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You can either follow along in
your Bibles and notice the slight variations or on page 22 we have
the majority text translation of Revelation 3, 1 through 6. Hear the Word of God. And to
the messenger of the church in Sardis write, these things says
he who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars, I
know your works, that you have a name, that you are alive, yet
you are dead. Wake up and strengthen the remaining
things that you were about to throw away, for I have not found
your works to be fulfilled before my God. So remember how you have
received and heard, and hold fast and repent. Because if you
do not watch, I will come upon you like a thief, and you will
not know what hour I will come upon you. But you do have a few
names in Sardis who have not defiled their garments, and they
will walk with Me in white because they are worthy. The one who
overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments, and I will
not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his
name before my God and before his angels. He who has an ear
to hear, excuse me, he who has an ear, let him hear what the
Spirit is saying to the churches. Amen. Father we thank you for
your word and I pray that you would enable me as I seek to
mine for silver and for gold in the scriptures here to do
so accurately and to bless this your people. We ask for your
presence with us in Jesus name. Amen. May be seated. Well, the title of today's sermon
may have raised a bit of a question mark in your minds because it
says, when contentment is not a virtue. And the text of the
introduction may seem even stranger. It says, without a holy discontentment,
Christians will never have true contentment. You may wonder how
discontentment can coexist with contentment in the same person,
because discontentment is this deep desire, this longing for
something that we do not have, and contentment is a total satisfaction
with what we have. Those seem like totally opposite
things and how can they coexist at the same time within the same
person? But as I hope to show, they do
and they absolutely must. But in any case, at first blush,
that statement may seem to be in conflict with God's commandments
to be content in every circumstance. Hebrews 13 verse 5 says, let
your conduct be without covetousness, So covetousness is the opposite
of contentment. Let it be without covetousness,
be content with such things as you have. For he himself has
said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. So it says,
be content with such things as you have. Doesn't that rule out
all discontentment? Philippians 4.11 says something
similar. It says, Not that I speak in
regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am to be
content. And I want you to notice that
phrase, in whatever state I am to be content. Doesn't that just
absolutely rule out all discontentment? Well let me assure you that rightly
answering this question is the only thing that's going to avoid
Christ's rebuke that he gives to the church of Sardis. The
church of Sardis was content with having a reputation without
the reality and Christ rebukes them for that contentment. Sardis
was content to do works before men but not really doing them
before the Father and they are rebuked for that contentment.
Sardis was content with appearances. Sardis was content with what
they had already received and Jesus admonishes them that they
need to receive more from the throne of Christ. And actually
the context of the two verses that I read earlier mandate discontentment
and Paul in those passages certainly models that discontentment. with
certain things anyway. So while Philippians 411 commands
us to be content with certain things, there's other passages
in Philippians say we must have a discontentment with other things
and Paul had a passionate discontentment with the state of this world. He desired to see more of the
church's growth. Well that implies he's not satisfied
with the degree to which the church in Philippi had been growing
to that point. The context says he longs for
more sanctification. He longs to see more unity in
that church. He longs to see every knee in
this world bowing before King Jesus in Philippians 2 verse
10. To be seeking for something more than what you have is a
holy discontentment and it is holy because God himself has
commanded us to seek such things. Jesus commanded us to not be
content with the state of the kingdom that we currently see
in the world, to not be content with the state of righteousness.
Instead, he has us pray. Thy kingdom come, thy will be
done on earth as it is in heaven. He commands us to hunger and
thirst after righteousness. He commands us, seek first the
kingdom of God and His righteousness and all of these things will
be added to you. And he said, these are the things
that the Gentiles seek. So we need to be content with
those kinds of things. Any discontentment with those
things that the Gentiles seek, he said, is an unholy discontentment. But Jesus wants us to be discontented
with the ungodly state of the world. And the same was true
of Paul. So in chapter three of Philippians, Paul counts the
things that he used to long for as rubbish. And he makes it his
aim to know more of Christ. He says that I may know him and
the power of his resurrection. So at that point, he was not
content with how much he knew Christ. He wanted to know Him
more. He was not content with how much of Christ's resurrection
power was at work in his life. He longed to see more. So what
he's doing is he's trading in one set of things that he used
to long for, that's the rubbish, for another set of things that
he longs for much more. And those are kingdom realities.
In Philippians 3, verses 13 and following, Paul indicated he
was not satisfied with the state of his own Christianity. Why?
Because he is still pressing. He said, I'm not arrived yet.
I am still pressing into the upward goal that God has for
me in Christ Jesus. And those are just a few examples
from the life of Paul. There's many, many more where
he absolutely was not satisfied with his current state of affairs
in his life, in the church's life, and in the world. The world's
not where God wants it to be? Well, then Paul cannot be content
with where the world is at. And I looked up every Greek word
that is the antonym, the opposite of contentment, and I found that
those words can be used either to describe a sinful state if
it's self-oriented or a godly state if it is Christ-oriented. For example, you might think
that the word covet is only a sinful thing. That's the Greek word
zelao. And in 1 Corinthians 13 verse
4 it does describe a sin. It says love does not covet. But just a few verses later it
says that we are to pursue love and we are to desire, and it's
the same word, to covet. In fact, the King James translates
it that way, to covet spiritual gifts. So coveting by itself
is not bad. Titus 2.14 says, yes, we should
covet good works. Not to covet sin, but we're to
covet good works. So discontentment is not bad.
It depends on which direction it is oriented. Or you can think
of the Greek word for deep longing, epithumia, and it can describe
the discontented desires of the flesh, or it can describe the
discontented desires of the spirit, which should be longing for more
of God. And so using that word, Jesus
said, with fervent desire, that's epithumia, with fervent desire,
I've desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer, Luke
22, verse 15. Same word describes Paul's longing for renewed fellowship
with the Thessalonians. 1 Thessalonians 2 verse 17, or
a man's desire for the office of a bishop. He says that's a
good thing to desire that, but it's using that deep longing,
that epithumia. Or it can describe Luke's deep
longing for the church's diligent pursuit of Christ Hebrews 6 verse
11 Galatians 5 16 to 17 uses that word to describe both the
flesh's longing for sin and the Holy Spirit's longing for more
righteousness within us likewise the Greek word Epipotheo can
describe the ungodly longings of the flesh and or the godly
longings that the Holy Spirit has for holiness, James 4, 5.
Peter uses it to describe the deep longing for the spiritual
milk of the Word that we need to be longing for just like a
baby longs for its mother's milk. I think you get the point. I
won't bore you with all of that. There's a ton more scriptures.
that talk about this holy discontentment. But the key point is, the more
we long for Christ's kingdom, His power, His glory, His provisions,
the less the things of this world will have a grip upon our hearts.
And the more we seek first Christ's kingdom and His righteousness,
the more satisfied we'll be with the things He has promised to
add unto us. You know, of the things that
the Gentiles seek, the material things of this world. We'll be very
satisfied with them. cars, houses, family, the things that God has
entrusted us with. And I needed to give that as
a background for you to understand the main problem with Sardis.
Sardis seemed to lack passion and initiative to advance Christ's
kingdom. What they needed was a holy discontentment
with their current state of affairs. Instead, they were just quite
okay with where their ministries were at, where their sanctification
was at, the attendance they had, the knowledge they had, the successes
that they had already achieved. There was no holy discontentment
with the state of the individual, the church, or the world. And
in this, I believe Sardis represents the Stoic concept of contentment
much more than the biblical concept of contentment. See, the Stoics
thought of contentment as not desiring anything. You just have
to kill all desire. And really, it resembles more
apathy, lack of vision, inertia, lack of initiative, and self-satisfaction. That is not biblical. A.W. Tozer pointed out that other
than regeneration, this issue was the major difference between
Jacob and Esau. The difference was not that one
had sin and the other did not have sin. It was not that one
of them was a Christian and the other was not a Christian. They
both worshiped the same God, at least outwardly. We know from
the scriptures later that he was not regenerate. But it was
not that Jacob was free of covetousness and Esau was a covetous man.
I mean, they both had the sin of covetousness. The main difference
was that Jacob didn't like what he saw inside of himself while
Esau was quite pleased with himself. A.W. Tozer said, Jacob had a
great dissatisfaction and discontentment with himself and a longing after
God deep within. Jacob was deep in sin, but not
so deep that it followed him to the life of another world.
Esau was not so deep in sin, but he was satisfied with what
he had. The worst thing that could be said about Esau was
that he was spiritually satisfied and that damned him. And I think
the worst thing that could be said about Sardis was that it
was spiritually satisfied and that was about to damn the church
if they did not wake up and repent. It had a form of godliness, but
it did not have the power and the life of the Spirit working
in and through their ministries. So what is the solution when
a church finds itself apathetic and unwilling to grow and self-satisfied
and having inertia that pulls it down? Well, the first thing
that should be done is to look to God, the life giver, and ask
Him, beg Him to help. Help, Lord. I just feel like
I'm represented by... I am a representative of Sardis. Help me, Lord, to get out of
this state. See, Christianity is not about
pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. It's about responding to God's
grace, and that's where this letter starts. This letter is
God's initiative to the troubles and the problems in Sardis. Sardis
didn't even recognize they had a problem. They were self-satisfied,
right? So this letter shows God's initiative. Verse 1, And to the messenger
of the church in Sardis write, The Scriptures are a gift of
grace. In fact, they are probably the
chief means by which we grow. So when you find your Christianity
becoming formal and lifeless, ask God to speak to you through
the Scriptures. The whole next year, the elders
plan to really focus on the various ways in which we can immerse
ourselves in the life-giving scriptures. In the past, we focused
on prayer as one of the means of grace. But during this next
year, what we're wanting to do is show you the various methods
and techniques of internalizing this life-giving Word. In fact,
I think Gary is going to be starting off. Are you still planning to
do that, Gary? starting off the new year with a message on exactly
this theme, probably December 27, right? End of the year, beginning
of the year, but anyway, we wanna give this vision for the future
of how critically important it is to get the scriptures into
our hearts. Paul, I mean, John begins, he
ends this section with diving into the scriptures. The second
thing that we can do is to recognize that elders are messengers, not
the solution. They are the tools, not the life
giver. Now in this case, the messenger
himself, various commentaries say, was either unregenerate
or he was so spiritually backslidden that he did not have the life
of the Spirit working through him. He's using death as a shock
metaphor. And I tend to side with the commentators
who say that this is a shock metaphor. He really was regenerate.
because he goes on and he talks about him having some things
already that he's received by faith from God. So I think he
was regenerate, but he's to a place where his ministry is not empowered
at all by the Holy Spirit. And so he says, it's a dead ministry.
But anyway, you don't have to decide on that. Commentators
are divided on it. But either way, we cannot put
messengers or pastors in the place of God. We elders are not
your savior. Our job is to point you to the
Savior. We elders are not able to counsel you perfectly, shepherd
you perfectly, or change you. Our job as messengers is to give
you the Word of God and pray to God that He will turn you
inside out by the power of His Holy Spirit. And too many people,
I think, come hoping that we will fix their marriage or fix
their children or fix something or other. Well, brothers and
sisters, we're not the fixers. We are the messengers of the
great fixer. Your faith must be focused on
him. And I think this is one of the
issues that I have with some of the big celebrity pastors
out there is there's this tendency for people to think these guys
can make no mistakes and they're going to fix my problem somehow.
So we're going to go attend their church. No, you cannot put your
faith in man. You must put your faith in Jesus.
Thirdly, we need to ask Jesus for the filling of the Holy Spirit.
Verse one goes on to say, these things says he who has the seven
spirits of God. You will never fix the Sardis
syndrome with more programs, better music, more ministries,
better preaching. Christ's solution for inward
re-energizing is to give the church a refilling of the Holy
Spirit. And he uses the metaphor of seven
spirits to show that fullness. In John chapter one, verse four,
John emphasized the oneness of the Holy Spirit by using a singular
verb. The seven spirits is. And that's
why you have to translate it, the sevenfold spirits. But here
the emphasis is not on the oneness, that one person of the spirit,
but it's on the fullness of the spirit. So he uses the seven.
Seven is the symbolic number of fullness to indicate we must
have the fullness of the Holy Spirit within us. And to do that,
we have to come to Christ in faith. Just think in Acts chapter
4 of what happened when the church once again was filled with the
Holy Spirit. Incredible things happened. Incredible
ministries happened. It became a supernatural ministry
instead of what they could just do in their own strength. And
by the way, this is one of several verses that settles that ancient
church controversy called the Filioqua Controversy. It's a Latin verb and the sun. And we agree it split the church
in 1054 completely apart. We agree with the West when they
said that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.
That's filioque. And we disagree with the East
when they said, oh no, the Spirit does not proceed from the Son.
He only proceeds from the Father. Now I'm not going to get into
all of the ramifications of that incredibly important doctrine.
But I would encourage you to read Bojidar Marinov's article
on that and how he shows incredible ramifications, including freedoms
in the West, centralization of government in the East, centralization
of a lot of things in the East. But there's a lot of practical
ramifications on what you believe on the Trinity. But anyway, in
the Gospels, Jesus was very clear. He said, I will give you the
Holy Spirit. and I will send the Holy Spirit. And Rodney's been preaching on
that. Now Jesus holds the seven stars
in His hand. Chapter one said the seven stars
are the seven human messengers. which I take to be the seven
moderators of the seven city presbyteries. Some people take
it to be the, you know, the senior main preacher of local assemblies,
but because there's so many churches in each of these cities, I take
it as the moderator, but it's a human messenger. I think that
much is clear. Now here's the point. If they
are in his hand, I think it indicates that this messenger's deadness
was not total. In other words, that he was not
unregenerate. After all, verses two through
three indicate he had some spiritual life remaining and needed to
hold fast to what he'd already received. So he was saved. At
least that's my view. Commentators, again, are divided
on that. But this means that Christ's statement, without me,
you can do nothing, applies not just to apostles, it applies
to all, it certainly applies to church leaders. When church
boards try to figure out how to get out of the Sardis syndrome,
how do we get this church lively again, what do they do? They
go to these church growth seminars that teach techniques and programs
and how to improve your EQ and leadership skills and how to
make your building more attractive and how to have a more effective
and welcoming nursery and all kinds of things that they're
trying to use to stir up some life. That's all misguided. Jesus
and John here wants us to look to Jesus and receive renewed
grace from Him. Anything that does not flow from
Christ is counterfeit. It's a fake life. And Sardis
already had a fake liveliness. When you are feeling dry and
dusty in your Christianity, I would encourage you to do just like
David did in the Psalms, and we're gonna be singing one of
those Psalms after the service, and cry out to Him to quench
your thirst. Cry out to Him for power. Ask
Him to send the Holy Spirit into your heart so that once again
you can have that Abba Father relationship with God. God is the only answer to a lifeless
church. Now John moves on to describe
several things in our lives that either hinder us from walking
in the power of the Spirit or that help us. And the first one
that he mentions is a hindrance. He says, I know your works. They
had ministries galore. Okay, in fact, it was probably
the abundance of ministries that made this church content with
itself and blind to its deadness. But God sees through appearances. Busyness can many times hide
our emptiness. Chuck Swindoll once said, busyness
substitutes shallow frenzy for deep friendship. Busyness feeds
the ego, but starves the inner man. Busyness fills a calendar,
but fractures a family. Busyness cultivates a program
that plows under priorities. Many a church boasts about its
active programs, something for every night of the week for everybody.
What a shame. With good intentions, the local
assembly can create the very atmosphere it was designed to
curb. Many times, busyness is a cover-up
when we are spiritually lifeless. And if you find it, your life,
too busy to pray, it's probably an early warning sign that you
need to take heed to. Second, when others think we
are okay, it's easy for us to stop pressing into our upward
call. Having a good reputation, in
one sense, is a good thing. But in another sense, it can
make us blind to our current need. And this is especially
true if our conscience is trained to respond primarily to what
other people think about us instead of responding to what God thinks
about us. And if that's true of you, there
was a sermon I preached some years ago that deals with how
to train your conscience. I'm not gonna get into that this
morning. But it is so critical that we not have a social conscience,
that our conscience be sensitive to God. But in any case, a good
reputation can make us relax, make us blind to our current
need. Jesus points out that you have
a name that you are alive. Eight of my translations translate
it this way. You have a reputation that you
are alive. That's what name means. They
were satisfied with that reputation. And if man's praise is what you
primarily crave, what you're mostly worried about, Then when
you have man's praise, it's very easy to not feel the need to
press deeper into God. Thirdly, ministry without Christ's
strength is dead no matter how marvelous the ministry might
appear to be. Jesus said they had a reputation
of being alive, but the reality was, he said, you are dead. Yet
you are dead. Now I don't think necessarily
you have to believe it was an absolute deadness in terms of
unregenerate tears, though that's possible. I take it in a different
sense because the verse goes on to speak of strengthening
what remains. That implies they already had
something that truly was from God, and most commentators agree
with that. Sardis' problem was that they
were plodding on without the life of Christ, being lived through
them with little evidence of the work of the Holy Spirit within.
And let me tell you, without Christ and the Holy Spirit in
our efforts, our efforts are dead. Do you really believe Christ's
statement when he said, without me, you can do nothing? And he
was speaking to believers there. Without me, you can do nothing.
A lot of Christians, I don't think, really believe that statement
to be true. But a sense of self-sufficiency
will lead to the Sardis syndrome. ministry not empowered by the
Spirit, prayers not empowered by the Spirit, counseling not
empowered by the Spirit. Everything we're doing, we're
doing in our own flesh. If you feel like your ministries
are simply plodding on without any supernatural power, what
I would encourage you to do, as a start anyway, is to pray
one of the prayers for the infilling of the Holy Spirit that's in
my Hour of Prayer booklet or in the Spiritual War Prayer booklet.
I'll just give you just a tiny little snippet from one of those
prayers that illustrates how much we need the Holy Spirit
in everything. Father, your word has promised
that if we ask for the Spirit, you will give of the Spirit far
more readily than parents give the necessities of life to their
children. I lay claim to the how much more
of Luke 11, 13, and ask that you would give to me an extra
portion of the Spirit's presence for today. I need the Spirit
because you've commanded me to walk in the Spirit, Galatians
5, 16, and everything that I do. Help me to sing in the Spirit,
1 Corinthians 14, 15. To worship in the Spirit, Philippians
3, 3. To rejoice in the Spirit, 1 Thessalonians
1, 6. Please help me to pray in the
Spirit, Jude 20. Since I do not know what I should
pray for as I ought, Romans 8, 26. Help me to love in the Spirit,
Colossians 1, 18. Be led by the Spirit, Matthew
4, 1. Galatians 5, 18, be moved by the Spirit. Luke 2, 27, to
be compelled by the Spirit. Acts 20, verse 22, and to have
my mind controlled by the Spirit. Romans 8, verse 6. I mean, when
you begin to read through the Scriptures and you realize that
there is nothing we do that is pleasing in God's sight unless
it's done by the power of the Spirit, through Christ, and to
God's glory. You begin to realize, Lord, is
there anything I'm doing in my life that is worthwhile? Is there anything I'm doing in
my life that is to your glory? On the other hand, everything
we do, our carpentry, our vacuuming, giving a cup of cold water, if
it is done, dependence upon the Spirit, through Christ, to the
Father's glory, he says everything we do, even the most insignificant
things we do, will by no means lose his reward. So here's my
admonition, do not settle for a dry and dusty Christianity.
Do not settle for a Christianity that any Pharisee could live.
In fact, that's the whole point of the Sermon on the Mount, is
to bust people out of this Sardis syndrome and to make them realize,
where's the evidence of my Christianity? where have i ever done anything
that a pharisee could not do where is the evidence that this
is supernatural loving those who are unlovable and he goes
through in the sermon on the mount telling us all kinds of
impossible things that christians routinely do the next phrase
in verse two says in our translation, wake up, but literally it's a
call to be on guard. Be on guard against the inertia
that the flesh, the world, and the devil bring. Inertia is a
resistance to movement, resistance to change, and we can so easily
be satisfied with wherever we're at, whatever we're at. But Paul
had a hunger to grow his entire life. Even at the end of his
life, he said he had not arrived. He was still pressing into his
upward call. So be on guard against anything
that presents that. Fifth, failure to strengthen
what we've already achieved is a hindrance because there's no
neutrality. In the Christian walk, we're
either moving forward or we're moving backward. So verse two
goes on to say, and strengthen the remaining things. Apparently
this pastor and this church did have things that were very good,
but they had failed to strengthen them or to build upon them. And
you can see that each of these points that we've been going
through is a call to be dissatisfied with our current state, to constantly
be pressing into more of Christ. Look at verse two again. And
strengthen the remaining things that you were about to throw
away. When we get tired, it's very
easy to stop doing certain things. And when we have grieved the
Spirit, it is even easier to stop doing certain things. So I wanna ask you this morning,
what are the things that you've either already thrown away or
you're tempted to throw away? Is it devotions? Or Bible memorization? Or Bible
reading? Or meditation? Is it ministering
to your children or ministering to your spouse with the five
languages of love, creatively ministering to them? Is it hospitality? You know what it is that the
Spirit's been prompting you that you have not done. If there's
anything in your life that you used to do when the fire of God's
love was within your heart and you're not doing it anymore,
you need to at least ask yourselves, are there legitimate reasons
for not doing this? The seventh thing is failing
to do ministry quorum Deo or before the face of God. Verse
2 goes on to say, for I have not found your works to be fulfilled
before my God. Now they had works. They had
ministries. Verse 1 says so. Plenty of ministries,
but those ministries were not being done as unto the Father. They were not being done with
a sense of His presence or unto His glory. And if you're anything
like me, You're probably seeing these
things describe, at least at some point in your life, describe
you. They certainly describe me, off
and on through my life. I've had a number of these things
descriptive of me, and I've had to be warned by the Holy Spirit
to go back to Christ and to keep pressing back into him. And I
suspect that the Apostle Paul had this, just like David had
it in the psalm that we're going to be singing later on. And that's
one of the reasons why Paul said he had not arrived. He kept pressing
toward the goal. And so the point is not to feel
guilty, not to try harder. It's a focus issue. Where is
your faith focused? Is it focused on trying harder?
Well, then it's focused on yourself. Or is it focused on Christ? Point
is to repent and to live by faith in Christ. In fact, the next
phrase, so remember how you have received is a reference to how
they began by faith. They received something from
Christ. Many things in the past, it implies
a liveliness of their faith in the past. But something had come
in and had dampened that. That's the problem. And remembering
what we used to have can sometimes stir up that desire within us
once again. So remember and let that remembrance
of the way things used to be stir up a holy dissatisfaction
with your current state of affairs. See, if you're not totally happy
with where you're at spiritually right now, that's a good sign.
Yeah, you might be getting depressed and discouraged in this sermon
saying, man, my life has a lot of Sardis. But if you're recognizing
it, if you're dissatisfied with it, no, that's the greatest first
step because then you go to the source and he, by your faith,
you can receive from him what you need. Okay, the next phrase
says, and hold fast. Greek word that means to hold
something tightly in custody. It is so easy to relinquish the
important for the trivial. We could be holding on to the
important of what God has given to us, and we see a trinket on
the ground, and we let that down so we can pick up the trinket,
which will not last. Or we can give up our intimacy
with Christ to meet the expectations of a busy schedule, the expectations
of other people. But Satan is very, very creative.
He's got any number of ways to keep us from holding fast to
things that are really, really important. So here's another
question. At the end of your life, when
you're dying, what will you wish that you had held fast to? I
think that's the question to be asking right now. And God's
call, if we come up short, is repent. He doesn't make us pay
penance and whip ourselves on the back and feel sorry, and
He doesn't make us have stones and walk for a mile with stones
in our shoes. No, He just calls us to repentance. Turn around. That's all that
repentance means. And by the way, repentance and
faith are two sides of the same coin. You cannot have one without
the other. So repentance is turning around
from the pursuit that really is an ungodly pursuit and faith
is pursuing something else. It's pursuing Christ. So repentance
is saying I'm no longer going to find my sense of contentment
here. Faith says I'm going to find
my sense of contentment in Christ. It's just two sides of the same
coin. Now Jack Miller says repentance
in his book, Repentance in the 20th Century Man, he points out
that repentance biblically is a daily thing that we go through
for the rest of our lives. If you think you've arrived automatically,
you're probably in trouble. The rest of our lives we say,
okay, I've blown it there, I'm turning around, I'm not gonna
beat up on myself, I'm turning around, I'm gonna pursue Christ.
Moment by moment we do that. Now the alternative is worth
considering. Verse three goes on to say, because if you do
not watch, I will come upon you like a thief and you will not
know what hour I will come upon you. God loves us too much to
leave us in our deadness. We are destined for life. Now
in John 10, verse 10, Satan wants the opposite. Jesus said that
Satan comes only to steal, kill, and destroy, but then he goes
on in the next verse and he says, I have come that you might have
life and that you might have it More abundantly, right? He wants us to have life. That's
what we're destined for. And God loves us too much to
leave us in our dead state. So He's gonna do something about
it. He's gonna rough things up. He's gonna, if we're like chicks
in a nest, He's gonna do like the mother bird and flutter us
out and get us flying. But He's gonna make sure that
we don't stay in our deadness. But though we are to trust in
God alone for grace, that was the first point, it's still appropriate
to utilize the means to keep our faith alive. And one of those
means is fellow believers. Hebrews tells us that the whole
purpose of putting you into a church is for mutual accountability
and so that we can stir and other up to love and to good works.
We help each other to keep looking to Jesus. So the point is it's
not just ministers who point you to Jesus. Every one of you
are tools to point each other to Jesus as well. And it's like
coals in a fire pit. If those coals stick together,
they stay warm for a long, long time. Scattered, they lose their
glow very, very quickly. So Hebrews 10, 24 through 25
says, let us consider one another in order to stir up love and
good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together
as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another and so
much more as you see the day approaching. And then he goes
on to say, if you don't do that, it will be so easy to apostatize. so easy to fall away. So let me spend some time looking
at how the godly remnant in this church could be a good source
of encouragement, could stir up these people to have the same
passion for Christ if they would let them into their lives. First
of all, here were people who had a holy discontentment with
the status quo. Verses 4 through 5. But you do
have a few names in Sardis who have not defiled their garments,
and they will walk with me in white because they are worthy.
The one who overcomes will thus be clothed with white garments,
and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I
will confess his name before my father and before his angels."
Now, we want to be in that company, don't we? We want to be amongst
those that God is not embarrassed by. He's not ashamed of. And
these were clearly people who were pressing into their holiness.
Secondly, they were pressing into God's favor. They cared
more about God's well done thou good and faithful servant than
they did man's praise. He also characterizes them as
overcomers. which to me implies they had
the same temptations that the rest of the church had, same
temptations to apathy and inertia and stopping the fight and losing
ground. It's not that they weren't tempted, it's they were overcomers,
they kept fighting the good fight. So here were people who had a
holy discontentment with the way that their lives were. and
the way the church was. And they had a holy discontentment
with the way the world was. They wanted more of God's kingdom.
They wanted more of His righteousness. And to that end, they're fighting.
And God says that they were worthy. Now, how do you reconcile that
statement that they were worthy with the statements by Paul and
Jeremiah and Isaiah and so many other godly Christians that they
had sin in their lives? Does worthiness mean that they
did not have sin in their lives on a daily basis? And we would
say, as good Reformed people know, they did have sin in their
lives. So what does it mean to be worthy? It means they daily
repented, daily put on the garments of Christ's righteousness, and
daily depended upon Him. That's the only worthiness that
counts, is the worthiness of Christ. And of course, the white
clothing is symbolic of Christ's righteousness. But if the clothing
represents Christ's righteousness, what does verse four mean when
it says that there were only a few names in Sardis who would
not defile their garments? How do you defile Christ's righteousness?
Well, there's two ways you could go on this. If this is primarily
talking about justification, which is God's legal declaration,
you are perfectly righteous, I'm going to treat you as if
you'd never sinned because of the imputed righteousness of Christ, then
defiling Defiling that justification would be misusing the security
we have in our justification to excuse our sinfulness and
not care about our sinfulness. If it's dealing not just with
justification which is the imputed righteousness but also sanctification
which is Christ's imparted righteousness then it's likely pointing to
our need for daily cleansing, and that's the way I take it,
because the Greek word for defiled is moluno, which is defined in
the dictionary as being in a state of being ritually impure. Now you gotta remember, the book
of Revelation is just filled with metaphors from the temple.
And so when a believer in the Old Testament was ritually impure,
He couldn't come into the temple to make his requests before God,
okay? It didn't mean that he had lost
his salvation. He just was ritually impure. Well, people in the Old
Testament would not have been satisfied with that. They would
have gotten cleansed because they wanna go into the temple.
They want to be able to pray to God. And in the same way,
or in a similar way, I should say, in 1 Peter 3, verse 7, it
tells husbands not to be sinning against their wives. He says,
lest your prayers be hindered. So, conversion ushered people
into the covenant, but ritual purity symbolized the need for
daily cleansing. And that's what makes some commentators
believe that the first set of Christians were antinomians.
They didn't see the need for daily cleansing. Rodney preached
on the washing of feet, Jesus washing his disciples' feet some
months ago. And Peter initially didn't want
Jesus to wash his feet. I think he must have been embarrassed
by that, thought it was beneath Christ's dignity. And Jesus said,
hey, if I don't wash you, you won't have any part in me. And
then Peter says, okay, Lord, wash my whole body. And in effect,
symbolically, that would be like saying, okay, I wanna get saved
all over again, and that's impossible. So Jesus said this. He said,
he was bathed. Well, that would be a conversion,
right? Your entirety is completely cleansed. He was bathed, needs
only to wash his feet, but is completely clean. And you are
clean, but not all of you. So the washing of feet was symbolic
of getting rid of the sin that happens every day. And if you
don't do that, you're not acting like a true Christian. You may
be fully dead or you just may be mostly dead as Sontoya, mostly. But Jesus says that without allowing
him to wash your feet daily, you have no part in him. True
Christians see their sins and they repent and let Jesus wash
their feet. Now here's the application I
would like to make to perseverance of the saints. Perseverance of
the saints, just like faith and repentance are two sides of the
same coin. Perseverance, our perseverance, and God's preservation
of us are two sides of the same coin. And since the Bible says
God will preserve all of the elect all the way to heaven,
not a one of them will be lost, if we're not persevering, which
is the flip side of that coin, that means we're not the elect. Can you see that? If preservation
and perseverance go hand in hand together, if we're not persevering,
then God's not preserving us, obviously, and the indication
may be that we were never regenerated in the first place, okay? So
I think that's the way to look at it. You cannot separate perseverance
from preservation, and I think that helps to explain the next
phrase, which, man, this has caused so much controversy in
the Christian church, but I think it bears just a little bit of
time on it. It says, I will not erase his name from the book
of life. Now, many people claim that that
phrase implies that sin can cause us to lose our salvation. And
I won't take the time to answer every issue surrounding that
subject, but I've put into your outline three faulty interpretations
with my suggested solution. The first interpretation says
that true believers can lose their salvation. And this group,
wow, do they ever have a hard time? I've known quite a number
of people in this group. They have a hard time with having
assurance of their salvation. Because, you know, they commit
a sin and they feel like they have to get saved all over again.
And they just, there's no growth in their life. But there's also
this struggle with, am I saved? Always it's, am I saved? They
have no assurance. Now, the next two points are
just two variations of the opposite viewpoint, the opposite extreme,
the once saved, always saved position that believes that,
you know, you make a profession of faith, that's your ticket
to heaven, and even if you leave the Lord, it doesn't matter,
you're gonna be saved. Even if you, you know, sin like
the devil and don't care about it, you will be saved. And its
advocates often have a false assurance of their salvation.
My position and the position of most Reformed writers is that
true assurance can only be had by continually pressing into
Jesus, who is the author and the finisher of our faith. On
the one hand, we do not believe true believers can ever lose
their salvation. But on the other hand, we do
not believe true believers can persevere in failing to press
into Jesus. Okay, so let's take a look at
these three views. First of all, there are five-point Arminians
who say that this verse teaches that truly saved, truly regenerated,
truly justified people can lose their salvation, and that loss
of salvation is symbolized by God erasing their names out of
the book of life in heaven. Now, my quick answer is to say
that that verse doesn't say anything about truly saved people having
their names blotted out of the book of life. On the contrary,
He gives assurance to overcomers that their names will not be
blotted out, and he simply doesn't give any assurance to those who
are not overcomers. Here he's talking to the true
believers, giving assurance of what won't happen. Now I've listed
a bunch of scriptures that show how impossible it is for the
elect to lose their salvation. While there are people who look
very much like Christians who will end up in hell, John 3.16
says that if you truly put your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ,
you will have everlasting life. That means it never ends. If
you lose your salvation, everlasting life ended, right? It's not everlasting.
But you have everlasting life. John 6, 39 to 40 says, this is
the will of Him who sent me, that of all that He has given
me, I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day. For this
is the will of my Father, that everyone who beholds the Son
and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I myself will
raise Him up on the last day. So he's saying, Everybody who
truly believed in history will be raised on the last day, and
Jesus is not going to lose one single one of those people. John
10, 27-29, My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow
Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish,
neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. My Father who
has given them to Me is greater than all, and no one is able
to snatch them out of My Father's hand. And Armenians have responded
to me, oh yeah, nobody can snatch them out of the father's hand,
but they could jump out of the father's hand on their own and
lose their salvation. But the earlier phrase says,
they shall never perish. In any case, such an interpretation
would completely break the golden chain of salvation that you find
in Romans 8, 28 through 39 that says that every single one that
was predestined is predestined to be conformed to the image
of Christ. And how does he do that? He does it first of all
by calling them. And he says, all who are called
will be justified and all who are justified will be glorified.
All, all, all. And it's the same all in all
of those cases. It's the same people who are
predestined, who are called justified and glorified. That means it's
impossible for any justified person not be glorified in heaven.
Impossible. And it goes on to say that nothing
in all of creation can separate us from the love of God, which
is in Christ Jesus. And rather than answering that,
they bring up another objection. Arminians respond, but doesn't
Hebrews 6 say that it's impossible to renew people to repentance
if they fall away? Say, yeah, it does. But it goes
on to say that if people fall away, they were never saved in
the first place. Okay, verse nine says, but beloved, we are
confident of better things concerning you. Yes, things that accompany
salvation, though we speak in this manner. In other words,
if you're truly saved, you're not going to apostatize. And
Arminians respond, yeah, yeah, but aren't apostates referred
to as saints and as believers before they apostatized? And
I say, yes. as a judgment of charity. As long as we are in
the church, we must treat them as brethren. And if they're outside
the church, even if God knows that they're regenerate, we have
to treat them as heathen and publicans. We're not allowed
to read hearts, and we don't need to. Let me give you one
example. 1 John 2.19 describes apostates
in these words, they went out from us but they were not of
us. For if they had been of us, they
would have continued with us, but they went out that they might
be made manifest that none of them were of us. Now they were
previously of us in the sense that they were professing believers
and the church included them in the number of the saints,
but they're not of us when they apostatized. It doesn't say they
lost their salvation. He said they never were truly
of us. Never. Matthew 7, 21 through
23 does the same. It describes people who were
once in the covenant and even had access to the covenant overflow
of miracles and ministries, and yet Jesus is quite clear they
were never elect, they were never saved. Here's Matthew 7, 21 through
23. Not everyone who says to me,
Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he
who does the will of my Father in heaven. So it's not a matter
of pure profession, it's a matter of inward possession which automatically
leads to obedience. He goes on, many will say to
me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name,
cast out demons in your name, done many wonders in your name?
And then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from
me, you who practice lawlessness. In that verse, we see, first
of all, that people who profess to be Christians and who did
Christian ministry will end up in hell. Second, lawlessness
gives evidence that there is a lack of grace within professing
believers. And then thirdly, Jesus didn't
say, I once knew you, but you lost your relationship with me.
He said, I never knew you, never. They were not true believers
in the first place. Now Auburn Avenue or federal vision people
give a twist to this. They love quoting John 15 where
Jesus says, every branch in me that does not bear fruit is cut
off and cast into the fire. They say these branches were
savingly united to Jesus. They are in him. And they had
every grace, not all the Auburn say this, but many of them say
they had every grace that we have except for the grace of
perseverance. And so they claim that true Christians
can lose regeneration, lose justification, lose election. But that's not
only contradicted by the verses that I've already read, it's
contradicted by that passage itself. That passage says nothing
about regeneration, justification, election. It just says in some
sense, there's a branch in Christ. And historically, Reformed people
have said they are covenantally in Christ, not inwardly, but
covenantally in Christ. They were part of the us for
a while that 1 John 2, 19 refers to until it became evident that
they were never truly of us. You see, if you take one metaphor
and you ignore the other metaphors, you're going to get yourself
into trouble. All of the parables give a beautiful picture of Christ
and the church, but if you isolate them, you're going to come up
with an imbalanced and distorted message. The Vine and the Branches
illustrates the point that false believers who produce no fruit
can initially look identical to true believers, but eventually
their fruitlessness makes it evident that they are not. By
their fruits you will know them. The parable of the tares and
wheat gives a similar message. And tares are a weed that looks
very, very similar to wheat initially. But tares are always tares, and
wheat is always wheat. It does not prove that wheat
can become tares and lose their salvation. It simply proves that
false believers and true believers can look identical for a time.
And the way Peter words it is he says, you know, there are
some of these people who were in the church, and they left,
but they never had their nature changed. They're pigs who have
been washed up, clothed, perfumed, they smell great in the church,
but they go back to their mire. Why? Because they're still pigs,
they're not sheep. They've never been changed. So outwardly, well
anyway, I'll just say, I think that's enough to say the Arminian
doctrine does not have exegetical basis and the Auburn Avenue interpretation
does not have exegetical basis. But the other extreme that is
held by the average evangelical Christian is the carnal Christian
theory, a theory that says a simple profession of faith gives you
a ticket to heaven. And even if a person abandons
the Lord, he will still end up in heaven. Now, this heresy,
and that is not too strong a word. And if you think it's not a heresy,
I would encourage you to watch R.C. Sproul's Seniors. lecture
on the heresy of the carnal Christian theory. It is a horrible, horrible
heresy that has led many people to perdition. But anyway, this
heresy treats repentance as optional, but not necessary to salvation. It is a heresy because even though
we are justified by faith alone, All of the Reformers, without
exception, said, it is not a faith that is alone. We're justified
by faith alone, but it's not a faith that is alone. And if
it is a faith that is alone, it's a counterfeit faith. Remember,
we saw that repentance and faith are two sides of the same coin. If you don't have repentance,
there is no genuine faith. It's a fake faith. And by the
way, justification is always followed by sanctification. If
those two are separated, it's faulty. But I won't get into
all of that. I just want to very, very briefly deal with their
objection here. Among carnal Christian theory
advocates, I've seen two theories to explain away Revelation 3,
verse 5. The first theory is to claim
that every human on planet Earth had their name written in the
Book of Life since God wants everybody to be saved. And on
Judgment Day, God's sadly going to have to erase certain names
because they have not yet, He'd been hoping they would believe,
but they have not yet believed in Him. Okay, it's a very clever
response to this verse, but it doesn't work with two other references
in Revelation. If you turn to Revelation 13
and verse 8, It says, all who dwell on the
earth will worship Him whose names have not been written in
the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of
the world. Their names never were in the book of life. I mean,
that's a flat-out contradiction of this theory, and Revelation
17, 8 says exactly the same thing. Now, there's another group of
the same kind of people, the carnal Christian theory, who
claim that this verse says nothing at all about true believers having
their names erased, and that's true. I will not erase his name
does not logically imply that others will have their names
erased. But while this verse alone cannot
prove that anyone ever has his name erased from the book of
life, I think there are other scriptures that do. And I want
you to turn with me to Revelation 22, verse 19. This is a verse that clearly
teaches that some will have their names erased from the book of
life. Revelation 22, verse 19. And if anyone takes away from
the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away
his part from the book of life, from the holy city, and from
the things which are written in this book. Have there been
professing believers who took away from the things of this
book. Yes, the early church talked about people who deliberately
edited out, cut out verses from the Bible. So at least those
people had their names taken away from the book of life. But
turn over to Exodus 32, verse 33. This is even clearer. God is
about to wipe all of the Israelites off the face of the map and to
make a new nation out of Moses. And Moses begs God not to blot
his name out, but to spare the others. So he's gonna take the
punishment for them. And God refuses. This is God's
answer in verse 23. And the Lord said to Moses, whoever
has sinned against me, I will blot him out of my book. I will
blot him out of, this is not theory, okay? This was an actual
erasure of names from a book in heaven, and God refused to
blot Moses' name out of that book. So the question comes,
if true believers can't be lost, can't lose their salvation, which
means they can't have their names blotted out of the book of life,
and if everyone's name's not written in the book of life,
whose name does get erased? And my view is that God has a
book of all who are outwardly in the covenant. So from the
foundation of the world, all who would be outwardly in the
covenant had their names placed in this book, which is a covenantal
document. And I emphasize the point that
the book of life is a covenant, covenantal document. It's a legal
document, but as proper church discipline takes place, some
names are erased, not just below, but above, And the final false
believers will have their names erased on Judgment Day. So this
is a simple explanation of the difference between the church
visible and the church invisible. And I'm not going to look at
it in depth, but let me just give you a couple of verses to
back this up. In Matthew 18, Jesus tells the church to engage
in church discipline. You're all familiar with that.
The final step of church discipline is discussed in verse 17, which
is excommunication. And it says, if he refuses to
hear them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses even to hear
the church, let him to be to you like a heathen and a tax
collector. And the very next words out of
Christ's mouth explain that excommunication by saying this. Assuredly, I
say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. And whatever you loose on earth
will be loosed in heaven. Where there is an excommunication
that is legitimate, the name is not just removed from earthly
church roles, it's also removed from the heavenly church roles.
And from that point on, angels must treat that person as outside
the protection of the covenant. Those angels can no longer protect
that person. As Paul worded it in 1 Corinthians
5 verse 5, he is handed over to Satan for the destruction
of the flesh. So angels and others are bound from bringing the blessings
of the covenant into this person's life. Now, if he's truly regenerate,
he'll be brought to repentance, according to 1 Corinthians 5
verse 5, and his membership in the covenant will be restored.
But binding a person on earth binds a person covenantally in
heaven. So it's my tentative view that
when people are no longer reckoned true believers on earth, their
name is removed from the heavenly role as well. Now, whether my
interpretation of the binding and the loosing on earth or in
heaven is correct or not, I think you can see just from the text
itself, it's a pretty serious thing to undergo church discipline. It's also a serious thing for
Jesus to uproot the church, to declare it to be apostate, which
really amounts to the same thing on a massive scale. Jesus saying,
you're blotted out of the covenant. But this is the only interpretation
that I have seen that fits all of the passages together without
violence. Now, I'm not saying that church
discipline is perfect or that there are no true elect out of
the church. I believe the thief on the cross
was outside the church, but he was clearly saved. Jesus said,
this day you will be with me in paradise. I believe that 1
Corinthians passage that I mentioned earlier in chapter five, verse
five, that that believer When he was excommunicated, Paul himself
said he was going to be saved. I mean, he was outside the church.
And in 2 Corinthians, Paul is saying, look, he's repented.
Bring him back in. You're keeping him out too long.
So there are at least two cases of people who are saved who are
outside of the church. And so the Westminster Confessions
correction of the ancient church is appropriate. Ancient church
said outside the church, there is no salvation. And Westminster
Confession of Faith says, outside the church there is ordinarily
no salvation, but it's not absolute. So my theory is that the Book
of Life is a covenant document that reflects the covenant membership
rules on earth. When a person is rightly excommunicated,
his name is immediately erased from the heavenly rule And though
tares will continue to exist until the final day of judgment,
the last tares will be removed from the heavenly roll at that
point. And the church triumphant will be exactly the same as the
church invisible. Now, if you've got a better theory,
I'd love to hear it. But that's my take. It's the
only one that I've been able to see that fits all of the different
scriptures together. only those who are overcomers
will have verse 5 true of them where he says and I will confess
his name before my father and before his angels and in the
gospels Jesus had said the opposite of some he said whoever is ashamed
of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation of him
the son of man also will be ashamed when he comes in the glory of
his father with the holy angels well that brings us full circle
to where we started You can have no assurance of your salvation
as long as you manifest the same deadness of the moderator of
Sardis or the majority of the church membership. Now, I'm sure
some of those non-overcomers became overcomers and pursued
hard after Christ as a result of that rebuke, but the actual
assurance of not being erased from the book of life comes only
to overcomers. Now, the rest of them, they may
or they may not be genuine believers. Only God knows their hearts.
But if they are genuine believers, you can bet your bottom dollar
that they will eventually become overcomers. And the reason I
say that is that 1 John 5 says everyone who is born of God overcomes
the world. And this is the victory that
overcomes the world, even our faith. There's not a single regenerate
person, according to that verse, that's not at some point in their
lives overcomers. Okay? Faith is lively, it clings
to Christ, it possesses its possessions, it keeps pressing toward the
upward calling in Christ Jesus, it focuses upon Christ by listening
to His word. So that faith can waver, it can
become so dim as to almost become dead, but it will be stirred
up because faith cannot remain in the Sardis Syndrome forever,
it cannot. By definition, those who have
faith will eventually be overcomers. Well, as he does in all seven
letters, Jesus ends this letter by pointing regenerate ears to
once again have their, retune their spiritual ears to listen
to the Holy Spirit speaking through the scriptures. And may each
one of us eagerly do so. And as we press into Jesus, may
he give to us the full assurance of faith. Amen. Father, difficult
passage and yet an important passage and I pray that our hearts
would be stirred up to lay hold of you and of your grace and
all of the resources that we have in Christ Jesus. Help us
not to become apathetic. Help us not to be careless. Help
us not to be uncaring when sin comes into our lives but to be
grieved by it and to turn from it immediately and by faith to
keep on keeping on. I pray that you would bless this,
your people, with a balanced Christian walk. And as we sing
this final psalm, may our hearts truly find refreshment as they
thirst for you. And we pray this in Christ's
name. Amen.
When Contentment Is Not a Virtue
Series Revelation
The central problem with Sardis was a satisfaction with a form of godliness even when the power was gone.
| Sermon ID | 99324161826420 |
| Duration | 1:05:48 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Revelation 3:1-6 |
| Language | English |
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