Week 52 Case 5 Sardis
The church in Sardis had a reputation for being alive. A name in the community for being a vibrant lively animated vigorous place.
Unfortunately their public reputation was just a house-of-cards. The Lord’s view was quite a bit different: you are dead.
I think the Lord was exaggerating slightly here. He didn’t mean absolutely and totally dead since he added a follow-up faint-hope clause : now wake up! Strengthen what little remains, for even what is left is at the point of death. Luckily Sardis wasn’t a fully-and-clinically-dead church. But it was on life-support.
Likely the only thing standing between near-death and total death was that a few individuals in the church had stayed loyal to the Lord. A worthy minority.
But to the rest of the congregation the Lord said:
Go back to what you heard and believed at first
Hold to it firmly
Turn to me again.
I guess it’s a natural thing for churches to want to move forward. Improve. Advance. Evolve. Contemporize. Sardis seemed to have successfully moved along in that direction.
John’s warning was that in the process they had lost track of the fundamental things. And losing the fundamental things – even if they gained a great reputation in the community – was a poor trade-off.
Note: Revelation 3:1-6. Quotes from 3:1 2 3 2:24-25 (NLT). The Lord gave a similar bit of advice to Thyatira: I will ask nothing more of you except that you hold tightly to what you have.