SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/9/2015
1:59 PM
My Worship Time Focus: Introduction to Sardis
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Revelation
3:1-6
Message
of the verses: “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.
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. 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. 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. 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. 6 ’He who has an ear, let him hear what the
Spirit says to the churches.’”
Jesus calls this church “The dead
church,” and if that is what He calls it we have to believe that was what it
was when He sent this letter to them. I
wonder what they thought about this letter when they got it or do I need to
wonder what they thought about, for the church disappeared along with the city
so they could not have listened to what the Lord said in this letter He wrote
to them.
John MacArthur gives a very
interesting analogy about this church in his introductory comments on the
chapter he writes about this church and I would like to share it with you. “The vast distances of interstellar space are
unimaginably immense. The nearest stars
to us are trillions of miles away. Those
large distances have forced astronomers to come up with an appropriate measurement
unit, the light-year. One light-year equals
the distance that light, traveling at more than 186,000 miles per second,
travels in on year—more than 6 trillion miles.
“The enormous distance to even the
nearest stars presents an interesting possibility. If a star thirty light-years away from the
earth exploded and died five years ago, we would not be able to tell by looking
at it for another twenty-five years.
Though no longer in existence, the light from that star would go on
shining as if nothings had changed.
“Such a church was the church at
Sardis. It was reputed to be alive, but
the Lord Jesus Christ pronounced it to be dead.
The downward spiral depicted by these churches, beginning with the
Ephesian church’s loss of its first love for Jesus Christ and continuing with
Pergamum’s worldliness and Thyatira’s toleration of sin, reached a new low at
Sardis. The church at Sardis could well
be nicknamed ‘The First Church of the Tares.’
It was a church dominated by sin, unbelief, and false doctrine. Like the fig tree in Jesus’ parable, it bore
leaves, but no fruit (Matt. 21:19).”
We know from our study so far in
Revelation that this church was an existing church when John penned this
letter, but it also represents many churches in our day as well as throughout
history there were many churches like this one.
I will now quote from a paragraph
that I wrote in my first study or Revelation and this one is dated
03/07/2005: “This church had the
reputation of being alive, yet in fact Christ reports that it is dead, as seen
in this verse (verse one). The church
was living on its past reputation, and that is not good at all, for if you stop
growing as a church then you go backwards, and then you can give opportunity
for the enemy to come and slow the work completely. It is uncertain if there were many true
believers here who were doing carnal works, or works in the fliesh, or if there
were actually many unbelievers attending this church, however the fact remains
that the churches reputation was life, when in fact it was dead.” With that last statement we could say that
this church was the opposite of the church as Smyrna: “’I know your tribulation and your poverty
(but you are rich), (Rev. 2:9a).”
Spiritual
meaning for my life today: As I look
at the decline of the churches in these two chapters of Revelation I do not
want to make the first step by not loving the Lord as I should love Him, for as
I go through the study of these churches I understand that by losing your love
for Jesus Christ you can end up like the church at Laodicea and have Christ on
the outside wanting to come in.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Love the
Lord with all of my heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to better understand
the love He has for me.
Memory
verse for the week: 2 Peter 1:10.
10
Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain of your calling
and choosing you; for as long as you practice these things, you will never
stumble.
Answer
to yesterday’s Bible question: “Ethiopia”
(Acts 7:27).
Today’s
Bible question: “Who preached the
baptism or repentance for the remission of sins?”
Answer
in our next SD.
2/9/2015
2:34 PM
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