Of the church in Sardis, write the words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. Remember then what you received and heard. Keep it and repent. 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. Yet you have still a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with me in white for they are worthy. 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 before my Father and before his angels. He who has an ear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches.

And then verse 22, we dealt with Philadelphia some weeks ago. Verse 22 or verse 14 rather through 22. And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write the words of the amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s creation. I know your works. You’re neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say I am rich. I have prospered. I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.

I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline. So be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him and he with me.

The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches. Father God, thank you for this beautiful day and the opportunity we have to be here. And we pray for your word to become to life as we hear it this morning. Help your servant to share what you have placed upon my heart with compassion and conviction and may each person hear and receive instruction and correction, Lord, which is the goal of these letters. And we bless you and thank you for it in Christ’s name.

Now we’ve done this a hundred times. I don’t want to delete the slide because I might need it, but we won’t give the three acts again this morning. We will just move on to other things. Okay. We want to be reminded though quickly that the book is not a mystery to be solved. It is a revelation about Christ intended to encourage his people in times of persecution and adversity. It is written to and for the church and the encouragement in the letter sometimes comes in commendation and sometimes in rebuke, but it must come and it does come each time.

Now we have to begin here noticing verse 22 and verse number six, he that has an ear letting hear what the spirit says to the churches. These things are written to the church and they apply to all the churches. Since these churches are representative of all time, of all churches through history up to including our time, what Christ says to them should be taken to heart by us.

We should not approach them saying, “Oh, those bad Christians over there,” but we should use it as a mirror for our own lives. Now, again, we must touch briefly on the subject that keeps coming up, but I want to focus. Well, I’ll come back to that in a moment and focus on Sardis, but let me make a point or two about Laodicea.

Laodicea is the only church without commendation out of seven churches. He finds something good in the other six, but he comes to this one; there’s nothing good to say about it. That’s a tragic consideration. One of my commentaries said that this is the only church that didn’t survive. The other six churches had representation in congregations for centuries later. Laodicea disappears because Christ has nothing good to say about them. And I think you agree with me. We do not want to come to that place.

The other thing about Laodicea is that it is the most frequently misused in the two ways you see before you. The first is the question of being lukewarm. I don’t know if you picked up on, but three times he says, “I wish you were cold or hot.” I wish you were cold or hot because you’re neither cold nor hot. And how somehow people just focus on the hot part and think God really wants us to be on fire. Well, he does want us to be on fire, but that’s not the point of the text.

And when people just use the lukewarm and they say, “We’re supposed to be burning hot all the time for God,” and they’re misusing the text in that way. The second one is connected to the picture, which you can see. Many of you have seen this picture. It’s a painting from 1851 of Christ knocking at the door.

And I am just bad. Because the point is there’s no doorknob on the door. But the doorknob should be on the other side of the door behind Christ. The hinges are on this side. And every door you see that has the hinges on one side, the doorknob on the other. And that’s just your pastor’s perfectionism bleeding through.

But the point is they say there’s no doorknob. Christ is knocking. And this is true.

But it’s written to the church. This is not an evangelistic scripture. That’s how it’s usually used. And I won’t say that people are demonic for doing that. But the point of this, Jesus is saying to the church, you’ve locked me out. I’m knocking ready to come back in with fellowship. But you’ve closed the door on me. And what a tragic thing that is that this happens.

And it does happen because there would be no reason for Jesus to say this except that the church has locked him out. And we as individuals within the congregation, we’ve said it. It’s on the sign. There’s no I in church. It’s not me or you. It’s us. Christ died for the church.

And so when he says to the church, I’m knocking because you have locked me out of the fellowship by your attitudes toward me, toward my word, to who I am. And this is how the letter is misused in that consideration.

Now remember that with the exception of Smyrna and Philadelphia, all are challenged on the idea of idolatry. The idea of idolatry. Now let us talk for a moment. What is idolatry? And here I think is the simplest definition of idolatry. It is the substitute; it is the worship as ultimate of something which isn’t. It is we have substituted because God is the only ultimate. God is the only thing that you will never lose. And what we do is we focus on the passing, the temporal, the transient, and those things become ultimate to us.

And that’s idolatry. You shall have no other gods before me. Therefore, anything that becomes more important to God, more important to you than God, is the essence of idolatry.

Now, throughout this study, we’ve also seen with these churches references to false teaching. And the reason that’s important is because false teaching and idolatry are linked.

Get my stuff together here. Because idolatry rises out of a false belief about God. If you’re taught the wrong things about God, you’re not worshiping God. You’re worshiping the false image of God that you have been taught. This is something we must be cautious of. And this is why Jesus spends so much time talking about these things.

Idolatry is my living out a belief that is constituted by a set of false values. And to end the idolatry, I must correct the beliefs. This is why it’s not enough to simply say, “Stop being an idolater.” We must address the beliefs that form the undergirding of that idolatry because they’re linked together.

I have the wrong idea of God. And to get away from the idolatry, this belief that something else is ultimate, I must correct my beliefs. And this is why it’s so important. We are in church and we be exposed to good, solid, doctrinal, biblical teaching. Because without that, we drift into idolatry.

Now, Jesus speaks to five of these churches about idolatry. So you and I shouldn’t sit here and say, “Oh, I would never do that.” I’m a good, sold‑out, blood‑bought Christian. I would never fall victim to that. Five of the seven fall victim. And that should be a warning to us.

Amen. And may we go back in our minds to 1 Corinthians 10:12, let him who thinks he stands take heed, lest he fall.

Now, one of the principal points in connection to that, which we noted last week, is the toleration of false belief. You tolerate, he says to the church at Thyatira, “I’ve got this against you.” You tolerate the woman, the person, the character, the personality who is teaching falsehood. It’s not just that you accept the false; you allow that person to do what they’re doing. And he says, that must end.

Now, this is a point where many Christians in the modern church get uncomfortable. They do not like error being called out and the possibility of some false teacher being identified. Jesus tells us to do what? Beware of false prophets. That’s okay. Jesus tells us to beware of false prophets. Why?

Because he doesn’t want us to fall victim to them and the influences they have on us.

Now, it’s very important to see this. The Christian must recognize two things about this when we’re uncomfortable with the calling out of false teachers and false teachings. The false teacher is advocating and encouraging a substitute view of God. The false teacher is cultivating idolatry in the hearts of people. When he or she says something biblically untrue, not something we disagree about. Something unbiblical. When they’re teaching something that changes the concept of who God is, that is a false teaching.

And in that, they’re cultivating idolatry because your understanding of God is being changed from that teaching. It’s so very important to see this. The false teachers advocating and encouraging a substitute view of God.

For example, the prosperity gospel. The prosperity gospel says what? Money is ultimate. Success is ultimate. God is merely the tool to achieve the ultimate. Can we not see the idolatry in that?

And it’s not about whether you’re prosperous or whether you’re successful. God wants His people. God wants many of His people to prosper and succeed. But it is when I let success and prosperity become the thing I’m worshiping rather than God.

I bet if I ask you this morning, how many of you are thankful to God for all the good things you have? Every one of you would say amen.

But do we think about the thankfulness we need if all those things were deprived us? Job, losing everything, says the Lord gave and the Lord took it away. That is God is ultimate. But if God took it all away and we lamented and cried and fussed about losing it, that tells us, isn’t it, that that has become ultimate in our life? Not God.

Now, this is our predicament as fallen people, children. Now, the second thing I want you to see is that we have to refute that, well, maybe God could use them. Maybe God could use them. That’s not a justification for them being tolerated. It’s not a justification for them being tolerated. Let me make my point.

So, I mentioned this book several weeks ago, Feed My Sheep, a passionate plea for preaching. And you should know this, but I am desperate, desperately sincere about wanting to be effective in the pulpit. I have nothing else to offer you except this 40 minutes. That is all I have. And I’m trying my absolute best at it.

And so, I read books on preaching. And I bought this; I had this book before. It’s like the third time I’ve read it. And it’s got all these different preachers, Joel Beakey, James Montgomery Boyce, Sinclair Ferguson, John MacArthur, Al Mohler, John Piper, Derek Thomas, etc. And I was reading this on vacation, took it with me. And I was reading it.

And James Montgomery Boyce, who was pastor of 10th Street Presbyterian in Philadelphia for 30 years, recommended this book called Christ‑Centered Preaching. And this is the third edition. It originally came out in ’94. They reprinted it in 2005. They reprinted it again in 2018. It’s a recognized resource.

And in this part of the book, the writer’s talking about that attitude. Well, maybe God could use them. And here’s what he says. Faith in the working of God’s Word and Spirit does not mean we are without responsibility.

Early American pastor John Shaw once preached at an ordination. It’s true, as one observes, that God can work by what means He will, by a scandalous, domineering, self‑seeking preacher, but it is not His usual way. And listen to this. Foxes and wolves are not God’s instrument for generating sheep.

Here’s a life lesson I will draw from that. The preaching of a substitute gospel cannot produce genuine Christians. If we want Bible‑believing Christians, we must talk about the God of the Bible. The second one is, if I will go further in using this illustration, wolves cannot produce sheep. Well, maybe they’re not wolves. They’re wolves if they’re teaching a substitute gospel and a different version of God.

It’s not the same as all the questions we’ve talked about many times about which way we do communion, which way we baptize, which version of the Bible. That’s not the point. They’re preaching a substitute false God. And that makes them a wolf because they’re not concerned about God and His sheep. They’re concerned about themselves.

And wolves can only produce wolves. Secondly, our goal is not getting people saved. Our goal is making God known. And they are saved by God being made known. They are saved by hearing about the mercies and greatness and goodness of God. But our goal is not to get them saved and hope they’ll become believers. It is to make God known.

And God, through the working of the Holy Spirit and His Word, draws people to Himself. And they become true believers. And when we say, well, maybe if God does that, and I don’t say He doesn’t, He’s using, He’s doing it despite that teacher, not because of them. And that’s important for us to realize.

Because as long as we think He’s doing it because of them, we will never call Him out because we think the goal is to get people saved. The goal is to make God known and to glorify Him and to lift His name high. And I don’t have time to give you all the scriptures to validate that. Now this is essentially what is occurring in Sardis and Laodicea.

Remember that this is the same area of the world at the same time of history being oppressed by the same Roman Empire. Therefore, the influences of idolatry are pressing on all of them, including these last two churches. Thus, the rebuke or the reprimand that Jesus issues to the other churches applies to these two churches as well.

And you can see this in verse number 4 again of chapter 3. Listen to what he says. Yet you have still a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments. Notice also chapter 3, verse 18. He says, they are naked. And he says, you should buy white garments.

Now this is a term related to idolatry. They are guilty of idolatry. The idolatry has taken their covering or it has soiled their covering. And this is again the substitution of something other than God as ultimate.

Now children, think about it. What was the first sin? Substitution. Here’s what God said. And here’s what Adam and Eve preferred. Doot. Doot. That’s my Australian accent. Do not eat of that tree. And the devil comes along and says, “God’s, God’s, that’s not the real God.” That’s not the true God.

The true God would never deny you anything. If He really loved you, He would want you to have it all. And now they believe in a different God. And they are empowered to act out their stuff. They define themselves not in God, not in Him as ultimate, but something they wanted more than God. And this is how the garments were sold in Laodicea.

This is a pattern in Scripture. Listen to this from the book of Genesis. Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, “Put away the foreign gods that are among you and purify yourselves and change your garments.” Now please notice first the history behind.

Jacob has had some problems and so he’s decided to take his family back to the place where he first encountered God. Back to Bethel. Back to the house of God. And he says, but before we go back to God’s house, we’ve got to get ourselves ready. This is a commercial, but it’s a valid, necessary commercial in 21st‑century America.

Do you spend any time preparing yourself spiritually before you come to church? Is it a last minute, throw on the makeup, throw on the clothes, rush out the door, speed down the highway, get mad at the people in front of you, and then come into church and say, “What a mighty God we serve.” We need to prepare ourselves for worship.

And it’s a significant, you say, well, where do you get the soiled garments? Change their garments. Remember that the distinction between our culture and theirs is that in our culture we buy clothes on the basis of convenience and the basis of fashion and the basis of ability. I want that dress. I want that shirt. I want those pants. I want that. I want that.

And we buy it. But in that culture you had to make your clothes. They didn’t have closets full of clothes and clothes full of shoes. If they had to go back and He tells them to change their garment, there’s a significant cost involved in doing that in that day. And so it is to us. To turn from our idols and to give God the full glory of His heart will cost you something periodically, if not constantly.

Listen, John Gill, who died in 1771, commenting on this Genesis passage says, “The changing and washing of garments were emblems of renewing of the mind and cleansing of the soul and of the change of heart and life.” Now, where does he get such concepts? From the book of Ephesians chapter 4. You must no longer walk as the Gentiles do.

My spring breathing difficulties here. You must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. What’s he talking about? Their idols. Because if you read the rest of the Old Testament, it’s always talking about how the idols were futile in the futility of their minds. You must not walk like they do in idolatry.

You must turn from those things. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from God because of the ignorance that is in them. But that is not the way you learned Christ.

As the truth is in Jesus, put off your old self, which is corrupt according to your former manner of idolatrous life, corrupt through deceitful desires, and put on the new man who is renewed in the image of Christ. This is the concept.

When Jesus says to these sardines, to the Christians in Sardis, I’m about to call them sardines, and I don’t think that will work. The Christians in Sardis and Laodicea, when he says your garments are soiled, he means you’re engaged in idolatry. You’re putting something else in the place of God, and you’ve got to change your clothes.

Listen to this passage from the book of Jude, the next‑to‑the‑last book of the Bible. “Save others by snatching them out of the fire.” To others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh. Now, is he talking about the same thing there? I believe he is. First, because in my computer Bible, when you look at “stained by the flesh” in Jude, it refers you back to Revelation 3 and 4.

But here’s the second reason. The letter begins, the letter of Jude begins with a reference to contending for the true faith and warns throughout the brief letter of these false teachers and ideas, and then ends with a reference to sold garments. It’s the same problem, the same battle.

You know, children, we have a lot of struggles in our culture, but this is not something new. The lure of idolatry to our hearts is prevalent in every age. Remember, in the other churches, it’s been the same focus. And in Ephesians, Jesus says what? To the church of Ephesus, you’ve left your first love.

Now, why does that happen? Because something became more important than God. It’s the same thing. The simplest explanation is that something has become more important to them than God. In other words, something other than God has become ultimate, and that is the essence and definition of idolatry.

Now let us pause to note the subtle, pernicious nature of idolatry, that how the devil and our flesh can turn anything into an idol. John Calvin said our hearts are idol factories, generating like an assembly line, new things to believe in other than God.

And this is our human predicament. But know it’s a similarity, and that is they both have, both are trusting in a reputation that is incorrect. In Sardis, it’s what the world thinks. You have a name that you’re alive. In your community, in your culture, you’re viewed as tolerant, compassionate inclusive, but you’re dead as far as I’m concerned. This is a consideration.

But what about Laodicea? They’re trusting in what they think about themselves. What does the Bible say over Romans? “Do not be wise in your own eyes.” That’s the problem of our culture. It is what they think about themselves. I’m all right. I’m a good person. I’m not as bad as those folks over there. And I must be aware of how, as a fallen, sinful creature in a fallen, broken world, the lure of something else is always before me.

Laodicea and Laodicea, Sardis and Laodicea are told to be clothed by white garments, that is, without idolatry, dominating their lives. This is our goal. This is our pursuit. And that, by the way, the book ends, the marriage supper of the Lamb at the end of Revelation says the saints are robed in fine linen, which is the righteousness of the saints.

It’s at the end of the book because the entire book is about the lure and the pressures of the world to make us compromise our faith we come. Now, let me talk to you then about Sardis and make two points about the church of Sardis.

The first one is this. The definition of worthy. Ironically, the idolatry that we are by sin inclined to is encouraged by a misunderstanding of worthy. You may have said it. You may have heard it. Well, God, there must be something good about me. Why would God love me? And you’ve just taken the wrong step.

I love what Jason said last week. Love is who God is, not who we are. And we have twisted this thing all around. You can see this. The balanced message is that by virtue of our being created in the image of God, we have intrinsic worth. That’s why we value all human beings. We value all humans. They’re made in the image of God.

Ah, but that’s only half the story. The rest of the story is because of our sin, our rebellion, our rejection, our substituting something for God, we are objects of His wrath. I said this at our Good Friday service. When you look through the Bible and you see how many times it talks about the wrath of God directed towards human beings, and then people say, “But God loves us.”

Well, if we’re, how can we be objects of love if we are worthy? Objects of wrath if we are worthy of love? That would give us a picture of God which is pernicious and twisted, and He’s not reliable because He wants to love us, but He can’t because of His wrath. And there’s a balance to this, I understand, but we get it wrong when we say, “God, we are worthy, and that’s why He loves us, and that’s why He saves us.”

And that is the whole concept behind self‑love. And it’s wrong, biblically. By our sin, we deserve wrath and damnation. God’s love is what rescues us from that, from what we deserve. It is not an expression of the good we deserve. It is a rescue of the bad from the bad that we deserve.

The unbalanced message is God loves us because we are worthy, and the opposite is actually true. And you can see this in the letter to Sardis. He says, “You have a few in Sardis who have not soiled their garments.” They will walk with me in white, for they are worthy.

The worthy ones are those who have kept their faith. Not the ones who are living in rebellion to God, but those who have kept their faith in Him. They’re the worthy ones. There’s a passage over in Luke that I failed to look it up, but Jesus is talking to them about the end times, and He says, “Pray that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things and to appear before the Son of Man.”

If people were by nature worthy, why would we have to pray to be counted worthy? It demonstrates that this worthiness is misused and unbalanced in our culture. By calling these few people worthy, He’s implying the rest are unworthy, and that could not be true if we’re worthy by default. He is talking about those who are faithful to His call.

The worthiness in this text flows from their salvation. It is not the basis of it. He saves us and empowers us to live in a way that’s worthy of His mercies, but it is not our worthiness that saves us. And by the way, if people were worthy, if all people were worthy by nature, then we should all be saved.

We all know the Bible’s clear. Not everybody’s going to be saved. Why? If they’re naturally worthy. I’m going to save these, but not those. If we’re all worthy, then we should all be saved. And that’s where the message comes. We’re not worthy. God chooses to save some of these people who are unworthy. That’s what makes His love and grace incredible. I don’t deserve it, and I cannot merit it.

Now that flows directly then into the second point I want you to see from verse number 5. The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life. Now, there are two sides on the question of our eternal salvation. I can lose my salvation, or I can’t.

I don’t have time to deal with every aspect, but I want to repeat just quickly the little exercise. If you believe you can lose your salvation, does that matter? Do you want to go to hell, or do you want to go to heaven? If you understand that losing my salvation means I’m going to hell, do you want to lose your salvation? No.

Then the next question is, how will you prevent that from happening? And the answer is, “I’ll live a spotless life.” I’ll spend the rest of my life, no matter how long it is, and I’ll never sin again. Now, it is the highest epitome of human arrogance to think you will never, ever sin again.

You ever heard of the sins of omission? Sins of omission are things we haven’t done we should have. Sins of commission are the things we do that we shouldn’t do. But none of us can be confident that we have done everything we should have done in life. There’s all kinds of things you could miss, and that one sin is enough to take you out.

So, when you say, “I believe I can lose my salvation,” what you’re saying is there’s a sin that I could commit that Christ couldn’t take care of, didn’t see coming, and didn’t cover when He died for me. That’s the only way out of that scenario.

I argue, you cannot lose your salvation. And I think to tell you, I have to tell you, I don’t think this verse is saying that. People say, “Well, if He could block, He won’t blot your name out,” which means He could blot your name out, and therefore you could be lost.

Well, in addition to what I’ve already said, and I say this, children, please hear me. Dear God in heaven, jeez, I’m either going to learn to be a good preacher, or God’s going to deliver me someday from the burden and the frustration of trying to be a preacher as a broken person.

I’m not saying this to you to try to make a theological point that proves we’re better than the Arminians who say you can lose your salvation. I’m trying to offer comfort to myself.