In our day, the word “mediocrity” is very often used as a kind of assault weapon against those who are “average” or “ordinary” or “unexceptional.” It’s often used as a threat, or an “implied encouragement” shall we say as a way of mobilizing people to another phrase “rise above their mediocrity” in order that they should excel or shine or make an impact. But such jacked up language ignores the fact that even the most talented, exceptional, and accomplished of people have areas of their lives in which they are, in fact, average, ordinary, and unexceptional, because we are human, we are human beings. All of us are human after all. 

But our text confronts us with another kind of mediocrity, a mediocrity that is studied, deliberate, and a threat to the church of God. Jesus is once again speaking to a church, and we’ve reminded ourselves that these seven letters to the seven churches are meant to give us a comprehensive view of what can go wrong in churches. And what can go wrong will go wrong. And that any individual church, any particular place in the world, at any given time, is on the continuum in the stream of these seven churches to which Jesus speaks. There’ll always be something that will address a particular church, and we need to know them all to get the big picture of what the church in the world is really like. And you don’t have to have been a member of many churches to know that the church, as Martin Luther said, “has the face of a sinner.” Even if it didn’t, as soon as you joined it, it would. That’s the reality.  

So I want to look at this letter, and to begin by talking about the church as it is, that is, as it is to God. What is true of the church? Look at the introduction. What we’ve found is in each of these letters, the introduction tells us something about Jesus, but also about the church. He begins like this,  

“The words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars.” 

Revelation 3:1

Now we’ve seen the word seven applies to perfection or to totality, to the church universal, the church catholic, as we confessed earlier. It has that sense of the completeness and perfection and wholeness of a thing. So the number seven then points us in that direction. The seven stars have already been introduced as the heavenly representatives of the earthly churches. You notice there is one for each church there is a heavenly representative for each earthly church. And it’s a reminder to us that every church, wherever it is in the world today, has both an earthly address and a heavenly address. The earthly address of this church in Sardis was Sardis. 

Sardis itself was a one of the premier cities of Asia Minor – modern-day Turkey. It had a reputation for wealth based on gold that had been found in a nearby river. It was well known for its commerce, and for the fertility of the lands surrounding, in the region surrounding the city. The oldest part of the city at that time was about three or four hundred years old. It was a citadel on a hill that was regarded to have been impregnable. And yet in the history of the town, that citadel had been taken twice by a surprise attack. That was his earthly address. 

But you notice what Jesus is really interested in about Sardis is not the citadel, or the commerce, or the gold. Jesus’ interest is entirely with his church, with his church. He holds her representative in his hand. The church is being sustained and held by King Jesus in all of its life. And you notice that he has in the same hand the seven spirits of God. The Spirit of God, that is, comprehends and ministers to and gives life to the church, wherever it is in the world. That language of the seven spirits of God is important. The word seven again – completeness, perfection, fullness, wholeness.  

This description comes from the first chapter where we have a Trinitarian formula found. There in that first chapter, grace and peace come from the Father – “him who is and was and is to come.” Grace and peace come from the Spirit, the seven spirits that are before the throne of God. And grace and peace come from the Son, that is, Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness. So when he is called the Holy Spirit, we’re pointed to his divine nature because God and God alone is holy. God alone is holy in all his ways.  

“Holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is full of your glory.” 

Isaiah 6:3

The Holy Spirit is divine. When he’s described as the seven spirits that are before God, we’re being pointed to the comprehensive perfection of the Holy Spirit, the fullness of the Holy Spirit in his manifold energies, by which he works in the world. Here he is the one “who has proceeded from the Father,” as John 15 says. The one “who is breathed out by the Son,” as John chapter 20 tells us. The one who was poured out upon the church on the day of Pentecost, as we read in Acts 2. Who is this one in Second Corinthians chapter 3? He’s called “the Lord, who is the Spirit.” In Romans chapter 8 he is called the Spirit of life. And those are the two references that lead us to the language of the Nicene Creed, where the Holy Spirit is called the Lord and Giver of life. 

In other words, the churches belong to Christ. The Spirit with all of his perfection belongs to Christ. And the Spirit in all of his fullness and perfection gives his power and his life to the churches. Ultimately, Christ is the one who gives or withholds the powers and energies of the Holy Spirit on which the churches depend. The ascended Lord Jesus has the Spirit of God by virtue of his ascension and his exaltation. The Apostle Peter says that on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2,  

“Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this which you now see and hear.”  

Acts 2:33

Jesus Christ is the Living One. The Holy Spirit is the Giver of Life. The Living One, Jesus, has breathed out the life-giving Spirit upon his covenant people, so that it can be said of all of God’s people that the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.  

So what does that tell us about the church as it should be? The church as it should be is a community whose very essence and existence is life – spiritual life. So now we’re moving the story to the church as it was. One scholar put it like this:

“The church here in in Sardis is the perfect model of inoffensive Christianity.”  

The perfect model of ineffective and inoffensive Christianity, but on the surface, they had a good reputation. Literally, Jesus says in the Greek: “You have a name for being alive.” That’s important, by the way, because the word that word for name comes up again and again in this short letter to Sardis. “You have a name for being alive.” Yes, it includes you have a reputation. You have a name for being alive. In the esteem with which others looked at this church, they would be registering the fact that the people of the church came regularly to church to worship. And when they came, praise was regularly sung to God, perhaps even sung enthusiastically. The sacraments were regularly celebrated, sermons were regularly preached. To all intents and purpose, the church was a vital going concern. In other words, as people looked at the church of Sardis, they saw all the indicators of being a vital ecclesial body. They had the Word and sacrament, the worship and fellowship, the confession of sin, and the confession of faith. They had doctrine and discipline. They had all the marks that you would want of a church. 

At the time of the Reformation there was very much discussion about the “Nota Ecclesiae,” that is, the notes or the marks of a true church. The Reformed came up with three: the word rightly preached, the sacraments properly administered, and church discipline faithfully deployed. And all of these things people saw in the church of Sardis. “You have a name for being alive.” 

You see, there was no false teaching at Sardis. There is no suggestion that there was a lack of vitality in their programs or in their activities. Their congregation may have been large, possibly fashionable, no shortage of money, talent, or resources. But Jesus gives to this church, that had the appearance of being a lively church, Jesus has for this church an unqualified, indeed the severest, censure spoken against any church in the book of Revelation. 

“You have a name for being alive, but you are dead.” 

Revelation 3:1

We’re presented with the paradox of death under the name of life. In the eyes of Christ, in contrast to the opinion of others, the congregation is dead. She remained “Christian.” She remained “church.” But she was dead. 

Now how serious is this? Well, remember what it takes to become a Christian and to form a church. You remember the One who formed the universe that we, that we exist in, this universe, the first cause and the prime mover in Creation is Almighty God. So it is that the first cause and the prime mover in the New Creation is Almighty God. The Apostle Paul can write to the church or churches, who are going to receive the letter we call the letter to the Ephesians, can write to them and you can say this to them, “you” – you plural, by the way, not individually. Jesus is not talking to individuals, but to churches in this letter —  

“and you (plural) he made alive when you were dead through your trespasses and sins. In which you once walked… God made us alive together with Christ.”  

Ephesians 2:2

And when he was writing to the church in Colossae, he said to Colossae,  

“You who were dead…God made alive together with him.” 

Colossians 2:13

To be dead looks like a reversion back to the natural state of men and women before this action of God. That’s the way it looked. They just, these people did not know Jesus. This church did not know Jesus. The way Jesus speaks on behalf of the church to God the Father, when he says, 

“This is eternal life, that they may know the only true God,”  

John 17:3

That’s the intimate word — “the only true God” — personally. 

“and Jesus Christ whom you sent.” 

John 17:3

Sardis had no error in it, but it was dead. Sardis wasn’t being persecuted either. Isn’t that interesting? Its people were living nominal Christian lives. They were not disturbing Satan at all. They were not particularly different from their neighbors. They were not witnessing to Christ – and by witnessing, I do not mean virtue signaling, but actually talking to you their neighbors about Christ – and pointing their neighbors verbally to the way of salvation. They were not breaking down strongholds of evil. They were merging into the culture. 

If you know anything about Christian history, you’ll know that at the turn of the 19^th and into the 20^th century, there was a rise of what was sometimes called modernism in one form, and liberalism within the church in the other. And we can see this happening by the way in our own day, within the Roman Catholic Church, especially under this pope who whatever he is, is not catholic in the sense of holding to the catholic faith, with a small “c,” that we just confessed together here. There is a movement of liberalism in that church today. We can see it in the Presbyterian Church USA and the degree to which it has plummeted in any reasonable commitment to the fundamentals of what Christianity is. But in the early 20th century, modernism and liberalism arose within the church out of a determination by people in the church to be accepted by a secular society. 

Not to appear too enthusiastic – people look down on enthusiasm, especially in England. I’m talking about the British situation where, if you’re enthusiastic, well, you’re of the lower classes. The upper classes’ “stiff upper lip”, you know, very formal. They never get enthusiastic about anything. It’s never kosher to be enthusiastic. Too puritanical, that is, too committed to the kind of morality and ethics that you find in Scripture. Too unscientific, too counter-cultural. That was what motivated the marriage of Christianity to modernism and liberalism. Was the church’s gamble with the world successful? Wherever you go in the United Kingdom, you will find these great buildings that used to be full of people worshiping God. I think of a building this size and this beautiful in the center of Glasgow that now is Glasgow’s biggest nightclub hub. And all over Britain beautiful churches are now luxury apartments, or they’re carpet warehouses, or they’re nightclubs, because they married the spirit of the age. And if you marry the spirit of the age, you’re lost when the spirit of the age changes. You’re absolutely lost. 

G. B. Caird of Oxford University puts it like this, “Content with mediocrity, lacking the enthusiasm to entertain a heresy, and the depths of conviction which provokes intolerance, it was too innocuous to be worth persecuting.” By whatever measurement, they were not what they appeared or seemed to be or were reputed to be. There may have been no persecution. There may have been no heresy. There may have been no divisiveness. There may be no abuse or profanity within the church. But there was nothing there – mediocrity, apathy, boredom, laziness in the congregation. The congregation was dead. 

Jesus puts it like this:  

“I have not found your works perfect in the sight of my God.”  

Revelation 3:2

Remember, Jesus distinguishes when he sends Mary back to the disciples and says to Mary, “Tell them I’m returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” Jesus’ relationship to God is a relationship of nature, our relationship to God is a relationship of adoption, so there’s a distinction there. “I found your works not perfect in the sight of my God. Like an empty shell with nothing substantial within it or seeds which have never been planted and therefore do not produce any growth or fruit.” Oh yes, there were works in Sardis, no doubt about that, but there was no completeness, no perfection, no fulfillment. Nothing that makes human actions acceptable in the sight of God. That same word for perfection or fullness or completeness that’s used here is used of the fullness of life in him. That the church should have fullness of life, perfection of life in him, or completeness or fullness or perfection of joy in him. Jesus uses it that way as well, there was no joy, no life. There was a deficiency at the very heart of this church, and here we get to the heart of the matter. What the church looks like to outsiders, to onlookers, is secondary in importance to what Jesus sees in the church.  

Many years ago, David Wells of Gordon-Conwell Seminary wrote this, he said: “In the evangelical world today, God sits inconsequentially on the church.” God sits inconsequentially. If you were to look and to analyze what people are talking about in the church, what people are interested in the church, what books people are reading in the church, what are they about? Are they about God? No. They’re about techniques, and programs, and other things that are intended to help the church be better at what it does. And yet the reality is what’s important is what God thinks of the church. Oh yes, we have to, we have cares with duties towards our fellow human beings, but we’re reminded by our catechism that our chief end “is to glorify God and enjoy God forever.” It is to God we live. It is before God that we stand. It is to God we must give an account on the final day. We mustn’t give too much notice to the world and to the world’s opinions. As we are reminded in the book of Samuel, 

“The Lord sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”  

1 Samuel 16:7

What does God see when he looks in the heart of this church? Of the American church? Does he see life? Does he see fullness? Does he see substance? Or does he see an empty facade? What the church was?  

I wonder what Christ’s verdict will be over his church in the last year. I think it was on the second Sunday of the pandemic, I had to preach and put it in perspective, and I preached on the Day of the Lord, and we were reminded from the Scriptures that the Day of the Lord is something that is ongoing. We are living in the day of the Lord, and that from time to time in the Day of the Lord God sends things into the world, he permits wars, and rumors of wars, and factions, and divisions. And he sends pandemics, and he sends all kinds of things to the world for the sake of his church, to get his church to wake up. If this pandemic is about anything, it is about the church of Jesus Christ. And I wonder what under what Jesus’ verdict will be on his church. 

And look at what Jesus goes on to say here. What the church must focus on, Jesus says to his church, “Wake up.” “Wake up,” he says. Notice who he’s addressing – they have a name that they live, but they’re dead. But he says,  

“You have still a few names within Sardis who have not soiled their garments.” 

Revelation 3:4

They’ve remained faithful. They’re not perfect. They’re not standing out; you can hardly see them. Only I know who they are, but they’re there nonetheless, there are some there. These ones have not let spiritual deadness make them indifferent to moral evil. They had not soiled their garments. You see as always Jesus draws our attention to that spiritual death that takes its shape from our conformity to this world that is passing away. The more we want to become like this world that is passing away, the more we choose death over life. Paul says in Romans 12:  

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is that good and acceptable and perfect will.”  

Jesus is talking to the remnant. Even Sodom had faithful Lot. Lot that wasn’t your classic Christian; he wasn’t a good Christian if he’d been a Christian. He wasn’t somebody who was really up there in the list of the heroes of the faith, and yet God says he was faithful. It doesn’t matter how inadequate your faith is, Jesus always works with the remnant of the faithful in his church. That’s why every letter ends with those words:  

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

Revelation 3:6

As it was for Israel, so it is today. Except the Lord of hosts had left to us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom. And the scariest language of all comes from Jesus: 

“When the Son of Man comes will he find faith on the earth?”  

Luke 18:8

Will he find faith? It seems that then this church that was dead, there were those who were death-like, but they were only asleep, and Jesus urges them to wake up. I mentioned earlier that in the history of the city of Sardis, the citadel had fallen into the hands of its enemies through a lack of vigilance. Jesus says, “Wake up.” He adds the warning,  

“If you will not awaken, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come.” 

Revelation 3:3

Remember Jesus told the parable once of the householder and the thief that got in during the night, and he applies it to the church, and he says,  

“Watch therefore: for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the householder had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have watched and he would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you – church – you must be ready for the Son of Man is coming in an hour you do not expect.”  

Matthew 24:42-44

He’s talking about the ultimate coming of Christ – the Parousia. As Paul says,  

“You yourselves know well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. That when people are saying ‘peace and security,’ then sudden destruction will come upon them…and there will be no escape.” 

1 Thessalonians 5:3

That last day will happen suddenly, and we should be aware of what that last day will bring. The Apostle Peter says of that last day, 

“The day of the Lord will come like a thief, and the heavens – that is, the universe of sky and planets – the universe will pass away with a loud roar, the elements from which it’s made will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and its works will be that are upon it will be burned up and consumed.” 

2 Peter 3:10

Everything will be consumed. That’s the destiny of our planet, our universe, and it will come like a thief. You will not be expecting it. People will not be pondering it. People will not be telling us, hypothesizing about it. It will come like a thief, and it will conclude history as we know it. 

But there are interim comings of Jesus. I remember when we were coming to terms within a few days, a couple of days as a team with what was going to be happening, and we had to make the decision to close down, to do the lockdown. We’ve been living in a kind of never-never world for a little few days, in a sense, trying to get our heads around how serious is this. Is it this serious, or whatever? Suddenly there was this universal global emergency, and it came suddenly. We weren’t expecting it and it affected our churches, our meeting together, our fellowship together. It’s still doing that, isn’t it? We can’t see each other’s faces. We can only look into each other’s eyes. It’s still affecting the world. 

Jesus acts in the world for the sake of his church. And he disrupts things, and there are what we might call proto-judgments, leading up to the final judgment. And it’s a warning from Jesus for the church to wake up, and to take action.  

There’s a second thing: “Strengthen what remains.” It’s talking to these within the church. There were remainders of God’s work among them, even though they’re in terminal decline and ready to die. What remained was personal and institutional. Faith, love, and piety needs our attention. It needs to be preserved. It needs to be put on a firmer footing. Remember, he says. This idea of strengthening, by the way, is used of the churches in the New Testament. The disciples are strengthened, babies in Christ are strengthened by the Word of God as it’s taught in the church. Paul appeals to “God who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ.” Take action. “Strengthen what remains.” 

And how do you do that? You do that by thinking back. “Remember, then, what you received and heard. Keep that, and repent.” What you received – every blessing you receive as a Christian is a blessing that you receive as a gift. “What have you that you did not receive?” Paul says. “If then you received it, why do you why do you boast about it as if it were not a gift?” It’s a gift. Faith is a gift. “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God” as it’s preached to you, Paul says in Romans 10. “Our gospel came to you, not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction,” he says to the Thessalonians.  

“And when you received the Word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a word of man but as it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe. That’s what you received.” 

1 Thessalonians 2:13

And what they had received and heard was the word of God in terms of the body of truth to be believed, in terms of the sacramental tradition that had been passed on to them by the apostles. So Paul writes to the Corinthians, and he says, “Remember me… maintain the traditions even as I have delivered them to you.” The traditions. The sacraments are one of those traditions. 

“I received from the Lord that which also I passed on to you, the night Jesus was betrayed.” 

1 Corinthians 11:23

The traditions. And Jesus, Remember Jesus Christ risen from the dead. In other words, Paul is, Jesus is saying to this church that there is nothing new that you need to do. There isn’t a new handbook out there or a new contemporary work about what to do to make the church alive. It’s not there – you have to look, it’s what you have received and heard – that’s where you must go. There’s no magic potion. What is needed is a course correction: repentance based on what you know but have forgotten. That the secret of life in the church is not about me saying to you something that’s kind of evangelical language. “You and, and do you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?” Our relationship with Jesus Christ is corporate. We are united to Jesus Christ. That language is just fuzzy language. The question the New Testament answers is not “Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?” It asks the question “Are you a practicing Christian?” Because it’s by being a practicing Christian that you drink from the fire hose of the grace of God. 

The means of grace, the secret of your Christian growth, of your Christian life, is the means of grace -gathered worship, the preached word, and frequent sacraments. These are the instruments of the Holy Spirit by which the life-giving Spirit creates, and then maintains, and then perfects the spiritual life of the church. Those that avail themselves of the means of grace show themselves to be among the company of God’s elect. Those who are destined to walk with Christ in the New Jerusalem, where our names are written in the book of life and were written there before the foundation of the world.  

And those, those who employ the means of grace in order to refresh their spiritual life, and to grow in their spiritual lives, have Jesus’ solemn promise that he will never blot your name out of the book of life. He will never blot your name out of the book of life. 

“My name from the palms of his hands 
eternity will not erase; 
Impressed on his heart it remains  
in marks of indelible grace. 
Yes, I to the end shall endure,  
as sure as the Spirit’s help is given; 
more happy, but not more secure, 
the glorified spirits in heaven.” 

Augustus Toplady, A Debtor to Mercy Alone