The Dying Church

Well, good morning and blessings to you all. It's good to be here, and I want to thank you all as well for sharing that refreshing, hopeful message with us this morning. For a text this morning, you can turn your Bibles with me to Revelation 3. I've been doing a series of messages on the seven churches, the letters to the seven churches, and this morning we're ready for Chapter 3, verse 1, "The Church in Sardis."

I'll just read the passage at this time. Jesus says, "Unto the angel of the church in Sardis write these things, saith he that hath the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know thy works, that thou hast a name, that thou livest, and are dead.

Be watchful and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die, for I have not found thy works perfect before God. Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon you.

Thou hast a few names, even in Sardis, which have not defiled their garments, and they shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy. He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment, and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, and I will confess his name before my Father and before the angels.

He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches."

Wow, that's quite the passage. I felt like I almost need to apologize to the choir this morning. Here you come and you just bless us with a message of hope and love and joy and all of that, and now I turn around and I pick a passage that talks about this dead church. Pretty depressing, isn't it?

What can we learn? To the congregation this morning, to the audience, and to myself, we owe one thing here this morning, however this connects with us, but Jesus says at the end of this passage, "He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches." I don't know how many churches are represented here this morning, how many congregations, quite a few.

So you all and I owe attendance to this word this morning. So sit up straight and take heed and listen, and I just want to be a mouthpiece between God's word and stir you up and stir myself up to somehow open ourselves to the Spirit and see how the Spirit can use this passage this morning.

The little bit of the history of the messages so far, for just a little bit of a background here, Ephesus we looked at as the backsliding church. Smyrna was the persecuted church. Pergamon was the compromising church. We saw there some compromise. It seemed the first two churches had a really strong stand against wrong things. They were very aware, and then we see this shift, a little bit of compromise, and then we looked at Tyre, the tolerant church. They were tolerating some false spirits and teachings in their midst that was causing them a problem.

Every one of these seven churches had a different particular, unique problem within them, and yet there are several things that they all have in common. I want to just highlight that. At the beginning of this letter, Jesus said that he's given a candlestick to all seven, and the candlestick represents, I believe, their testimony, their light, their presence in a community. So all seven, no matter how sickly they look and how on the brink of death they are, they still at this point have a candlestick.

Another thing that is common for all seven churches, Jesus said that he walks in the midst of all of them. So if you don't like church this morning, if you think church is boring and you're disengaged and unplugged from the church, you're disengaging yourself from where Jesus walks.

He's interested in every congregation, no matter what our problem is. He said, "I'm going to walk right in the middle of you." Another thing that is common to all these churches, he says, "I know your works." That's saying, "I know everything about you. I know your strengths. I know your weaknesses."

And there's quite a number of things I think these have in common, but one thing that really stood out to me, no matter how deep in trouble they were, there is a message of hope to every one of the churches.

That message is so clear. It's the gift and the avenue of repentance. It doesn't matter if we're dead. We see that this morning. Jesus still offers the message of hope. One of my brothers just the other day was telling me how he's in contact with a man that really messed up his life. He's a married man, has a family. He cheated on his wife. He was unfaithful. The church was working with him, and there was no true repentance for many, many years. It's just this falling back into immorality, and the family and the wife finally came to the place where they rejected him, and the church excommunicated him. He was a business owner, part of a business, a partner.

The business partner rejected him and sent him out. We're done. We lost confidence. We lost trust. Well, this man is in his 70s. The good news is he found help through repentance. He's a lonely, lonely man. The Bible says the way of the transgressor is hard. He's messed up his life. His family and his wife are still not trusting and receiving him. He's living basically by himself, from what I understood, but he found the power of Jesus.

It was through the avenue of repentance. The Bible tells us that the law came by Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ, and we have this message this morning. That is why I get excited about the gospel, is because it's the only program, if we call it a program. It's the only system of religion that offers a message of hope after we've completely messed our life up. Every other system is going to fail us, but through true and genuine repentance, Jesus, he says, "If you come to me, I will in no wise—I don't care what you committed—I will not reject you if there's genuine, heartfelt, and broken, obedient repentance." And that's what he's going to call this church to this morning.

Just a little bit of history about the city itself, if this matters. It'll help us see a little bit what the Christian church was living in, the city. If you look at the map, you'll see that this city is sort of the central city of the seven, sort of almost like the square of them, and according to history, it's one of the oldest cities, and it's a very strong city. They prided themselves in their strong city foundation and so on.

However, it's been taken, according to history, at least twice by invaders, and in AD 17, there was a sudden earthquake that took this city. It says history tells us it was one of the greatest earthquakes in history, and it destroyed this city. It was quickly rebuilt, though, by strong leadership and so on, and was back to prosperity again, a very wealthy city.

Their work there was some of the specialties in their work was wool dyeing, luxury textile, and a clothing trade, a tremendous trade route going through to trade their things there. And they tell me that if you go and visit this spot today, I guess it'd be in western Turkey there, but where this particular area was, you will still see many sheep grazing the hills. I thought that's interesting. All this time later. Now, is there some of that still going on there or not? But that is somewhat of its history tradition just in a nutshell. What about their worship? As we looked at the earlier churches, all of these churches had an influence of pagan worship all around them, and they even in their system, if you remember, to the local congregation, we talked about their gods, and they had a god of gods.

Interesting how they take from the true Christian and sort of imitate, but there was a very popular god that I think had a temple set up in most of these cities, and this was the god they called—in some cases, it was referred to as Artemis or the same as the goddess Diana. And if you remember back in Acts when Paul came into the city preaching in Acts, I think was it about 19, I'm not sure now, but there was a real uproar that went on there, and this Demetrius, I believe it was, the silversmith, he called his friends together that were in the same business, and they stirred up a riot. I mean, basically a protest against this message simply because it was destroying their wealth.

So they had that presence here, at least two big temples, one to Artemis, one to Augustus, and so on. It's a little bit about the false religion they were surrounded by. Now, let's just look at the condition of the church itself.

Now, Jesus says they had a name that they were alive, so I take that as Jesus is saying they had a good name. It was a name of a reputation. It was a name that was spoken well of. It was a name that spoke of life, a name that liveth. But when the veil is rent and Jesus really looks into the church and he really looks into the hearts of people, what a shocking news.

He says, "You're dead."

Would there be any possibility? What can we learn from that statement? You're dead, and yet you have a name. I don't know what all that meant for that day, having a good reputation, a good name, and yet you're dead.

And he gives a description of this, and when I read this, it reminds me of a real pandemic because they're not all dead, evidently. He says, "You're dead," to the church, "but evidently there's some individuals there that still have some life, and that which is still there is on the brink of death." In other words, if there's no action taken here, even that which is alive is going to die.

When we have a pandemic in the medical world, in the health system, and we faced that in the last three years, I mean, we went to great lengths, didn't we? I mean, we shut down shop. We shut down churches.

We wore masks. We stayed at home. We canceled weddings. Canceled weddings? Not really. We just made them smaller. Look at what all we did because we were facing a pandemic. This past week, we were at the hospital for a checkup. We're at the doctor's office, and nobody's wearing masks anymore. I'm saying, "What's going on?" "Oh, finally we can take them off." I asked the one lady, "How long did you wear that mask?" She said, "Three years, and it feels really funny to take it off," she said.

I just bring that in to say, do you see what we do medically when there's a pandemic? Just a little bit of numbers here. I always take interest in numbers and statistics. This is medically speaking. In 1994, according to medical records, Alzheimer's disease was the leading killer worldwide.

Found that interesting. You folks sang this morning about that kind of—and then we go into 10 years later, in '04, it's heart disease, and I think that held the leading for quite a number of years. And I think, according to the medical record today yet, it's some sort of heart disease that is the number one killer, but it's very interesting. They do not consider abortion as death, but if you look at the abortion numbers, it is shocking, and both the Christian organizations that tally numbers together and the medical numbers of abortion—here's the numbers I found. So in 2022, that's last year, 300,000 mothers died related to childbirth, 300,000 worldwide.

I bring that in because the medical system says many abortions are done for the safety of the mother. 300,000 mothers died. They have what they call a safe abortion and an unsafe abortion. To me, if it's an abortion and a child dies, they're all unsafe. 1.3 million people died to COVID-related in 2022. 8 million people died to cancer, and I think that's maybe about second in the list, but heart failure, I don't have those numbers down here.

According to medical records, 173 million abortions.

173 million. The Christian organization numbers come up with 44 million, and they're saying where's the discrepancy, but if we go with the medical numbers, that is somewhere between 50. It would be, I think, if I did the math, it'd be around 60% of all deaths worldwide.

Take COVID, take cancer, take heart failure, take automobile accidents, take suicide, take every other death. Abortion is way above any of them and comes up over 50% of them all combined. That's quite the commentary on the human race, is it not? Quite the commentary. James says that the ears of the Lord hear the cries of the innocent.

Now, we think this is awful, but God is hearing the baby crying all day long. The 172 million annually, God has to listen to that.

He's going to come back for several reasons, and he tells us in the book of, I think, 1 Thessalonians that he's going to come back to receive his bride. He's also going to come back to be admired by the saints and be glorified, but he's also going to come back to pour out his vengeance without mixture of grace.

Every time God judges us in this life, there is a mixture of grace, but on that day, except we repent, the Bible tells us there's going to be judgment without mixture. That's severe. That's severe.

Let's go on to the text. Let's look at the nature of this death that we see here. Now, Jesus uses this word death in the same way he uses it in the parable of the prodigal son. When the son came back and Jesus told the older brother, "Your brother was dead and is alive.

He was lost and he's found," same word. So the kind of death that we talked about in the medical system, like Sister John Hearst or what's her name, is going to be buried one of these days. That brings closure. We all go through that.

I was there when we buried my mom and my dad. Some of you lost spouses. We sort of bring closure to that, and it's finished as far as this life is concerned, but in the way Jesus uses this word death, he was dead and he's alive again.

That encourages me that the death he's talking about is through our responses to Jesus. We can be sold dead today, but if we respond to him, we will be made alive again. The power, the message of the gospel.

The kind of death that we see here, the way we read it, is very suggesting that this church was dying in a slow way, and I don't know what you think of when you think of some are dead and others are dying.

A progression there, a declining. It's a slow bleeding. I just think of a slow bleeding kind of death, and I think if Jesus is so upfront about this death and he says we as churches are supposed to listen to what the Spirit says, I wonder if we can identify what is killing us spiritually today in a slow way.

The church in Smyrna had persecution, and Jesus addressed that. He said, "I'm going to be there for you." It might be a sudden death. I mean, you could be buried today or tomorrow, and some of the other churches, Pergamos, I believe, was the church that Jesus said that you are in Satan's where Satan sits or sitteth. In other words, you're right there where the devil himself is right there in your area, what you're facing.

Thyratyra had the Jezebel. Remember that. We talked about that, and there were also false teachers in some of these churches, the Nicolaitans and so on, but here he mentions nothing of that. It's just you folks are dead and you're dying, but he doesn't really say what the cause of this death is.

It's not Jezebel. It's not the Nicolaitans. It's not persecution. So what is it? Let's do an autopsy here. In verse two, I think it's somewhat telling here,

or verse one. The end of verse one, he says, "That name that thou livest," but you're dead. So let's think of that a little bit.

There's something going on. They have a good name, a good reputation. Jesus once came to his people and he said, "The hypocrites are the ones that go out and they stand on the street corners and they make these prayers to be heard of men, and then when they fast, what do they do? They disfigure their faces so that they appear like they're fasting."

And he uses other things to describe those people. He tells the Pharisees that on the outside you're nice and clean, but when we come to examine the inward parts, you're full of dead men's bones. It seems like some of that is going on here. We have a good name.

Oh, we protect our face. We protect our name. We do all of that. I believe this text is so fitting for us today.

We're very careful how we make ourselves look and how we appear and how we, and that's important. Jesus isn't condemning that. He didn't condemn the Pharisees for their clean cup on the outside. What he condemned them for was what was inside. There was no fruit. There was no life, and he speaks of that right here. "I have not found your works complete."

So incomplete works is the first thing he lifts out here, the incomplete works, and I guess the question that I would ask for us, and we can ask ourselves individually, whatever I do, whatever efforts I make in the kingdom of God and the community, is it about making myself look good and feel good, or is it about Jesus? Is it about bringing glory and honor to him and his people? Those are questions we can ask.

Remember Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13 that if we do everything, give our body to be burnt, and have not the love of Jesus, it profits me nothing.

Paul says when he comes to the church at Corinth, "For I am determined. I determine not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified." Paul could have shared a lot more than that, couldn't he? But it was all about Jesus, not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and the power that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men but in the power of God, and I believe that is what was missing in this church. It became focused on itself.

When we become self-focused and when self becomes our God, we're going to bleed to death slowly but surely.

Now, these are numbers again. If I would ask you today, out of all the creatures in the animal world, sea creatures, birds, animals, whatever of creatures out there, which one would be responsible for the most human deaths? What I would have guessed?

Probably a shark or a crocodile or a snake or even a dog. What would your guess? Anybody care to guess what it actually is? Mosquito had so caught it. That was probably the last on my list, mosquito. I thought the only thing mosquitoes do is make you mad when they sit on you and whatever. I didn't realize they're the number one killer, mosquitoes.

I think of that spiritually. We look at the false prophets. We look at the Jezebels. We look at the persecution, but what about the mosquitoes in our life that slowly but surely make their sting? Do they put things in or draw blood? Both maybe.

What could it be in our life that is slowly but surely causing us to bleed to death?

Another thing that Jesus lifts out to these people, your garments are defiled.

That's interesting that they lived in the city that was well known for their wool dying, their textile, their clothing, and all of that, and yet they came around with soiled clothing. Interesting. Jesus lifts that out. When there's one thing that happens in our physical, when our clothing are soiled or filthy, my wife can tell you what that is, some of the things. I come in from the barn. Oh, I can see and smell where you are. You were in the cattle barn, or I can tell you were changing oil or something, or I can smell you had a fuel spill. She can identify when my clothing are defiled, and spiritually speaking, he says there's clothing here that have been defiled.

What do you think might have happened? According to their history over there, their excavations, in their excavations, they find that in this particular spot, and I was never there. I wouldn't mind visiting this area, but they found that there was a temple where, according to the things they dug, it seemed like the church, the Christian church, had adopted that one particular temple as their worship service.

But there was one problem with that because this temple was right outside, right next door to a huge theater, not a theater. It was a, what do they call it? A gymnasium with a bathhouse in the back, and if you read history and see what goes on in those places, there's not a lot of godliness going on in those places. I mean, there's pagan worship. There's religious immorality.

There's many ungodly things. Now, if you were a Christian and you were worshiping God right next to that place, do you think that would have had an influence on whether your garments are going to be defiled or not?

Just that constant pressure. The Bible talks about wearing out the saints, and I believe that was too close. My opinion is the house of worship has no place next door to an attraction place like that. I think there should be a great separation. What can we learn from that today? Somehow their clothing got filthy.

It speaks of garments that are spotted by the world, and remember what James says about that? If we get our garments spotted by the world, we're going to make enemies with God. Think of it. We're going to inject ourselves as the mosquito does, and we're going to bleed to death slowly. I don't want to take too much time. I thought of some of those things in our day today.

Can we identify them? What is snuffing out the Christians today and bleeding us to death? We could talk about the god of self. Oh, we don't worship Demetrius. You know what she represented? She was portrayed as a beautiful woman on a statue. Supposedly, she made a commitment that she'll never get married.

Very interesting, though. They worshiped her as the god of fertility and life. That would have been appealing, wouldn't it? If you did not know the true life giver, Jesus Christ, you're going to turn to the goddess Diana because there's a promise of life, whether it's real or not. At least it has that appeal.

We could talk about our gods in America, simply the god of self, the god of money. Jesus says you can't serve that and serve Jesus. It doesn't work. What about the god of you make your own list this morning, but one that stood out to me, and here's numbers again.

I like to look at numbers. Football is the greatest sport in the world today. Here's numbers.

Football fans worldwide come to 3.5 billion.

How many people are in the world? That number to me is shocking. Do you know what? The top football player income just went beyond the record. I think this was for 2021 or so. All-time record, $200 million.

What would you do with $200 million? It reminds me a little bit of Demetrius back in Acts where he said, "You know what? Paul and these disciples are coming in there, and they're going to upset our wealth." Is there anybody in the Christian world today that is trying to upset this kind of God?

I'm here this morning. Now, another number. So we hold the 3.0 billion fans worldwide. According to counts or records, how many Christians worldwide? Now, this is not followers of Jesus, the ones that take discipleship serious. This is in name only. There's the count they come up with. If a person names the name of Christ and he says, "I'm Christian," but he still lives like the world, he counts as a Christian. Here's the number, approximately 200, no, 2.2 billion.

That's way over a billion less than the football actor has. Those are big numbers, and I'm there thinking, what do you think Jesus thinks about that? So he's there in heaven. He's the one that gave his life for the human race, and he has a strong appeal and invitation to everyone to sit back and admire him, and guess what?

The football actor gets way over a billion people more, way more than that if we narrow it down to the followers of Jesus, but Jesus said, "The way that leadeth to destruction is a broad way," and there's going to be many people there on, "but the way that leadeth to life is a narrow way. It has a tight gate, and a few there be there on."

What's Jesus going to do about this?

Let's look at the top YouTuber. If there is some mosquito in our churches today that is injecting, what about social media? Harry Argo was just here and had a series of topics in our Bible school. I haven't listened to all of them yet, but I think he brought some things to our attention: the poison, the addictions, the attractions. I read the top YouTuber at this point has 240 million followers.

I get really nervous when I hear born-again Christians say that I follow him or her on YouTube or any other Facebook social media. I follow them. Jesus made it very clear, "Follow me," and he said, "If you're not willing to leave even father and mother."

A lot of these social media characters, you never met them. I never met them. All you know about them is you look them up. When people say they follow them, what does that mean? Does that mean every day? You say, "You know what? We know what we mean." Jesus knows what we mean when we make those statements.

If you're a follower, and forgive me, I'm just warning. I'm lifting out. If you're a follower to the point that every day, every day of your life, you have to somehow get up and look at this particular person that you admire, you never met them, never prayed with this person, but you have to follow this person because somehow this person is interesting. He or she does many things that are very admirable, and rightfully so maybe.

But suppose, suppose we would get up every day and we would open up the Word of God, and we would really become a follower of Jesus, and we'd read the passage and say, "Oh, remember the Bible says that he's going to come back to be admired of the saints?"

And if we're not admiring him today, when he comes and he opens the clouds and he comes back, are we going to admire him then? And you say, "Well, Jesus is boring. The Bible's boring. I read it over and over. I know what's in there. It's not my daily life." Maybe we say that at times, but let's not lose the wander.

Remember what Jesus in Isaiah 53, when he went to prison, we can read that every day and follow that and be admiring and following him. What about what he did to the ten lepers? What about what he did for the widow? What about what he did for the blind Bartimaeus? What about what he did for me when he changed my life?

Let's not lose the wander, brothers and sisters. Let's have him our number one. It is who I follow. All other relationships go by the wayside. Folks, we're not going to regret it on that great day when the clouds open and the voice of the archangel.

We're going to admire him then when I've been a follower all my life of something lesser.

He gives us a prescription here. So he tells this church, "You're dead." Now, he gives us a prescription for healing. Let's look at that. This slow bleeding death, he introduces himself as the person that has the seven spirits of God.

What does that mean?

Capital S, seven spirits. Is God made up of seven spirits? God has one Holy Spirit. It's the Spirit that speaks to you and me. It's the power of that Spirit that draws us to himself. That Spirit has different ministries. Let's look at I'll just read a passage in Isaiah 11, the prophecy of Isaiah, when he said, "And there shall come forth a rod of the stem of Jesse.

A branch shall grow out of his roots, and the Spirit of the Lord," number one, "is upon him. The Spirit of wisdom," number two, "is upon him. And understanding," number three. The Spirit of counsel," number four. The Spirit of might," number five. The Spirit of knowledge," number six.

Then the fear of the Lord," number seven. You see that completeness in the prophecy of Isaiah. That is all under the heading of one Spirit. Recently, my wife went through surgery, as most of you know, and in the day of our operation, she had some complications they ran into.

I mean, originally, there was one surgeon going to take care of the whole project. Complications came along. By the end of the day, they called three more surgeons in the operating room. Total of four surgeons in the operation.

When I think of this, this is the healer that says, "I can do it all. I have one Spirit. I am qualified to do every work that needs to be done for your healing and your restoration to coming back to Jesus and finding life again." That's how he introduces himself. He introduced himself to the church at Smyrna, the persecuted church, when they were on the brink of a different kind of death. Remember? They might lose their life. They were put to prison, and Jesus introduced himself to them as the one that was dead and is alive, and he said, "Stay faithful to death." That was a different kind of death. That was the death of the martyrs, and Jesus said, "If you're faithful to that, you're going to die, but praise God, you're going to live again."

Here's the remedy he gives for us, the prescription from the supernatural healer. I'm going to be involved in every one of your problems. I'm the physician. I have the seven different, would we say, ministries of the Holy Spirit to come to your aid. He says, "Now, your responsibility is to be watchful." Does that sound like Jesus in the Gospels?

Does it sound like the warnings the apostles give us throughout their letters to the churches? Be awake and be watchful. It's when we start relaxing in our Christian life. That is when that mosquito comes and injects us and causes us to slowly but surely bleed to death.

Now, he says, "The next thing in this watchfulness, there's two things that you need to be aware of in your watchfulness. Strengthen the things which remain." So there's a few believers here in this church yet that have not defiled their garments. He's saying to the rest of them, "Link arms with them. Strengthen them. Walk with them."

Thinking of a building that needs reinforced, I've been involved in putting slabs on rafters on a roof that's sagging from snow load. Maybe some of you were involved in propping up a building that's about ready to sag. Maybe some of you were involved in a door that's fallen off the hinges.

You didn't rip off the door and put a new door on. Jesus says, "Strengthen that which remains." So if you belong to a church and your church is struggling, let's take from this. That life that is still there, get behind it.

Get behind it. Support it. See the picture that he's giving us?

And then the next thing he says, "Remember your history. Remember. Look back." So this is a refresher course. He says, "You don't need to be reconverted. You don't need to be rebaptized." He mentions nothing of that, but he says, "I want you to remember what you've been taught and where you came from." They were taught Jesus Christ and him crucified, and the Bible tells us, "As you have received the Lord Jesus, so walk in him."

How have we received him? With joy? With gratitude? Peace? Joy? Love? Life? Wonder? Go back to that. Refresh it. That's what he's telling us. If you're feeling dead this morning, that's for you. That's for you. Go back. Go back. Let's not lose the wander.

Remember your history. It's interesting. He says, "While you remember, then hold fast." We're losing our grip, aren't we? Back when I was working on the construction crew, we were once putting a barn up and cleared out in the hills of West Virginia.

Just a few of us on the crew that day, and this was in the morning, mid-morning, hot morning sun. One of my coworkers was beside me on a ladder, and we had the ladders on concrete, very smooth concrete, and we were putting up a cornice or something. And here, his ladder slipped.

The feet of it slipped back, and he wrote that ladder all the way to the concrete. And as he's going, he's hitting a few things here and there, and he got down, and I'm like, "Oh, dear. We don't even really have phone service. I mean, we're back here in the boonies."

And his lips were bleeding, and I'm like, "Are you okay?" "Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm okay." Well, the next thing I know, he's falling over. He's fainting, and I take him and say, "Are you going to be okay?" And he's out.

He's obviously not okay, and I didn't know what to do, where to run for help or whatever, way back in the woods like that. So then he came to again, and every time and this was going in and out for quite a while.

Every time he came to, my first question, "Are you okay? Should we go for help?" "No, no. I'll be okay. I'll be okay." And again, he wants to fall over, and while he's doing that, "I'm okay."

You know what? We finally put him in the van and put the air conditioner on him and got him cooled down. He's all sweated and bloody. And finally, when he came to himself, as Jesus said about the prodigal son, he came to his senses.

Before that, he's wondering why in the world he's here and what happened and all this confusion. And the mosquitoes can do that to us as well spiritually, where we become slowly but surely sort of sleepy, and we forget why we're here, and we forget how we got here, and we forget, "Why are my lips bleeding? What happened?"

But when we got him cooled down and his senses came back, now things became clear again. He did end up being okay. Well, I think he rested the rest of the day, but we needed no more help necessarily. I'm using that as an example. In our Christian life, the devil loves to inject lies and numb our senses, and Jesus is here saying, "While you remember, I want you to hold on for dear life."

Closing, we want to look at three of the blessings that he gives. This church here, obviously by the writing, it's made up of two groups of people. You have the few, and then you have the church that is dead, the few that do not have their garments defiled, and the first word is to the few. Do you notice what he says about them?

The few, and I think we want to highlight this. This is to the few that were the faithful ones.

Verse 4, "Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments, and they shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy." That last phrase just really stuck out to me. Every one of us this morning would say we're unworthy to walk with Jesus in white apparel, pure and white, but Jesus highlights these people as the faithful ones.

And if you and I remain faithful to what we have experienced in Jesus, we build on that. We grow in the grace of God. We hold on to that with dear life, and we reject any other God of this world.

We are in this number by the promise of Jesus Christ, and he said, "You can walk with me." Is that in the church? I believe it is. I would like to think that these few were the very reason the candlestick was still here.

I would like to think that these few were the very reason that Jesus was still walking right in the midst of this church because he said, "You can walk with me in purity." Now, to the rest of them, he says, the rest of them, the ones that are dead, he says, "If you overcome or repent," as he brought out earlier, he has good news for them.

He says they're going to wear garments, a raiment clothed in white. That symbolizes in the book of Revelations. It symbolizes purity, victory, and celebration. And all three of those words are good news, by the way. The Gospel has in it the gift of repentance. The way of repentance produces really good news. You see that?

White clothing represents celebration, and he says, "I'm not going to do what I was going to do." Now, commentators of the Calvinist persuasion waste a lot of discussion on this phrase. I read it this way: Jesus is there with his white-out brush, as we would say in our modern day, and he's considering removing these names except they repent.

Is that how we read this? It's really close. If you don't repent, your name is going to be taken out of the book of life.

Modern-day commentators go out of the way to try to prove that that's not what he meant, but that's how I'm going to take it. It's how I understand it, folks, that if we're dead this morning and if you know you're dead and we don't repent, your name might be still in the book, but you know what? Jesus only has the authority to decide when to take it out. That's how serious this is to these people.

I take that as a very positive thought because he should have taken the name out before if we're dead, right?

And then he says in closing, "I will confess his name before the Father and the angels." But this man in Hebrews 7:24 to 26 talking about the priesthood, "But this man, because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood; wherefore he's able also to say them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth and maketh intercession for them. For such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens." That is our God, and he says, "That's what I'm going to confess. I'm going to tell God. I'm going to tell all the angels that you repented.

You were dead." The angels seem to know that. God knows that, but Jesus says, "I'm going to come along your side, and I'm going to confess to God that Brother so-and-so, Sister so-and-so, turned back and found life in me." He's confessing. He's interceding. He's standing with us, and he's there for us daily. God bless us to that passion. Any thoughts or anything before we pray?