Are You Living in a World of Recreational Christianity?

When a train, plane or ship gets moving, it's kinda of difficult to get it to stop. You can turn the power off and it will still go for quite awhile. Even in big churches, once you get the momentum going, we can become complacent. We see this even in today's modern times. The question you should be asking is "Are we still doing God's work here?" Churches should always contemplate before making any decision, is how will it glorify the church or glorify the Lord?

Are you a Christian? Because when you say that, you make that a public declaration to the world what your life should look like. We better be careful when we say it because when you say you are a "Christian," it means "I follow Christ!" We are now living in a world of recreational Christianity. We just want to bring Him out on Sunday's only and even then, we don't want our pastors to go one minute over their allotted time slots. No more than an hour to an hour and a half. We put Jesus back after that.

Remember the signs of dying church? One of reasons is when Jesus Christ is no longer consulted. Jesus is either the Lord and Savior of your life, or He isn't your Lord or Savior! When pastors stop seeking the will of God, then the hearts of the people will likely follow. It's a very frightening thing when that happens. Is God working through the pastor of your church? You know that pastors will stand before the throne and give an account to what they are teaching duties of any church. Jesus Christ when writing this letter to the Church of Sardis, He is addressing it to the church leaders, but also the the leaders of the church age as well. We have learned in our study into the Book of Revelation that in each of these letters to the seven churches, they also apply to certain aspects of our own spiritual life at one point or another. This is the reason we ask, "What kind of church are you?"



If you are a believer in Jesus, one of these letters in the Book of Revelation, applies to you right now in your life. In this case with the Church of Sardis, Jesus' letter indicts the church on a few things.

1. Complacency: You never take your hands out of your pockets. You don't do anything for the Lord, you're not interested in that. This church of Sardis began to slack off. They had quite the reputation. Out of all the churches in the seven letters, Sardis was the most popular church. Everyone knew about the church of Sardis, it had a reputation. If it existed today, we would send people to that church to learn how to grow the church and its ministry. The church was so accepted in the community that the community began to depend on the church for godly things but for conditional things. They became comfortable.

Vance Havner writes in his book, Playing Marbles with Diamonds, that we need the Holy Spirit to comfort those who are afflicted and afflict those that are comfortable. They wanted messages that only made them feel good, no negative comments in their sermons. They didn't want people to tell them what to do. Only positive messages from the pulpit please! No one took the church seriously anymore.  They had grown complacent when it grows old. They were rotting in the church with how comfortable they were. They didn't want anything new in their church. They don't like the color of the carpets, or chairs, music or anything different than what was their traditions dictated. Is your church growing old?

Do you hear things like, "Well this is the way we have always done it." Maybe the Holy Spirit wants to do something different. Do your pastors messages sound the same? Pray for your pastor, that He spends time alone with God in study, you have to get the messages from God, not the internet or in some book. It's like eating old manna. You ever eat old bread? You might eat it if you were dying. A pastor needs to be spending study time with God and have God dictate the message. A pastor should never want to hear that "his messages all sound the same." If a pastor stops growing, so will his church through his messages to them.

2. Jesus is the proprietor of His church, paid for with His own blood. It was bought and paid for by His blood on the cross. You just need to accept the offer. It needs to left in the hands of Jesus to use as His will. He is in charge. That regardless of a churches condition, progress or failure, the Holy Spirit is always watching. And God is patient, giving man time and opportunity to repent, or to strengthen up in spiritual matters. Have you ever thought about how your doing in your relationship with Jesus Christ?

Jesus has the seven spirits of God = watching.
and the seven stars = the men who answer to God for the direction of that church.

Pastor Jesus was saying in the end, these men will answer to Me alone.

3. If we don't consult Jesus, it's over. Human now take over the church, if we won't consult Jesus. That just like Porky Pig saying, "That's all folks" at the end of the cartoons. Haven't you seen a local church is your town, dry up and blow away? When Jesus is no longer consulted, the church begins to die from the inside out. In the letter to the church of Sardis, at the conclusion of verse 1, that is all the good that Jesus had to say to them. From here on out it was all downhill.

What kind of church are you, when the Holy Spirit is no longer in power! When's the last time you asked God to fill you with the power of the Holy Spirit. We can't live Christianity without His power. They lost the power and person of the Holy Spirit.

Revelation 3:1b -2~ " I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God."

The worst patients are doctors, because they know what goes on. Like a passionate surgeon, here Dr. Jesus, the Great Physician, cuts into the body of the church of Sardis, and looks inside and is sickened by what He sees on the inside, and sees spiritual cancer and disease of complacency. He stops and begins to stitch her up, saying "you are as good as dead. There is nothing I can do here." Instead of marching forward, it had become easier to boast of past victories.

"Christianity has no grandchildren; and a church alive for Jesus Christ, will never turn into a coffin."

Sardis was resting on its reputation, and for this reason, Jesus denounces it as a dead church.  Are you willing to be revived? This was the only hope for the church of Sardis. Maybe God is trying to lay you open through things going on in your life so He can revive you and bring you back. Are you willing?

How Does a Church Die?

Welcome back to our continuing Bible Study into the Book of Revelation, the only book of the Bible that promises a blessing on those who read and hear it's words. We've been going through this in very detailed studies, not trying to rush through anything so things are explained that may have been misunderstood or simply didn't understand because you can't simply just read the words, in the book, you have to study them, specific words in the original context in Hebrew, Greek or other word origins, because as we studied thus far into the letters to the seven churches, they were not only really churches in Asia Minor, now modern day Turkey, but they also chronicled the age of the church and lastly that each of these letters are applicable to us as believers in our current spiritual state. This is what prompts the question in each of these studies to "What kind of church are you?"

We begin today with the Church of Sardis or the fifth of the seven churches, Jesus personally addresses here. One thing you don't want is to be anything like the Church of Sardis. It was a church that was very complacent, they were in a lucrative and affluent area, very successful, they were very comfortable in their culture and thus the reason for the rebuke from Jesus. He warns them to take their eyes off of the things of this world and back onto the things of Heaven and faith. He tells them, they believed they had a great name. He says, you're alive, but I say you're dead. There was no heartbeat in this church towards the things of heaven. They had become complacent and settled on their laurels. He basically tells them to ship out, and even reminds them that there are a few in the church that are still hanging in there, he alludes them to get it together otherwise their name might be blotted out from the book.

We need to understand that if you are truly a Christian believer, and have found salvation and repented of your sins through the offering of Jesus Christ, your name will never be blotted out from the Lamb's Book of Life. The reason Jesus is addressing the church here is that some may not have been so solid in their faith, they looked the part but were lacking true salvation on the inside. The question we need to look at our own spiritual lives is this, is your name in the Lamb's book of Life? Do you know Christ personally?

So when looking at the churches in the Book of Revelation, we are also to take a look at what kind of Christian you are because each of these letters deals with things believers struggle with. You and I are a church, in our home, in our work, the people we hang out with. We are a witness. You are a church in your own life. It defines the kind of church you attend as well. We learn churches are impacted by their leadership, so the way the church goes, so does it's leaders and pastors.

Today we are looking at how does a church die? Churches aren't supposed to die, they are supposed to live, because they are alive due to their belief in Jesus Christ which can never die. How many of us have grown up in communities that have watched churches die? Why does that happen? We know the gates of hell that will not prevail against His church. They won't prevail, but the truth is that churches start and fail. Jesus wrote this letter to a church so sick that it had died.

He is calling out to them to remind them what is happening to them. The church of Sardis on the surface, looked like a church you wanted to attend on the outside. It was the desired tourist stop in the Ancient world. It was a beautiful place, located in the valley of Hermus, east of Smyrna on the Mediterranean and south of Thyatira. It is modern day "Sart" and that is all that is left of the city of Sardis of that day. There are lots of tremendous ruins still available today. Isn't wonderful that we can still go to places like that today, based on the Bible, and prove it is not a story or fable. Our faith is based on fact today. The church was been the greatest influence in the world today. It is raising the standard of what we see like women's rights to be treated well, we get that from the Bible.

Sardis was the most famous of the Lydian regions of the Roman Empire. In fact if you saw the movie Gladiator, you have seen the most historically accurate Roman Empire at about the time of the writing of the book of Revelation. It is the most accurate recreation of Rome based on the facts we know about Rome from that time. In fact the historian Eusebius, tells of a letter from Melito, the bishop of Sardis, when he wrote to the emperor Marcus Aurelius and his son, Com-mo-dus, counseling them to enact a decree to the magistrates of Asia Minor, to stop all persecutions of the Christian churches, and to take no further evil actions against the Christians.

Sardis was a comfortable church, easy place to live in. Welcome to the City of Sardis, It was considered the greatest city of its day, at an elevation of 1500 feet above the Hermus valley, with a 360 degree view, it was considered impregnable from invading powers. It was well fed by a fresh water river, Pack-ta-lus. However Sardis was conquered. The King of Lydia was a man named Creesus, an extremely wealthy and powerful man, who resided above that perfect elevated city of Sardis. He believed that he had been called by his god (Delphi) to rule the world. He consulted with oracles about if he should conquer the world. He believed what they told him that he could attack and destroy other cities.

And so rumors of war began to spread. So the King Cyrus of Persia sent spies to survey the region and the city of Sardis. One night history records, William Ramsey writes, how a Persian spy watched a Sardian soldier drop his helmet over the side. He traversed a secret path, picked up his helmet and went on his way. It was that little observation by that Persian spy that enabled the Persian forces to sneak into the city that night undetected and took the city. Later Antiochus III,  brought his army to Sardis and guess what? Captured it exactly as the Persians had done. Sardis means the ones who have escaped. But escaped its spiritual carnality or escaped its invading forces?

Revelation 3:1-6 ~ "To the angel of the church in Sardis write: These are the words of him who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God. Remember therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you. Yet you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy. He who overcomes will, be like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out his name from the book of life, but acknowledge his name before my Father and his angels. He who has a ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. (NIV)

What kind of church are you, when Jesus Christ is no longer the counselor or consulted as a church. (verse 1a). They became comfortable. When He writes to the Sardis, it is an open rebuke to the church. Are you disgusted in your performance as a Christian? When we proclaim we are a Christian it means that we follow Christ.

It is so easy to slap on a label or a sticker. What we need to ask our ourselves is what is behind our label or sticker. We need to make sure we are representing Jesus well in our lives and not just recreational users. The world these days is looking for the real deal, can it be found it you? If we live our lives, empowered by the Holy Spirit, we will attract a world, that is hurting, especially in light of the growing persecution that is happening around the world. Did you know on average 362,000 Christians die every year for their faith, most in Central and Northern Africa and that number is growing?

So why would you want to claim this kind of faith when it could get you killed? The church today needs to grow in its purity and strength and stop being a cancerous growth.