Bible Study Library

Dear Disciples:

Jesus’ letter to Sardis was written to a church that looked great on the outside but lacked spiritual life on the inside. A few people were alive, but the rest were zombies - looking alive, but really dead.

Jesus gives them a 3-step approach to regaining life. If they take it, He’ll pronounce them innocent. If they refuse, they’ll walk in darkness like the rest of the heathen world.

For each of the seven church in the province of Asia, we’ve begun by reviewing what we know about the church and its community in the 1st century.

Sardis was a great has-been. It was once a very great and important city - 700 years before this letter, Sardis was the capital city of the great kingdom of Lydia. Later it became the center of the great Persian Empire.

By the time of Christ, however, Sardis had become a relatively obscure place known primarily for its great history. People still thought of it as great, but when they visited they found little to excite them.

The one thing Sardis still had going for it was its industry. Several major Roman roads came together at Sardis, it produced large amounts of wool and dyed goods, it was home of the cult of Cybele (one of the great mystery religions), and its government promoted Roman emperor worship. Residents there lived free-spirited and luxurious lives. But it had lost the cultural significance that it once had.

What was true of the city was also true of the church. Jesus said they had a reputation for being alive (3:1). The church probably had regular lively meetings, was socially involved, and had all the things that from the outside make a church look alive.

But, Jesus said, they were in fact dead. Satan wasn’t even interested in them! Note closely what isn’t in this letter: No one persecuted this church. No Jews taunted them. No false teachers infiltrated them. They had found their zone of comfort and sustainability, and they stayed in that zone to the exclusion of life.

I worked for a former employer for 10 years. It’s in my nature to be a creative agent of change, and that’s what I was in my early years with the company. I passionately championed important causes, led efforts to help our company continuously improve, and provided creative solutions to problems. I had a reputation throughout the company as cutting edge and innovative. But eventually - thanks to crass politics and unhealthy management - I burned out, but few people realized it. I became an expert at producing just the right amount of ideas and taking just the right amount of creative action for people to continue to remember me the way I used to be. I truly had a reputation of being alive, but I was dead.

The church at Sardis was dead because it lacked what needed to be inside - a spiritual thirst and the Holy Spirit’s power. Their problem was basically nothingness. They had become a shallow secular church with a deep spiritual apathy. But spiritual death isn’t always apparent to the casual observer.

The Sardis Christians performed works that were part right, Jesus said, but the works were incomplete. He did acknowledge that something remained that was still alive at Sardis (3:2). He exhorted them to strengthen that living remnant before it died, too - like giving Miracle Grow to a withering, neglected plant.

Something remained that God could still work with. They needed to fortify it, strengthen it.

Jesus gave them a three step plan (3:3):

1. Remembering the things they’d received and heard (i.e., studying again the true teachings and doctrine they had learned)
2. Putting them into practice
3. Repenting

As Christians we need to put as much effort into guarding our hearts as we put into participating in worship and engaging in service. All Sardis’ prosperity as a church, all its good works, all its charitable service - all of it was a religious failure because they lacked the life of the Holy Spirit. Everything was external.

What if they don’t take the three steps above? Jesus warned them that He’d come like a thief and they wouldn’t know when. Please understand the full impact of what that means…

Coming “like a thief” means He would come unexpectedly and refers His second coming (see Rev. 16:15; Mat 24:43; Luke 12:39; 1Th 5:2; and 2Pe 3:10).

But Paul said Jesus’ second coming would only catch people by surprise who are in darkness:

“But you, brothers, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief. You are all sons of the light and sons of the day” (1 Thess. 5:4-5).

In other words, if this church refused to re-learn the truth, put it into practice, and repent they would no longer be a church. They would be in darkness like the rest of the heathen world!

Fortunately, a few people at the church were still clean and pure (3:4). Instead of walking in darkness, those Christians would be dressed in pure white and walk with Christ Himself. This same opportunity was extended to anyone who overcomes (3:5). If they would, He promised never to blot their names out of the book of life. He’d acknowledge them before the Father and His angels.

We’ll close with this question: What would the church of Sardis look like today?

Could it, possibly, look somewhat like your own?