A sermon on Revelation 3:1-6
OK, we’re working our way steadily through the Book of Revelation. We’ve studied the historical context. We’ve looked at the vision of Christ in Revelation 1. And we have looked at Chapter 2, the first 4 of the 7 letters to the churches: Ephesus; purpose-driven but lacking in love; Smyrna: persecuted by the Jewish population; Pergamum: under the influence of the Nicolaitans; Thyatira: tolerating corrupt worship, under the sway of the metaphorical Jezebel.
And tonight we move on to Chapter 3 and we come to the fifth church letter, this time sent to the congregation at Sardis. As always, we’ll look a bit at the cultural context and then move on to see what the letter itself has to teach us.
The Context
Sardis still exists but is known today as Sart and it had been a very important city: the capital city of the ancient Lydia Kingdom. Sardis was planted in the middle of the Hermus Valley at the foot of a mountain and so it was built up on the side of the mountain like a huge citadel.
Sardis had an interesting history because it had been attacked many times because of its key location at a junction of 5 major roads in the Hermus Valley and because of the ingenuity of its build: it seemed to be an impregnable city, well-defended. And in AD17, it was partially destroyed by an earthquake but soon rebuilt.
Recent archaeology suggests that Sardis had perhaps the most elaborate synagogue in the Western diaspora at the time. And the sheer quantity of mosaics and Greek inscriptions that have been found suggest that the Jewish community was well integrated into Roman, civic life. And this is reinforced by the fact that the synagogue was part of a larger complex that included baths and a gymnasium.
Sardis was a key industrial location; the dye industry and manufacture of wool lay at the heart of its economy and it was also renowned for carpet making.
The stream Pactolus flowed through the market place and it was known to carry ‘golden sands’, which was actually gold dust from the nearby mountains and so Sardis was a place where people could literally pan for gold in river flowing through the city streets. It’s interesting right at the end of the Book of Revelation, chapters 21 and 22, that John describes a vision of the new Jerusalem, our eternal home and in 21:21 he writes, “The great street of the city was of pure gold” and in 22:1-2 he writes, “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life…flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, down the middle of the great street of the city”. That was a description of the new Jerusalem that would have meant a great deal to the people of Sardis reminiscent of a renewed version of where they already lived.
Anyway, with the city streets flowing with gold and the dye and the wool and the carpets and the strong fortifications, it seems that Sardis stood rich, proud and self-sufficient.
But all that was actually a grand exercise in self-deception because the reality was that Sardis was a city in decline. It was a city that lived on its past glories and paid little attention to the fact that it was declining. Its glory period was in the 6th-century BC when it was ruled by King Croesus and it was an extremely wealthy city: you’ve heard of the saying, “Rich as Croesus”: Sardis is where it comes from.
And the people of Sardis still lived as if they were in the days of Croesus. They were too self-confident. And it was that self-confidence that had resulted in its two major downfalls. First, in 549BC, Sardis had been captured by the Persians and again by the Seleucids in 218BC and both times, the armies had attacked at night and come through a crack in the rock wall. But the people of Sardis were so complacent, they hadn’t bothered to put sentry guards on duty.
So here was a city that lived on past glories that was self-confident and complacent and in terminal decline, even though they refused to admit it. And the Jews in the city had become complacent in their own worship and were closely aligned to the ruling Roman authorities.
Sardis needed to wake up!
OK, let’s have a look at the letter
The Letter
Verse 1: “To the angel of the church in Sardis write: These are the words of him who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars.” As always, this self-description of Jesus refers back to the vision in Chapter One and there are two aspects to note:
“..him who holds the seven spirits of God”. As we thought about way back in week one, this is a reference to the Holy Spirit. There is only one Holy Spirit, equal and wholly present in every church throughout time, and he is referred to as the seven spirits to indicate the truth that the Holy Spirit dwells in each and every church in equal measure. And you might remember that it is also a reference to the prophecy about the Holy Spirit of God in Isaiah 11.
And the seven stars are the angels of the churches; the leaders of the churches, or the messengers and, again, the reference to seven is a symbol of completeness referring to all churches throughout time. And what is interesting, of course, is that Jesus describes himself again as the one who “holds” the seven spirits and the seven stars”. This again is a symbolic representation of his authority and control. The Holy Spirit of God is the Spirit of Christ and is sent by Christ into the world. In John 14:26, Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as the Counsellor and says that the Father will send him to us in the name of Jesus. Jesus holds the Spirit of God who will be sent in his name.
And then, immediately, Jesus is into the main issue of the letter. To Ephesus, he had commended them for their toil and works. To Smyrna, he had commended them for their perseverance in the face of affliction. To Pergamum, he had commended them for remaining true to his name. To Thyatira, he had commended them for their perseverance. But to Sardis, there is no such commendation. Jesus comes straight in with his critique, verse 1: “I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead.”
“I know your deeds”. It is notable, of course, that when Jesus is speaking to the Christians in Ephesus and Thyatira and says “I know your deeds”, there is something reasonably warm in his words. But here, as he speaks to Sardis, that warmth has gone. “I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead”.
This is such a sharp condemnation that cuts to the very core of their being. Sardis was a church that was highly regarded throughout Asia Minor. It was probably a bustling church, full of activity, not unlike Ephesus in that regard. But the reputation did not reflect the real truth of the spiritual state of the church.
And perhaps we come to the nub of the problem when we reflect on the self-description of Jesus to the church at Sardis as the one who holds the seven spirits. It seems that the church at Sardis may have been busy and active but they were not reliant on the Holy Spirit in their ministry. This church, the people in the church, were not filled with the Holy Spirit: like the city of which they were a part, they were relying on past glories, not present spiritual realities. A bit like when your car runs out of petrol: if you are on a slope, you can keep moving forward for a while but not through the power of the engine so much as the reserve of energy still to be dissipated. The car looks like it is projecting forward but there is no power.
A church that relies on its past glory and does not operate in the power of the Spirit can look alive and bustling and active for a while, maybe quite a long time but it is dying, it is emptying itself with each dying gasp and will eventually be seen for what it is…
Jesus is critiquing the church in Sardis because it had become a shrine to the good old days and the Christians were still living in Memory Lane!
It is a dangerous thing for a church to just go through the motions and to become a museum to the past. It is not what Jesus wants for his church. Instead, he wants the church to be a lively, vibrant community reliant on the ministry of the Holy Spirit
pursuing God in the Now, not God in the Then…
“You have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead”. This is a study in contrasts and is the complete opposite of how we should be as Christians. And I do mean the complete opposite: as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 6:9: “We are known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on…” The complete opposite of the church at Sardis, regarded as alive but dead whereas Paul describes the Christian as being regarded as dead but living on…
Perhaps the Christians at Sardis looked down the road to their brothers and sisters ion the church at Smyrna who were being persecuted and suffering and pitied them as though they were dead. Yet it was to the Smyrneans, not the Christians at Sardis that Jesus said: “He who overcomes will not be hurt at all by the second death”.
Sardis: the church that had a reputation of being alive, but was dead.
Sardis: the dead church because they were not moving in the power of the Holy Spirit.
And then comes the stern warning in verse 2: “Wake up!” or as the Greek has it, “Be watchful!” “Be watchful” is a better translation than “Wake up!” because to wake up would be a one-off act but the phrase used is in the Present Tense, indicating a continuous action. So, it’s not a one-off thing they need to do, like “Wake up”; it’s a continuous state of being they are being called to: “Be watchful!” And this would have spoken deep into the psyches of the people of Sardis; the city that twice in it’s history had been captured for the very reason that they weren’t being watchful! No sentry guard at night – and twice the enemy armies had infiltrated the city. Their complacency had cost them politically and Jesus is now saying that their complacency will cost them spiritually too.
And Jesus goes on to advise them: “Be watchful! Strengthen what remains and is about to die”. Even in this advice we see the compassion of Jesus. Just now he had said to them, “You are dead” but now he tells them to strengthen what remains and is “about to die”. So, even at this late stage, they are not fully dead. In the grace of God, there is still a chance for them to repent and get back on track.
The phrase, “what is about to die” is quite difficult to translate because it suggests that actions from the past will impact on what happens in the future. So the sense there is that the impending death is as a result of their complacency that goes back over a long period of time. And complacency is like that, isn’t it? It creeps up on us over a period of time and, in the end, the state of complacency feels so normal that we don’t recognise it as complacency anymore. Perhaps that is what had happened in Sardis…
And then in verse 2, Jesus continues: “I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God”. I just want to unpack this sentence a bit:
“I have not found…” The way this is written indicates the fact that Jesus has undertaken an examination in the past of their actions and he has come to a decision about them, which continues into the present. A bit like saying, “I don’t like brussels sprouts”: the idea is that I tried them once and I continuously don’t like them. So Jesus is here re-iterating his role as judge with authority and power over Sardis: he has examined their works and he has come to a judgement about them.
And what is the judgement? “I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God…” Again, the sense is that the deeds of the past have not been complete and they are still not complete at the present time: there is a continuous incompleteness about the works of the church in Sardis, almost as if their complacency has become a habit, a way of being.
It’s interesting, isn’t it, that the church of Sardis was not being persecuted by the Jews, it was not facing economic hardship at the hands of the Romans, it was not struggling against false teachers. There was nothing to trouble them at all because they had become so complacent and easy going and apathetic that they had no enemies! One commentator has said that Sardis was a church at peace. The problem is that it was the peace of the graveyard! They just trundled along, untroubled and untroubling to the world…And God has seen that, he has observed their deeds over a period of time and his judgement is that they are as good as dead.
It’s a sad and sorry state of affairs in Sardis.
So Jesus goes on with a recommended course of action in verse 3: “Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent”.
They are to “remember” – and this is a present imperative, which suggests the need to hold in their minds: again, it’s not a one-off act of remembering they are being called to but a fundamental change to the way they think: “Remember…hold in your mind…stay mindful of…”
“Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard…” Actually, what the Greek says is “Remember, therefore, how you have received…” so it is not so much the message itself they need to remember but the manner in which it came to them. Perhaps Christ is calling to mind the authority of the disciples, perhaps John himself, and reminding them of the passion they had when they first received the Gospel from the first believers: the Christians of Sardis are part of a historic movement and they need to stay true to the passion of that movement.
“Obey it, and repent.” Obedience is, of course, an ongoing activity and perhaps Jesus is calling them to obey the teaching of the disciples who first brought the message to them. The church at Sardis was nurtured in the faith with passion and were called to a state of being filled with the Holy Spirit. They need to hold on to the reality of that history and make it their present experience by living out the Spirit-filled passion of the first disciples in their own walk with God.
Verse 3 continues: “But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I come to you.” The people of Sardis have been caught out before by the two invading armies and by the earthquake in AD 17 and all of these social events crept up on them like a thief. They know how that feels…And Jesus reminds them that he, too, will come in judgement on them.
Now this is not a reference to the Second Coming of Jesus because Jesus says he will come like a thief if they don’t wake up but the Second Coming is going to happen whether we are awake or not. This is a reference to Jesus visiting them in judgement prior to the Second Coming and they have the opportunity to avert that judgement if they change their ways and obey the historic faith that was delivered to them by the first believers.
And so we move on to the second part of this passage, verses 4-6, which are a bit more encouraging, I hope!
Verse 4: “Yet you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy.”
This is an interesting passage for a number of reasons. First, Jesus says, “You have a few names in Sardis” and I think this contrasts nicely with the idea that the Sardis church as a whole has the name of being alive, but is dead. There are some names that are fully alive in their midst.
And they have not soiled their clothes…In Asia Minor at the time, dirty clothing in worship was taken as being an offence to the deity being worshipped and those who had dirty clothes were ejected from the Temple. But those names in the church whose clothing is clean, they are the ones whose worship is acceptable to God.
And “They will walk with me”, which is to say that they will live in a continuous relationship of intimacy with Jesus.
“Dressed in white”, we may think at first glance that this means they are pure but given the next sentence, that’s a bit unlikely. It’s more likely to refer to the fact that they have been justified by God and that their sins are forgiven. We are reminded of Isaiah 1:18 in which God says: “Come, let us reason together. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” There were many wool-workers in Sardis who would have understood this…
“They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy”. Well, none of us are worthy to walk with Christ – in our own merit: we become worthy when we walk in the power of the Holy Spirit and we receive the justification of God and the forgiveness of our sins.
Verse 5: “He who overcomes will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out his name from the book of life, but will acknowledge his name before my Father and his angels.” That is such a beautiful promise to receive. The Book of Life in the Old Testament was a register of all the names of people who held citizenship within the people of Israel. That is why the Book of Numbers was so important, for example
because it tells of the census that was taken at Kadesh Oasis. And we know, particularly from the Christmas story about the importance of the census for the Roman Empire and the need to have your citizenship recorded. And here in Revelation 3, we find a metaphor, of course, that God holds the Book of Life which records the names of all those who are citizens of heaven and here we have the assurance that our names will never be blotted out if we have been justified by God.
And that is a really important point for us to understand: that we can never lose our salvation because our salvation is not dependent on our behaviour but solely on the gracious justification of God. Salvation is a gift – it is not ours to lose but only God’s to give and that is why it is so important for us to understand that the notion of being dressed in white in this passage is not about purity of behaviour but justification. If we did not understand it like that, we would be left with the conclusion that our names only remain in the Book of Life if we remain pure and undefiled in terms of behaviour. But that’s not the truth: our names remain in the Book because we are justified and counted worthy through the grace of God. And Jesus will acknowledge us before his Father and the angels: what wonderful news is that?
So, this letter to the church at Sardis is packed full of challenge for us. And not least is the challenge to us to reflect on our need to rely on the power of the Holy Spirit in our own lives and in our church. It is not enough to rely on past glories – the church is not a museum; we must constantly be seeking out the presence experience of God and be moved by a passion to see where he will lead us and where he wants to take us. We must be constantly watchful and remember how it is that we received the faith and seek to be faithful to the historic tradition that has been delivered to us without becoming slaves to that tradition itself. We are to beware of complacency. We are to beware of passivity and self-satisfaction in our churches and be constantly moving into God’s future. If we do that, we will know what it is to be justified by God and will be counted worthy of spending an eternity with him and nothing can ever take that away from us.
“Be watchful” is the message: avoid complacency and walk with Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit.
“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”
