Revelation 3:1-6

November 3, 2019

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts at 18:40 in the audio file.

Or, Guarding Against Nominal Spiritual Life

This might be the most severe letter of the seven that Jesus sent through John to the churches. What was their problem?

It’s possible that Sardisians had some of the same issues that the others churches did, but Jesus doesn’t explicitly say so. The church in Sardis may not have been super loving, though they didn’t have a bad reputation for that. It’s possible that they were following some false teachers, but that’s not addressed. Specific association with idols, religious or civic, isn’t mentioned, nor is sexual immorality. Their problem was that they weren’t paying attention.

Carelessness and coasting is costly. False security is the worst kind of insecurity. Sardis knew all about the ruin caused by negligence, and the church hadn’t learned her lesson.

Sardis had the longest history of any of the seven churches addressed in Revelation 1-2. The old city was built on a 1500 foot high acropolis (a fortified city on a hill), with almost perpendicular rock walls on three sides (Mounce), which they believed made them impregnable. But twice enemies climbed the wall, got into the city, opened the gates, and defeated the Sardisians. It happened in 549 BC, when Croesus, the king of Lydia, went out against Cyrus, king of Persia. Cryrus beat Croesus who retreated to Sardis thinking he’d be safe and his army could regroup. But a Persian solider did the “impossible” and scaled the walls. The unthinkable happened again in 195 BC when Antiochus the Great attacked Sardis with the climbing strategy. In both cases the city hadn’t bothered to station anyone at the wall. It was reckless inattentiveness and inactivity.

The church in Sardis had more people who weren’t paying attention to their spiritual life than those who were. Their negligence was about to lead to death, and Jesus called them to Wake up, twice.

The Spirit Giver (verse 1a)

The Lord and Head of the church has supernatural concerns.

And to the angel of the church in Sardis write, “The words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars.”

That Jesus has the seven spirits refers to the greeting John gave to the seven churches in Asia (1:4), and isn’t a part of the vision of His Person (1:12-18). The seven spirits is a prophetic appellation for the Holy Spirit, the source of grace and peace mentioned in the greeting between the Father and the Son. It also connects with Zechariah 4, and means that Jesus has and sends and directs the Spirit. The third Person of the Trinity is also called “the Spirit of Christ” (Romans 8:9; 1 Peter 1:11).

The seven stars are mentioned at the end of chapter 1, and identified as “the angels of the seven churches.” Of course it’s tempting to make these angels “messengers,” that is, to make them men, and then see them as those who carried the messages from John to the cities, or rather as a church pastor/leader in each city. But do the “seven spirits” as the Holy Spirit and seven mailmen match? Do the “seven spirits” and seven pastors match? And why would it help the church in Sardis to know that Jesus was in charge of all the rest of the mailmen/pastors? If anywhere, that would have been more applicable to the church in Thyatira since Jesus said “all the churches will know” (2:23).

No, the seven stars are “the angels” (1:20), the celestial beings who live around us, above us, and yet are not obvious to us. Church life occurs in two realms: the physical and the supernatural, in the first-century city in Sardis and before the eternal God and rulers and authorities in heavenly places (see Ephesians 3:10).

This was the heart of the problem in Sardis. Negligence in the spiritual battle is not just cost[...]