Revelation: The Church at Sardis
“Spirituality”

In the Gospel of Luke we read the words, “6 But Jesus often withdrew to the wilderness for prayer.” and we often see examples of this same activity recorded in various places throughout the Gospels. Jesus goes off to be by himself to spend some time in prayer.
When we talk about Jesus, we usually concentrate on the teachings of Jesus and the miracles of Jesus and the death and resurrection of Jesus, but we often gloss over the examples Jesus sets for us in the everyday practices of his life. This example of Jesus ‘going off to pray’ is an example of what we would call ‘spiritual practices’ - the exercise of the spiritual side our lives with God. The personal communication and time spent with God. This practice of ‘spirituality’ is what we learn about as we look at the church in Sardis.
Here we have another large city, known for its commerce especially in the area of textiles and wools and for its strategic location as a crossroads. It is a city that had throughout its history been an important city in the Roman empire in that it sat on the top of a hill surrounded by steep cliffs and from there was almost untouchable by approaching armies. Like the other 4 cities we have talked about before that had their pagan temples, but unlike the other cities who had a bunch of temples to a bunch of different gods, this city concentrated its temple worship on one god, the mother goddess Cybele. The worship of Cybele was quite a contrast in our mind of what worship is because to go to worship this goddess you had to wear a pristine, white robe, and if there was any soil on the robe you could not enter the temple for worship. Like the other pagan worships we have talked about, worship then on the inside consisted of food, drink and parties. Again, we have to remember that unlike us who have grown up in an atmosphere where extreme eating, drinking and participation in wild parties is considered not the way to live, people in the time and age in which the letter of Revelation was written think exactly the opposite - you are just strange in you don’t participate in this hedonistic lifestyle.
So we need to keep in mind that the people who are in the church of Jesus Christ in this part of the world lived with the understanding of worship in terms of parties - until they have become part of the church of Jesus. So they participated in the pagan worship a much longer part of their life than they had living as a follower of Christ. And many of their family members and friends and co-workers are putting pressure on them to come back to the pagan temple. Their conviction had to be steadfast in order to be able to stick with their new way of life.
Think of it this way - let’s say you and your family got together a couple times a week and spent your time drinking Sundrop and eating hot dogs. You and your family had done this your whole life. So you go to the Dr and the doctor tells you you need to stop drinking Sundrop and eating hot dogs. You tell your family you are not going to be able to join them for the Sundrop and hot dog evenings anymore. But your family continues to harass you about not coming, and it is hard on you too because you have done this your whole life…… That is what it is like for these church members in Sardis.
Another pressure on these members of the church in Sardis lie in their Roman citizenship. In Sardis, your citizenship depended on your lifestyle. If you in any way acted outside the norms of society, the leadership of the city would strip you of your citizenship. The Christians then were in constant fear of the loss of their citizenship because of the choices they made that were clearly different than the ‘norm’ in the city. It was tough being a Christian.
The church at Sardis had been founded by the apostle John - the one who wrote the Gospel of John and the writer of Revelation. The church grew quickly and seemingly was very successful in spite of their location in this decadent environment. They quickly developed a sense of mission and had many missions and programs within their church. From all outward appearances, this was a successful church and Jesus compliments them on this work and mission. And as we have figured out by now, there is always a but…….. “But,” Jesus says, “This is your problem….” and Jesus says this problem is very serious and if they don’t correct it soon the church is going to fail. Which is pretty serious!
Their problem is in the area of spirituality; specifically their lack of spirituality. Which means we need to understand what spirituality is all about. And it is worth pointing out that this is the only church of the 7 where Jesus is addressing the individual members of the church. The other 6 churches Jesus is talking about the work and attitude of the church as a whole, but here he is talking to the individuals within the church. He says, “A few of you have it figured out. A few of you have your hearts in the right place. But the majority of you need to improve your spiritual life” ` or more accurately, they need to develop a spiritual life.
When ‘spirituality’ is addressed in the bible, there are 2 people lifted up for us. One is Jesus and the other is King David. So a quick overview of King David. David is anointed to be King over Israel by God when he is just a young boy. Saul is still the King when all this is going on and doesn’t know that God has appointed David the next king. So David actually goes to work for Saul as his court musician. Then David proves himself a warrior as he slays the giant Goliath - a story that we are all familiar with but what I want to emphasize today is that one very important element of that story is that David verbally professed great faith in God to King Saul as he approached the giant with only a sling shot and then David attributed his victory to the power of God. David took no credit for himself. Eventually David takes the throne and in that position we see David have great successes - and we see David have great personal failure as he has an affair with Bathsheba and then organizes the death of her husband. So David is a portrayed as a man of great faith - and a man of many weaknesses. And through it all God himself says that David, of all the people in the Bible, is the ‘closest to his own heart’, or in other words - David is the most spiritual of all the people in the bible that are put before us as examples. Seems kinds of strange that God would hold up in front us us an adulterer and a murderer as the example of who we are to look to as we understand what kind of relationship God desires from us. So don’t ever think that you have ever done something so bad that God will not love you - that is part of David’s message. As we read through the Psalms David wrote and read the story of David’s life, what we see is that David is forever talking with God. The Psalms are actually David talking with God - about everything. About his failures, about his joy - every aspect of his life David talked with God. And every time David messed up, he immediately ran to God with - “Oh God, I failed again. Please forgive me.” And God tells us that what he admires about David is the sincerity of David’s pleas to God. Instead of David internalizing these things and saying “Oh woe is me. I am so bad.” and hanging his head and beating himself up, David takes it to God and says - “God, I am so very sorry.” When David has decisions to make, he first goes to God. When David has successes, he first goes to God. David and God are examples of a close, personal relationship and that is what God wants with us - and maintaining this relationship is what we label spirituality.
And it is not easy and we have to work at it and we have to make a concerted effort at it - but the more you do it, the easier it becomes. It is Paul’s challenge to us to ‘pray without ceasing’ - which doesn’t mean we stop and fold our hands and say, “Dear God, so and so and so. Amen.” It is a running conversation with God that goes on all the time with some times of quiet thrown in. The quiet part is probably the hardest part - the just sitting quietly, knowing you are in the presence of God, and not talking. But that is essential in our spiritual relationship with God - and something David and Jesus did all the time.
Jesus went off for quiet time, we are told sometimes early in the morning and sometimes in the evening - whenever he could get the opportunity to ‘listen’ to God. That is necessary too - if we do all the talking then how can we ever hear God’s voice and God’s direction and God’s comfort and God’s forgiveness? So we have to work on both these elements - the running acknowledgement of God’s presence with us all the time - and those moments of quiet when we can listen for God to speak to us.
So what Jesus is pointing out to the congregation at Sardis is this - All the work you are doing is important. Jesus says to the church in Sardis - Mission is good, teaching is good, but it doesn’t mean a thing if your heart is not with God. While church and the things of the church are essential components of our life as the people of God, it is our personal relationship with God that is of the most importance.
This is something you have to do. I can’t tell you how to do it, I can’t tell you what you need to do to get yourself where you need to be in your relationship with God - all that I can tell you is that Jesus tells us that we have to develop a relationship. Not a knowledge of who he is or what he has done; not just a belief that he exists - but a personal relationship.
And we don’t even have to ‘do’ anything other than say that to God - in a moment of quiet in our mind, with all sincerity just say, “God, here I am.’

Amen.

REVELATION: THE CHURCH OF THYATIRA - “Beware False Teachers”

As we continue through our look at the 7 churches in the book of Revelation, we are getting bits and pieces of Jesus’ design for His church. Church is important to us. Some of you have been here in this church your whole life. You’ve put blood, sweat and tears into the work that is done here. Significant life events have happened here - baptisms, weddings, funerals… We have a sense of ownership for this place. So every now and then we need to stop and remind ourselves that this is Jesus’ church and we are simply a part of it. We need to remind ourselves that Jesus has definite expectations of what he wants his church to be . Looking at these 7 churches it is like we are getting these different pieces of a puzzle and as we put the pieces together, the whole picture of Jesus’ ideal church begins to appear. Then, we are challenged to look at this picture and see where we measure up and we see where we need to make corrections. That ideal picture helps us to allow the Holy Spirit to aid us in moving closer and closer to Christ’s design for the church.
We have looked at the church of Ephesus where we hear about the importance of holding true to correct doctrine and of how important it is for us to love one another in this congregation - or as Jesus says - How can we teach love to our community if we can’t even love one another. Smyrna was the church that held true in the face of severe persecution as a witness to their faith - so we learn that as difficult as things may get for the church, if we rely on Jesus then we will hold together regardless of what problems we may encounter. Last week was Pergamum - the church that again was complimented for holding it together when some of the members had been martyred. But Jesus reminds them he requires the church to be holy - meaning ‘different’ than the unchurched community around them. Jesus tells them that the choices within the church must reflect Jesus’ teachings rather than what culture holds important.
We have learned to be loving, holding true to doctrine, relying on the Holy Spirit to hold us together in times of difficulty, staying apart from the culture - and now on to church #4 - the church at Thyatira. Unlike the here previous cities, Thyatira was a pretty nondescript sort of place. It was a lot smaller and a lot more insignificant than the other cities. It had no fantastic buildings, no huge temples and no real political status. All it really had in its favor was that it prospered as a trading center.
We have no idea how the church here came into being but as Jesus’ talks about this church in Revelation he does so with glowing terms. The section of Revelation directed to Thyatira is actually the longest of all the letters written to the churches. Jesus says, “I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance.” He goes on to say that the church is now doing more in the way of service and deeds than they have ever done before. The church of Thyatira was living as Christ wanted to his church to be - they cared for one another, they were active in mission in the community, they had a strong and hearty faith. The church is growing and they are able to do more and more mission. The church stood in the community as a witness to the faith, hope and love of Jesus. The church understood that the Christian life is a life of continual growth - not growth in the terms of numbers but growth in the knowledge and understanding of Christ’s teaching. It reflected the movement we in the church today call the principle of “Deep and Wide”. - you have to grow your church deep in its faith and knowledge of the things of God before you can really grow your church wide - in bringing in new members.
But this is the situation - Thyatira was known for its trade guilds. There were guilds for carpenters, dyers, sellers of goods, tanners, weavers, tent makers and such. These trade guilds were similar to what we know as trade unions. It was very difficult for the tradesmen to make a living unless they were a part of one of these guilds. All work was contracted through the guild so if you were not a member of it, you would get little if any work. Now these guilds were different from our unions is that they were linked with the worship of pagan gods. Each guild had its particular guardian god and as a member you would be expected to attend all its functions and participate in its activities which included worship of the pagan gods with offerings, feasts and immoral activities.
The guilds would hold common meals which were in the temple of ‘their god’. The meal would begin and end with a formal sacrifice to the god. The meat then served during the meal would be the meat that had just been sacrificed to the god. The meeting would then degenerate into consorting with the women who worked at the temple. Now remember that even though this is far from our understanding of what worship is - this was their tradition for worship of their god. They felt they honored their god because this is what the god required of them - eating, drinking and having relations with the women.
The members of the church in Thyatira were torn between making a living on the one hand, which meant having to be a part of the guilds and participate in their worship and on the other hand staying faithful to Christ and his standards.
Now there appears there was a leader in the church that Jesus labels “Jezebel” - not because their real name was ‘Jezebel’ but because this person was acting like the Old Testament character Jezebel. The Old Testament Jezebel was was a woman who was not a part of God’s people, but from the nation of Sidon and she was a pagan worshipper. King Ahab of Israel, who was a part of God’s people, married her for political reasons and brought her to live with him in the palace in Israel. Now in a perfect world, Ahab would have converted Jezebel to become a worshipper of the one true God - but instead told her she could worship whomever she wanted which then caused her to convert Ahab to the worship of the pagan god Baal and then proceeded to convert the entire nation of Israel to Baal worship. Within a very short period of time because of the influence of Jezebel, God’s people had abandoned him for the fake god Baal. Jezebel was simply just an evil woman. We read the story of Naboth’s vineyard earlier in the service just to show what a self-serving, conniving woman she was. Jezebel represents someone who purposely deludes people into thinking they are right when they are clearly doing something wrong.
This is what this leader of the church at Thyatira was doing. This leader was encouraging the members of the church to continue in these trade guilds - even if it meant they participated in worship of the pagan gods and participated in the immoral acts associated with these gods. “It really doesn’t matter”, this Jezebel taught, “God is a God of grace and he will forgive whatever you do. It’s OK. Don’t worry. You can pretty well do whatever you want….” But in this letter Jesus says, “No!” This is not right and he tells the church that they are being led astray by this false teacher. He tells them they need to ‘repent’ quickly - to turn away from these trade guilds and their practices. In other words, Jesus was telling these members that they were going to have to take an economic risk to stand for what they believed in.
We do have a modern day example of what Jesus is telling these church members to do - and that is the Hobby Lobby lawsuit. Now whether or not you agree with them, the issue is that the owners of the company were willing to risk financial loss in order to stand firm in their Christian faith and what they believed. And honestly, biblically, the Hobby Lobby owners are are on pretty solid biblical ground in what they have decided to stand for. Or we could look at Chick-Fil-A who is willing to do without commerce one day a week because they practice the Biblical directive to honor the Sabbath.
So Jesus is fussing at Thyatira because they were not willing to take a stand, but are more than willing to allow this false teacher to lead them astray. It is certainly a deep challenge to us to consider if we have the confidence in what Jesus’ teaches to stand firm in our faith and not to compromise - even when it starts to cost us something.
And how do we get that confidence? By reading and studying and learning what scripture has to say. We have all the information we need if we will just use it. That was the same instructions given to the church in Pergamum - learn what scripture teaches then your decisions become easier to make.
Just like that passage from Matthew where Jesus tells us we can either build our house on rock or on sand. Rock meaning the word of God found in the Bible - sand being ‘what we think’ or ‘what we have heard someone else say’ or ‘what we have learned from popular TV preachers’ or wherever other than the Bible itself we have ‘heard’ that the Bible says this or that. Your conviction can stand firm on the rock, but the house on the sand will collapse quickly.
Jesus tells his church - know what I have really said so that you can stand firm in the face of false teachers.

Amen.