Living Community (Part 2 of 3)

When you see a church with beautiful buildings, popular programs, strong attendance, energetic singing, all of these things can give the impression that the church is a vibrant church, at least from the outside. Today on Truth for Life, we'll hear how Jesus sees past the appearances. Alistair Begg is teaching from chapter 3 in the book of Revelation. These are the words of him, verse 1 of chapter 3, who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars.

And as Leon Morris says, for one so fond of symbolism, these things can hardly be without significance. Well, just when we come to this first verse, we discover that Mr. Smith, who is present at our local Bible study, immediately wants to launch in with a word of personal testimony about what the number of seven has meant to him in his life. And also, he's very quickly going to tell you that he knows the identity of the angel of the church in Sardis. Now, what are we going to do with dear Mr. Smith and his kindly wife, Ethel, who is nodding all the time as Mr. Smith begins to launch into this minor exposition?

What is the leader to do? Well, first the leader is to do their homework, so that we have studied the text of Scripture, we have studied those who have said helpful things about it, so that we are prepared to recognize that there is a clarity to this, there is a brevity to it, and it is all purposeful. The person who is leading the group, having done their homework, will know that you can get a PhD doing what Mr. Smith is now about to do in the local Bible study group, namely explaining who the angel of the church is. And so, you pick up one commentary and it says that the angel is the messenger. You pick up another commentary and it says that the angel is the pastor or the bishop or the leader of the church. I don't know if you brought your pastor with you or if you left him behind, but I'm not sure if my congregation back in Cleveland, when they think pastor, immediately think angel. I don't know that many of them are referring to me as the angel of the church in Parkside, who is over at the moment in Skegness.

I'm sure they have a number of designations for me. I'm pretty well determined that angel is not one of them, especially if they spend any time with my wife or with my children. But that's one of the explanations. Then one other explanation is that the angel means angel. There's an intriguing idea, isn't it? That angel means angel.

Don't go under the chairs. Or that angel is expressive of the spirit of these congregations, so that he is addressing, he is personalizing, as it were, the church, the entity, the body itself. The angel of the church then simply is an expression of its prevailing spirit.

Now, for myself, I think three or four is probably where we ought to be. But we don't need to tie ourselves up in knots about what is uncertain and thereby get confused about what is clear. Because the message that is given to this angel, whose identity is obviously cloudy, is a message that is clearly meant for the church. And so, we say, well, we can't say with absolute certainty just who or what this angel is, but we do know that the Lord Jesus has spoken very, very clearly, and he has identified himself here the words coming from him who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. Now, each time Jesus is designated, and these messages follow a pattern throughout, you'll discover that it ties back in to the vision of Christ that is given for us by John from the ninth verse on in chapter 1.

And here is no exception. Jesus is identified in terms of his majesty and his authority. But who are then these seven spirits of God, or what are the seven spirits of God? It may be a symbolic expression of the full range of the exercises of the divine power in the seven churches. It may be expressive of the heavenly entourage referred to in verse 4 of chapter 1. Or it may be, as the footnote in the NIV seems to suggest, a reference to the sevenfold operation of the Spirit of God that is referred to back in Isaiah chapter 11 and verse 2.

Make a note of that and just put it down for homework. Isaiah 11 2, question mark, vis-à-vis Revelation 3 1. Again, we needn't stumble over what is hazy.

Because the Lord Jesus says very quickly, I am the majestic one, I am the authoritative one, I am the one who holds all of the deeds and the responsibilities of these churches. I move among them, and I want you to know that I know your deeds. I know your deeds.

Just pause for a minute and think about the amazing nature of that phrase. I know your deeds. Who knows you? You say, Well, my wife knows me, my kids know me, my boss knows me, whatever. Who knows the spirit of a man except the thoughts of a man that are in him? The only one who actually knows is the one who writes this letter. A psalmist understanding it says, O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit down, you know when I stand up, you know the thoughts of my heart, you know my words before I even speak them. Such knowledge is high.

I cannot attain to it. Small wonder that the Bible says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. There is an awesomeness about the simplicity of this phrase written to this church in the first century, relevant to the congregations we've left behind this morning. The risen Christ looks upon us, and he says, I know. I can't remember what the program was. It just comes to my mind as I speak, but there was a line a lady used to say. It's something like Thora Hertz. She used to say, She knows you know.

I can't remember what it was. It's irrelevant now. But the Lord Jesus knows, and he writes to this church in Sardis, and he says, I know your deeds. I know what you do, and I know that you have a reputation of being alive, but you're dead. It's not difficult to grasp that, is it? Pretty succinct statement. Hey, Sardis, I know everybody says you're a great place.

I know they all think you're fantastic, but I know that you're dead. They had a great reputation, apparently, as having a vital ministry, but it's only in name alone. It's only in reputation. Stott says, quoting the comings and goings of the people, he says, what a live church you have here in Sardis. Visitors would exclaim with admiration when they attended its services or watched its activities, and so no doubt it appeared, but things were not as they appeared. And that's the significance of verse 2. Wake up, strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found, and this is the phrase, I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of God. I haven't found your deeds complete. What he means is this. Your deeds are like a shell.

If you go beyond the routine of them, there's nothing there. Here is a congregation that is known for perhaps its size or for its influence, for the way in which it has been able to put its programs together, and the way it's been able to develop certain strategies, and they're well known throughout the Christian community, and people come and take a Sunday off from another congregation in order they might go and see what's going on. And so they all flock into Sardis. And Jesus says, I see this, and you lack the proper motivation, and you lack at the same time spiritual orientation.

Therefore, your stuff is a sham. See, we need to face the fact that the essence of a church is not its programs or its buildings or its achievements or its reputation or its institutional greatness or its formal constituted doctrinal clarity, as important as that is, but the real issue of a church is its spiritual life. Is anybody alive in here? You know? In the course of pastoral ministry, I sat in funeral homes more than I ever wanted to. Eventually, I will be in one myself, but on that occasion, I won't be aware of it. But on the occasions that I have been aware of it, I don't really like it in there. The undertakers put you in back rooms with all kinds of things behind curtains that I don't even want to look behind. But the one thing that has struck me about it is it's deathly in there, you know? There's no coughing. You don't hear anybody whistling, you know, in booth number two.

You know, down on the one over in the corner, nobody's going, Here we go, here we go, here… It's just deathly. In the States, they dress them up, you know, paint them up. Some people I haven't even recognized in their coffins, they look so good by the time they're finished with them, they look better than they did when they were alive. But they're dead.

Beware of making yourself look good, talking the live talk. I know this. I've been there. We've done this. We're developing that.

We are this. Lest Christ, who knows the deeds, walks amongst us and says, You know, I know it looks good, but you've got a problem. The problem in this church in Sardis would appear to be from verse 4, given that there were some people who were distinct from the majority, the problem of moral laxity. In verse 4, he says, You've a few people in Sardis who haven't soiled their clothes.

In other words, the exception in this group are those who are living pure lives. The majority of the place is soiled. The most scathing statements, incidentally, of the seven messages are in this one and in the last one, Message 5 and Message 7, which they asked me to take first.

Maybe it's to get the worst over immediately so that we can end on a more encouraging note. But these are difficult messages to proclaim. I'm sure it's not easy for you to listen to.

The majority of you, he says, have soiled your clothes. Sardis was known as a place of licentiousness. The pagan environment was almost overwhelming, and apparently what had happened was that this church, despite the fact that it gave the impression to people who were not able to discern the reality of things, that it was really vibrant, it was really going on well, if you had been able to look down on the inside of it as the risen Christ did, you would have seen that the majority of the people were at least fiddling and tampering with the moral laxity that was represented in the prevailing culture. Now, listen, my dear friends, and listen carefully. This is where contemporary Christianity is in more cases than we are prepared to admit.

The boat is supposed to be in the water, but the water is not supposed to be in the boat. And in the realm of student ministry, if you probe and you listen, you will discover that students, university students, many of them, are prepared to allow the flush of a moral inconsistency so to sweep over them as to lose the purity and vibrancy that is to be theirs, living in obedience to the standards of the Lord Jesus Christ. If people could see into our living rooms, let alone into our minds, the amount of material that contemporary Christianity takes on board on a weekly basis, is it any wonder that we are as ineffectual as we are? Is it any wonder that we cut as little as we do? We say nothing because we have nothing to say, because there's nothing that will seal your lips or tie your tongue like the poverty of your own spiritual experience.

You can't go to the man next door and tell him, get rid of the dandelions out of your grass here, because it's all blowing over to my place, when you've got a nettle patch, the like of which the botanical gardens would be delighted to have. It's the pot calling the kettle black. Oh, but the attendance was good. Oh, the singing was great. They knew that you were to lift up holy hands. They had decided they would just lift up hands, because they weren't holy. Some of us ought to sit on our hands for a while, till we settle the issues in the secret place of our lives. For he who walks amongst the lampstands says, Threw sardust into our lives today. I know.

You can't fool me. So don't let the vibrancy of our singing or the intensity of our preaching or the consistency of our attending ever become a cover for the absence of our spiritual vitality. Oh, waking up.

Verse 2, waking up. Sardust thought it was impregnable. The way it was built—I won't go into the details of it, it's largely extraneous—but it regarded itself as an impregnable place. It was never ever taken by a direct assault on the gates and walls of the city.

But twice it was taken by stealth, under the cover of darkness. And when they thought they were impregnable, then the marauding forces came in and managed to cripple the city. It was its very sense of sheltered ease which worked against it. Some of us are bemoaning our circumstances. We're bemoaning how difficult things are, the challenges we face, the disappointments. It's not as it once was. It seems to be a more difficult day, and so on. But listen, my dear friends, what do you want? Ease? Ease is no good.

Sunshine all the time, you only have desert. The Lord chastens those he loves, and he rebukes those whom he cares for, and in order that he might save us from settling down into the sort of comfortable, complacent easiness which makes us so vulnerable to the subtle internal attacks of those who love to sleep. It's funny, isn't it? Because when you're asleep, you don't know you're asleep. It's not exactly a deep thought, I admit, you know?

Not exactly a philosophical breakthrough, but it is interesting, isn't it? That when you're asleep, you don't know you're asleep. It's only when you wake up, you knew you were asleep. And people say silly things like that. They don't even wake up and they go, oh, was I asleep? Yes. Oh, that's good, because if I wasn't asleep, I was probably dead. Exactly. So when you go in that pose and you come in, you find your grandfather like that, you've got to go up and give him a wee shake, because if he's not asleep, he's dead.

Because he gives no signs of life at all. So the word is, hey, waken up. Strengthen what remains. Remember what you received, obey it, and repent. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. People say, what am I supposed to do now? Well, the Lord Jesus tells us very, very clearly. He issues a warning.

You better keep awake. He says the city was overtaken by stealth. Your church may be overtaken in the same way. Now, it's clear that it wasn't all hypocrisy in Sardis. There were some who were still marked by loyalty.

That's the significance of verse 4. There's a few people there who are still marked by loyalty. They walk with me.

They're dressed in white. They are worthy. And so Jesus says, I want you to look at those who are still loyal to those who are still awake, and I want you to find in them an incentive and an encouragement to be like them.

Rouse yourself from your slumbers. Some of us are in churches where it would appear to be. Only a small group of us are able to keep going. And every so often we say, I wonder, should I still do this?

Well, keep on. I remember when I was about 17, getting in the car in Hillclay, once I got my driver's license and threw a few friends in there along with me, and off we made the journey through Harrogate and over to York. All was on a Sunday afternoon. And the reason being that we wanted to go to St. Michael LaBellefry, where the late David Watson was teaching the Bible in the Sunday evening services.

And what a thrill it was, especially when I realized, having got there the first evening and had to watch it on closed-circuit television, I made sure I never did that again, got in time the next time so that I would be in the actual building itself. And when I realized that David Watson, as a young curate, had been sent to St. Michael LaBellefry because the church was in disrepair. It was physically in disrepair. It was falling apart. It was spiritually in disrepair. It was a dead place.

There maybe have been one or two that were sleepy folks who needed a pincushion in them, or a pin from the pincushion in them. But by and large, he was sent there by the diocese so that he could kind of practice on the dead and the dying and the sleeping. Because after all, the plans by the diocese was, we'll shut St. Michael LaBellefry down. Good. Nice try.

Not in the plans of Jesus, unfortunately. Thank you, administrator from the bishop's office. And suddenly the students of the university are there. Suddenly the people are there. Suddenly the singing is vibrant.

What has happened? Well, they woke up. Who woke them up? The risen Lord Jesus.

How did he wake them up? Taking them in his hands, filling them with his Spirit, driving them again to their knees, showing them the inconsistency of their pilgrimage. And of course, before God called David home, the services had moved to another church, and then the guest services were being held in York Minster. Now, I look at this church in Sardis, and it chills me. I find myself saying, O breath of life, come sweeping through us and revive your church with life and power. Cleanse us, renew us, and fit your church to meet this hour.

And the promise you will notice there is so very clear. He who overcomes will like them, verse 5, be dressed in white. I'll never erase his name from the book of life. I'm so glad we sang that hymn.

My name from the palms of his hands, eternity cannot erase, because they're there marked with indelible grace. Now, the gravity of the situation calls for the severity of Christ's assessment. And the severity of the Lord Jesus's assessment is an occasion for hope and encouragement, because he is speaking to those, verse 6, who have ears to hear. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches. It can be uncomfortable to hear a hard message from Jesus, but it's still a message of hope. So, Jesus chastens the ones he loves and gives us the opportunity to change.

You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. We are seeing how important it is to understand and apply scripture in our lives. And of course, our mission at Truth for Life is to teach God's word without adding to it or taking away from it.

It's teaching that you can trust because it points us back to the only source that can make us wise for salvation. Now, I think most of you know that Truth for Life is entirely listener-funded. The teaching you hear on this program is brought to you each day because of listeners like you who pray for this ministry and who give regularly to cover the cost associated with distributing Alistair's teaching.

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And if you'd rather mail your donation along with your request for the book, write to Truth for Life at PO Box 39-8000 Cleveland, Ohio 44139. Now last week, Alistair hosted the Basics Conference at Parkside Church. If you are in pastoral ministry and were not able to attend Basics, or if you did attend but would like to dive deeper into the insight Alistair had for pastors, we want to recommend a study for you. It's called The Basics of Pastoral Ministry. There are four modules available online that include 30 sermons and lectures from Alistair. In this series, he teaches how to lead a local church. You'll learn about the marks of persuasive preaching, the benefits of expository preaching, the power and pitfalls of the pulpit, along with studies on leadership, practical issues pastors face. Each module includes a downloadable study guide. The Basics of Pastoral Ministry provides a solid framework if you're an aspiring pastor. It's also a great refresher and a source of encouragement for a veteran pastor.

All four modules and corresponding online study guides are completely free. Just visit truthforlife.org and search for The Basics of Pastoral Ministry. I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for listening. God wants us to be people who share His light in our surrounding community. Join us tomorrow to find out how wealth can sometimes dull your shine. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.