Revelation 3:1-6 – 2024 Mar 21 – Sardis

Hopefully by now, you are seeing the same progression that I am in the Churches. Ephesus left its first love, and then came Pergamum, where it compromised with the world because it was easier. From that compromise came the tolerance of sin in Thyatira, which we considered the last time we were together. Smyrna, of course, remained faithful and forms an interesting contrast to the process we are seeing. Think about this. Smyrna was spending so much time keeping themselves in prayer, trying to practice the right thing, worshiping God, and studying and teaching the Apostles’ Teaching all while not revealing themselves for the sake of survival, they didn’t have time for anything else. What we had in all the places where this was less of an issue was…well, “else.”

Tonight, on this trip around the circle road of the seven churches named by the Lord Jesus Himself, we arrive in Sardis. It is also an interesting and perhaps even concerning stop on our tour of the churches that represent all of us in Scripture as the Body and Bride of Christ. I have spent a little more time than usual on this one because of my own health issues, but even if I had not, I would have found this jarring to the conscience and morals. This actually lights a bit of a fire under me because it has implications for denominational Christianity, something many of us here subscribe to of necessity.

It was different in the day that John wrote the letter. Unlike today, where we have 8-10 CBOQ churches in the city of Ottawa, and I may be making a conservative estimate, There was one church in Sardis, as in all the other cities. You went there because there was nowhere else to go. If you had a bad teacher, for example, you were stuck with him, although if you thought your teacher was a moron, you might want to either educate him on the Apostles’ Teaching yourself or take upon yourself the task if you were qualified. Thyatira did not take that responsibility seriously, and let unqualified teachers lead the congregation in doctrine and in practice. See what leaving your first love gets you? Not fun. Sardis takes the cake in some ways, but it still isn’t the worst of the seven, even though the Lord has nothing good to say about Sardis.

Sardis itself was founded as a city in about 1200 BC. It was one of the greatest cities of the ancient world, eventually becoming the capital of the Lydian Empire. If you didn’t know this, the Lydians were incredibly rich in terms of money and resources, and that becomes important. Have you ever heard the phrase, “as rich as Croesus?” [wait] If you have not, it is because it has fallen out of favour in the last 20-30 years, but I heard it from my high school history teacher I think. Croesus was their most famous king, and that saying was meant to say that such an individual had unlimited wealth and resources. Another famous person may have been from Sardis as well. Ever heard the name Aesop? He of Aesop’s Fables fame? There is reason to believe he was from Sardis. Much of the wealth of Sardis was from the Pactolus River, which had a HUGE store of gold that was easily taken from the river. Archeological discoveries in the area include many crucibles used in the refining of gold. They also claimed to have invented the process of how to dye wool, which I’m sure you will agree is an important commercial process. I sell carpets in my other job, and we sell handmade and hand-dyed wool carpets. They are expensive because they are laborious to make, even in a day with technology like we have now.

The city was located about 30 miles south of Thyatira in what is known as the Hermus River Valley, at the summit of Mount Tmolus, or one of the nearby hills (the resources I have were unclear to me). The location of the city made it nearly unassailable. There was a long and winding narrow path to gain entrance to it. The drawback here is that there was no room for the city to expand. As the wealth of the city grew, a new city began to expand at the bottom of the hill, and the old city was made into a citadel where residents could escape in times of danger.

This location, however, made Sardis overconfident, and the city eventually fell to complacency. Through carelessness, the story is told, a soldier in the citadel knocked his own helmet off of the wall and it fell into the deep ravine that defended the city. That soldier climbed down the ravine and retrieved it. Soldiers that were invading the land from I believe the Persian Empire saw him retrieve his helmet, and marked the way up that he took. Under the cover of darkness, they climbed up in an oh-dark-hundred kind of operation and the city fell. Such was the overconfidence of the soldiers of Sardis that they believed even a child could defend that approach (and they could apparently), but they left that way completely unguarded and were conquered. Apparently, there is no security in secrecy if you are not diligent in guarding secrets.

The city never regained its independence, and eventually control fell to Rome in about 133 BC. An earthquake is said to have destroyed the city in AD 17 and was rebuilt with a very generous grant from Emperor Tiberius. In response to this, Sardis built a temple in his honour. The main deity worshipped in Sardis, however, was Cybele (aka Artemis, aka Diana), the same “goddess” worshipped in Ephesus. In John’s day, the city was still prosperous but fading into decay; the city and the church it contained had BOTH lost their vitality.

Linguistically, the name “Sardis” comes from a once-precious stone that significantly appeared on the High Priest’s breastplate in Exo. 28:17 and 39:10. It was red, and in the days and region of Israel in the days of the High Priest Aaron, it was a precious and valuable stone, enumerated as “jasper” I think in those passages. I was unable to sort out which tribe the stone represented, but I’m sure some have, for whatever that may mean. However, it was renamed Sardius at a certain point, because a huge deposit was discovered near Sardis, and it became a common stone. This will have applications as well. Let’s look and see what the text says.

I broke the text into the following thought units.

KV3: Turn and Be Saved from the Wrath to Come

3: So remember what you have received and heard; and keep it, and repent. Therefore if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come to you.

1: The One Who Gives the Holy Spirit Knows You

2-3: The One Who Gives the Holy Spirit Gives Advice

4: There Are Exceptions for some in Sardis

5-6: The Promise to the Overcomer

It may surprise you to learn that I used to be in a personality cult of sorts. Some of you already know the story, and some do not. This represents the doctrine that our Lord Jesus has shown me in His Word, not what I have called the “brain-damaged theology” I came out of that place with. They used to have all kinds of wingnut ideas about who the overcomers were, and the so-called “spiritual nobility” of the text in Sardis (and the other letters as well). We were taught that because this was a church, everyone there was saved from wrath. I do not think this can be so, and I never really have, though I did learn the idiocy they taught. A plain reading tells me that those who were “in the church” were, as we are so many times today, metaphorically divided into the sheep and the goats. The sheep in this analogy represent the believers that God chose from before the foundation of the world. The goats are those who have not turned and repented of their sins and believed that Christ paid for them on the cross. We could go through the parable, but the Lord Jesus Himself in this letter to Sardis does so, and I won’t waste your time trying to tell you otherwise because to do so would be to not accurately handle the Word of truth.

What I will say at the outset is that most times, if you simply read the Scriptures in context, you avoid all the weird applications and nonsense that are mostly designed to make you feel special, like you are the true acolytes of the secret knowledge, a purely Gnostic approach to things. If that is where you find yourself right now, then you are in the right place right now. God is about to tell you the truth in the text, and to the best of my ability, it will be the unvarnished plain truth of Scripture. God bless us and have mercy on us as we see the text.

KV3: Turn and Be Saved from the Wrath to Come

3: So remember what you have received and heard; and keep it, and repent. Therefore if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come to you.

There are many reasons that most if not all churches today are filled with what we would call the unregenerate, or false converts, or secret unbelievers. Some occurred in history as a result of political rulers. Most blame Constantine by saying that he is the one who made Christianity the state religion, but he in fact did not. What he did was make it legal to be a follower of Christ, something the governments of the world seem to be attempting to undo at this point in the history of humanity, though that is a different topic. The man who made humanity the state religion was one of Constantine’s successors, Theodosius I, and was ratified by his co-emperor Gratian in AD 380 when they decreed that the empire would have no other religion than Christianity. Through forced conversions, the church literally became filled with unconverted people who were for lack of better terms political Christians. This is the reason why I use terms like “believer” and “saint” to describe actual followers of Christ in contrast to those who are really Christian in name only. Over the past while, really from the book of James until now, we have looked at the differences and how to tell them apart. However long we sped at it though, we are still unable to do it because some people behave better than others even as unconverted as they are.

Sardis was filled with these people. Maybe their mother or father was a believer, maybe a grandparent, but they found themselves in the church and doing the things that over the years they had seen brought their believing relative comfort. They weren’t finding any, but they stuck around because that’s just what people did. It still happens. I know a number of individuals who continue to do things they would not normally do in honour of someone’s memory. Some of those things are injurious, too. They still do them. Are they really honouring their relatives? It is debatable, and I think they are not. Their relative would want them to live in peace and prosper, not mourn them for the rest of their natural lives. The very sad thing is that they know it and they still cannot make themselves stop, and so they continue in self-inflicted pain. Some church, right?

Unlike what I had to learn in this personality cult I was in, I have since learned that there is no reason to try to falsely distinguish between Christians who are walking with the Lord consistently and those who are NOT walking with the Lord consistently. Those who are NOT walking with Him consistently are NOT real Christians, no matter how much they protest they are. That understanding gives the clearest understanding of this letter and presents the gospel in the best light for those who read it this letter. Let’s see what John scribed for the Lord.

1: The One Who Gives the Holy Spirit Knows You

You see, unlike me, my Lord Jesus Christ can see your heart. He KNOWS you. He formed you in your mother’s womb before you knew Him, and He has known you from before He Himself made the world. Remember, this is the Greek word oida, and it means “to know on an intimate level,” like Adam knew Eve in Genesis 2. He knows everything about you and everything you have ever done! So when you were sneaking into the house at 5 a.m. after a night of partying and worse, He was there and saw you, even if Mom didn’t. I can remember parts of a drive home like that once. When I got home, my dad was home, his transport truck in our driveway. I rolled up to the door of the motel unit I was staying in (my folks owned the motel) and shut off the engine fast. The idea was not to wake my dad up. I EASED open the door, and I fell out of the car. You see, I was so drunk, I couldn’t stand up. I remember closing the door of the car VERY gently and then using my foot to push it until I heard the click that told me it was closed all the way. I crawled to the door (thank God it was not locked) and closed that door the same way. It was about 3:30 a.m. I passed out on the bed. At 7:30 a.m., my dad was pounding on the door because I was on one of the teams in the firefighter competition our townships held annually. He told me to get up, he was buying breakfast. I was ready in about 15 minutes, still half in the bag, and he did buy breakfast. It’s the only time he ever ordered his eggs sunny side up because he was trying to make me vomit I think. I am ashamed to admit that Jesus saw that whole thing, and worse things that I have done, and He saved me anyway because it didn’t depend on me or my choice. He KNOWS you. He’s seen everything you have ever done. We will say more momentarily. Let’s read the verse.

1: To the angel of the church in Sardis write: He who has the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars, says this: I know your deeds, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead.

The meaning of the name Sardis has been linked to the idea of a remnant, but there seems to be no linguistic link to that concept. We have already looked in brief at this and determined that is related to a resource of wealth and security that has lost its value and meaning. If you want a detailed history of Sardis, I recommend the video series commentary Chuck Missler has done on the Koinonia House YouTube channel. There are 24 lectures that are all worth watching. It is free to watch. Can you imagine being the pastor of the church at Sardis? I can, and I wouldn’t call it my dream job, I’d call it a nightmare, especially these days. I suppose this is why Paul told Timothy to do the work of an evangelist. More in a minute.
“He who has the seven Spirits of God” is an Old Testament reference from Isaiah to the Holy Spirit. That is Isaiah 11:2, which reads “The Spirit of the LORD will rest on Him, The spirit of wisdom and understanding, The spirit of counsel and strength, The spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.” If you count, there are seven categories here. You have to include the “Spirit of Yahweh” as the first category.
“…and the seven stars” is a reference we have seen before, and is a reference to the seven churches that our Lord Jesus has named that are getting letters to address them. This is a reminder that He Himself is the one who has sent the Holy Spirit to all believers, and is the one who oversees every gathering to His name. People think they can just meet and call themselves a church. I’m telling you, there is a lot that goes into that. Like a believer, a church itself must also be corporately born from above. If that has NOT happened, you are meeting in vain. Christ sets the parameters for His church gatherings, not man. One cannot simply “break away” because there is something you do not like in a gathering and form your own. God has to call that church into being just like He calls each believer. People have asked me over the last few years if I would go and start a church with them. I must answer this officially now. I will do nothing that the Lord has not called me to do. For the most part, that will mean my answer must be NO until the Lord shows me otherwise. If you want this, ask yourself why. Be warned though, God WILL reveal your motives to you. After you have repented of walking in the flesh, start to try to get along with your brothers and sisters in the place He has put you. God loves us all, and there has been far too much of this kind of uninspired separation of His body. What God has joined together, let no one tear asunder. It has more than one application, Beloved.
“I know your deeds.” Of course He does! He’s Yahweh Yeshuah! He knows EVERYTHING! Do you think you can hide from Him? Now that’s playing in a fantasy league.
“You have a name that you are alive!” Yes, yes, we are. We are alive! We do great works! Say our name! Just remember, you asked for this.
“But you are dead.” It seems that the spirit of Dr. Voddie Baucham has arrived. He said, “If you can’t say, ‘Amen,’ say ‘Ouch.'” Ouch. What I think had happened in Sardis is that what was once a vibrant gathering of God’s people had followed a very specific path over time. It had left its first love, compromised with the world, and begun to tolerate open sin. The moment that happens, non-believers find their way into the Christian church and falsely call themselves Christians without ever repenting of their sins and following Him in His prescribed way of holiness of life. Worse, they think that because they have become part of the number of people who meet to worship Our Lord Jesus with us that they are Christians. Beloved, a commitment to one hour or so a week does not make you a Christian. Even coming to the Bible study and Sunday Worship doesn’t make you a Christian. As songwriter Keith Green once sang, “He wants more than Sundays and Wednesday nights!” In reality, He wants all of you. Our God is a jealous God. Again, ouch.
To those believers who ARE in the midst of this local gathering of believers, we need to have compassion on these folks! Thundering excommunications is NEVER, repeat NEVER, the answer. No! Such were some of you, Paul told Corinth, the most worldly church in the Bible until Thyatira. These people have made some kind of commitment, based on time, or friendships, or whatever, and that is worth something. They sit in the same pews, singing the same hymns, listening to the same sermons, week after month after year. The same Saviour loves them. He died for them also if they will turn to Him in repentance and faith. We need to share that with them, but more later on that. According to Dr. John Macarthur in a lecture he gave on the subject, we have a record in church history of a pastor from about 50-100 years after this letter. I don’t remember his name, I think Melitos was it, but I could be corrected on that. I didn’t write it down. He may come up in a while also.

It is possible to have a group of unbelievers calling themselves a church. There is a move today (it is at least 20 years old at this point) to have secular churches. They are filled with actual atheists, all wanting the social aspects of the church they grew up in but without having to be accountable to a holy God. They also sing hymns, unbelievably Christian in nature and theology! Comedian Steve Martin did a thing about this years ago. “The Atheists ain’t got no SONGS….” as he played his banjo. Christian Comedian Tim Hawkins has written some as well. [sing if you can remember] No one loves the little children, I am an A-T-H-E-I-S-T, like that. As funny a thought as that is, and is at least humorous for being a non sequiter, it isn’t funny at all. These people are not born again, and their “church” is not born from above either. They incur great judgement on themselves in avoiding the discipline of a loving God. Enough said about that. Next.

2-3: The One Who Gives the Holy Spirit Gives Advice

The Lord Jesus here will “give advice” on how to fix the problems we have just discussed. I couldn’t think of what else to call this, but it isn’t outside of what the Lord is doing here. Like a fiduciary, He is concerned for the one He is addressing. It is not His will that any should perish. 1 Timothy 2:3-4 says, “This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” I once learned a couple of definitions of words that most people think are interchangeable. Those words are “customer” and “client.” A customer is someone with whom you transact business. A client is under your care and protection. Jesus here is advising the client to fix the problem, in a VERY specific way. Let’s see.

2: Wake up, and strengthen the things that remain, which were about to die; for I have not found your deeds completed in the sight of My God.

The Lord Jesus pulls no punches here, so neither can I. There are people who will see this that think they are believers but are not, even though they will protest this, some very loudly. To you, I must say, and say with fire in my heart for this, “WAKE UP!!!” Let the sleeper awake!” This is no normal sleep either. This is reminiscent of the kind of sleep Jesus’ friend Lazarus once had. He had been dead for four days. Some of you have been asleep longer than that. Paul says it this way in Eph. 2:1. Now it is in the past tense because Paul was writing to those that the Lord had already awakened. “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins…” Beloved, this is everyone before Christ awakens them from this death in sin even while they live. If you don’t think this is true of you, then you are still dead in your sins, by the way. If you think you aren’t a sinner at all, you are also still dead in your sins. The very man who scribed this letter for our Lord Jesus says so! Look for a moment in your Bibles at 1 John 1. We are starting with v.8. “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.” See? Now look at verse 10. “If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.” Friend, that’s all of us without Christ. You may have noticed I skipped verse 9. Let’s look at it. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” This is the deed that has not been completed in His sight, friends. We have not turned away from our sin and we have not placed our faith in the Lord Jesus, King of kings and Lord of lords, for the payment of our debt before Him. We must confess that we are sinners to Him, and maybe to yourself for the first time ever. We must admit that what we have been doing is sin. Getting drunk or stoned is sin. Having sex outside of marriage is sin. Stealing anything is sin. Lying is sin. Getting angry at people all the time is the sin of murder. If you don’t think that is true about anger, think about this: at the very moment of the height of your anger, if you had a gun, they would be dead. THAT intent is the sin of murder, and we have ALL done it. I could go on, too, but I think that makes the point. We must admit to God that we have done and still are doing these things. As a part of repentance, that is changing our minds and turning to Him, we must also ask God’s forgiveness based on the sacrifice Jesus made for the world on the cross. He died for you personally, you know. And then we must believe that Christ’s atoning sacrifice on the cross was enough to pay the penalty, the debt you owed to God for your sinful behaviour. If you really do all those things, God will cancel your debt and see you as He sees Christ. He will forgive you, and adopt you into His family. Wake up indeed. That is what we call “The Gospel.” Gospel is an Elizabethan English word that means good news. And it is the greatest news ever given. If you have other questions related to that, talk to me or email me after. These deeds MUST be completed in His sight, or you will be condemned with all those who will not turn to Christ.

3: So remember what you have received and heard; and keep it, and repent. Therefore if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come to you.

This is a kind of promise to those that will not turn, and an encouragement to turn at the same time. The Lord starts by saying to remember the things you have seen and heard, and in context, that is the gospel of Jesus Christ. How do we know? He says to keep it and repent! And then a warning.
If you do not wake up, if you will not turn to Him, if you will not choose salvation, then He will return for you like a thief and you will not see Him coming. Most of us here think this is a connection to something prophetic called the 70th week of Daniel, but we will say more about that in future studies. The point that the Lord is making through John here is that no one knows how much time they have left on planet Earth. The Christian doesn’t know either, but as a follower of Christ, they are ready regardless of when the Lord comes for us personally. For the unbeliever, they are not ready because they do not want to get ready, and as such will be caught unawares. Someday, time will run out for each one of us. While I hope that is in the peace that Christ provides for all of us, it is not a guarantee. Turn and repent or risk running out of the grace and time that the Lord is giving us every second we are alive or outside of that 70th week of Daniel. No believer will be caught off guard by that either.

The point that the God who Gives the Holy Spirit to Believers is making here is that your salvation opportunities have confined limits. Those limits are not up to you, and you have nothing to do with them, nor can you choose them, nor can you escape them. You who sit in the same pews as we do, singing the same hymns and spiritual songs, sitting under the same ministry from heaven as we do, take this opportunity to rely on Christ and His work on the cross for your salvation. Or don’t, but there will be consequences that you will wish you had avoided earlier. Enough said, let’s move on.

4: There Are Exceptions for some in Sardis

The exception is for those that already belong to the Savior, friends. Make certain that you are in that blessed category. Those that do not belong to the Savior have NO exceptions. It is those who belong to Him that ARE the exceptions in Sardis, and that is a sad commentary on modern denominationalism. Last year, I was our delegate for the denominational convention, and there were folks there who were not only tolerating sin but actively trying to push sin’s sinful agenda on the rest of the churches. When people of faith resisted, they resorted to verbal manipulation and emotional coercion. Neither tactic worked on me or on any other of the people I was sitting with, but it was an interesting observation. No one said that being an exception would be an easy affair, but it is preferable to the alternative of being lost. Anyway, let’s look at the text and see what the Lord says.

4: But you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their garments; and they will walk with Me in white, for they are worthy.

The first thing to notice is that they are FEW as opposed to many. Occasionally, I have heard people comment and have felt this way myself, that we are outnumbered by the unconverted. The sad truth is that we probably are. That does not change who we are to stand for or the holiness with which we must walk. I’m not sure we could change or hide this if we tried.
These people have NOT soiled their garments. They have not left their first love, they have not compromised with the world system, and they have not tolerated sin in their own personal walks with Christ. There was only one church in Sardis. They couldn’t go anywhere else. Maybe they didn’t know anything else. But the Lord knows how to keep those who are His pure for Him. Peter tells us, “then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment…” (2 Pet. 2:9). The Lord Himself tells us that those who will remain unsoiled and unstained will walk with Him in white. That’s the key to living in a Sardis-like situation. Walk with Him in white, the righteous acts of the saints, whatever those might be. As Paul tells us in multiple places, walk in a worthy manner. We want to be those who are walking with Him in white.

I have been unjustifiably called a legalist on occasion for my stand of personal holiness, but this is one of the reasons why I take that stand, Beloved. We are His and not our own. We have been bought with a price, a precious price, the sanctified blood of the God-Man Himself that atones for the sins of all who will believe His Word. How can we NOT walk in a worthy manner? Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t think it is legalism to want to please the Master who bought me, and I don’t think many here do either. May we be those who can say with Polycarp, “Fourscore and six years have I served him, and he has never done me injury; how then can I now blaspheme my King and saviour?” This brings us to the last thought unit, the promise to the overcomer here.

5-6: The Promise to the Overcomer

Every letter has a promise to the overcomer, and there is no letter as clear about the identity of the overcomer here. The overcomer is the one who has believed in Jesus for his or her own salvation from the wrath of God against sinful mankind. That overcomer is the same in all the letters without exception. It isn’t some super-spiritual nobility of God that has especially walked with the Lord in self-acetic abuse as an initiate of the secret knowledge, Beloved! It is all believers. The ones that God the Father foreknew before the foundation of the world predestined those ones to ALL be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, Beloved. That still leaves room for individual personality, but it also makes us all look the same. We ALL have the SAME promises from the SAME God, and individuality as well. Otherwise, we would all be robots or something. Let’s see what the Lord promises the believers in Sardis.

5: He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.

The first phrase carries over from the context of verse 4. Let me rephrase the first phrase of the verse in a way that makes sense: The one who overcomes will IN THIS WAY be clothed in white garments. IN THIS WAY is a carryover from v.4 because context matters. The garments are white because they have not been stained or soiled with sin, as it says in v.4. This is important. It places the promise on God to reward the behaviour, but it places the responsibility for that behaviour on the one to be clothed in white to keep the garments white. This is a direct reference from the Lord Jesus Himself to the perseverance of the saints, the last of the doctrines of grace. Those who are truly His will persevere and overcome. God will preserve those who persevere. Both of those things are true in this case.
“I will not erase his name from the book of life.” This is NOT saying that He will erase the names of some or even hinting at that possibility. This is a reference to an old custom called Census from the ancient world. Any given city would have a book or scroll that contained all of the people in that city. There were ways you could be deleted from the roll, too. You could move to another city, and they would take your name out of one so that the new city would write it in theirs presumably. You could die, in which case your name could be deleted after a period of time. You could commit a serious crime like murder or treason. In the ancient world, that would lead to your execution and the deletion of your name. Our Lord Jesus is saying that He has given us eternal life in His coming city, and He will NOT remove our names from that roll. I am reminded of a song called “The Courtroom” by Carmen Liciardello. [sing if you can remember] The last refrain has a pertinent question: Is your name in THAT book? Is your name in that book? Is your name in that book tonight? If you’ve been forgiven, then your name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. Or something like that.
No, as those who have overcome death by believing that HE overcame death on our behalf, rather He will confess our names before the Father of All, His and our God, and all the angels standing by to attend to Him. What a scene to imagine! And what a place to be! What privilege and honour for us who were enemies of God. But He made Him who knew no sin to become sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. I will simply end that thought with verse 6.

6: He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

What about you? Do you have ears? Then God is speaking directly to you! Be willing to hear what He says to all the churches.

What can we say about the salvation of the Lord from this? It is for all who will listen to God and His servants, be convicted and convinced of their sinful state by the Holy Spirit, who is given to us BY God, and be saved by repentance from our sins and our faith in the work of Christ on the Cross.

If you are a regular pew-warmer in a building for an hour on Sunday, then we implore you to be reconciled to God by faith in Christ and repentance of your sins. If you sing the same hymns as we do, we BEG you to turn from your sins and be saved. If you sit under the same ministry as we do, we beseech you to be reconciled to God! The Lord says in Isaiah (1:18), “Come now, and let us reason together, Though your sins are as scarlet, They will be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They will be like wool.” All of the things that you do that you kick yourself for later can be made right by a look to our beautiful Savior. Turn to Him. Turn to the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One of God and be saved from His coming wrath.

That’s what I saw in the text. If it has hit you like a slap in the face, good. It means that the Lord got your attention. Don’t waste this moment.