall. And so they didn't immediately go, of course, but they waited until the cover of night. They slipped in like a thief in the night, having found this place, and they were able to attack the city. You would think Sardis, the city, would have learned its lesson. About 300 years later, the same thing happened once again. And now like the city, the church is vulnerable. Vulnerable, but the threat comes from the Lord himself. So we've seen the Lord's penetrating diagnosis, his prescription for healing. We've seen his threat to those who are asleep. And now in verses four to six, finally, we'll see the Lord's promise to those who overcome. He doesn't end, thankfully, with the rebuke. He doesn't end with that threat. He goes on to give hope and to give a promise to those who do repent. He says again in verse 4, as we read a moment ago, you still have a few names in Sardis. Again, the church is only mostly dead. That's another great encouragement for us, isn't it? that just because a church may be dead, it doesn't mean that all of its members are dead. There may be some within it, just like it was here in Sardis. There are still a few names, people who have not soiled their garments, they will walk with me in white, for they are worthy. And so, Jesus says they haven't soiled their garments. This is imagery that the book of Revelation will pick up on later when it speaks of whiteness of garments, you know, a stained garment. If you get to Revelation 14, you see that it's really a reference to those who have compromised, they have participated in idolatry, which seems to be, again and again, the theme that we're coming to here and what is being warned against in all of these letters, the idols of the culture. But rather, these are clothed in white robes. They don't have garments that are soiled or stained. And that whiteness, the unsoiled nature of their garments show that they're pure, they're righteous. In fact, as we get to the marriage supper of the Lamb, the white robes of the saints, it is referred to the righteousness of the saints. The Lord Jesus is one, of course, who endured through suffering, he was one who was considered worthy. And it's likely, too, that the worthiness of the saints that is that is spoken of here in verse number four is is something like that. It's their endurance through the things they were tempted against and that they came out as purified. There's this promise of After they walk after the pattern of Christ, that they are clothed with white and they walk with the Lord in whiteness. Of course, these white robes stand in opposition to the soiled garments that we read of there in verse four as well, soiled or stained. The ones who are not soiled, not stained, are those who conquer, those who overcome. And as we go on, again, just to kind of put all this together as we consider the white robes that the saints are clothed in, in Revelation 7, the saints are those who have washed their robes. They've made them white through the blood of the Lamb. Also, in Revelation 7, we see those whose garments are white, whose robes are washed in the blood of the Lamb, are those who came out of great tribulation. So you have this idea, they are those who have been washed in Christ, and they have been brought through with great endurance through great tribulation, and they come out purified. Of course, these are descriptions of what true faith is. Faith looks to Christ, it doesn't trust itself. We know that there is no atonement, there is no way of washing ourselves. As Isaiah said, in ourselves our garments are nothing, our righteousness is nothing but filthy rags. We look to Christ and to him alone, that his blood alone can wash away sin. But what is the nature of true faith? It perseveres, it endures, and that is what we find of the saints who trust in Christ, whose allegiance, their devotion is to Him. They are brought through, as we've been seeing in Hebrews, brought through with great endurance, running their race to the presence of God. This is what is true of these saints as well. They come, as Revelation 7 says, out of great tribulation. They conquer, they're considered worthy. That's who we're reading of now in verse four, who have not sold their garments. They walk with Christ in white. They are called worthy. These are the ones who, in verse five, conquer, they overcome, they're clothed in these white garments. Their suffering, their endurance is served as a refining, purifying fire. So they come out unsoiled. And Jesus says he will never blot their name out of the book of life. That's just like the white robe. This is another theme that we find all throughout Revelation. Book of Life is mentioned five other times in this book. It is contrasted with other books. The other books are those that record the sins of the unbelieving. They're judged on the basis of those sins. But the Book of Life is where the righteous find their saving destiny was already written down and the destiny of the elect was recorded and even speaks of it this way, that their name was written in the Book of Life before the foundation of the world. And so what we find here is that those who have soiled their garments If they don't wake up, if they fail to repent, they'll find that the verdict of Sardis is true of them, that they are dead. But those who are robed in white are those who find life, those whose names are written in the book of life. So nominal churches must repent by waking from their slumber and sloth. nominal churches. Again, that is to say in name only, and the word name occurs four times in this short letter. We've already mentioned the first use of name. It's in verse number one that the ESV translates as reputation. You have the reputation, it is literally you have a name, that you are alive, but you are dead. Then we have three other references. That first one is a reference to those who were dead, right? They're not genuine. And yet the others are references to genuine believers. where the Lord says, you still have a few names in verse four in Sardis. He says in verse number five, I will never blot his name out of the book of life, and again, I will confess his name before my father and before his holy angels. And that first, again, is a reference to reputation, that among men there is a reputation, they're alive. Actually, it's false. But the rest of them, is what the Lord thinks of them. Well, they're all what the Lord thinks. You have the reputation of being alive, but what he truly sees is that you're dead. And then the remaining ones are what the Lord has to say about his people. You have a few names in Sardis that are alive. Those who conquer, I will not blot his name out of the book of life, and I will confess his name openly before my father and before his holy angels. We cannot be satisfied with a nominal Christianity, a Christianity in name only. Because if that is true, that's all we have. A reputation that we are alive, but the Lord is the one who sees what is true. He is the one who gives the true assessment. We should not be Christian in name only, but at the same time, the name Christian should be a great comfort to us. It should be a great comfort to us to know we're identified with Christ. It should be a great comfort to us to know that God has put his name upon us. It should comfort us in suffering and in persecution as we consider where that name comes from, derived from our Lord himself, the Christ who has suffered and endured on our behalf. But it should never, the name Christian should never be the occasion for complacency. for lethargy, for sloth, for drowsiness, for slumber. Rather, to be called a Christian should be something that spurs us on. It should be something that gives us great exhortation to continue on. So that by God's grace, by the supply of his spirit, with all of our redeemed humanity, we strive to do these very things, to put things in order if they are about to die, strengthen what remains, to remember what we received and heard, to hold fast to it, that is to keep it. to strive to walk in purity with unsoiled garments, to follow Christ faithfully, if we bear that name. And if the Lord's assessment reveals that we have been sleeping, that we are nominal, then may we be so startled by his words that it would cause us to repent. Let's pray.