SEVEN LETTERS | Week 4 | Sermon

And I wanna read the six verses that make up the fifth letter, and we will jump in. So Revelation three, if you don't have a bible, you can follow along with me on the iPad bible on the stage. But here's how the story begins in verse one.

It says, write this letter to the angel of the church in Sardis. K? The church name is Sardis.

This is the message from the one who has seen the seven fold spirit of God in the seven stars. I I know all the things that you do and that you have a reputation for being alive, but you are dead. Jesus goes right for the jugular in verse one. He says, wake up. Strengthen what little remains for even what is left is almost dead. I find that your actions do not meet the requirements of my God.

Go back to what you heard and believed at first, hold to it firmly, repent and turn to me again. If you don't wake up, I will come to you suddenly unexpected as a thief.

Yet there are some in the church in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes with evil. They will walk with me in white for they are worthy. Last couple verses. All who are victorious will be clothed in white. I will never erase their names from the book of life, but I will announce before my father and his angels that they are

mine. Verse six, anyone with ears to hear must listen to the spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches. Would you pray with me quickly, father? Lord, we ask right now through the power of the holy spirit that you would do supernaturally

where you would speak through one person, but you would speak individually and separately to every single person in this room. God, we know you're here in our midst. Jesus being with you, it will change us. And so we just give you permission now to come into a heart, to convict, to encourage, to allow us to walk out of this room different than we walked in here. It is in Jesus' name that all God's people said, amen.

I was thinking about it this week in relation to this letter. Again, I grew up in a pretty, you know, residential, non rural environment. I was as urban as they they came. And so, again, I know we live in what used to be a very rural area that's become more,

urban, but a lot of you grew up on farms and were around different stuff like that. That that was not my upbringing. And so I was at a friend's house in junior high, and his family raised a bunch of chickens. Now I have chickens for eggs, but I've never had chickens that you actually eat. I go to Chick fil A, and I order the chicken, and they give it to me. Right? And so when I'm at his house, we're playing video games. His parents come in and they're like, hey, do you wanna help us process some chickens? That's the word that's the phrasing that they use. Right? So I'm like, yeah, processed chickens, that sounds harmless and fun and I like animals. Little did I know that by processed chickens, what they meant is that we were gonna take these chickens,

go over to the little wooden block that they had set up, and somebody would hold the chicken while somebody else cut the chicken's head off. And so to my surprise, I walk out there and somebody just lops the head off of this chicken, and then they literally take the body. And this was the part that freaked me out because I've never been through it before, and they let the body go. And this now headless chicken

runs around, this is where the phrase come from, like a chicken with its head cut off. It literally just starts sprinting and running around. It's literally doing back flips, and I'm like, everybody's just acting normal. And I'm like, is nobody gonna react to the zombie apocalypse that is upon us of chickens? Like, this thing's just running around without its head cut off. And and I'm sitting there talking about this this week with my family, and my son was like, yeah, dad. I heard about a chicken that had its head cut off that ended up living for almost eighteen months. And I was like, man, you've just been on YouTube for too long. Like, there is no chance. Like, it takes a couple minutes and eventually the chicken falls over, but it it dies. And so my my son was convinced. He's like, no. I swear there was a story. And so we went and looked it up, and there's a true story of this chicken in the nineteen forties. They've named him Mike, and I got a picture I wanna show you. K? This is Mike the headless chicken.

It's the craziest thing in the world. It's a totally true story. A farmer was processing chickens,

and one of them, he cut the head off and it started running and it never stopped. This thing didn't die. And they think what happened is they cut the head off and somehow left some of the brain stem intact, and then it had a perfect blood clot and stopped him from bleeding out. And so this farmer

then took the headless chicken on a tour around the country showing people the headless chicken. And here's what's wild. He did live for a little over eighteen months, and you're you're not gonna believe it when I tell you, but guess where Mike the chicken died? Phoenix, Arizona.

I was like, what? Get out of town, man. He was from Colorado, but he died in Phoenix. You would have thought it was his head being cut off that killed him, but it was truly the summer heat that finally took him out.

He literally, they think, choked to death in a hotel room in Phoenix, Arizona. Man, the reason that that I start there is, as I was reading this letter and studying the the church in Sardis,

this picture came to my mind. Because when I was in junior high and I had that experience, I became convinced of two things. The first one is if we get into desperate times and I have to stop ordering from Chick fil A, have to we start processing chickens, one of you needs to step up because I'm not gonna be that guy. Alright? But number two, the thing that I learned is that something by all accounts

from an outside perspective can appear to be very much alive in its function. But the truth is is it was dead and had died a while before, and it was the only thing that wasn't aware that it was actually dead.

And it's one thing for a chicken to run around dead for a while and not realizing it, but what Jesus says is that same thing is true about the church in Sardis. And it's a really bleak message. It's one that should wake you and I up to go that you can simultaneously have a great reputation,

but be dead on the inside at the same time. And the part that's really interesting when you start to study what happened in Sardis, you would think because sometimes we convince ourselves that the greatest existential threat to the church, it's like people out there. It's it's politicians.

It's culture becoming bad. Or or maybe we'll get to a point where we think that it's like somebody from the inside rises up and starts teaching heretical messages, and that's what would lead to a church from being alive to being dead. But the interesting thing with Sardis is none of those things were true.

What happened inside of Sardis is something that is a bit of a social experiment that we should learn from. Because the church in Sardis, the thing that took them down, the thing that led to their demise, the thing that led to Jesus telling them, you think you are alive, you appear to be alive, but you're really dead.

It was actually a church that had become incredibly comfortable, incredibly wealthy. They were amongst a bunch of prosperity. The church in Sardis forgot.

Your and I's goal on this side of eternity is not to just survive until we get to heaven one day. We have a mission. We have an assignment. We've been given a duty. We have a role to play in advancing God's kingdom. But if you and I will believe the lie that our goal is just to survive

and to make sure we get through this thing, we will potentially end up sliding down a slippery slope that we don't even intend to get on. That is one that will lead to us being what Jesus refers to as dead. The church in Sardis stopped taking ground for the kingdom. They stopped converting new Christians.

They stopped being a place where marriages were restored and addictions were broken and people who are far from God could come in the doors and be made new again.

They just circled the wagons, became really comfortable, became really wealthy, and it was the thing that led to their demise. Here's what wanna try to convince you of in these next few moments we have together. I think there's a lesson that we have to learn from the church in Sardis because where they were culturally

is very similar to where we're headed or where we potentially are right now as a culture as well. I think there's some lessons we have to learn. The big idea, the thing I wanna try to convince you of is I think sometimes we settle for the goal being survival, and I think it's the wrong goal.

I don't think our goal is to just survive. I think God has a much bigger vision for you and I. Here's what I believe the goal is. I believe the goal for you and I while we're here on this earth, the goal is revival, not survival. And I know revival is kind of a churchy word, but when I say revival, what I mean

is a faith that is progressing. A relationship with God that is growing in intimacy. Where we're sitting in our prayer time and our our prayers are growing in their fervor. Our ability to distill the voice of God is something that's growing. Revival is something that is continually being made new.

And what happens when we do that individually is sometimes these things will overflow out of our lives, and then we collectively will begin to experience revival in our communities. I believe the goal of this life is for you and I to produce revival all around us.

Not just try to survive the bad culture that's out there. If you're just joining us today in the middle of this series, again, I wanna catch you up real quickly in where we are in the church in Sardis. I'll put up a map here real quick to kinda show you. These seven letters were written to seven specific churches while John was sitting on the island of Patmos. He had a vision and the resurrected Jesus tells him, write these things down. I have seven specific messages.

And the order that we've addressed them in is the same order, obviously, that Jesus wrote them in because it's the path that they would have taken as they gave the letters to the churches. We started in Ephesus. We got to Smyrna. Last week, we looked at Pergamum and Thyatira.

And now we're at Sardis. We have two more weeks in the series, and then we'll be at Christmas, which is mind blowing in and of itself. But where we are today is in Sardis. And Sardis is a really interesting city.

It's one where folklore has kinda blended in with fiction, and sometimes it's kinda hard to separate truth from, you know, what is just story and folklore. But what we know for sure to be true about Sardis is it was at its heyday one of the wealthiest cities in the world.

It had a river that created so much gold that everybody inside the community had more money than they knew what to do with. The legend is is that King Midas used to live in Sardis. And King Midas was the one that famously had the Midas touch where everything he would touch would turn to gold. And that sounds pretty cool until you go to eat a chicken nugget and you touch it and it becomes gold. Right? Like, not so cool that I can't eat food. He couldn't touch his loved ones, and so this thing that was a blessing eventually became a curse. And as the legend goes, King Midas went into the river and the gods had told him to wash himself in this river. And again, it's all legend. We don't really think that it's true. But what they say is that his golden curse transferred to this river that created this place of opulence for the city. And what happened was a gold rush, and people came into this city and they built a really thriving community because they had so much money. They were able to build a fortress around the city where they were un penetratable. There was armies that could not conquer them. They were incredibly safe.

And what happened in Sardis is what you and I can sometimes think is the goal of our time here on earth. To build a place that's really comfortable. To build a really safe community

where everybody has more than what we need. Where everybody has money. There is no need. There is no hardship. There's enough money to go around. But the city of Sardis is one of a bit of a social experiment that we should learn from. Because it came with some unintended consequences.

What happened in a life of luxury, in a life of comfort over generations is because times were so easy, people became incredibly weak. And the men in Sardis, there was a hyper feminization of all of the men inside of the city. There was rates of homosexuality

in the city of Sardis that you didn't see in any of the other surrounding cities in Asia Minor. Again, you could argue that where Sardis was, we are either on the path towards or we are potentially getting there ourselves as a culture. And sometimes when we think the goal is

safety and the goal is wealth for everybody, that it might come with some unintended consequences. Sardis became filled with incredibly weak people that had more than they knew what to do with.

The problem was is eventually an earthquake happened. And the earthquake broke their walls and their barriers were destroyed for a period of time. And an army saw this was our chance to come in and to take all their wealth and to plunder the city. And so the army prepared for battle. They came into the city of Sardis.

And to their surprise, there was no men that were willing to fight and protect the city. Because the men had been so comfortable for so long, there were no warriors left amongst them. And the problem with comfort in easy times is it often produces really weak people.

The city was conquered in less than twenty four hours with literally no fight. And they plundered the city, and what they left behind was a city of ruins. And what was talked about about Sardis was the city that used to be, and all of the incredible things that God used to do in that town.

And there was a church inside that city that was following closely behind it. And then you have Jesus that walks in and speaks a word to this church. And his word is one that you and I have to heed. It is one that we have to listen to because there's lessons that we can learn from Sardis.

There are things that we can learn from their mistakes and apply to our lives if we wanna make sure that we don't unintentionally become a church that Jesus would say is dead.

And more importantly, individual Christians who are the the people who have been entrusted with the holy spirit today who are functionally alive, but the truth is we're dead. Here's what we are. Well, here's what we see in verse one. Again, walking back through this letter, Jesus starts

and he says, write this letter to the angel of the church in Sardis. He's writing this to the pastor of this church and he says, this is the message from the one who has the seven fold spirit of God and the seven stars. It's again a description of Jesus. If I had more time, I would walk through it more. But here's what he says to the church. He goes right for the jugular in the beginning. He says, I know all the things that you do. You have a reputation for being alive, but you are dead.

I think the first thing that the first thing that we see from the city, the first thing that we learned from the church in Sardis that we have to learn and apply to our lives if we're going to make sure we don't unintentionally become dead Christians that make up a dead church,

the first thing that we have to do, I want you to write this down, is you and I will have to learn to ignore our reputation. We will have to not over inflate what people think about us. Because here's the truth.

It's always plagued humanity to a certain degree, but right now you and I are in the middle of a grand social experiment that we don't quite know the results of it yet. We are the guinea pigs right now in a social experiment called social media. And for the first time ever, people have access to your lives in ways that nobody's ever had access to before. Do you know what your friends ate for breakfast yesterday? Do you know where they went on vacation, whether or not they did their yard work yesterday?

And it creates this kind of weird cultural phenomenon. I've had to remind people sometimes when we meet in person where I'm like, look, know you know a lot about me, but you and I have never actually spoken before. Like this is a first time thing. Say hello.

Say hi. My name is you know what I mean? Like, because it creates this thing where we feel this connection.

And I think the other unintended consequences is that sometimes because we know people are watching, we are hyper focused on what people think about us, we will be tempted to curate an image of ourselves that isn't actually real. We will be tempted to try to fix our reputation.

We'll try to present an image of us that just isn't the reality of who we are. And you and I think we'll have to fight really hard to go, the most important thing about us is not what other people think about us. But we live in a world that says, no, no, that's what's most important.

And yet the reputation of this church was phenomenal. It was incredible. All the Google reviews were like, man, this is a great church. If you want to go there, check out Yelp. They talk about the amazing light show that the church has. The coffee is good. They had a great reputation. Yet reputation wasn't the goal.

Here's the thing that I want you to know. God could care less about your and I's reputation. You know what he cares a lot about? Our character. Our soul. How you're really actually doing. And I wonder sometimes what would happen to the people of God. If we spent more time working on addressing the things that God knows about us

versus spending all of our time working on in trying to fix what we think people are thinking about us and not address the things that God knows about us. Here's the thing that that I heard that I think is so interesting. In your twenties, they say you become obsessed with what people think about you.

In your forties, you you stop caring so much what people think about you. And then when you get to your sixties, you finally start to wake up and realize, man, nobody's been thinking about me this whole time.

And sometimes we just have to realize our reputation really isn't that big of a deal. Like how much money you make, how big your house is, how big your business is, how great your vacation was, that might impress some of your friends, but I'm telling you friends, it does not impress God. What

God cares deeply about is the condition of your soul, Your heart and your character. I would argue if reputation was the goal, you know who failed the highest at? You know who failed the worst at having a good reputation? Jesus. When this man died, the world thought that he was a lunatic.

His closest friends thought he was a failure to a point that they denied ever even knowing him. They were like, man, guy that we thought was going to usher in a new kingdom, here he is dying a criminal's death next to two common thieves. If reputation is the goal, Jesus failed famously.

It tells me that maybe just maybe reputation isn't all that we think that it is.

And I wonder what would happen if we stop caring so much what people think about us, what people would say about us if we finally said this at work, if we finally went there with our coworkers, if we were finally willing to take a stand for Jesus in the middle of a culture that says, don't bend the knee.

Be willing to do anything else but to say that you're a Christian. Friends, I'm telling you for the people of God to make sure we don't end up accidentally becoming dead Christians, be filling a dead church, we have to be people that go, you know what? Our reputation, it's not the ultimate thing.

We're gonna focus on something else.

We're gonna focus on our character and the condition of our soul and who we really actually are. The second thing that we see in this first verse, the very opening line to this letter to the church. The second thing we have to do if we're willing to become people who just go, I refuse to become a dead Christian. I refuse to fall down the slippery slope that leads to death is we have to ignore our reputation

and then we have to face the actual reality. The actual reality is something that sometimes we're really good at avoiding. We're really good at polishing it and addressing it and talking about it differently when the truth is sometimes you just need to call a spade a spade. The church in Sardis had a harsh reality.

It appeared to be alive, but in Jesus' definition, it was dead. And sometimes before something can be resurrected, before something can be revived, it has to be declared dead.

Friends, there's sometimes the thing that's going to get you to a point where you're willing to work on your marriage is finally acknowledge the fact that this thing is dead. It's been dead for a while.

I'm not saying that gives you permission to walk away from it, but now you can invite the partnership of the holy spirit and some other people into this thing so that what was once dead can now be revived. Because the problem is is we serve a God that isn't isn't is in the business of resurrecting dead things

when what we want to do often is just have slight improvements of what we already have. And sometimes we need to let these things die so that something new can be completely born again. Sometimes we have to face the current reality.

We have to face the truth that maybe just maybe the spirit of God that we we used to feel so closely, maybe just maybe it's departed us. Because the question really becomes, what makes a church dead?

And I think the most simple definition would be similar to how we declare a human to be dead. Right? A human is declared dead when the soul has left it. The the human spirit has left the body. That's the point that that body is now dead. I think the church is the same way.

The moment that the holy spirit leaves this thing, the moment that the holy spirit leaves our doors, that is the point that we become a dead church. And we can still be functional for a while without it. But what starts to happen is we start to become known about things that the church was never supposed to be known for.

We make really secondary, ulterior issues the primary big things. And this stops being what it's supposed to be, a house of prayer, A place where broken marriages are restored and addictions are set free and lives are transformed. And my fear is that sometimes the Lord's spirit has left us and we don't even know it.

Here's the truth of of the reality of the spirit of God. All of us, the bible says when we give our life to Jesus, the spirit, the holy spirit, the third part of the trinity begins to live in us. And we now become

the temples of the holy spirit. We gotta remember, god is separate. He's other than. He's holy. He's completely set apart. And so the problem is is when we have sin in our lives and you now have sin living inside the same temple with the holy spirit, that will lead to this thing called conviction.

But if you don't allow the emotion of conviction to lead you to the the action of walking through repentance, eventually, after a period of time, that spirit will fill in another vessel. It will leave you potentially and go to a vessel that's more willing to be obedient.

But one of the scariest stories in the bible to me is recorded in Judges. It talks about this guy named Samson.

And Samson was convinced that all God was interested in was all these external things from him. He he famously had long hair and he thought his strength came from the hair. But the truth is that his strength didn't come from the hair. His strength came from the spirit of God that was in him.

But the problem was is he was living a life of unrepentant sin, believing that you can have both unrepentant sin in your life for a period of time and also have the fullness of the holy spirit.

Well, you look at Judges chapter 16, it records what happened to Samson. He tells Delilah, this is where my power comes from. He gets his hair shaved in the middle of the night and then the Philistines come in. They come in to arrest him again and look at what it says in verse 20. It says, Samson woke up and he thought, I will do as before. Right? I know what to do. I've been doing this church thing for a long time.

I know the things to say. I know the motions to go through. Heck, I even know the prayers to pray. I'll just do what I've always done and shake myself free. But he didn't realize the Lord had already left him. He didn't even know that God had left him.

And friends, there's sometimes you and I have to come to the reality of understanding. You cannot have what we have been sold as the bill of goods in American church today, where you can have all of this world live however you want on Fridays and Saturdays, and at the same time walk in the power of the Holy Spirit.

They at some point will come to odds with each other. And you will have to make a decision. Do you go all in here

or do you go all into the world? And my fear is that what is happening inside of our culture, what is happening inside of our churches, the warning signs are there is that what is starting to take place is what used to be alive is slowly becoming dead.

And my greatest fear is that in fifty to sixty years when they look back, and they will, they will look back and they will ask what you and I, what we did with the time that God gave us as the people carrying the baton for our generation with his church, what did they do with it? Did they steward it well? Or

did they just circle the wagons, make comfort the primary thing, keep the bad people out, and this no longer became a house of prayer and it just became a house of gossip. And friends, I'm telling you, if you look at what's happening in The United Kingdom right now,

it tells us what can happen to our churches in America if we're not careful. There is things happening in our country right now that are incredible. They are good for the church. What is not always great for the church is comfort. Ease.

Being the main religion in culture, history tells us what happens when that takes place. It tells us what happens when we just become cultural Christians. So the question is is what do we do? What do we do when we begin to realize, okay, maybe just maybe, I've become that person that's living with unrepentant

sin, and truth is I'm feeling the early warning signs that maybe my faith is dead too. Here's the good news. Here's what verse two tells us. It says all you have to do is wake up, strengthen what little remains,

for even what is left is almost dead. This next verse is the entire like learning lesson for this verse or this section of scripture. It says, I find that your actions do not meet the requirements of my God. He says, remember that you have a mission. Wake up. Stop sleeping.

Stop thinking that you and I are going to legislate our way out of the cultural problem that we sit in. We won't be able to. What is desperate is for the church to wake up again. And remember, you have a calling on your life. You have an assignment. You have a kingdom to expand. You have people to rescue.

God needs you and I to wake up because culture is desperate for it again. Wake up Because here's the truth. And I know this isn't like super fun and it feels like I'm punching you in the face. There's some encouragement coming in a second, but here's why history is so important for us to remember.

Because if we don't learn from it, we're doomed to just repeat it. In this cycle that we are in as a country, it is not a new one.

It is one that has happened before. And the early warning signs are happening in our churches in America that we have to wake up and realize. There's a theologian that talks about the progression of what happens typically in churches. There's a four part, four stage movement that happens.

He says what usually starts with a man, k, one person that's willing to go, let's do this thing. Let's build something powerful. We we can argue in our context, that's Bill and Carrie that started this church some twenty years ago. One person was willing to start something that becomes a movement.

And man, you and I are in the middle of an incredible move of God in our midst right now. The fact that we have baptized over a thousand people this year alone, it is unprecedented. It is amazing and we should celebrate it. But at the same time, I would tell you we also have to be careful.

Because if we're not careful, what always happens with a movement is eventually that movement will become institutionalized. And that movement will become a machine. And look at how it's played out over the course of history. If that machine is not stopped,

if the institution is not checked and we forget what we're supposed to be about, we are supposed to be a place of life change. We We are supposed to be a place where lost people can come home. Where runners who have been running from God can walk in the doors and be met with open arms, and they can admit that their marriage is broken. They can admit that they're in the middle of a struggle. And this is a place where life change will continue to happen if we just let it become a machine

and all we do is start playing cultural Christianity, we are a few steps away of becoming nothing more than a monument. My greatest fear is that in fifty or sixty years, people will walk around this place. They'll walk through the buildings like Rock Point and they'll say, man, look at how beautiful this place is.

Back in 2023, they baptized almost a thousand people. Yeah. I know nobody comes to church here anymore, but it was amazing what God did then. I'm telling you, go walk around The United Kingdom. Go walk around what's happening in England. 16,000 plus churches all around that are all empty.

Beautiful ornate buildings that at one point were a house of worship that today are literally a museum. I wanna show you a picture of one in particular. This is Westminster Abbey. K? One of the most famous cathedrals in all of The UK. This is where all the royal weddings are done. This is where all the grand celebrations

take place. And at one point in time, this was a thriving church community. And today, what they do primarily is they run tours through there, and they show you all the famous dead people that are buried there.

There was a story of this sweet old lady that was on one of these tours. She stopped and she asked the tour guide like, hey, it's amazing that Queen Elizabeth is buried here, but I'm just curious when was the last time somebody gave their life to Jesus in this building?

And the tour guide said, yeah. I don't know. I'll have to get back to you. Friends, I'm telling you, I think we are at a bit of a crossroads right now as a culture, more importantly as a church.

And the question is is what are we gonna do with the church that we've been handed and what we're how are we going to steward what God has asked us to do? I believe that if we are not careful, we potentially will end up becoming a dead church full of dead Christians. We have to remember what the main things are.

And here's what I love about this whole series. There's seven letters. There's seven different things that these churches are dealing with, seven different indictments that Jesus addresses with them, but there's always one path home.

There's always one path back. Every one of them, the path to come home is always the same. If you find yourself here this morning and you don't like where you are currently, the beauty of who Jesus is is that in Christ, how you feel today, where you are today, it doesn't have to be where you are tomorrow.

That you can, in a moment, come back to him. You can, in a moment, set straight all of the things that have so gone wrong in your life. That's the good news of the gospel.

Look at where Jesus gives us. This is the hope. This is the turn the corner. What do we do? He says go back to what you heard. Go back to what you believed at first. Hold to it firmly. Repent and turn to me. If you don't wake up, I will come to you suddenly as unexpected

as a thief. Here's the third thing you and I have to be committed to if we're going to avoid becoming dead Christians. We have to all experience our personal repentance.

We have to be committed to living a life of repentance. For those of you who have never done it, that is your first step into the kingdom of God. To realize that the bible says that all of us are sinners. All of us are broken, and we don't have the ability to get to God but Jesus. Two thousand years ago, he who knew no sin became sin so that you and I would have the opportunity to become the righteousness of God. And it's not about what you did, it's about what he did. And if you repent from your sins, you can today enter the kingdom of heaven forever.

It is the good news. But for those of you here who like you made that decision in 1985, the same invitation is for you and I.

I think if there was one measurement, if there was one thing to go, how do you separate like baby Christians from people who are really just crushing it in their walk with God? I think there's one measurement that we should be about. The measurement should be, what is your timeline between failure and repentance?

Because all of us in this room, I know if you're new here, you'll be tempted to believe that we're better than we think we are because we'll lie to you. Right? Like, we'll tell you all the good parts about us. But the truth is is just for a moment, if we could be honest

and we talked about the things that we really struggle with, the things that are happening that people don't know about us, the thoughts that we've had, the websites we've been to, the conversations that we're having that we know we shouldn't be having, the truth is that all of us are broken. We're gonna continue to fail. What God is not after is perfect people.

He's after people who are willing to fight for holiness.

To go, look, I know I made a mistake, but I'm gonna repent. I'm turning back to it. I'm coming home. I'm not going to live in this. And as long as you stay engaged in that fight, that's how you do what the new testament says. Work out your salvation with fear and with trembling because the stakes couldn't be higher. It

couldn't be greater for you and I. This stuff matters. He says the path home is always repentance.

It's always coming back to him. Now here's where I wanna kinda close and turn the corner with this. Know this is kinda throat punchy, but verse four, as I was reading this this week, it is what jumped off the pages to me. It is my prayer that this is what would stir in our community. Look what happens in verse four.

He says in the middle of this dead church, in the middle of all of this unrepentant sin, all these dead people, yet there were some in the church in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes with evil. They will walk with me in white for they are worthy.

He says, all who are victorious will be clothed in white. I will never erase their names from the book of life. I will announce before my father and his angels that they are mine. He says, anyone with ears to hear must listen to the spirit and understand what he is saying to churches.

At the very end of this letter, Jesus brings up the reality of eternity. And he says that all of us, we all start with our names written in the book of life. But if you die without having surrendered your life to Jesus, what happens is is your name is blotted out of the book of life.

And he says that all of us have to remember that we're going to spend forever somewhere. And here's what's really funny. I promise you, if Jesus had a church today, it would be without a doubt the smallest church in the East Valley. You know why? Because 40% of what Jesus talked about was hell and money.

Could you imagine if one out of ever, like four out of every 10 messages we talked about was like, yeah, we're gonna talk about hell today. I know we talked about money last week, so we're gonna talk about hell tomorrow. Like, that's all he talked about Because eternity

is real, and you will be tempted to be lulled into believing that all of this is all that matters. And friends, all of this is but a vapor. All you've been given is a few years while you're here, and what's going to happen is someday God's gonna ask you, what did you do with what I gave you?

I entrusted you with so much. What did you do with it?

And he says inside the Church Of Sardis, there's this group of people. This remnant, if you will. The the bible refers to it as a remnant. And and here's what's amazing to me. You you read all the old testament. You you look at the nation of Israel. In their darkest moments, in the gravest days of the church,

at all times, there was always a remnant left behind. It means that there's always a group that God leaves behind that is willing to do the impossible.

That is willing to stand against a culture that says, do not take a stand for Christ. There's a remnant of people that is willing to stand up. And here's what it tells me about a remnant. A remnant, a group of people that are left behind that are committed to living a life of repentance,

that is what you need to start to bring about again a revival. And as I look I'll be honest, man. My my prayers these last few years has been, God, would you give us the privilege of stewarding again another powerful move of God in our generation? And I am convinced when you look at where we are culturally,

when you look at where we are on the timeline of history, I believe that we are prime for another major revival in our community, in our generation, in our culture. And and what I mean by these kind of revivals is you look over, our history as a nation,

there are these moments. There are these select windows and times where seems like the floor of heaven is just open. And heaven touches earth for just a couple years. And what typically takes decades to happen happens in a matter of months and years.

And I think as I look at our country, where our culture is, where we are again on the timeline of history, our culture is desperate for another one.

And what is needed for the making of a revival is a remnant of people who are saying, you know what? We're willing to do this. I I close by giving you a bit of a history lesson. The last major revival in our country, in our generation happened in the late sixties.

Some of you are old enough to remember it, and it was a crazy time in our country. In the sixties, our our culture was changing in major ways. You had the Vietnam war that divided us. You had the rise of secularism at rates that we had never seen before.

You were watching people move away from this thing that they used to call the moral majority. Right? People were walking away from their faith in droves. And the church was freaking out. The sexual revolution was taking over culture and the people inside of the church were convinced,

this is it. This is the end. Jesus has to come back. He couldn't get worse than this, saying a lot of the same things that the church is saying today. And in 1966, I wanna show you the cover of Time Magazine. Time Magazine, based on all of this stuff, they posed a question.

They said based on where we are culturally and what is happening in our society, is God dead? Was the best of our times behind us and what all that lies in front of us is a godless generation? And honestly, I think God saw this cover and he took personal offense to it. Because what began to unfold simultaneously

as the rise of secularism was a group of people who were willing to say yes in a culture that tells you to bend the knee. And what started in this little church in Calvary Chapel in Southern California, pastored by a guy named Chuck Smith,

was a group of people who started to allow these hippies to come in. And it took a while. It was a tough adjustment for the church because they didn't wear shoes, they smelled, they looked different, they felt different, they didn't look like them, they didn't talk like them.

And Chuck Smith slowly pastored these hippies. And what began to happen with a faithful remnant of people willing to say yes even though everything around them tells them they shouldn't is revival began to break out.

And what they would do is they would gather at this place called Pirate Cove, and they would do baptisms. And I wanna show you a picture of one of these baptisms.

This is actually Chuck Smith and a guy named Lonnie Frisbee that kinda led the hippie movement, and this is a group of hippies where they would baptize sometimes 5,000 of them in one day. Think about that. I mean, it's amazing that we baptized a thousand in a year. They would do 5,000 a day for multiple days in a row.

And what was happening culturally is it was falling apart. And simultaneously, there was a there was a move of God happening that was beginning to sweep across the country. In 1971,

they all these hippies, all these young adults gathered in Dallas, Texas. The largest gathering of young adults under the banner of Jesus that has ever happened in our nation's history happened in 1971.

They gathered at the cotton bowl over a 100,000 of them and they listened to Billy Graham preach, they listened to Johnny Cash lead worship, and they proclaimed the goodness of Jesus in the middle of a culture that seems to be falling apart. In 1966,

Time Magazine posted a cover and said, is God dead? I wanna show you the cover of the Time Magazine in 1971.

The cover of the magazine was the Jesus revolution. The thing that was sweeping across the country. In five years, we went from asking is God dead to going what we are a part of is something completely unprecedented. My question, friends, is this is the last major revival that's happened in our country.

My question is is do you believe that God can do it again? Do you believe that we're at a time where we're desperate for God to do it again? As I'm telling you friends, that has been the cry of my heart as you go, God, would you entrust us with another one? And I wanna tell you, revival has requirements.

The people that make up revival,

there's requirements of you. Give up your reputation. Stop living for what people think about you. Focus on what God knows about you. Face the reality of where you are. Live a life of repentance, and maybe just maybe what God will entrust us with is another move of God for our generation and for our people. And the church, the people of God can stop just surviving.

And what we can begin to usher in collectively in our own hearts and in our homes and ultimately in our community and in our country would be revival. And I'm telling you friends, it's way more fun than just trying to white knuckle through this thing called Christianity and merely surviving.

My hope and my prayers that we would be a people that take ground. That when they look back in fifty years, they're not talking about the monument of what was once used to be, but they talk about the people that were willing to sacrifice and live differently despite what culture was saying. And they'll look back and go, man, in 2023,

what happened in this little crazy town called Queen Creek, Arizona is revival was born. And what started here spread across the country. And I'm telling you, if we are on our face asking God to do it, maybe just maybe we will get an opportunity to steward a move of God in our generation again.

Friend, my hope, my prayer is that you and I would realize the goal of this whole thing. It's revival. Don't think it's revival just because of where we are in the timeline of history. I think the goal is always revival, but you have to wake up and stop just surviving.

Look yourself in the mirror, how are things really going? And be on your face praying, God, would you let us do this again? We are desperate for this to happen again. Amen? Amen. Let me pray for you.

Father, I'm so thankful for the opportunity to gather and worship the name of Jesus. And, God, I know that in our in our lives, all of us are wrestling through different things. And I know in this room are our finances that need to be resurrected. There are marriages that need to be revived. There are relationships

that are just so broken. There's jobs that seem like they're struggling. And so God, we ask and we invite you to participate in an in these things. God, would you, through the power of the Holy Spirit, begin to bring back dead things.

And God, our our hope and our prayers that you would trust us to steward another major move of God in our generation. Jesus, we so desperately need you. It is in your name that all God's people said, amen.

Thanks for joining us us online this weekend. Let us know if we can help you in any way. And make sure to follow us on social media and connect with us on the We Are Rock Point app for prayer and everything happening here at Rock Point.