Thoughts in Worship

Message Magazine's Online Devotional for Friday, September 4, 2015

Today’s Scripture:

“AND TO the angel (messenger) of the assembly (church) in Sardis write: These are the words of Him Who has the seven Spirits of God [the sevenfold Holy Spirit] and the seven stars: I know your record and what you are doing; you are supposed to be alive, but [in reality] you are dead. Rouse yourselves and keep awake, and strengthen and invigorate what remains and is on the point of dying; for I have not found a thing that you have done [any work of yours] meeting the requirements of My God or perfect in His sight. So call to mind the lessons you received and heard; continually lay them to heart and obey them, and repent. In case you will not rouse yourselves and keep awake and watch, I will come upon you like a thief, and you will not know or suspect at what hour I will come. Yet you still have a few [persons’] names in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes, and they shall walk with Me in white, because they are worthy and deserving. Thus shall he who conquers (is victorious) be clad in white garments, and I will not erase or blot out his name from the Book of Life; I will acknowledge him [as Mine] and I will confess his name openly before My Father and before His angels.” (Revelation 3:1–5, AMP).

Serious Question for Consideration:

Are you dead or alive?

Today’s Observation:

While I would love to examine the details of the exact nature of the problems going on in Sardis, it would be more efficient for us to consider some of the basic principles, then apply them, in the short devotional time we have today.

I must admit that the state of Sardis is particularly troubling to me. Remember that we said at the beginning of our devotionals on the seven churches, that these counsels not only represented what God said to those members, but also applied to various stages of our relationship with God. That is not to say that every professed believer experiences each stage represented in the real world issues of each of the seven churches, but it is a case of, “If the shoe fits…” well, you fill-in the blank.

So, why is the story of this church so troubling to me? Sardis represents a time in church history when the newly reformed Protestants started to yield the protest. In many ways, they stated, as many have very recently, that the “protest is over.” They began to compromise their faith, because the struggle to stay faithful to Bible truth overwhelmed them. They slowly began to drink the intoxicating spiritual wine of Rome with a Protestant twist. Some of them were hypocrites. The One who shines the revealing light of God’s Holy Spirit just stripped off the proverbial covers and what was manifested was startling. They appeared, by all intents and purposes, to be alive. Like the fig tree Jesus encountered that showed signs of fruit bearing, but did not, they appeared to live. They sang the right songs, read the right Bible, professed to worship God, etc., but they went to sleep at the wheel. They allowed creeds, statements, and other modes of reasoning to supersede the truth of God’s word. In some ways what happened to them was even more insidious than where the church was pre-Reformation, because, as Jesus alluded to, they departed from the holy lessons that they received and learned. They appeared to be alive with truth and God’s righteous covering, but they were actually dead, espousing false doctrine, having lost their love for the truth. When we lose our love for the truth, we will be deceived into believing a lie. To people living in this state of compromise and unrepentance, Jesus becomes as a thief in the night, when He would much rather be the One who comes to those who are anxiously awaiting His appearing (I Thessalonians 5).

Life Application:

Like you, I have to ask myself whether the truth of God’s Word is precious enough to me to repent of my hypocrisy. Is His Word so precious that even though I have made...