Sleepy Sardis

*The sermon manuscript below was generated from the recording by AI…

We’ve been journeying with a messenger, haven’t we? As we’ve been traveling through the 7 churches of Asia, and we’ve traveled with the messenger through Ephesus, and through Smyrna, and through Pergamum. And recently we were in Thyatira, where we saw a church which was overwhelmed with compromise under the woman, Jezebel. And, and now we’ve left town with the messenger. We’ve left Thyatira, and we’ve started heading towards Sardis.

Now, on the way to Sardis, as you’re traveling there, one of the things that really strikes you as you start drawing near to Sardis is that, all along the hill, sort of overshadowing you, are tombstones, graves, burial sites. And, and they actually go all the way around the city. There’s all of this, this picture of death is just sort of forebodingly overshadowing the town. And, and as you draw near into the town itself, you notice that you’re drawing near to what might be called New Sardis, because there’s New Sardis and there’s Old Sardis. And as you look up the mountain, what you see is Old Sardis sitting upon the hill. It was a very well-known city. Very well-known. It was up, built literally into a rocky fortress, and you had walls of rock on 3 sides that were impenetrable, and you couldn’t climb up the sides of the precipice on any side. The only way up was this one winding road, which is obviously very easy to defend. It was similar to Helm’s Deep in people would say that it was impossible for anyone to ever overthrow it. No one could ever conquer Sardis. It was impenetrable.

And yet, that was now just an old, dead site. It wasn’t really used for much. It was an acropolis, a fortress s- that served the rulers, but they didn’t really use it for a whole lot. Most of life happened in New Sardis, which was down on the plain. It was a dusty place. It was very easy to soil your garments in the place because it was quite dusty, but it was also a place which was very rich. You see, Sardis had been a place where, in history, they said that gold flowed down the rivers and the king would just go into the river and scoop out gold. In fact, there was a, there was a hyperbole that the sand itself around Sardis was made of gold because it was such a wealthy empire. You see, some 4, 300 years earlier, it was a very important, prominent kingdom, Kingdom of Sardis under the King of Sardis, and he had been very highly respected. And it wasn’t until the time of Cyrus that he was finally deposed.

And as, as, as the man, the messenger, and you and I travel into Sardis, you, you notice that there’s not a lot of contention in this place. There’s a lot of peace. There’s not a lot of opposition. There doesn’t seem to be persecution. Christians are living out their faith apparent boldness. They’ve got a large sign on the front of their church that says, “All are welcome. We are the Church of Sardis of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we welcome you to worship with us.” And as you go in, you notice that, you know, they’re- they’re quite well-off. They’ve got good resources, good programs. You know, you walk up to the notice board that every church has, and on there is all the different programs. They have the mum’s group, and there’s the children’s group, and there’s the 13 different holiday programs that run each year. And they do outreach work and, and they’re busy and they’re doing all the time. They’re very, very effective. Their prayer meeting is overflowing. Both of their services are well-attended. And you think to yourself, “This is a church that has it all together.”

But, of course, if you’re the messenger that’s been to all of the last churches, you’ve already heard the letter to Sardis read, and so you walk in and you take the letter and you give it to the, the angel, the minister of Sardis. You say, “I’ve got a letter to you from the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.” You can imagine the, the gasps of, of breath taken in by the congregation. “Whoa, a letter from Jesus Himself. Not from the Apostle Paul. He’s long gone. Not even from the Apostle John, but from Jesus Christ Himself to us. Well, we must be reasonably important. Jesus must think quite highly of us if He’s going to send us a letter. Of all the churches he could have written to, He’s written to us.”

And so Jesus speaks to the church and He says to them, “These are the words of Him who has the 7 spirits of God and the 7 stars.” It’s, it’s a picture of 2 things. It’s the picture of one who holds the power of life. That’s what the Spirit is, right? Spirit is He who gives life, He who works life within us. He causes us to be born again. And He causes the life within us to overflow and grow and bear fruit. This is very telling for the people in Sardis because what, what you didn’t notice when you were walking through the town was that one of the main gods of Sardis was the god called Cybele. And one of Cybele’s, sort of, character traits was that Cybele brought life through death, was the god of things like sowing. So, your plant dies, right? And the head of grain falls down and it dies and then it gives forth to more fruit. It was the god of regeneration or resurrection, the god who would take death and from death would bring about something new, reincarnation. Very similar to the gods of Hinduism and Buddhism.

And so to this church surrounded by this concept that life comes through death, Jesus writes to them and says, “I’m the one who holds life in my hand. I am the one who has th- the Spirit of God, who offers complete life, full life, and not through your death, but through mine.” But he’s also the one who holds the 7 stars, and we’ve heard that before, haven’t we? It’s the picture of authority. It’s the picture of knowledge. It’s the picture of one who is intimately involved and concerned with the state of the ministers of his church. You see, we often forget, or maybe we can be tempted to forget, that the minister is but a servant. He’s not the church’s servant, but he is a servant, isn’t he? The minister is not the church’s servant, but he is Christ’s servant, to whom he is answerable. And so, Jesus is reminding the minister of Sardis that there is one to whom you give account.

And Sardis is a church which is not going to get a lot of praise. With a lot of the churches, we’ve seen that, haven’t we? Jesus has said to them, “I know you do this well. Let me commend you first.” You may notice in your reading that there is no commendation in the beginning of this letter. The Lord Jesus comes with the picture of him with life on one hand, the offer of life in one hand, and the authorit- or the picture of authority in the other hand, and he immediately comes with critique. He comes with a 5 pointed critique of Sardis. A 5 pointed critique of Sardis.

Have a look. So, firstly, he says, as he says to all of the churches, “I know your works.” In other words, “I know your ways. I know what you’re like.” He says, “You have a name” That word reputation in the Greek is literally just name. “You have a name. You’re known for being alive, but you’re dead.” So, that’s first critique. Second critique, “Well, you have a name for being awake,” verse 2, “but you’re actually asleep.” Hence, he tells them to wake up. They have a reputation for being strong, yet Jesus tells them in verse 2 to strengthen themselves. Why? Because they’re actually feeble and weak. They have a reputation for being alive, but they’re actually dead, so he says to them, “Strengthen what is about to die.” He, they have a reputation for being complete, for being, the word is full in their works. You know, their works. If any church has quality works, quality program, has it all well-organized, it’s Sardis. But Jesus says, “You have a reputation of being full, but you’re actually hollow. You’re actually empty.” And they have a reputation for being dressed in white, but they’re actually soiled. Hence, Jesus can say, “There are a few remaining who have not soiled themselves.”

What’s this a picture of? What’s this, this picture? A church that would s- that would have a reputation within themselves and outside in the world, and probably all of the other churches in Asia I would imagine that when the 7 churches received the 7 letters and read them, every church, including Sardis, would’ve gone, “No. Sardis? But, but they’re so good. But they’re so well-respected. But they’ve got so much going for them. They’re We’ve seen it with our own hands. Their budget’s incredible. They give a million dollars away to missions every year. Their programs are incredibly well-structured. They’re rich. They’re strong. They’re powerful. They’ve got everything going.” And yet Jesus says, “No, you have none of these.”

What’s, what’s another word for this? Is it not hypocrisy? See, what’s a hypocrite? Well, biblically, a hypocrite is a play actor. You’ve, I’m sure you- you’ve probably heard it by preachers before. A hypocrite is that Greek word for an actor who stands in a coliseum or at a show with a big mask. Why? Because you don’t have cameras to zoom in on actors’ faces. And if you’re in the back of the coliseum, you can’t see them very well. And so, they’d have a big fake face. And when they were acting happy, it would be a ex- e- extreme happy face, highlighting the happiness of the actor. And yet, everyone knew that the person on the inside might be absolutely miserable, right? And it’s no different today. You can be an actor. and you can be acting the most jovial person on the face of the planet, like one actor I think of, who then went out and shot himself 3 weeks later. Why? Because what you act is not who you are. That’s a hypocrite.

And the thing that marks the church in Sardis is hypocrisy. They are putting on a show. “We’re rich. We have it all together.” And yet, it’s all fake. Something’s missing. Something’s not right.

See, Jesus comes to them, and he critiques them because Jesus is not primarily concerned with what we produce. But part of the problem is, that’s how we almost exclusively think, isn’t it? I was talking to someone about this the other day, I think it was here. But we Even in our vocabulary, in the way we speak nowadays, we highlight that we are people that think in a framework of production. Let me illustrate this for you. When you greet someone, is it not common now to say to a person, “How are you doing?” Why do you say, “How are you doing?” No one used to say that. It’s a modern thing. What did people used to say? “How are you?” Or, “How do you be?” people used to say if you go further back. Why? Because my concern is not with, what are you doing and what are you producing? My concern is with you as a person.

And there’s a sense in which the church has actually imbibed this con- this context and this culture so that we gauge churches and we gauge ourselves based off what we produce. So, when you speak to a friend and you talk to them about their church, what questions do you ask them? How many people go to your church? What programs do you run? A- and ministers, I think, are the greatest illustration of this. When you go to a ministers conference or a ministers event, the standard conversation, and it, it just grosses me out, I- I wish I could avoid it. You sit down at a table for lunch, and the conversation immediately becomes, “What is your church? How many people attend? Do you have any missionaries? Do you have an associate pastor?” And it’s all about what? Size, money, production. Because that’s the way we think. Because in our minds, in our fleshliness, success is based off what you produce.

But that’s not how Christ functions. Success is always based off faithfulness. I remember sitting in a church with a young man when I was preparing for the ministry and, and just starting to think about these things, and he said to me once, “Why is it, Logan, that we, uh, we, we do all the right things, you know, we honor God’s Word, we seek to be faithful, we seek to uphold the Scriptures, and yet our churches don’t grow? We don’t succeed. But then I look down the road at the local Pentecostal church, who does m- all manner of things which God despises, and they grow and they succeed, and they’ve got huge bank balances and their pastors have Harleys. So how does this work?” And I said to him, “Because you’re gauging success wrong.” If success is based off growth and money, sure, you’re right. But if success is based off faithfulness, then the metric’s completely different.

And the problem with Sardis is they were defined not by faithfulness to Christ, but by faithfulness to their own programs, by commitment to their own priorities and not the priorities of Christ. And so Christ comes, and Christ critiques them. And I guess it’s worth pausing for a moment and asking ourselves the question, if, if someone was to listen to the way we speak as a church, if someone was to listen to the way we pray, where would they say our emphasis is? Where would they say our metric of success is? Would they say this is a church devoted to numbers, growth, and human success? Or is this a church devoted to faithfulness to Christ?

Are these Christians play-acting? You see the greater problem is not so much that our focus becomes on results, but because our focus comes on results, we begin to function purely in an exterior fashion. You see, when we become obsessed with results, our heart no longer matters. You see, because your heart can be very far away, and you can do all the right things and gain all of the right results. But God, God doesn’t want our results. He wants our heart. He wants us. You see, He saved us for Himself, to be His children, to be in relationship with Him, to commune with Him. And Sardis had lost this.

You see, they had a very comfortable life, and because of it, they were thinking they were very safe. In fact, they were just like old Sardis. You see, old Sardis dwelt in a fortress which was impenetrable. I mean, you could hold off an army for years with just 5 men standing on the wall. You only had to watch one front. And because of that, they, they grew fat and lazy, and overly secure, and they forgot their reason why they were secure. They forgot to keep watch. And do you know what happened to old Sardis? Well, King Cyrus came. King of Sardis went out to meet him in warfare, having received a prophecy that a kingdom would be destroyed. He assumed it was Cyrus’. He was wrong. He went out and got d- defeated by them. He retreated, knowing that he’d be able to defend himself and Sardis indefinitely. He retreated to Sardis, and during, during the time that they were sort of held within Sardis, one of their soldiers was walking along the cliff wall and accidentally dropped his helmet off the edge. And he climbed down the rock face to grab it and climbed back up. Well, while he did that, one of the men of Cyrus watched. And so what did he do? He led a group of men who climbed up the precipice, all the way, all night long, they climbed up until they had soldiers on the inside. And so there is King of Sardis, looking out the front door while an entire army sneaks in the back door. And there was a wide open cavern that had slowly worn itself down in the wall, and they hadn’t bothered repairing it because “We’re impenetrable. We’re safe. We’re secure. We’re sleepy. We’re dead.” And they were overthrown.

And what’s striking is the exact same thing happened 300 years later. The populous grew fat and lazy and forgetful and sleepy, and they were overthrown. And Sardis, the church Jesus is highlighting, is in exactly the same danger. They have forgotten the things that really matter. They have failed in their peace and prosperity. They have failed to keep watch.

And brothers and sisters, that’s a warning for us. Don’t we live in a time of peace and prosperity? I mean, let’s be honest, it’s hard sometimes being a Christian, but no one’s beating you to death with a mallet. You might get insulted on the internet, but you’re not watching your children being abducted and sent into re-education camp. We live in peace and prosperity, and as a church, in spite of everything we’ve been through, we dwell here together as, as a loving family with comfort, don’t we? We must be very weary, lest we begin to fall asleep. Lest we begin to sleep the sleep of death and lose sight of the things that really matter and let the flame in the heart begin to grow cold and peter out. We need to fan it into flame, don’t we? We need to spur one another on. We need to strengthen weak knees, as the writer to the Hebrews says. Why? Because we’re all prone to take our foot off the accelerator, ’cause we get tired. And so, we need to encourage one another and inspire one another and build one another up.

And so, Jesus does that for the church in Sardis. He critiques them, but He loves them, doesn’t He? And He doesn’t want them to stay that way. And you know, when you go to the doctor and he tells you what’s wrong, he’s a really bad doctor if he just tells you what’s wrong and sends you on the way. “Oh, it appears you’ve got a broken arm. Have a lovely life.” No, what do you want? He says, “You’ve got a broken arm. Let me put a cast on it. Let me fix it for you.” And so, this spiritual physician, the physician of the soul, the Lord Jesus Christ, He, He puts His finger on the wound inside us and He jabs it, but then He tells them what they need.

He says to them, firstly, “Wake up. Wake up.” You see, one of the biggest problems is we don’t realize what’s wrong, do we? The apathy kicks in, and we become sleepy and drowsy in our faith, and we begin to drift off. The passion that we had for Christ begins to wane. And what do we need? A wake-up call. You understand this if you’ve got teenagers. You know what it’s like getting teenagers out of bed sometimes. It’s amazing how fast they can fall asleep. You walk in and you say, “It’s time to get out of bed! It’s church! It’s Sunday!” And they look at you and they go, “Okay!” And then you walk back in 5 minutes later and they’re asleep. like You open up the door and you say, “It’s Sunday! You’ve got to get out of bed!” They say, “Yep, getting up.” And then you walk back in there 10 minutes later and they’re fast asleep. I was terrible like this, until one day my dad got so sick of waking me up to go and milk the cows that he walked in with a cup of water and tipped it on my head. Kapoosh! I refused to wake up.

And Christians can be like that. The minister will say something from the pulpit, and you’ll think to yourself, “Oh. Oh, yes, that is a problem.” But then by the time you’ve gone home, you’ve forgotten. You, you thought you felt the Spirit stabbing a wound, but you quietly silenced it. And Jesus says, “Wake up. Realize what’s going on before it’s too late. Don’t lose sight of the problem. You’ve grown sleepy.”

And so, the first imperative thing in order to be awakened with zeal is to hear Christ saying, “Don’t put up with mediocrity. Don’t put up with lethargy. Don’t accept laziness. Don’t wander through life in passiveness. Wake up and realize that your face is on the ground and that you’re sleeping, you’re dreaming. Get out of bed. There’s work to be done. There’s a life to live.”

So, the first thing He says is, “Wake up.” The second thing He says is, “Strengthen what remains.” You know what it’s like w- if you’ve ever had a cast. I’ve had a lot of them. I, I was very accident-prone as a child, and I think 4 different broken wrists. I only had 2 wrists, but I broke them multiple times. Broken ankles. And I would often have casts on. And, and it’s amazing. After 6 weeks with a cast on, when you take that cast off, what your arm looks like. You think to yourself, “Did they give me a different arm? Where did my arm go?” It’s this pasty, wrinkly, skinny little arm with no muscle. It’s all withered. My grandfather went through this. He was in a body cast for some 14 months, full body cast after a car accident. He was a withered-up person by the time they they were finished with him. That’s what happens when we don’t exercise our faith, when we don’t exercise our spiritual muscles, when we don’t pursue Christ with energy. We wither up. Our muscles shrink.

This is why when you begin to stop pursuing Christ it gets easier and easier over time. Let me just give you one little simple analogy of this. When you read your Bible consistently, it gets easier and easier to do it, right? It’s like a muscle. And when you don’t do it one day because something happens, you sleep in, you get out of bed and you don’t have time, and you go to work, everything feels a bit out of place, and the day doesn’t feel the same. You didn’t start it well. Everything’s a bit funky. But, but then you sleep in the next day because you stayed up playing computer games ’til 1:00 in the morning, a-and so you didn’t do it the next day. And then the next day there was a birthday party that you had to go to, so you went to someone’s birthday party, so you didn’t do it the next day. After a week, what happens? All of a sudden you, you actually don’t even notice that you didn’t read your Bible because your spiritual muscle begins to shrivel and shrink. Same thing with prayer. Same thing with every spiritual discipline. They wither, and it’s really hard to start doing them again, isn’t it?

And yet Jesus says, “Strengthen what remains.” There’s still some strength there. You’re not dead yet, so use what you’ve got. Start pursuing me. Even if you can just pray for 30 seconds, pray for 30 seconds. Exercise the muscle. What do physiotherapists do with people? They don’t get them out of bed the first time and say, “Well, time to do a marathon!” Do they? They say, “We’re gonna go to the end of the bed.” And then the next day they say, “We’re gonna get to the edge of the room. We’re aiming to get to the bathroom. We’re aiming for the corridor. We’re aiming to the end of the corridor, while this week we’re going down the stairs.” And bit by bit they strengthen what remains.

And this is what Jesus says to you and I this morning. Where are you lazy? Be honest with yourself. Be honest with the Lord. You don’t need to tell me, but tell the Lord. Where are you lethargic? Where are you lazy? Where have you grown cold? Where have you grown weak? We 0 look to the Lord and say, “Ah, let’s do it again. Let’s strengthen my spiritual muscles.”

But then, thirdly, he says strengthen. Then thirdly, he says, “Fulfill your works. I have not found your works complete in the sight of God,” He says. And then he says, verse 3, here’s the next command, “Remember what you received and heard.” Now, the, the translators here are trying to translate a sen- sentence which is a little bit funky. It’s quite literally, “Remember then how you have received and heard.” How you have received. You think to yourself, “What? Wh- why how? Shouldn’t it I mean, what makes more sense, right?” Remember what you received from Jesus. But Jesus doesn’t say, “Remember what you received from me.” He says, “Remember how you r- received it. Remember how you have received it in the past.” In other words, think back to the effect that happened within you when you heard Christ, when you received Christ, when the life-giving Spirit of God moved in your heart.

Can you remember? Can you remember those, those first moments of marital joy when you first met the Lord Jesus Christ, your beloved? I mean, if you’re married you can think back to those first moments, can’t you? When you first got married, the honeymoon period, before you realized that they left their socks and underwear on the floor. Now think, think back to what your heart was like when you first received Christ. Was it not elated with joy? Was it not overwhelmed with wonder? Did you not just sit there at times and find your thinking, yourself thinking about the incredible thing that He would choose you, a-and that when He spoke all you wanted to do is just sit and listen? And yet at some point you forgot, didn’t you? At some point It no longer excited you. And you need to ask yourself, why? Why did it stop exciting you? Why did the voice of Jesus become stale? Did he change? But you know the answer to that, don’t you? He didn’t change, but you changed. And do you know the number one cause of change? Do you want to know the number one reason why people stop being excited by Christ? Because they become far too excited with the things of this world.

And if, if we’re honest with ourselves, we will acknowledge that to be true. The more saturated we are with the things of the world, the less excited we will be with Christ. It’s a little bit like your mum’s cooking. If you’ve only ever eaten your mum’s cooking, you think it’s the best thing on the face of the planet, right? Like, little children, they’re like, “My mum’s the best cook in the world.” And then they grow up and what happens? They go to a restaurant. They go to a 5 star restaurant and they go, “Whoa. Is this what food is? I thought meat was meant to be black. I thought veggies were meant to be boiled to death. What is this strange phenomenon?” And so then what do you do? Well, I’m gonna go to another one and another one and another one. And then one day you go back to your mother’s cooking, and you look and you go, “It’s not quite the same as it used to be.” And yet, don’t we do this with the world? Christ doesn’t dish us up a burnt steak. He gives us eternal riches of glory. And as C.S. Lewis would put it, “We’re like children playing in a mud pie whose parents come along and say, ‘Sunny, should we go to the beach?’ And the child says no because they can’t imagine how good the seaside is.” They’re too busy playing in the mud.

We’re like that. We saturate ourselves in fleshly things, so why are we surprised that we care nothing for the things of Christ? And so Christ is calling us to leave it behind, just get rid of it. “Sardis, wake up! Strengthen.” Receive again, hear again with joy. Wake up. It’s right there for you.

“Keep it,” he says next. Y- when you remember So, these things go one after the other, right? You wake yourself up to the problem, you then strengthen what you have, you then remember how you used to receive the Word of God, and then you keep it. Now, the reason this is important is because when you first begin to return, everything inside of you says no. Your flesh objects to it, right? Your flesh says, “Ugh, sounds painful. This sounds like work. I don’t wanna do this.” It’s called a spiritual discipline for a reason. You have to discipline yourself. So, keep it. Get the Word of God in your heart and do it.

“And repent daily.” Get up, repent. “Lord, I’ve missed it again. Grant me joy. Give me fire in my heart. Kindle a blaze that which has gone slack. Woo me back to your side, Lord. I’m sorry.” Repent again. Return, Return to the lover of your soul.

One of the things I love in the Old Testament is how often the Lord addresses his people as a husband. He says to them, “I gave you everything. Everything. And you forsook me. But even now, if you will return, I will revive you.” And this is the wonderful promise of the Lord Jesus Christ to us today. Maybe we’re feeling cold, maybe we’re feeling indifferent. Maybe- maybe we think it’s too late. Maybe we feel like it’s a horse that’s been flogged to death, and it’s just not worth trying again. Well, the Lord promises to you, “Return. While there’s breath, there’s hope. It’s not too late, Sardis. It’s not too late for you, nor for me.”

And so Jesus is calling to his people to reawaken themselves again. But the Lord knows these things aren’t easy. Our flesh is very strong, isn’t it? Our worldliness is a real battle. And so he also then threatens them, and motivates them. He threatens them and he motivates them. He says in verse 3, “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.”

Now, notice 2 things. Firstly, thief. Second, against you. It’s a very strong word, “Against you.” He doesn’t say, “I will come like a thief and take away your nice stuff.” Now, if you, if you know the Gospels, you probably know and, and hear echoes of Jesus’ teaching on the earth, don’t you? Jesus’ parables of the end times, what does he frequently say? “The Son of Man will return like a thief in the night when no one expects it.” He says, you know, if, if the, if the man had known the robber, he would have been prepared. But when the man comes like a thief, he’s not prepared. Or he tells the parable of, of the servant who he appoints over his house. And the servant, he starts well, but then the servant recognizes, “Well, the king isn’t coming back any time soon. I don’t think he’s ever gonna come around.” So he begins to get drunk, and he begins to beat the other servants. Jesus says, “And what will the master do when he returns and finds the unfaithful servant? He will cut him in pieces and cast him into the lake of fire.” It’s a terrible imagery.

Jesus is drawing on all of these imageries as he says these words, “I will come like a thief in the night.” In other words, “I will come in judgment. Right now, I’m coming in peace, I’m coming in mercy, I’m coming in love. I’m seeking to awaken you before it’s too late. But if you will not wake up, I will come in judgment against you.”

Brothers and sisters, you must recognize that sleepiness is the first sign of spiritual stupor and death. Do we not all know people of which we could say with the Apostle John, “They were of us, but they clearly weren’t, because they left us. They were clearly not of us, because they went out from us,” John says. Do we not know people like that? People that at 1 point were zealous for the faith, and we looked at them, and we said, “Here’s a Christian! Here’s a godly person!” But they went cold. And having gone cold, they fell asleep. And having fallen asleep, they died, and they never rose again. And they sit in their stupor all the way to hell. Be warned, lest Christ find you napping, and he come like a thief in the night.

This is a severe warning, Church, for each and every one of us. But he also brings a wonderful motivation for those of us that have not spoiled our garments. Verse 4. “There are some that have not spoiled their garments. They will walk with me in white, for they are worthy.” And then he goes on and he says, “The one who conquers,” in other words, the one who heeds my instruction, he who wakens “He who is alive will be clothed thus in white garments. I will never blot his name out of the book of life. I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels.”

You know what’s wonderful about this motivation? ‘Cause as I said to you right at the beginning in verse one, that word reputation is the word name. It’s the exact same word that’s used here for name. And, and so Sardis, the majority of Sardis are saying, “We’ve got a name. We’ve got a name! We’re important! We matter! People think we’re special! We’ve got it all together!” Jesus says, “I will give you a name. I will write down your name in a book, and it will never be scrubbed out, and I will confess your name before my Father and before the angels.” Why? Because you’re so good? Because you heeded the word of Christ. You woke up. It says, “I will dress them in white,” a symbol of righteousness in the Book of Revelation, “and what he has will never be taken away from him.”

You see, Jesus was threatening to take away everything Sardis had, but he was also promising any that would wake up and follow Christ shall never lose what they have. Brothers and sisters, this is not just an important message for Sardis, because the reality is there is always a temptation for every single one of us to grow sleepy, comfortable, and lethargic, right? And so it’s a warning. If you’re not there, then it’s a warning for us. Don’t grow tired. Press on in the upward call of Christ. And for those of us that have begun to become sleepy, it’s an invitation to wake up and do the work of the Lord, and not to grow tired or weary, but rather to strengthen our weak knees and our flabby arms and do the work of the Lord, and he will be pleased to bring fruit from it.

Press on, brothers and sisters. Don’t grow weary, but continue in doing good, and may God grant us all that we need to do so.

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