The Messianic congregation at Sardis was considered a dead church. This devotional reading looks at how God approached them calling for their repentance.
Nuggets
- Audio Man gave a call to repentance but didn’t elaborate on it.
- God sees who are faithful to Him — especially when they have found it difficult to walk with Him.
- Jesus will not remove our names from the book of life, but can we?
We’re looking at letter to the Messianic congregation at Sardis. They just got a condemnation.
The disciples at Sardis were putting on a show. They weren’t really who they said they were spiritually. They thought their service and reputation were enough.
They were organized as a congregation. They were doing things congregations did but were going through all the motions and rituals.
We said it seemed like Audio Man was withdrawing from the congregation. This withdrawal was further evident in the call for repentance.
Let’s jump back in there.
Let's Put It into Context
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Devotions in the The Letters to the Congregations series
Call to Repentance
“Remember, then, what you received and heard. Keep it, and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you” (Rev. 3: 3 ESV)
Audio Man gave a call to repentance but didn’t elaborate on it.
Remember
The Messianic congregation at Sardis received God’s Word. Back in the first century, they wouldn’t have read it. But they heard it.
Their problem was they forgot it. Well, we’re assuming they forgot.
Hopefully, they didn’t abandon God’s Word. That would have been worse than forgetting it.
Forgetting is an unconscious decision. Abandonment is a conscious decision.
Let’s put verses 2 and 3 together. The congregation at Sardis had accepted the gospel they had heard but, at some point, were no longer putting into practice what they had been taught.
It is important that we don’t abandon God’s Word. “I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you” (Ps. 119: 11 ESV).
Audio Man wanted them to remember. But isn’t that all through God’s Word? “I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your wonders of old” (Ps. 77: 11 ESV).
Paul gave the purpose in our remembering. “So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter” (II Thess. 2: 15 ESV).
Ooo, baby. We can’t let that word traditions trip us up.
Paul wasn’t trying to get us to establish new traditions so that we could abuse them as the Pharisees did. He is explained it was very important for them — and us — to contrast without Christ and within Him (Eph. 2: 11-13).
The congregation at Sardis would have benefited greatly from that exercise.
Keep It
I thought it was interesting that the keep it is before the repent. That seems backwards to salvation.
We are not required to clean up our acts in order to approach God. “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool” (Isa. 1: 18 ESV).
Together, God and we reason out our salvation. We come to see what He is offering us.
Then, we grab onto his doctrines and promises and hold on tight. While we are holding on, we also have to hold on tight to His laws and commands.
How do we hold fast to God?
We get our submission to God down to the heart level. We fortify our faith to believe in Him through thick and thin.
Okay. Something is trying to wind through my head. Let’s see if we can grab it.
Ephesus: “… To the one who conquers …” (Rev. 2: 7 ESV).
Smyrna: “… Be faithful unto death …” (Rev. 2: 10 ESV).
Pergamum: “… you hold fast …” (Rev. 2: 13 ESV).
Thyatira: “Only hold fast what you have until I come” (Rev. 2: 25 ESV).
Sardis: “… Keep it …” (Rev. 3: 3 ESV).
All the admonitions to the other churches had to do with enduring. This is about obeying.
No, the other congregations didn’t obey, either, but Sardis seems like it is one of the worst of the worst.
What faith they have appears to have been hard fought. Keeping it while enduring is hard.
Repent
All was not lost for the congregation at Sardis. They were given the chance to repent. They were instructed to go back to their conversion.
We touched on it briefly in the last devotion. This call to repentance was much different than those in the previous letters we have studied. Nothing was said about restoration.
Without restoration, there is no hope.
Any repentance had to be soon.
Like a Thief
They will suffer the consequences if they do not repent and obey.
The congregation at Sardis had a role to play in their repentance. They had to initiate it.
If they did not repent and turn back to God, they would suffer the consequences. “… 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” (Rev. 3: 3 ESV).
Instead of repentance, it talked about a thief in the night.
This phrase has been used when it was describing the Day of the Lord. Time for repentance will be over.
Okay, people will try to make the argument that it wasn’t the congregation at Sardis that was the focus of the letter because the Day of the Lord hasn’t come. I don’t think that is going to fly.
Their lives ended a long, long time ago. It may not have been the end of the age, but it was the end of their lifetimes.
They had no more time to repent.
To the Faithful in Sardis
“Yet you have still a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with me in white, for they are worthy. The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life. I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels” (Rev. 3: 4-5 ESV)
God sees who are faithful to Him — especially when they have found it difficult to walk with Him.
Yet a Few Names in Sardis
Not all of the people in the Messianic congregation at Sardis were giving lip service.
As terse as the letter was to the congregation at Sardis, Audio Man did not forget the faithful. God will never forget His true children.
There were some who were walking with God. Some were trying to navigate the Sanctification Road.
This would have been very comforting to them. They were facing a strong, organized opposition and enduring.
This brings up the concept of the remnant. We think of it mainly as an Old Testament term, but it is in the New Testament, also. “So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace” (Rom. 11: 5 ESV).
They are the remnant because of their faithfulness. They endured the struggle.
Do we see how it all connects?
Was the congregation at Sardis the only congregation/church that had a rarity of true believers? I would love to say no.
That isn’t my call. If the Church is missing Jesus, as God has told Pastor Steve for two years, I would hazard a guess we have modern-day churches like Sardis.
Walk with Me in White
Holiness has to be more than experience. It has to be our character.
Our journey through life is characterized by a walk. Think about it.
How did Jesus teach the Apostles? He did it while they were walking around the countryside.
True, we can say that Jesus took them out of their ordinary lives and dropped them into this. But this had become their lives.
The Apostles were learning as they were going.
Who better to walk with than our Lord Jesus Christ?
This activity helps us to work out our salvation. We have companionship with God.
One thing that is mentioned several times in the Book of Revelation is the white garments. What was that about white clothes? “Let your garments be always white. Let not oil be lacking on your head” (Ecc. 9: 8 ESV).
The white garments symbolize our character. They show our sins being washed and purified until they are the color of white.
I’ll say it again. Holiness has to be more than experience. It has to be our character.
We obtain God’s character by navigating the Sanctification Road. Over the course of our journey, it becomes a habit. We have to have habitual holiness.
How do we tie this all together?
- The white garments show we have been justified by Jesus.
- They symbolize purity in God.
- We get purity in God through salvation, not doing works.
- Our works can be a costume to cover up the fact that we don’t have white clothes — a real relationship with God.
- If we are doing the works with the wrong motivation, we are Matthew 7: 21 people, who end up being goats on Judgment Day.
What do we want? We want to be clothed with righteousness.
We know it is hard to be in the world, but not of the world. Jesus knows the struggles that we face, too. He faced them himself.
We can take comfort in the fact that Jesus withstood the temptations. No, we are not God, but we can withstand with his strength.
Our main goal should be to keep our character unsullied. That is the only way in which we will be pure.
To do that, we need to follow God’s laws and commandments. They show us His character, which we are to imitate.
Just because no one becomes absolutely spotless in this life does that mean we fail at being a disciple. We are still in these sinful bodies in a sinful world. We repent from any sins we commit and turn away from them.
We are maturing to become like God. On the Day of the Lord, we will be pure as He is.
The only way we gain the white garments is by conquering sin. The only way we conquer self and sin is by putting our faith in Jesus and imitating Him.
Closing
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (Rev. 3: 6 ESV)
If we look at the closing as being the message to those in the congregation who have conquered their battles in this life, we look back at verse 5.
Jesus will not remove our names from the book of life, but can we?
Is verse 5 an indication that one of the things we hold on as truth really isn’t? “The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life. I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels” (Rev. 3: 5 ESV emphasis added).
We are going to save the discussion on the book of life itself until Revelation 20. Right now, we are going to discuss once saved, always saved.
Is the belief that once-saved-always-saved biblical or just something we are holding on to because that is what we have always believed?
First, we have to put this in cultural context. Taylor helped us with that. He wrote,
“The allusion of this phrase [“I will not blot his name out of the book of life”] is supposed to be to the genealogical tables of the Jews, out of which a man’s name was blotted when he died; and the meaning is, that Jesus will not blot such a victor’s name out of the register of His redeemed ones.”
Resource
Then, we connect it with what is the foundation for our spiritual belief. “… I will never blot his name out of the book of life …” (Rev. 3: 5 ESV).
We are told that God will never lose us, but can we make ourselves get lost? Can we decide we no longer want to believe in God and obey Him, therefore losing our salvation?
I don’t think this is necessarily a disciple’s unrepented sin. It is our conscious decision to deny God.
If we tie it to the cultural reference, maybe Jesus will not blot such a disciple’s name out of the book of life, but He does for those who are not disciples.
But then what does Audio Man mean when He writes the Messianic congregation at Philadelphia? “I am coming soon. Hold fast what you have, so that no one may seize your crown” (Rev. 3: 11 ESV).
How can someone take our crown? (Stay tuned for the next devotion to address that cliff hanger.)
I think we have to leave this to God to decide once-saved-always-saved. We just have to make sure our relationship with God is where it should be.
But we have to remember that this is the whole point of the letter to the congregation at Sardis. Some believers looked like they were still good to go, but they weren’t. “… You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead’” (Rev. 3: 1 ESV emphasis added).
Nothing dead is going to enter Heaven.
“… I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels” (Rev. 3: 5 ESV) is a good argument for Vision Man being Jesus. We have this visual of everyone standing at the judgment seat on Judgment Day, and Jesus calling out, “Tom is mine, Sally isn’t mine, and Elaine is mine.”
To me, this appears to be how we are going to be introduced to God. Jesus will always acknowledge our obedience to God’s laws — especially our sincere salvation.
It is our reward — and honor — to have our names written in the book of life. We should not take that lightly.
Making the Connections #1
Mackennal said that part of the problem at Sardis was the lack of discipline. That is a major problem.
Discipline shows our commitment to God. It is needed to establish consistency.
- We have to consistently read God’s Word.
- We have to consistently pray.
- We have to consistently attend worship services.
- We have to consistently evaluate ourselves to ensure that we are navigating the Sanctification Road toward God.
The sad part is I think that many feel the same way Mackennal did. He wrote,
“So deep is the sin of the Church that it is blessedness only to have been free from it. So dire is the doom that, for them who have escaped it, to have their names not blotted out of the book of life is enough. The Lord will confess their names in heaven, because it is a wonder to find souls from Sardis there.”
Resource
It is enough to just get our foot in the door of Heaven. I get that because the alternative is hell.
Eeek! What does that say about trying to establish a relationship with God? It makes it sound like it is okay to tread water in our faith.
I know, sometimes, it feels like that. Satan is just throwing everything He has at us, and it is a struggle to just get through the day.
But those are the times we grow the closest to God. If we aren’t using the trials to motor closer, we won’t during the smooth sailing either.
How true a disciple are we then?
Making the Connections #2
Mackennal argued much of our trouble in building a strong faith is laid at the door of restlessness. Things do not satisfy us for long.
Resource
But the problem with that is that it is following a worldview mentality. There are several issues with that.
If we are just following someone else’s thoughts and preferences, that doesn’t make us strong in our own beliefs. We get in trouble when we follow the world.
That constant switching to follow the current fad makes our lives very chaotic. Chaos is definitively not of God. Satan specializes in that.
Of course, the issue is always that disciples are to be in the world and not of it. That is a fine line at times, but we have to make sure we are following God’s Will, not Satans’s.
Making the Connections #3
We might be sad when we read that there were so few believers in Sardis. We can be sad.
We shouldn’t be surprised.
Jesus said there would be few following the narrow way. “For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Mt. 7: 14 ESV).
That is proof that it is not a numbers game with God. He isn’t going for seats in pews. He is going for a transformed heart.
How Do We Apply This?
- Study God’s Word in order to keep our garments clean.
Resource
Father God. Lord, we do not want to be so far away from You that You do not come to us with restoration. We want to be in Your Will, striving to grow closer to You. Help us to constantly seek You. Amen.
What do you think?
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