October 28, 2001

Revelation 3:1-6

A Church of Camouflaged Christians

1. Introduction

1. Illustration – Lily Tomlin said, I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific.
2. Context – Do you ever feel like that? Like you know there’s something more for you than what’s been going on in your life? Like there’s more to this Christianity thing than you’ve been experiencing? The Christians in Sardis experienced something similar. And Jesus tells them in Revelation 3:1-16 exactly what to do about it.

1. Scripture Passage

1. Revelation 3:1-6, from The Message – Write this to Sardis, to the Angel of the Church. The One holding the Seven Spirits of God in one hand, a firm grip on the Seven Stars with the other, speaks: "I see right through your work. You have a reputation for vigor and zest, but you’re dead, stone dead. Up to your feet! Take a deep breath! Maybe there’s life in you yet. But I wouldn’t know it by looking at your busywork; nothing of God’s work has been completed. Your condition is desperate. Think of the gift you once had in your hands, the Message you heard with your ears-grasp it again and turn back to God. If you pull the covers back over your head and sleep on, oblivious to God, I’ll return when you least expect it, break into your life like a thief in the night. You still have a few Christians in Sardis who haven’t ruined themselves wallowing in the muck of the world’s ways. They’ll walk with me on parade! They’ve proved their worth! Conquerors will march in the victory parade, their names indelible in the Book of Life. I’ll lead them up and present them by name to my Father and his Angels. Are your ears awake? Listen. Listen to the Wind Words, the Spirit blowing through the churches.
2. Obviously, Jesus is pointing out a vast difference between perception and reality. The goal He has for us this morning is to learn the vast difference between our perception and His reality in our own lives and in the life of our church.

1. Rebuke, Not Commendation

1. As John Walvoord notes, the letter to the church in Sardis is almost devoid of any word of commendation such as characterized the word of Christ to the other churches. There was no good news from Jesus to soften the blow of what He had to tell them. Things were so bad in Sardis that He had nothing to commend them for. Laodicea was the only other church of the seven to receive no commendation. Sardis was in bad shape. But why?
2. Walvoord goes on, The reason for the sad condition in Sardis was that the people were surrounded by the grossest form of idolatry. As Andrew Tait states, The people of Sardis were idolaters – they worshipped the mother goddess, Cybele… Her worship was of the most debasing character, and orgies like those of Dionysus were practiced at the festivals held in her honour. Sins of the foulest and darkest impurity were committed on those occasions; and when we think of a small community of Christians rescued from such abominable idolatry, living in the midst of scenes of the grossest depravity, with early associations, and companionships, and connections, all exerting a force in the direction of heathenism, it may be wondered that the few members of the church in Sardis were not drawn away altogether, and swallowed up in the great vortex. Imagine living in the middle of a small city like that, with orgies and other atrocities going on in public in broad daylight, and trying to carry on a Christian witness by not taking any kind of part in it. And all the while your friends and relatives and business partners and customers are all trying to get you to join them. Talk about a tough place to be a Christian! Shouldn’t these folks be commended?
3. Jesus says, "No! I can’t commend them! They do some of the right stuff, enough that their reputation of being a center of spiritual life has spread among the churches, but they have lost their salvation! They continually compromise with the culture, and participate in those abominable rituals and orgies!" They were keeping busy doing church work, but not God’s work. Why weren’t they doing God’s work instead? Because they had forgotten the full message of the gospel of salvation – eternal life and deliverance from lives of sin through Jesus Christ. They got the salvation from eternal death thing down, but they did not allow the Holy Spirit to rescue them from their sinful lifestyles. And it was costing them dearly. It was costing them their very souls! Jesus told them, as the NIV puts it, Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you. Jesus tells them, "You heard the full gospel and you received it! Remember what you learned! Change your thinking and your behavior before it’s too late, or I’ll have to punish you severely, and it will cost you your very souls!" In Sardis, refusing to leave sinful lifestyles was a church-wide epidemic. In Sodaville, refusing to leave sinful lifestyles isn’t a church-wide epidemic, but it’s prevalent enough to cause us a lot of grief and keep us from growing. There are several people in our church who are like this, who are comfortable in their sinful lifestyles and afraid of what will happen if they leave them. Guess what? All of us have been there. All of us have found ourselves caught up in sin and afraid of the unknown that repentance would bring. But Jesus is stronger than our fear of sin. Jesus is stronger than our sinful lifestyles, and He is offering freedom and deliverance for everyone who has been refusing to leave a sinful lifestyle.
4. Illustration - British writer Baroness Mary Stocks said, "We don't call it sin today, we call it self-expression." Very true, isn’t it? But sin is something altogether different. Brent Kays writes about a middle school here in Oregon that had a problem with the girls’ restroom. A number of girls were beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the bathroom. After they put on their lipstick, they would press their lips to the mirrors leaving dozens of little lip prints. Finally the principal decided something had to be done. She called the girls to the bathroom and met them there with the custodian. She explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian, who had to clean the mirrors every day. To demonstrate how difficult it was, she asked the custodian to clean one of the mirrors. He took out a long-handled brush, dipped it into the toilet, and scrubbed the mirror. Since then there have been no lip prints on the mirror. Try thinking of this story when you’re tempted to sin. If you could only see the real filth you’d be kissing, you wouldn’t be attracted to it. A lifestyle of sin is a lifestyle of filth. It’s about time we cleaned up our acts. That’s what Jesus is saying.

1. The Coasters

1. But Jesus wasn’t just talking to those who had never bothered to leave their sinful lifestyles. He was also talking to a group I’ll call "The Coasters." No, it’s not a fifties’ singing group. The Coasters were a group of Christians in the church in Sardis who had started out on their walk with Christ well. As a matter of fact, they probably had done some great things for Him just in getting the church off to a solid start. But at some point they started to just go through the motions of Christianity and to neglect their relationship with Christ. Jesus said, Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God. What was wrong with their deeds? No relationship! These Christians had done well, but then they started resting on their laurels and going through the motions. It’s tough enough to keep a consistent relationship going with anyone here on earth, let alone with our God who we can sense but not see. So it’s easy to let things slide. It’s easy to say, "Well, in the past I did this and that, and I spent this much time in Bible study and prayer, so I can take a break." Kim and I have relatives who regularly take what they call "vacations from church," and their lives show it. There isn’t a single person in this room, myself included, who can afford to say, "I’ve done enough," and coast on our past accomplishments. We can’t afford to do it!
2. I’ve been struggling with that lately. I’ve been very tempted to say to God, "You know, I’ve done an awful lot for you the last five years. I’ve switched jobs. I’ve moved a long way. I’ve left friends behind. I’ve allowed you to take me way outside my comfort zone. It’d be real nice, God, if you would back off for a while and allow me to back off for a while, too." Have you ever said anything like that to God? I believe all Christians say that at one time or another in their lives. But what may be okay to say is not okay to do. God hasn’t said "yes" to me and I don’t expect Him to. In fact, I’m glad He hasn’t. Because then my relationship with Him would be dead, just like the people in the church in Sardis. Coasting will kill you spiritually. You can’t afford to coast in your relationship with God anymore than I can. Coasting is a killer!
3. Illustration – When I was a senior in college, I had a ’65 Comet. Not a real looker, but it ran well and got me where I wanted to go. Heading south on Highway 99 West toward Newberg there is a fairly long slope heading down Parrot Mountain. One time when I’d been in Portland and was heading back to school, I decided to try coasting down Parrot Mountain to see how fast I could do it. So I popped the automatic tranny into neutral and coasted down. If I remember it right, I only got up to about sixty. But an interesting thing happened when I got to the bottom – when I popped it back into drive, nothing happened. I had to pull over to the side of the road, put it into park, then kill and restart the engine in order to get it to go back into drive. The same thing happens when we try to coast spiritually, whether through resting on our past accomplishments or by refusing to leave our sinful lifestyles. We have to stop, kill the "engine" that is driving our attitudes, and restart our walk with Christ. Then we have to put it back into gear and begin to do the right things because of our relationship with Christ, not in spite of it. There is only one way to kill the "engine" of sin in our lives, and that is to repent, to change our thinking, to ask God to forgive us on the basis of the blood of Jesus Christ, and then to do what He tells us to when He tells us to do it. And refuse to do what He tells us not to do. Coasting means death; Christ brings life. Choose which one you’re going to follow today. It’s your decision.

1. Clean Clothes

1. There are three groups in the church in Sardis, not just two. There are the camouflaged Christians who are involved in every part of the pagan practices in their city. They are in danger of losing their souls for all eternity. There are camouflaged Christians who are merely coasting, resting on past accomplishments, in their works and in their relationship with Christ. They are in danger of losing their souls for all eternity. Then there is the third group. They are not the camouflaged Christians, but the clean Christians, those who haven’t mucked themselves up in the filth of their culture. They are by far the minority in the church, but they’ve been faithful and true in their relationship with Christ and in their works. They are dressed in white.
2. White clothing was a significant contrast for the people in the church in Sardis reading this letter. Sardis was a center for manufacturing and dying textiles. Apparently everyone wore richly dyed clothing, clothing that had been stained by the orgies and pagan partying that went on almost constantly. The few Christians in Sardis who had not soiled their clothing in this manner were to be clothed in white in heaven, for they are worthy. They have kept themselves pure from sin in the midst of a sinful culture. So Jesus calls them "worthy." There is nothing I would like more when I see His face than to be called "worthy." Jesus will lead the worthy in a heavenly parade in which He testifies to His Father and to the angels that they are worthy. I want to be there. Don’t you?
3. Camouflaged clothing is made so that the soldier will blend into his surroundings. White clothing makes a person stand out from his or her surroundings (unless, of course, you are in snow, but that’s not what the passage is talking about). All of us have the choice. All of us must choose whether we will camouflage ourselves with sinful lifestyles or with coasting religion, or whether we’re going to put those things behind us and wear unstained clothing. Are you going to blend in with our culture, or are you going to stand out as bright lights for Christ in the midst of our culture? The choice is yours.

1. Conclusion

1. Which one of the three are you today? Is your lifestyle so sinfully camouflaged that it is indistinguishable from our culture? Are you coasting what you’ve done in the past so that your relationship with Christ is camouflaged from those around you? Or are your clothes kept clean by your ongoing, humble, self-sacrificing relationship with Jesus? Which of the three we’ve talked about are you right now? The current state of your relationship with Jesus is what matters, not what you’ve done in the past or what you think you’ll do in the future? Let’s spend a few quiet moments letting God through the Holy Spirit whisper to us which one we are and where we need to be with Him.
2. If you haven’t been received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, and you’d like to do that, or if you’ve been a camouflaged Christian and you want to repent, to change your thinking and your actions, now is your chance to do it. Now is your chance to be the person God created you to be. It takes a bold step of commitment. If you want to become a Christian, or to stop being a camouflaged Christian, take that bold step now. Come forward, kneel and pray, and someone will come and pray with you. Come forward now.
3. Let’s pray.