The Walking Dead

There has been a plethora of movies, shows, video games in recent years highlighting an interest, probably not a really healthy one to be honest, in zombies. One particular, popular show in recent years has the apt description for zombies in the name of the show - the walking dead. The zombies appear to be alive because they are walking around, but they are dead. They are the walking dead. Well, Jesus addresses a dead church. It’s a church that appears to be alive; it has a reputation of liveliness, but in fact it is dead. 

The church was in Sardis, a city thirty miles SE of Thyatira. Remember these letters are being addressed and were to be delivered in a sort of mail route. Sardis was a dead, degenerating church. And the spiritual state of the church matched the history of the city at the time in which Jesus spoke these words. Seven hundred years prior to this letter, Sardis was a city with a lot of glory. It was one of the most important cities in the world. At the time Jesus spoke these words, the city of Sardis was decaying. Today, it is in ruins.  

The Seven Spirits and Seven Stars

To the church at Sardis, Jesus introduces himself this way:

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.” 

This is fascinating. Jesus introduces himself as the One who has the seven stars. We’ve looked at this before. The seven stars are the messengers or the angels of the churches. Jesus has them. They belong to Him. They are not autonomous messengers running around with their own agenda. They are the Lord’s and they do His will. And of course, every faithful messenger - whether an angel from heaven or pastor of a local church, or missionary on foreign land, or anyone carrying the message of reconciliation - wants to please the Master. He has the seven stars. But Jesus also says this strange phrase: “the seven spirits of God”. What on earth is this? God has seven spirits? You might be thinking, “I thought we believed in the trinity.” We do. This is a reference to the Holy Spirit. 

A couple things to keep in mind. Revelation is a book of numbers. Lots and lots of numbers. The number seven is seen quite a lot in the book. The number seven is a number of completeness. The seven days in the creation story. Six days of work and on the seventh rest. But also keep in mind, the book of Revelation has TONS of Old Testament allusions. This phrase, “the seven spirits of God” calls to mind two passages. Listen to Isaiah 11:1-2:

1 There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. 2 And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.

The prophesied Messiah will have the Holy Spirit resting upon Him, and the Spirit is described in a sevenfold way: The Spirit of the Lord, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. Zechariah 4 also describes the Holy Spirit in his sevenfold fullness. So the seven spirits that Jesus has is the Holy Spirit in his sevenfold description and fullness. In other words, Jesus Christ possesses the fullness of the Spirit… He has the Spirit. The Spirit does His will. The Spirit is God… but he does not operate autonomously. He speaks the words of Christ: 

13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. 14 He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. (john 16:13-14)

But the Spirit also ministers the presence of Christ to the church. He promises to be with them, though he will be with the Father in glory. In John 14:18, Jesus said, “I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you…” So Jesus Christ has the fullness of the Spirit, and he bestows the Spirit on the church for her good and beautification. We are going to see the importance of the Holy Spirit in the message to a dead and dying church a bit later. 

[but I want to take a moment and consider something…]

Jesus Speaks to Churches, Not Just Individuals

This letter was not to be read in some sort of highly individualized way. We shouldn’t either. I am not sure all the reasons for it, but we tend to take what the bible says and make it all about me and Jesus. But Jesus here addresses entire churches. And I think we need to do better at this. Instead of thinking in terms of my private devotion to Christ, we should be thinking “how are we doing?” This is to think in more of a covenantal way. We are a covenantal community, a body, a church. And we are members of one another. And as such, the Lord doesn’t just know your works (as an individual). He knows ours works… He knows what we lack. Which brings us to the problem Jesus had with Sardis. He said:

I know your works. You have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead.

A Reputation And the Truth

Sardis had a certain reputation. They had a certain name. Their name was known in Asia Minor as one thing. Namely that they were alive. But Jesus said, “The truth of the matter is that you are dead”. In verse 2 Jesus says that some things were “about to die”. So the church was not completely dead. They were not completely without hope. But they once were lively, but were on the verge of flatlining. Perhaps Sardis was living in the glory years so to speak. They were living in the splendor of a bygone time (Napoleon Dynamite - uncle Rico). Perhaps outwardly, they appeared to still be lively and active and the Spirit was at work, but Jesus who sees and knows the truth, had a different assessment. Or perhaps, they were a very busy, active church doing things that don’t really matter. This is clear: The church at Sardis needed Christ to help them see more accurately. 

Could you imagine a more devastating indictment than this? Imagine the Lord coming to RLC and saying, “You have a name that you are alive. You have life in your name… and “real” life at that. But you know what? I see deeper down… I see the truth, and you are dead. Well, Jesus did Sardis that. He said, “You’re dead”. Of course, Jesus was referring to spiritual deadness. There was a form of godliness, but not the power of it. There was the outward appearance, but not the reality. Let’s humble ourselves before God and just say, “Lord let this not be true of us… but if it is… help us do what needs to be done in order to be revived.”

After the shocking indictment, Jesus says, “Wake up or else…” Verses 2-3,

Wake up and strengthen what remains… 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…

We usually think of the language of Jesus coming like a thief in relation to his second coming on the Last Day. But here it is referring to coming to a particular church. And the point is clear - He will come like a thief. Which means unexpectedly. And he will come in judgment - he makes it clear that he will come “against them”. Remember who Jesus is talking to! He is not talking to the devil. He is not talking to a group of people who are part of a false religion. He is not talking to the UN or the WEF or some evil ruler. He is talking to a church and he says, “If you don’t repent, I will come against you.” When we see the legitimate fall of a church or ministry, we need to have a category in our minds that can fathom the thought, “Jesus is coming against them… Jesus has said, ‘Enough!’” 

We are seeing that happen right now. Ministries, churches, denominations being brought down. And one of the ways Jesus may come against a church (or denomination) is by giving them over to the same death-producing beliefs and activities they are engaged in. But then Jesus says there are a few names (reputation) who have not soiled their garments. There are some who have reputations of life, but are dead… and they need to repent or else. There are others who have reputations of life and are the real deal → they have not soiled their garments. Jesus says, “They will walk with me”. They both have names… reputations. One is legit, the other is not. 

Reading through these letters ought to bring us to the sobering conclusion. Not everyone who is a part of the visible church, who appears to be a Christian, who professes Christ, is actually a Christian. Wheat and tares. Big net with lots of fish, sorted out by the angels. Certainly this is a call to seriousness. There is no salvation, no life to the one who will not bow the knee to Jesus Christ as Lord. 

The Path To Being Revived?

So what would a dying church do in order to be revived? We don’t know for sure what happened to the church at Sardis, but we do have some hints (I think), which give us a pathology of how a church dies, but what’s the path to renewal. What is the path to being revived? Because that is what we all really want to know. When a church is dead or dying, what is the path to being revived (brought back to life)?  Jesus gives us four steps: 

ONE: Wake Up! (v. 2)

The first step on the path of reviving what is dead is to wake up. This word translated “wake up” carries the idea of being alert or keeping watch. When Jesus was in the garden of Gethsemane just prior to his betrayal, he said to Peter, James, and John “My soul is distressed even to death, keep watch with Me.” Keep watch, stay alert. Wake up! Of course, Jesus really wanted his disciples to physically stay awake with him. Here, he is calling the church in Sardis to wake up to the reality of the state of the soul of the church! You think you’re alive, but you are not - you are dead! Wake up! It probably also means to take care to watch over and guard your soul. One of the chief ways life slowly drains out of a church is when lifeless formalism takes precedence and the heart is neglected. Proverbs 4:23 says, 

Watch the heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. 

Outward actions matter (which we will see shortly), but the Christian life is one that is lived from the inside out. So the first step toward revival is to wake up… be alarmed and alerted to the fact that you need to be revived. 

TWO: Remember (v. 3)

Remember. It may sound benign, but one of the besetting sins of God’s people is forgetfulness. Forgetting the gospel. Forgetting salvation. Forgetting identity. So Jesus says, 

Remember, then, what you received and heard.

Remember what you received. You have received every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 1:3-14). You have received every good and perfect gift from the Father of lights (James 1). You have received all things pertaining to life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3-11). Remember also what you have heard. By the time this letter was written, much of what we have in the NT had circulated and reached them. They understood the truth. They heard it. Now he says, remember! As I said, one of the besetting sins of God’s covenant people is forgetting. 

10 “And when the LORD your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, 11 and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, 12 then take care lest you forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 13 It is the LORD your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. 14 You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you— 15 for the LORD your God in your midst is a jealous God—lest the anger of the LORD your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth. (Deuteronomy 6:10-15)

Psalm 78 chronicles for us the sad history of the people of God and their continual forgetfulness and God’s subsequent judgment. We must keep in mind how great a sin it is to forget what God has given and said. Remember. Remind each other!

THREE: Obey (v. 2, 3)

Verse 3 says, remember what you have received and heard. Then, “keep it and repent.” Part of repentance is not just remembering, but then putting feet to what you have received and heard. What you believe; what God has said; what you have received and heard should come out of your fingers and toes. You are to keep it. But it is a wholehearted obedience Christ calls for. Earlier in verse 2 it also says this:

Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. 

Jesus says, “Your works are not complete”. Get going. You have left some things undone. When I was growing up, one of my chores was to mow and trim the lawn. And it never satisfied my dad if I did half the lawn or ⅔ of the lawn. CT Studd:

Wake up, remember, wholehearted obedience. Finally:

FOUR: Separate (v. 4)

Separate from the world. Some in Sardis had not soiled their garments. They would walk in white with Christ. Then Jesus said, whoever conquers would also be clothed in white. So some had not been contaminated by the world, and the rest needed to deal with the fact that they had. This is worldly pollution. Soiled, stained, defiled, polluted. Over the last several years with more and more people attempting to climb Mt Everest, a serious pollution problem has emerged. People leave mounds of trash which then gets into the watershed, polluting the local water supply for the people who rely on it. 

The same thing can happen to us. We make peace with the world here, an alliance with that worldly ideology there, and little by little, we can become polluted. And what happens? It greatly hinders and can choke off the life of the Spirit. One enormous hindrance that is a perennial temptation is caring what the world thinks about us and our beliefs. Of course, we should be good neighbors, truly behave as Christians. But when we are pressured to accept the world’s definition of things like “love of neighbor” and marriage - we are being polluted by the world. When an atheistic scientific community shapes our interpretation of scripture and the age of the earth, we are being polluted. When a hostile ideology like radical feminism defines for us what manhood and womanhood are, we are being polluted. So there needs to be a godly separation from the world. 

Here’s the promise… 

The Promise

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 (reputation) before my Father and before his angels. 

What a remarkable thing. A reputation with Christ. Christ confessing our name before the Father. There is nothing better - to receive the approval of God. Let’s go for this. Let’s set this as our aim… and the One who has the seven spirits of God will pour out this fullness of his Spirit upon us in glorious renewal. 

Well, we end this way with every letter. 

Do you hear? (v. 6)

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. 

Do you hear? I hope you do. Let’s pray.