Surprised Like Sardis (Revelation 3:1-6) | Pastor Jake Sweetman

In this powerful message, we dive into the fifth letter of Revelation, addressing the church in Sardis. Drawing lessons from the ancient city’s tragic history, Pastor delves into the prophetic words of Jesus, urging us to awaken and recognize our spiritual vulnerabilities. Discover how Sardis’ false sense of security led to downfall, not due to known weakness but because of ignored strengths. Unpack the importance of humility, submission, and community in navigating our spiritual journeys. Explore how pride and neglected vulnerabilities can lead us away from Jesus’ path of righteousness. Through scripture and historical reflection, learn how to strengthen what remains by relying on the Holy Spirit and embracing the transformative power of confession and repentance. This sermon challenges us to revisit our assumptions, protect our spiritual lives, and maintain a living, active relationship with Jesus. Join us as we uncover ways to guard against the unseen cliffs that threaten to undermine our faith and watchfulness.

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Transcript

 We are going through the book of Revelation.

The series is called The Wonderful World of the Apocalypse.

I think we're relatively on track, to be honest with you.

I think it will somewhere be around 40 weeks.

We'll see.

And we are in week 11.

That's where we are.

Right now we're going through the seven churches.

Revelation chapters 2 and 3.

Jesus' prophetic messages to these seven churches.

And we are on the fifth one of those.

So Revelation chapter 3, the first six verses, is where we're going to be today.

Why don't you turn in your Bibles.

 to Revelation chapter 3.

I believe God's going to speak today.

Scripture says this, 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.

You might remember from chapter one that the seven stars are representative of the angels that are assigned to each of the churches.

I know your deeds.

You have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead.

Did you hear that?

This is strong words.

This is Jesus talking here.

 I know your deeds.

You have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead.

Now, in all of the other letters so far, Jesus begins with some encouragement.

It's like an encouragement sandwich from Jesus.

Like he has something, you know, nice to say, and then something kind of hard to hear, but then he ends on something nice to say.

These guys don't get the sandwich.

They just get like thrown straight into, you're not doing great, okay?

You have a reputation of being alive, but you're dead.

Wake up.

 Strengthen what remains and is about to die for I have found your deeds unfinished in the sight of my God.

Remember therefore what you have received and heard.

Hold it fast and repent.

But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief and you will not know at what time I will come to you.

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.

 The one who is victorious will like them be dressed in white.

I will never blot out the name of that person from the book of life, but will acknowledge that name before my father and his angels.

Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

The title of the message today is Surprised Like Sardis.

 In 546 BC, about 650 years before the book of Revelation was written, there was a king in the city of Sardis by the name of Croesus.

 And Croesus heard that King Cyrus, who ruled the Persians and his Persian army, were pushing west towards his territory.

And so King Croesus, the king of Sardis, went to meet King Cyrus in battle and they fought and their fight ended in a stalemate with heavy losses on both sides.

And because the traditional season for military campaigns was over...

 and winter was setting in, Croesus assumed that the battle was done and on pause and went back home to Sardis.

That's how warfare worked back then.

And so they go back to regroup and wait for spring until the battle resumes.

Cyrus, the king of Persia, however, did not go home.

 He broke the rules of ancient warfare.

He and his army, they marched straight towards Sardis.

And when King Croesus saw them coming, he withdrew his soldiers up into the Acropolis, the fortified high point of the city that was surrounded by cliffs on all sides.

And they were confident that they were totally untouchable there.

 and this is what sardis as a city was famous for the mountains above the city with steep cliffs on every single side these massive sheer vertical drops made of crumbly earth that looked impossible to climb and about 1500 feet up on a flat part of the mountain sardis built their acropolis literally high point of the city and that was their where their fortress was that's where they would retreat when they were under attack and it was considered impenetrable

 So much so that the Sardians didn't bother guarding the steepest sections of the cliffs.

After all, why guard what nobody is able to reach?

 But that false confidence was exactly their undoing because one day during the siege of the Persian army, a Sardian soldier dropped his helmet down the edge of the cliff and tried to sneak down through a hidden crevice in the cliff.

He retrieved his helmet and went back up.

He thought unnoticed that one of the Persian soldiers down below saw him go down the hidden crevice and saw the way up the mountain.

 That night, he and a small team of Persian soldiers crept up that crevice, climbed over the unguarded walls of the Acropolis, opened the gates, and let the rest of the Persian army in.

And in 546 BC, the city of Sardis fell to Persia.

Not where they thought they were vulnerable, but where they were so certain of their safety that they didn't bother keeping watch.

 They were taken surprise because they were sleeping on their vulnerabilities.

And 650 years later, Jesus says to the church in the city of Sardis, you are making the same mistake.

You have ignored your vulnerabilities because you thought you were impervious to falling down.

And as a result, you are now spiritually dead.

 And by extension, through this prophetic message, Jesus is asking you and I today, are we ignoring our vulnerabilities in our lives?

 When I use the word vulnerability, this is a definition that we can work based off of together.

A vulnerability is where I am exposed to attack.

Attack either from the ways of the world or attack from the proclivities of my own flesh or maybe attack from our spiritual enemy, the devil.

I'm exposed to attack because I've stopped depending on Jesus and I've stopped guarding that part of my life.

 Effectively the question that Jesus is asking us today is if the enemy were to trip you up how would he do it and The key that Jesus is highlighting is that the enemy would do it by taking advantage of areas in our lives that we are not guarding You see we've all got vulnerabilities and

 Some of those vulnerabilities we are aware of or unaware of rather, like when resentment starts to build up in our hearts and we don't realize that that resentment is the fruit of unhealed hurt.

And if we don't deal with that hurt before Jesus, then that resentment matures into revenge.

Maybe not revenge with our hands, but with our words or our cold and calloused hearts, our withdrawal from relationship.

That's a Sardis cliff that we've left unguarded.

Resentment is a vulnerability.

 Or like when apathy settles in and we think it's just a busy week or just that we're in a dry season.

But apathy is often a sign that we've grown lonely and disconnected at the heart level.

And when we ignore that loneliness long enough, eventually apathy turns to detachment.

Isolation so deep that we can't feel anymore.

That's a cliff.

Apathy is a vulnerability.

 Sometimes we are aware of our vulnerabilities, but we ignore them because they're too painful to address or too scary to face head on, like when self-pity has begun clouding our vision.

Self-pity is usually sadness that we haven't brought to God or brought into community.

And if we avoid that sadness instead of addressing it, then we slip into a self-pity that eventually begins making unfair demands on others that they are not able to fulfill.

 That's a cliff.

Self-pity is a vulnerability.

Or like when depression rolls in.

Oftentimes we don't realize that depression is the fruit of unaddressed anger in our lives.

Anger that we haven't named, haven't processed, never brought before Jesus, never channeled into healthy passion.

 And if that anger stays unaddressed, it makes way for a depression that eventually allows the self to run riot, pushing people away, making reckless decisions instead of submitting to God.

That's a Sardis cliff left unwatched.

We all have vulnerabilities.

And when we don't address them, they become an opportunity for the enemy to trip us up, sometimes depending on our response to that trip for a very long time.

 Sometimes we ignore our vulnerabilities simply because we wish they just weren't true.

But they are true because we are human.

And Jesus has the answer to help us guard against them.

 It begins in verse 1.

These are the words of him who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars.

I know your deeds.

You have a reputation of being alive, but you're dead.

I want to focus, first of all, on the fact that Jesus holds in his hand the seven spirits of God.

 As we saw back in Revelation chapter 1, the seven spirits is Revelation's language to describe the Holy Spirit.

And we will encounter that phrase, the seven spirits of God, a handful of times throughout the book of Revelation.

Now, seven as a number represents completion in Revelation.

So when Jesus says the seven spirits of God, he doesn't literally mean seven distinct spirits.

He's using that number seven symbolically to represent the wholeness of the Holy Spirit,

 of God.

Emphasis on the Holy Spirit actually begins and ends this passage.

Remember that's called an inclusio when the same idea or phrase begins and ends a verse or a segment of scripture and the Holy Spirit is that wrap around this text that we're reading.

 today and it's an interpretive key for the text that the strength of the spirit is what the church needs in order to recover and live out their faithful witness to jesus that he is the spirit of life and yet they are dead they have become a spiritless people who have nothing but an outdated reputation of life in other words they have hype but they do not have actual power

 And significantly, the sevenfold spirit is depicted as held in the hand of Jesus.

In other words, the Holy Spirit is intimately associated with Jesus and moves and goes at the behest of Jesus.

And the point of that is that where the spirit is, Jesus is.

 Where Jesus is, the Holy Spirit is.

And that says something important to the Sardian church and to us, that if we want the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, in our gatherings, in our communal life as a church, then we must draw near to Jesus.

 No Lamb of God, no Spirit of God.

Being a community of the Spirit, a Spirit-filled people is not hard.

We don't have to work for it or earn it.

What we do have to do is submit to Jesus and follow the Lamb.

Follow King Jesus as He has revealed Himself through the cross and you will walk in the power of the Spirit.

Why?

Because the cross-shaped life

 the life that the Spirit loves to come upon and empower this is what the New Testament proclaims again and again there is no reception of the Spirit apart from feasting upon and following the Lamb of God this means that cross-shaped humility is the key to walking in the power of God that is necessary for overcoming our vulnerabilities and in fact what this text is going to show us is that the thing you most need to guard against your vulnerabilities is not your own strength

 What you need is the humility that attracts the power of the Holy Spirit.

Everything else is a false sense of safety.

See, as we travel throughout this text, chances are some things are going to surface that need dealing with in our hearts and our lives.

And in typical human fashion, you may determine that you've got to fix those things by your own strength.

And you would be wrong.

 The invitation of Jesus here is that the presence of the Spirit is the strength that we need to guard against our vulnerabilities to the world, to our flesh, to the devil, and to repair what may have already been broken down in our lives.

Today, the humility required to receive that strength for some of you may look like receiving prayer at the end of this service as you humble yourself before God and ask for help.

 Jesus begins addressing the issue in the Sardian church by saying, you have a reputation of life, but you're dead.

And that accusation echoes the city's own story because Sardis was known for being impenetrable, yet the reality is that they were vulnerable.

The city fell for the very reason everyone assumed it couldn't.

There was even a local proverb that the people used to say, to capture the Acropolis.

And it was a reminder that what seems safe is often the first place to fall in our lives.

 After their defeat, Sardis rebuilt here and there, but it never returned to the strength that it once had.

What it did hold onto was wealth, enough prosperity to keep up appearances.

And that prosperity fed the illusion that the city was still great.

And Sardis kept telling itself the old story of its greatness, even after the reality of that greatness had faded.

They were living on reputation, not reality.

In other words, they were living in the past.

 And Jesus says to the church, you are doing the same thing.

You have a reputation of life that does not match your reality.

You once were alive, but that was yesterday.

And instead of guarding what little life remains among you, you are resting on a name that no longer reflects who you truly are.

That's what Christ is saying to this church.

You used to be a church full of life.

That's your reputation to those who follow you on Instagram.

But I know you up close and you're actually spiritually dead.

 because you took spiritual life for granted and you left yourself unguarded against compromise and temptation.

The word reputation that Jesus uses here in the Greek is literally name.

Your name is life, but your character is not.

And so they must recognize their overestimation of themselves or else, like the city before them, face the terrible consequences.

 I couldn't help when I was studying this, but wonder if sometimes we may commit the same error as the Sardians.

Are there any areas of your life where your reputation has actually outrun your reality?

Here was the question that I thought, where has guarding your name become more important than guarding your heart?

 Because that's what's going on when we refuse to ask Jesus and ask his church to help us identify and deal with our vulnerabilities.

We're guarding our name more than we're protecting the state of our hearts and our lives, opening ourselves to sin and dysfunction to run rampant because we don't want people to know that we need help.

It's like the high school star quarterback who now 15 years on is 100 pounds overweight, unable to hold down a job, but still thinks he's the man.

 His self-image is stuck in a story that ended years ago.

In his mind, he can still bench press 300 pounds, but he has one crisis away from collapse.

His name and his reality no longer match.

 I once knew a married couple who had a ministry that focused a lot on helping other married couples.

That was a big part of what they did to serve the body of Christ.

And of course, everybody around them assumed that their marriage was so strong and picture perfect.

And they made the same assumption of themselves.

But after years of not addressing vulnerabilities in their own marriage, eventually it led to the collapse of their relationship and the heroes became the victims.

 Where do you presume that you are so safe that you are actually vulnerable?

Maybe it looks like the marriage that appears strong online but is actually numb and distant and unguarded behind closed doors.

Maybe you're the person who avoids the big sins but refuses to guard your soul against comparison and self-righteousness.

Perhaps some of you parents are making assumptions about your kids and their relationship with Jesus

 Because they still live at home with you and will for many more years to come.

And you bring them to church twice a month.

But in reality, there's no intentional discipleship from you to them.

No spiritual leadership.

Nothing that teaches them in your home what faithfulness to Jesus actually looks like.

Where do you presume you're safe but you're actually vulnerable?

If the enemy were to trip you up, how would he do it?

Sardis wasn't beaten where they knew they were weak.

They were beaten where they assumed...

 They were strong enough to not bother paying attention.

I could tell you right now that a surefire way the enemy attempts to exploit our vulnerabilities is by using them to isolate us from the community of Christ.

He will convince you so deeply that you don't need help, that you actually distance yourself from the best people to help you.

And it starts in small ways, like you're struggling with a little bit of anxiety, for example, but you believe the lie, I can deal with this on my own.

 And then the anxiety grows, and then you think, well, I can just pray about it.

And you're so desperate not to be known by others as a project that you project a reputation that does not line up with your reality.

You are present in the community, but you're not really present in the community.

You are isolated in the midst of a crowd, and you are vulnerable to attack.

I'm going to show us how to guard against these vulnerabilities in a moment, but first listen to Jesus in verse 2.

Wake up!

 Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have found your deeds unfinished in the sight of my God.

Just like their civic ancestors who had slept on their vulnerabilities and paid the price, these guys need to wake up to the reality of their fallenness.

Specifically here, we see that that meant finishing what they had started.

In other words, refusing to rest on their laurels and rejecting the assumption that they did not need to take a continually proactive approach to their Christian faith.

 The idea of unfinished deeds would have conjured a very specific image in the mind of this church because their city had once begun building an enormous temple to the goddess Artemis, a projection that was meant to showcase their supposed greatness, but they never finished it.

And so the unfinished temple stood there for centuries as a monument to Sardis' problem.

Big reputation, impressive beginnings, no follow-through.

 And Jesus says it's the same with the Sardinian church.

You began well, but you've begun settling for the lie that yesterday's faithfulness makes up for today's apathy.

In fact, you're not just believing that lie.

You are presenting it as the truth to others.

It's like you have the blue checkmark by your name, but you don't want anybody to know that you bought all the followers.

Like you're projecting credibility that you don't actually possess.

 The church in Sardis is like the guy who goes home from a gathering like this and maybe drinks a little bit too much tonight, goes to bed at 1 a.m., wakes up at noon tomorrow.

 And that's become a little bit of a habit, so you're feeling kind of guilty.

But you don't want people to know that that's what you're doing.

So what you do is you take out your iPhone and you go through your photos and you find an image from a month ago where you had a quiet time with Jesus.

And the image is perfectly crafted.

Your pour over coffee is right there.

And your scriptures are wide open to the book of Psalms.

And you've got your journal and your pen at the ready.

And then you take that image and you post that photo today as if it were the present moment, even though you haven't cracked open your Bible since that quiet time a month ago.

 Unfinished deeds.

Now, that might be a dramatic example that I know none of us would ever participate in.

But what about the unfinished works that we do fall prey to?

Like, what are you taking for granted as true about your walk with Jesus, but you've actually stopped guarding?

Where are you assuming that past success or even present success makes up for the fact that you've grown soft in certain areas?

 Resting on past success sounds like I used to be really active in my last church, so it's fine if I just chill out and be a consumer at this one.

It sounds like it's okay if I flirt with this moral boundary because I've been really good, and I won't go too far.

Resting on present success sounds like politics isn't my entire world like it is for that group of people over there, so I'm not in danger of turning politics into my idol.

 Or I tithe.

Money will never be my idol.

I have a solid theology.

It's okay that my prayer life is anemic.

I don't struggle with lust.

An affair could never happen to me.

I don't need to be on guard against that.

At least I'm not off the rails like that person.

I must be doing pretty good.

It's okay if I sin a little.

All of that is sardis.

Those are the cliffs that we assume are safe, the cliffs we leave unwatched, the cliffs that the enemy quietly climbs.

 And so how do we guard against it?

Jesus says in verse three, remember, therefore, what you have received and heard, hold it fast and repent.

But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief and you will not know at what time I will come to you.

So Jesus says the way that you strengthen yourselves is through remembering and repenting.

The thing that we are to remember, Jesus says, is what you have heard and received.

What is that?

That's the gospel.

 The fact that you have relationship with God through the person of Jesus Christ.

And so the point here is that Jesus is telling them, hey, remember me.

Stay close to me.

Remain reliant upon my presence, my power to help you continually live faithfully to me.

Repentance then is doing just that.

Return to Jesus.

Do whatever you have to do to remain close to Jesus.

 even when that means awkwardly dealing with your vulnerabilities head on.

Because if you don't deal with your vulnerabilities, your vulnerabilities will deal with you and that will make a mess in your life.

Sometimes that mess is small, we clean it up, we move on.

Sometimes that mess is large and it has a lot of matriculating factors throughout our lives.

And Jesus is saying to the church in Stardust that they have succumbed so deeply to the vulnerabilities of unfaithfulness and sin and compromise that they're actually not even walking with him anymore.

 The worst possible thing has happened to them.

Their drift has become legitimate distance and Jesus does not do long distance relationships.

So it's bad.

But it doesn't start that way.

It starts small.

And so the point for all of us today would be don't just settle for a reminder about how dangerous unguarded vulnerabilities in our lives are.

 Don't just settle for the fact that you've been told.

No, act upon that information.

Actually repent.

Address your vulnerabilities and change.

That's what repent means.

It means to pursue change.

 And this is where many Christians break down.

We hear the reminder, but we stop there.

We recognize their vulnerability, but we never take steps to actually address it.

We get convicted, but we don't change anything.

We don't let reminder push us into action because we underestimate how vulnerable we really are.

Like Stardust, we assume that we're fine, but friends, assumptions are not going to guard your soul.

A living and active relationship with Jesus is what is going to guard your soul.

 If you're gonna guard against your vulnerabilities, you need the strong one.

You need Jesus standing guard right beside you and helping you to close the doors on those things.

And the New Testament actually gives us a pattern that invites the strength of Jesus to help us stand guard against our vulnerabilities.

That pattern is submission and confession in community.

Submission, everyone say submission.

Say confession in community.

 James chapter 4 says, Submit yourselves then to God.

Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

In other words, let me rephrase that, come near to God and he will come near to you.

 This is how you wash your hands.

You sinners, purify your hearts.

You double-minded, grieve, mourn, and wail.

Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.

Verse 10, humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up.

This is a paradigm for how to deal with your vulnerabilities to sin and to brokenness.

And the paradigm is stop shrugging them off.

 Instead of shrugging them off, submit yourselves, and on the end of that text, humble yourselves.

Those two ideas go together.

It's our submission to God that reveals our humility.

If we can't submit, which is another word for obey, if we can't submit to God and obey Him, then we're not really humble.

And if we're not really humble, then we are really vulnerable.

But when we humble ourselves, what does the text say?

God lifts us up.

In other words, He brings us out of reach from the enemy.

 You see, this is how humility wins.

Humility wins when it goes where pride cannot follow.

That's a slide if you guys have that.

This is how humility wins the day.

When it goes where pride can't go so that it reaches where pride can't reach.

 And then James expounds upon what this submission and humility looks like just a couple of paragraphs later in James 5.16.

Submit to God, humble yourself before God.

Okay, how do I do that?

Confess your sins to each other.

 and pray for each other so that you may be healed.

The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

Submission to God involves confession to one another.

It means submitting to the righteous people around us in Christian community and asking them to speak into our lives.

That's how we deal with our vulnerabilities.

 Did you know that God has placed people around you in this community to actually help you address the areas that you may not recognize could become potential pitfalls in your life?

God has put them around you in this very room.

Like for some of us, pride is a vulnerability.

And it's really evident in the way that we speak.

And when we speak, we don't hear how we sound.

But there's somebody in your neighborhood group who hears how you sound.

And you think you'll never get tripped up because of pride.

And so you're vulnerable.

You need to have somebody help you address it.

 For others of us, consumerism is a vulnerability and it's revealed through your spending habits.

And you don't notice it, but the leader in your life who is aware of your financial reality, they notice it.

And you may be shocked to hear that your walk with Jesus is getting tripped up by your spending habits because you don't see the bigger picture of how your spending actually hamstrings your availability to the mission of God and you need a leader to address it with you.

 For me, recently, I've recognized that an insufficient ability to listen well in my most intimate relationships is a vulnerability in my life.

It's an open door for the enemy to trip me up and to stunt my relationships with those that I am called to love and serve and journey alongside most closely.

 And I needed my wife to reveal that vulnerability to me.

But can I tell you, it's not enough for me to be aware of the vulnerability.

I need to address the vulnerability.

So here's what I did.

I reached out to the person in our church who I have experienced as one of the best listeners in our community, Eric Sherman.

I'm not sure where he is.

Amazing man of God.

And I said, Eric, I've noticed how great of a listener you are.

I'm struggling in this area.

Could you help me?

 This is drawing near to God.

And in response, the text says, God says, I'll come close to you.

And yet we easily neglect submission and confession in community.

And we fail to practice these things because pride tells us we don't need it.

We think we're safe.

So we're vulnerable.

We think we haven't figured out.

So we don't ask for help.

And we take for granted that because we've made it this far,

 surely we'll go the distance all the way to the end.

But what we fail to remember in that equation is that we didn't make it this far on our own.

 Hebrews chapter 3, look at this text, says see to it.

That means like pay really careful attention to this.

See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.

See to it that none of you fall prey to your vulnerabilities, your proclivities, to weakness.

And here's how you're going to overcome that.

Encourage one another daily.

 As long as it's called today.

Like take every opportunity that you have so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness.

Christian community encouraging one another daily is the key that keeps us from turning away from the Lord and remaining turned towards him.

That's the

 that helps us guard against our vulnerabilities those open doors for sin and satan to exploit and the reason that works the reason making use of the body of christ to help guard you against your vulnerabilities is because when people are speaking into your life guess what you won't just have you won't just have your own reputation you'll have the reality

 Because you have a self-understanding that is a piece of the picture of who you are, but there are people around you who have the other pieces of that picture, and they can tell you, hey, you think you're like this, but you're really like that.

And some of you are living off your own reputation.

And you need a reality check to have your eyes open to your vulnerabilities.

 I imagine it would have been really easy for the Christians in Sardis to, like, now that they've been saved and sanctified, or not so sanctified, to look at the unfinished Artemis Temple in their city and think about the failures and the shortcomings of the big, bad, lost world around them.

And Jesus says, yeah, let's consider the failures of the world around you.

Let's just hold this up as an illustration really quick, just so I can show you, you are like that.

 Like imagine if Jesus took you on a tour of all the brokenness in our city and all the brokenness of our world and all the things that you love to point your finger at and say, that's so wrong and look at what, you know, the effect that that worldview is having on this circumstance and Jesus show you all that brokenness just to sit down and you go, this is actually a pretty good picture for the state of your life.

Because that's what Jesus is doing to this church.

Because they've been neglecting their vulnerabilities.

 And if they don't wake up, Jesus says, I'm going to come.

Like a thief.

And you're not going to know what time I'm turning up.

Again, for a city whose history included the unexpected arrival of an enemy, that's very vivid language.

 He says, you've got a false sense of security.

You're incredibly vulnerable, not just to an attack from the enemy, but ultimately to the judgment of Jesus when he comes at the consummation of history.

Like what a sad day when what should be the much anticipated and hoped for arrival of your friend and your brother and your savior is actually going to be the unexpected arrival of the judge of all the earth.

 What Jesus says is this, if you keep living as though yesterday's faithfulness gives you permission for today's unfaithfulness, then tomorrow will not be an entrance into glory, it'll be an encounter with judgment.

That's the text.

All they will have to hold up is a reputation, but no reality.

Maybe fame, but no faithfulness.

 A name that people knew, but that isn't ultimately written in the Lamb's Book of Life.

And so Jesus warns them about this.

Why?

Why does he warn them?

Because he loves them.

Because he wants them to remain close to him.

 He wants them to address these vulnerabilities.

We all have vulnerabilities in our lives.

And if we do not address them, eventually they will trip us up.

When we allow them to trip us up enough times, eventually we wander.

It's not that Jesus leaves us.

It's that we leave him.

And Jesus in his love calls us to repent of those things.

 And that fundamentally has to do with putting down the false projections of our perfectly polished images and acknowledging where the enemy is getting the better of us.

Because the moment you stop propping up a false image, the moment you humble yourself is the moment the spirit rushes in.

 And he gives strength to recover what's been lost.

And Jesus says it's not too late.

Listen to the words.

Strengthen what remains.

What remains.

Like there's some life remaining.

He says, hey, I know you've taken some hits.

I know that you've succumbed to the vulnerabilities in your life and the enemy has gotten the better of you, but it's not too late.

Let's strengthen what remains.

As long as you can still hear my voice, there's time to turn.

As long as you're listening to the sermon, there's time to turn.

Humility is always available.

You see, this is the best thing about humility is it needs nothing to work.

 Like, in fact, humility works best with empty hands.

So if all you have is the confession that I need help, then you have everything you need for humility to work in your life.

Russell, you can come and help me land this plane.

How you doing?

The church in Sardis had been clothed in white.

 That's the imagery that Jesus uses to describe them at the end.

Revelation has a theology of clothing.

So for those of you who are into fashion, you might enjoy that.

It's a joke, didn't land, it's okay.

It's okay.

It does have a theology of clothing though, and clothing is quite symbolic in the book of Revelation.

And these white garments represent righteousness.

 And in the beginning, every single Christian in Sardis received one of these white garments.

Not because they were morally superior than other people, not because they had figured out some code to crack in life that all of a sudden made God go, okay, here, now you deserve this white garment symbolic of righteousness.

It wasn't because of that.

Revelation 7, in fact, says that the only reason Christians have a white garment is because their robes have been washed in the blood of the Lamb.

 That the red blood of Jesus, his self-giving sacrificial love and receiving the free gift of his grace, just like Pastor Ella sung so beautifully about today.

The free gift of that grace is what washes our robes that are filthy and makes them sparkling white.

And every single Christian in the Sardinian church had received that white robe.

But Jesus says only a few of them still have it.

 The rest of you have soiled your road.

It's gotten dirty.

Because you've distanced yourself from me.

You didn't address your vulnerabilities.

And now they've knocked you off track.

And so the answer is not something new or different.

The answer is to come back to what made them white in the first place.

Come back to the blood of Jesus.

Come back to the free gift of his grace.

 and walk with him, receiving his mercy.

And you only need one thing for that.

You just need humility.

The courage enough to say, I need help.

I'm not a great listener and I can tell that it's actually having a negative impact on my most intimate relationships.

And if I don't address that vulnerability, then eventually that's going to wreak havoc in those relationships.

 And who knows where that path goes.

But it certainly doesn't take me closer to Jesus.

What's your vulnerability?

The thing maybe that you're unaware of that somebody needs to speak into.

Or maybe you are aware of it, but you're kind of doing like the ostrich head in the sand thing because you just wish it weren't true.

Maybe it's an inherited vulnerability because it was in your dad and you spend your time going, Dad, why?

Why?

 Did you let that thing run rampant in your life?

Because now I've learned it from you and it's carrying over in my world and I wish and I wish and I wish.

And Jesus says, stop wishing, start kneeling.

Humble yourself.

And draw near.

Submit.

The word submit in the Bible is actually quite common.

That's unfortunate for us 21st century individualistic Westerners who don't like to submit to anything.

 The word submit doesn't mean like grit and bear it.

It doesn't mean smile and pretend and then do your own thing.

It means to trust.

That's what it means.

To trust that God and the people and the leaders that he's placed in and over and around your life are there for a reason.

And if you trust the fact that they see about you what you don't see about you

 then you will experience healing.

That's right.

A few hundred years after Sardis fell the first time in 650 BC, another king named Antiochus the Great came to the same cliffs at Sardis.

And once again, the people of Sardis trusted their reputation.

They believed the same story

 That they'd always told themselves, no one can climb up here, we're safe.

And so again, they left the steepest sections of the cliffs unwatched.

And again, just like before, the enemy found the way up and the city fell again.

Because they did not guard what they were so convinced could never fail.

And Jesus' message to the church in Sardis is very simple.

Don't be like that.

 Pay attention to the places where you think you're too strong to fail.

And don't assume that old victories guarantee today's victories.

Rather guard the places that you think you're safe.

 Some of you, you're like that first king Croesus, and you've had a moment where there's been neglected vulnerabilities in your life that have led to stumbles and falls and trips and some messes in your life, and you've learned a lesson from that, and you know, wow, I needed to wake up, but is that lesson prevalent enough in your life where you're going, I still need to keep watch?

 I say all of this to you because I love you and I care about you.

And the strength of the church will never be greater than its dependence upon the Holy Spirit.

And our dependence upon the Holy Spirit will never exceed our humility to come before one another in openness and honesty and say, I need it.