Dennis Tuuri

# Revelation 3:1-6

Please turn there in your scriptures. Just comment while you’re turning that in the northern hemisphere at least, this revolution from night to day actually occurs around the time that the church has historically for many years celebrated Christmas. There was some rock carvings found in West Virginia that indicated there were Celtic missionaries here in probably the 6th or 700s AD. And these rock carvings describes the coming of Christ in a cave at Christmas time in December, correlating that to the winter solstice.

This revolution of the world from night to day. Revelation is of course the trumpeting forth of God’s word. The trumpet section is the business section of it. Bells are kind of a modern day church equivalent to trumpets. So when we read this trumpeting forth that indeed right shall prevail, the Lord Jesus Christ shall rule. This book of Revelation is very relevant to such a topic. Revelation 3:1-6 is part of that trumpeting forth then and it actually correlates to the trumpet section of the book.

Please stand as we read this piece of God’s word that is a command word to us. Revelation 3:1-6. And to the angel of the church in Sardis, write these things says he who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your works, works that you have a name that you are alive but you are dead. Be watchful and strengthen the things which remain that are ready to die for I have not found your works perfect, that is completed before God.

Remember therefore how you have received and heard. Hold fast and repent. Therefore, if you will not watch, I will come upon you as a thief and you will not know at what hour I will come upon you. You have a few names even in Sardis, who have not defiled their garments, and they shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy. He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels.

He who has an ear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches.

Let’s pray. Father, it is our desire to hear what you say to the churches, both individually and corporately. And we pray Lord God that your spirit would open our hearts which all too often we keep closed. We pray father that he would write this word upon our hearts that it might change us and change our world. We thank you Lord God that you tell us that as our purpose is to come and worship you, we leave with faces that shine being transformed by your word and then bringing that transforming power of the Holy Spirit and word—Christ’s word—to the world. We thank you for these things. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen. Amen.

Please be seated.

In the churches that claim a Reformation heritage there’s a discussion about the lectio continui or the lectio selecta. What that means is lectionary reading—lectio continui, continuous, or lectio selecta, selected—and it refers to how you select sermon text. And there are some elements of the Reformed faith that are very insistent on lectio continui, that you’re supposed to take a text of scripture and preach through that entire book. And others say, “Well, no, it seems to be legitimate—Paul did that—to select text.” And I think that as with exclusive psalm versus preponderance psalm, we want to have a good abundance of psalms in our worship. But I do think it is certainly legitimate to sing hymns.

Well, the same thing is true of preaching. It’s legitimate to take at Christmas time or other particular times and seasons selected texts to preach upon. This year I decided to go for lectio continui, however, and God has brought in his sovereignty to a text that would not be seen normally as a Christmas text. Of course, however, hopefully this congregation is becoming sophisticated enough in the word of the Lord and the ways of God to know that these seven letters to the churches are an excellent section of scripture for Advent and a celebration of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

‘Cause that’s what they’re all about, isn’t it? They’re about Jesus coming in various ways. And this text is an interesting one because it’s somewhat different from the four that preceded it in various ways, and we’ll look at that as we go through this text. I think we’ll see that indeed as I’ve stressed last week, that since Christmas is a time of celebration and preparation, this text will be quite useful for both themes of celebration and preparation.

Remember I’ve tried to get us to think about that our celebration—we don’t celebrate as the world celebrates. They celebrate the season. They celebrate the lights. We celebrate the lights from presence as they reflect the great truth. We celebrate the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And our preparation is different too. Certainly there’s abundance of preparation we must do for the kind of Christmases that most of us celebrate in America in the 20th century.

But behind that I hope we see that in our busyness and activity what we really are trying to do is prepare our hearts for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ in the church’s liturgical season. Advent is a time of fasting as is Lent. Now, I don’t hold to that. I think the scriptures give us many, many days in the Old Testament of feasting and only one fast day. And the Christian life should be marked by feasting, not fasting.

The bridegroom has come after all. And while he has gone to prepare a home for us, he has sent his spirit that might bring us things of himself. And so we’re to be joyous celebrating Christians. Although the aspect of fasting that is preparation is certainly very, very important to the Christian life as this text tells us.

All right, let’s look at the text itself. And I’ve prepared no outline for the adults. You’ll all have to be little children today. And I am actually using the same outline for myself as you have there. So I’m a little child today, too. And we hopefully will have that expectation of children for Christmas that God might reveal himself in some way here that causes us to prepare better and to celebrate more joyously.

First of all, this text is to the church at Sardis. Remember we’ve talked about the names of these churches meaning things. The scriptures’ names are kind of like engine names as they say—they mean things. And Ephesus meant desirable and Smyrna meant perfumed. And Pergamos was a fortress, you know, like the advanced location of an advancing troop. A fortress settled there. Not defensive, offensive fortress. And then the last church we looked at had a name that meant—Thyatira—it meant an aroma of oppression. So the names are starting to change.

Well, this name is certainly changed because Sardis, while we don’t know its exact meaning, is related to the root word that becomes our sardonic. Maybe some of you older folks have seen Dr. Sardonicus, a horror movie from the past. Guy always has this big leering grin on his face. And I can’t think of the word sardonic without thinking of Dr. Sardonicus. Well, this church is sardonic. It is scornful and see that it is hypocritical.

So this is not a good name. You don’t want to be sardonic in your Christian faith. But these people were. So right away from the very name itself, we have this indication that this church has a different sort of letter coming to it.

We’ve talked about the fact that these middle three of the seven—okay, so 3, 4, and 5 are the middle sequence of the sevenfold sequence. And these three, four, and five churches exhibit discipline. Remember the third church had the few in there that taught the doctrine of Balaam. Just a few. And then the fourth church, a bunch of people there were part of Jezebel’s band, her children. And then now in Sardis, there basically nobody left. There’s a few names in Sardis that haven’t defiled their garments. So there’s progression. If a church fails to exercise church discipline, things get worse and worse and worse and the church will rot out as it were.

And so that’s a big lesson of this middle sequence.

Now, we’ve also talked about how these churches relate to the creation days. And while this is a little more of a stretch if you want to look at it that way, you know, you could take this just as application of the text and a way to remember this fifth church if you don’t want to see this as interpretive. But let me just say what was created on the fifth day.

Now, the fourth day assertions are real easy. The fourth day in these sevenfold cycles that are common in scripture—the sun, moon, and stars, the most obvious. What’s made in the fifth day? Can you think in your mind what’s made on the fifth day? Now, if you’re young, I’ll give you a pass on this, but if you’re older, you should know, and you shouldn’t have to look it up, although we frequently do, particularly as we get older and our memories start to fade.

But the fifth day, it’s not man and beast. That’s the sixth day. So, what is it? It’s the swarming teeming things in the heavens and in the sea. So, it’s all those sea monsters and fish that swarm in the context of the sea. You watch these shows on Discovery, swarming things in the sea, and then you watch these big crops of birds and stuff—swarming things. Swarming and teeming is what it says in the account in Genesis 1 of the created things that dress the earth in a sense as the earth has been brought through these first four days of creation.

The fifth day takes on this swarming and teeming association. So there’s swarms of things in both the sea and in the heavens. The world is made in three layers. There’s this below the waters and then there are things that are on the land and then there are things that are above the land. Okay? So you got the heaven or sky, the earth and the sea—the top and bottom one and three. Look at it that way.

And where things teem and those are the things that are created on the fifth day, and then on the sixth day the beasts of the field are made and that includes man as the crown of that creation on the sixth day. Well, what did the church at Sardis teem with itself in the context of its description here? Well, the text tells us that they are teeming with deadness. The text says Jesus comes to him and says, “I know your works. You have a name that you’re alive, but you’re actually dead.” And then he says, “There’s only a few of you. You have to strengthen the little bit of things that remain. Even those few things that you have left are about ready to die. You’re mostly dead.” I guess in the words of a popular movie the last few years, you’re mostly dead here. You’re dead. The few things still alive, but they’re even dying off.

And there only a few names in Sardis that have not defiled their garments. And the defiling of garments is a picture of the spread of death. And so the church at Sardis, if you walk into it, looks real good and healthy. Maybe lots of social programs going on and whatnot. Lots of people there maybe. But Jesus looks at it and what he sees is death teeming in the context of the church, flowing around, swarming in the context of that church, is a big pool of death and destruction. The people who are there are dead people, zombies walking. And so what teams at Sardis is not the living aspect that the Holy Spirit brought forth on the fifth day, but rather it is the teeming aspect of death and destruction.

Now we said that these letters to the churches seem to correlate with Old Testament history. We move through the garden period with Ephesus and then we talked about the patriarchal period. We talked about the period of the time in the wilderness. We talked about the monarchic or kingdom period with the reference to Jezebel, Thyatira, etc. Well, what does this remind us of? Well, you’ve got a little remnant group there, a remainder. And actually, that’s what it says: “Strengthen the things which remain.” Strengthen the remainder. You kids do your division problems. That little thing you got left at the end is the remainder in a long division problem that doesn’t come out equal.

Well, you’ve got this little remainder there, this remnant of people left, and most everybody else is dead. Well, it obviously correlates to the remnant period then that followed the monarchic or kingdom period both in the south and in the north. Remember what happens is they apostatize and eventually both north and south are taken into captivity. It’s that bad. Jeremiah in a way is sort of like this epistle—he’s trying to strengthen the little bitty things that remain in the context of some people who are the remnant left in that period of apostasy and then the tearing down of the kingdom period before the restoration.

So what period this reminds us of from the Old Testament is the remnant period after the kingdom.

Now Jesus tells us—let’s go to the text itself now. We did a little bit of review that way. Let’s look at the text and we’ll get to the remainder of the outline as we go through this text. Okay. And so to the angel of the church in Sardis, meaning scornful or sardonic, right? These things says he which has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars.

And I don’t want to major on this, but I do want to point this out because we’re going through this text that it’s an important verse as every verse in the scriptures is. The description of Jesus is that he has the seven spirits. Now, what are the seven spirits? Well, we learned early in Revelation 1, it’s the sevenfold action, the teeming aspect, if you will, of the spirit of God that brings new life in creation to the world and to this new creation in Christ.

So the seven spirits here refers to the Holy Spirit in the fullness of his work. And very importantly, Jesus ties the Holy Spirit to himself. He has the seven spirits. The spirit doesn’t come to speak of himself, does he? Jesus said, “I’ll send you the spirit. He’ll teach you things of me. He comes to teach and to bring to your life. He’s the active agent of the trinity involved in your life primarily. I mean obviously the Father and Son are there. The Son is there through the spirit. But it’s the spirit of God that moves in the context of his people. And that spirit doesn’t operate in isolation from the Son.

There was a heresy several centuries back called Amyraldism. And what it referred to were people that believe supposedly in the sovereignty of God, but they only really kind of believe sort of in four points not five. The fifth point in terms of limited atonement they sort of define differently. This is what they said. They said that Jesus intended to die, gave his death as a hypothetical atonement for all men. But then the Holy Spirit comes and the spirit is selective in terms of who he applies the atonement to.

Now it’s subtle but the great sin in that position is breaking the spirit and the son apart. See the son comes and he gives his life for everybody. Hypothetical atonement for all, and the spirit comes and he decides no, only some are going to get this atonement. So it’s breaking off the work of the spirit from the son. Modern-day heresies do that also—they refer to the spirit as something that gives you extra-biblical revelation and knowledge and sometimes even opposed to the very word of God itself, for people to study their Bibles and see what it says about particular situations.

The spirit and the Reformers were exceedingly emphatic about this. The spirit speaks from Christ and his word. Christ is the Word. The spirit does not operate autonomously from Christ. Well, I just wanted to point that out because it’s so important here that Christ has the seven spirits—unity. And he also says that he has the seven stars.

So, what are the seven stars? Seven stars are not the lampstands; the churches are the lampstands. They’re the pastors. And he doesn’t say here as he did earlier in Revelation 1 that he holds the seven stars in his hand. Here it says he has the seven stars. And this is a reminder that the church, the church that he will address and the pastor he’s addressing here is responsible to him for how they rule. See, the pastor isn’t supposed to be separated from Christ either. The pastor and the elders of the church and the people themselves represented by the pastor and elders are supposed to rule for Jesus Christ. And when they rule apart from him, then they violated this principle.

And in fact, they violate the truth. Because whether they like it or not, Jesus has them right in his hand. He has them. He possesses them. And if they fight against him, it’s not as if they’re apart from him. He’ll fight against them. Okay? So, this is who comes to them. And of course, he measures them by this standard. How well is this church obeying him? How well are they manifesting the seven spirits, the full action of the Holy Spirit?

And the answer to that is immediately given. What commendation is given here to this church? What good works of Sardis did Christ see? Remember we said this, the way these letters work is he comes, he says who he is and then he evaluates them. He says what they’ve done good and what they’ve done bad. Making a list, checking it twice. And he really does come. He says, “I know your works,” and what are they? “That you have a name that you are alive but you are dead.”

None. And that’s as you meditate through this letter, it tells you immediately what the primary focus of the letter is: the absence of good works. And that’s why I said this sermon is about good works and the providence of God. The Sunday school class was today as well—the necessity of good works, exhibiting faith. Jesus comes and he says, “You don’t got any works. You think you’ve got a lot of works, but in point of fact, you have no works that are made manifest to me. No works of mine.

Maybe lots of works of your own. Maybe lots of social action programs. Maybe lots of catechism classes. Maybe lots of doctrine classes. Who knows? Maybe lots of prayer meetings. Maybe long prayers. Maybe lots of exposition. None of these works are any good because they’re not done in connection to the kingship of the Lord Jesus Christ. And they’re not done in the context of the spirit who comes to brings things of Christ.

Okay, this church has dropped off the radar, so to speak. It has nothing to commend itself to Jesus Christ. They have no good works.

Now, it’s interesting that this particular city was very well-to-do, very luxuriant. Let me read a quote here. This was in the area of Lydia. Sardis is like the capital city of a section of geography called Lydia. And R.J. Rushdoony in his commentary, Thy Kingdom Come, quotes from Herodotus, who characterizes this particular church this way. And Rushdoony says they were kind of effeminate and easy living. Herodotus said this about them: “The tender-footed Lydians who can only play on the cithara, which is some musical instrument, strike the guitar, and sell by retail.”

So that’s kind of what that city was about. Sounds a little familiar with various sections of Portland, doesn’t it? In fact, it sounds familiar increasingly with American culture as we have had tremendous wealth—albeit created by the Federal Reserve system, printing up however much currency they think we’d like to have—tremendous wealth flowing through our culture, and we become more and more like the Sardis church.

Now, you know, Jesus is the one with X-ray vision. We’re not, but it’s hard not to see some rather obvious parallels between the church at Sardis and the church in America today. The church in America—many people say, “Yeah, we’re Christians.” A lot of people go to church. A lot of church activities are going on all the time throughout this country. But I think to many, many churches, the Lord Jesus would come and say, “We don’t have any works here. These things are done for the good of humanity. You celebrate the spirit of the season and not the Lord Jesus Christ. And ultimately, Jesus and Christianity is just a tool for you to teach a prosperity gospel that really has nothing to do with glorifying God in your works.”

So they didn’t have any works, and maybe one of the reasons was the great opulence in the context of which they lived.

So it’s interesting—quite different from the other churches. Quite different in the name of the church and quite different also in the context of the absence of works. Let’s look at another difference. He goes on to say, “Be watchful,” which means wake up. It’s like Tom Peterson—that’s the way to remember that line. Wake up. Wake up. You know those old commercials for Tom Peterson? That’s what this word “be watchful” here. Actually, that’s how actually how it’s translated in the NIV. Good translation. They’re sleeping in a death-like slumber. Wake up.

“Strengthen the things which remain, which are also ready to die. Even the few things you’ve got going for you are ready to perish. For I have not found your works perfect, that means completed. You haven’t completed the tasks that I’ve given you to do. They did things halfway. Okay, they did them in a halfway manner. They didn’t do things for excellence. They just sort of did them somewhat and didn’t find them completed.

There’s a sense in which this church is slothful. They may have a lot of activities. Remember when I preached on sloth? Sloth is not having a heart for the job that God gives you to do. Now, you may be quite busy at all kinds of things, but if you’re not moved in your heart to do what Christ wants you to do, then technically according to the scripture, you’re slothful.

And the slothful man, the Proverbs tell us, doesn’t roast what he takes in hunting. What does that mean? Well, he goes out, he starts well. He gets a rabbit or whatever it is, but then he doesn’t even bother to cook it before he eats it. He doesn’t add value to the thing that he has been given graciously by God in hunting. He doesn’t cook it, which makes it better. It adds value to the taste. So, the slothful man just sort of does whatever he has to do to get by.

And this church was also sort of like that in some ways because it wouldn’t complete tasks it was given to do. This should be a tremendous exhortation to all of us to do things for excellence, to do that thing we’ve talked about more and more a lot in these last few years at RCC—to mature. It speaks of the need for maturity. As we said last week, the church at Thyatira—same thing. How do you compare to how you were doing before? Are you maturing? In part, taking on a task—if you take on a task, do it well. Do it with excellence.

He goes on to say, “Okay, remember—keep in mind, in other words—therefore how you have received and heard. Hold fast and repent. Therefore, if you’ll not watch, I will come upon you as a thief and you will not know—rather you will not know what hour I come upon you.

What’s the enemy to the church at Sardis? Remember earlier we talked about at Ephesus you had the false prophets, and at Smyrna you had the synagogue of Satan, the Jews who were hurting the church. And at Pergamos, you had the Balaamites who were teaching people—Balaam, the false prophet, the false king—who would teach people to break God’s law, okay, and become Judaizers. And then in the fourth church at Thyatira, you had Jezebel and her band. All these enemies pictured to the church.

Where’s the enemy here? Well, it’s different, isn’t it? The enemy here is the church at Sardis itself. It’s the deadness of their church. It’s their own sin that is seen as the enemy to the Lord Jesus Christ. So, this really takes it home. Now, he’s kind of been taking it home anyway the last few, the last two letters, because they’re allowing this sin to go on. But here, it’s not like they’re allowing the sin to go on. Now, here they’re doing it. They are the enemy.

They’re pogo. We have met the enemy and he is us. Okay? There’s no external opposition probably because they were so ineffectual for the faith. But in any event, it’s another change. The name is a change. The no good works is a change. And here the enemies—some of which we’ve talked about from these other four churches—the enemies to Christ now is the church at Sardis itself.

Quite a change, and a real—as we prepare, go through a season of preparation for the advent of Christ, it really causes us to focus on who we are. Not on the enemies outside of the church, but on who we are. Have we become enemies to the Lord Jesus Christ in failing to manifest good works?

Now specifically we can say that their specific sin was a failure to do anything right. The third commandment says that we’re not to take the name of the Lord thy God in vain for God will not hold him guiltless who taketh his name in vain. And we think that means we shouldn’t swear. Well, yeah, it means you shouldn’t swear. You should use good sound speech and you shouldn’t take God’s name vainly or emptily when you utter a curse or an implication against somebody.

But the third commandment is far more broad than that. The third commandment says don’t take God’s name on you. Who’s taken God’s name upon themselves? Who’s taken God’s name? We all have here. We call ourselves Christians. Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He is God. So we’ve taken God’s name upon ourselves. It says don’t do that in vain, with vanity or emptily. It means when you profess the name of Jesus Christ, that you’re a church, that you’re a person who believes in Christ, do so with works that evidence the work of the spirit in your life.

James B. Jordan has talked about how those first three commandments—the first one primarily focuses on sins against the Father, the second sins against the Son, and the third sins against the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes to us, that sevenfold spirit of Christ comes to us to move us toward a full profession of the Lord Jesus Christ in word and in deed with things we do. And so the sin in Sardis was a failure to manifest good works, a violation of the third commandment.

They had taken the name as a Christian church and yet had done so in an empty, vain, useless way—vanity. That was their sin. Vanity not of mind or thinking they’re puffed up, but vainly or emptily naming the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, then we see a little change in the text. So, we analyze the church as a whole, but then he ends with some words of encouragement. Now, these help us to understand more of the problems at Sardis, but it really points us more in a positive direction.

Verse four: “You have a few names.” Let me mention, by the way, one other thing before I go on here. He says that if they don’t correct this vanity, this vain witness they have, he’s going to come as a thief in the night. And who does a thief in the night come for? If you look it up in scripture and other places, he doesn’t come to take the good away from the situation. When Jesus comes as a thief in the night, he comes to execute judgment on those who aren’t watching. Just like in the days of Noah—you know, people are playing and having a good time. And he doesn’t take Noah away. He takes the sinners away in judgment.

So he tells the church that is a vain church, “You don’t know. You’re going to be so puffed up in your arrogance and stuff, you won’t even know when I’m going to come, and I’m going to come and take you out.” That’s what he says.

Now Sardis was a city that was nearly impregnable. It was up on a hill and there was one way you could attack the city, but all you had to do, the geography was such—and all you had to do is post a guard back there who’d blow a whistle and you could easily defend the city if you just post one guard back there. But they didn’t do it. Twice in the history of Sardis, they failed to post guards at night and people came up and they were conquered by a couple of different conquerors simply through their failure to post guards. A failure of watchfulness, a failure of wakefulness. Just like the church here—Jesus is using very contemporary language here to warn them of what’s going to happen to them.

Actually, there was a third time too that Sardis was surprised in 19 AD, not that far before this. They were actually destroyed by an earthquake. Now, you can’t really prepare for that in a way except to be right with God. But they were also surprised by an earthquake. Two times by people breaking in, once by earthquake. Okay.

Then we turn in verse four to those few names. It’s interesting he uses the word “name.” Names and garments are a big—have a heavy emphasis in this epistle. “You have a few names even in Sardis who have not defiled their garments, and they shall walk with me in white—obviously white garments, for they shall be worthy.” Rather, “for they are worthy. He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments.”

So they’ve not defiled their garments. They’re going to walk with me in white garments, and I’m going to give them—he shall be clothed in white garments if they overcome. And then he goes back to the name: “I will not blot out his name from the book of life but I will confess his name before my Father and his angels.”

Why the angels? Because it’s a courtroom. Jesus confesses. The whole scene in Revelation, remember, is the throne of the Ancient of Days is set up. So, the whole ambiance to the situation is that Jesus confesses us before the Father and the angels who are present in the context of court situations.

Now, the obvious—there’s some obvious implications on the negative side of this. It means that most in Sardis have defiled their garments. Their clothes are dirty. They’re dead and they’re dirty, too. And also those in Sardis will have their names removed from the book of life. They’ll lose their salvation? No, they won’t lose their salvation. We don’t believe that. But what we do believe is that God’s book of life correlates to the book of church membership. It’s a book in which he adds names and erases them. Why? Because it correlates to the visible church.

When people are added to the roles of the visible church, it’s as if God wants us to think of it as if they’re written in the book of life in heaven. And when they’re excommunicated, they’re rubbed out of the book of life in heaven. He wants us to focus on the context of the visible church’s responsibilities. Christ has the church and her pastor in his hand. They’re an extension of him or they are to be properly. But at Sardis, there were a few people only that were going to—that had clean garments and we’re going to have them even whiter by Christ.

Now, garments are a big issue here. How do you get—if these most people at Sardis had dirty garments, how do you get clean garments? Well, first of all, how do they get dirty? It’s interesting to read the commentators here. They say, “Well, in the Roman culture at this time, the garments were used for this, and that or the other thing, and maybe it means this.” But no, all we got to do is look at the Old Testament.

These truths should be linked back to an understanding of what the scriptures say about them. We use all of the scriptures to understand the scriptures. We can look to the contemporary culture secondarily, but first we look at the Bible. And in the Old Testament, how do you have a problem with your clothes? Think about it a little bit. How do you have problems with your clothes? Well, I’ll tell you a few ways.

R.J. Rushdoony points out that you can have a problem with your clothes if you’re wearing the wrong kind of clothes. If you’re wearing a woman’s clothes and you’re a man or man’s clothes and you’re a woman—confusion of sexual roles and identity. And it’s interesting that many cultures when they get affluent, you have this confusion of roles as we do in America today. And that means that America has wrong, defiled, polluted garments on in a sense because it’s denied the proper functioning of the roles that God has established for men and women.

Well, Rushdoony also points out, you can get a garment polluted by leprosy. And of course, that’s a picture of the results of the curse and sin. And the third thing that R.J. Rushdoony points out is that your garment can be wrong if it’s made out of mixed fabrics. But it isn’t just mixed fabrics. It says very explicitly in Leviticus 19:19. You can look it up later. Leviticus 19:19—that you shall not make a garment, clothes, out of wool and linen specifically.

Wool and linen are distinguished in the Old Testament. In—not just the Old Testament—in the system in Israel while they were in the land with a centralized sanctuary, linen and wool had specific, very specific connotations. Ezekiel tells us that when the priest ministers in the temple, he’s not to wear wool. He’s supposed to wear linen. And it says specifically, it goes on to tell us why that is: because he’s not supposed to wear anything that makes them sweat.

So, you can get—you can have problems with your clothes if you’re wearing women’s clothes and you’re a man. You can have problems with your clothes if there’s disease on them. That’s a picture of sin. And you can have problems with your clothes if, in the Old Testament, if you—during the time in Israel—if you made a garment out of linen and wool.

Now, the priests would also have a problem with their clothes if they wore wool at all. They could have an all-wool garment. It would still be bad. Why? He didn’t want the priest sweating. Why not? Sweat’s a picture of the curse. Remember what happens to Adam when he dies in the garden? He eats the fruit, the wrong fruit, and he dies. And what happens? He starts sweating. “By the sweat of your brow, you know, you’ll have to work now to get this earth to make things for you. You got to sweat.” Sweat’s a picture of the curse and the results of man’s sin.

I heard a thing on the radio the other day. There, I think it was Stevie Nicks from Fleetwood Mac or something, who was trying to get the IRS to give her deductions for these expensive clothes she wears on these concerts because she wears them once—they’re so soiled by sweat she can’t wear them again. Well, they gave her 50% deduction. Not the whole deduction, but it’s a picture again of another way to get your clothes dirty—is to sweat a lot. And sweating a lot in the picture of the scriptures is a result of the Fall.

And then the final way you can get your garments dirty in the Old Testament is to have contact with things that are unclean or to walk into a room where there’s a dead person. It’s sort of like the death spreads to you. And now we don’t want to get into all the details, but here’s the picture. There are different levels of uncleanness or defilement in the Old Testament.

If you have some levels of uncleanness, all you got to do is go home, wash. You’re unclean till the evening. You’re okay. But if you have another level of uncleanness, like maybe you’ve touched a cow or something—a dead beast—then you’ve got to go out and you got to wash yourself and you got to wash your clothes. So the idea is that if your clothes have to be washed in the Old Testament, you have done something that is really a picture of the spread of death. See, any uncleanness is—when your clothes are dirty, it’s worse than if just you are dirty. If your clothes got to be washed, that’s a lot bigger hassle and it’s a lot bigger picture of how far the death has flowed by way of picture to who you are.

Okay, what’s the point of all this?

Well, the point is that at Sardis, they were in bad shape. They didn’t just need to wash themselves. They needed to wash their garments. They had gotten their garments defiled. They were probably having confusion of sexes and they certainly had the implications of the curse pictured by sweat and then defilement or death. That’s what’s going on. You walk into Sardis and we see people—what exists is teeming deadness and the deadness is spreading and it’s gotten so bad it’s even spread to the clothes of the people that are in there, and they really got to go through big time washing and change to change who they are.

Okay, garments are important in the scriptures. What do you do with a dirty garment? Well, we talked about this several weeks ago. We talked about Balaam. We preceded it by looking at Numbers 19. Numbers 19 says that if your garment’s real dirty—let me, not dirt, but you know what I mean? A picture of death. That’s what dirt and defilement means in the scriptures. Then what you’ve got to do is you got to take that garment and you got to wash it with stuff made from the ashes of a red cow with a red piece of wood or vegetable material and then red water. You got to take that and you got to wash your clothes in that.

And the book of Revelation says that the saints have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb. See, it’s not talking here—the Old Testament is not talking about how to give good medical advice to stop the spread of disease. That’s a nice side note to it. That’s not the picture. And it’s not talking about how you get clothes really clean. Don’t go out and say, “Gee, I know I can get my robes really shining white. The Bible says if I wash them in blood, they’ll come out white.” It’s not what it’s saying.

What it’s saying is that from Adam, sin, death, defilement, the curse is flowed out into the world. And the only way to remove that sin and defilement is blood—pictured by red water in the Old Testament, the blood of the Savior in the New Testament. And that blood pushes that effect of the curse—sweat—and it pushes that uncleanness and leprosy out of your garments and indeed makes them white because now you get Christ’s whiteness of garments. His goodness is imputed to your account. And guess what? Your will also then begin to do good works that are pictures of that righteousness as well.

The scriptures say in Revelation that the fine linen are the deeds of the saints. Well, at Sardis, they didn’t have those works, did they? They were void of works. They didn’t have the cleansing work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, they were in bad shape. And if they didn’t wash their garments, he was going to come and they were going to go down.

Now, what does this have to do with Christmas? Well, it’s really got quite a bit to do with Christmas, doesn’t it? We’re going to try in some ways this year—and it’s just certainly not encouraging you to—but the 12 days of Christmas, the whole point of that season leading up to Epiphany was to link the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, his birth, to his work, which resulted in his death and his sacrifice for people.

And so, Christmas is a picture—the coming of the Savior. And it’s the coming of the Savior who will begin to push back all the uncleanness of the world. We’ve talked about these correlations to the seven days of creation, the book of Revelation, because what Christ is doing in the book of Revelation—picturing his coming to the earth and his ascension after his sacrifice on the cross—is he’s bringing about a whole new creation. Everything’s going to become new.

The song “Joy to the World” says that he comes to make his blessings flow as far as the curse is found—to you, to your garments, to the uncleanness of the earth. The Lord Jesus Christ has come and for 2,000 years his blood has been at work cleansing the world and pushing back the effects of death and the effects of sin.

Jesus comes to us and he’s got X-ray vision and he looks at you and he says, “Well, do I see you doing anything for me? Are you doing any works?” You say, “Well, I don’t know if I’m doing any works, but I’m not following Balaam. I’m not following Jezebel. You know, I’m trying to be a good guy. I’m loving my neighbor. I’m thinking good thoughts about them. At least, you know, as I feel good about my neighbor and about my wife and my kids. I may not be doing anything, but you know, I’ve got my doctrine down. I know the Heidelberg Catechism—memorized it. I know the Westminster stuff.”

Jesus says, “I don’t care about any of that. If you don’t have works, you’re a dead man. And maybe your dead man is trying to hang roses on it. You know, the Grateful Dead is a skeleton with roses on its brow. Maybe that’s what you’re trying to do. You’re a dead man trying to dress yourself up like you’re alive. But hey, if you don’t have works, you’re dead. You’re dead. And even if you do have works, I see down to the depth of your being. And I see whether you’re really what you claim to be.

I see Sardis and everybody else looks at Sardis and they see good works. I look at Sardis and I see dead people. I see teeming, flowing death and defiled garments. Everybody there practically in need of whitening. That’s what I see.”

So, as you look at yourself and as Jesus comes this time of season, we meditate on this coming, think about it. Does he see any works in your life? And even if there are external works that people can see, what’s at the core of your being? Who are you there before Jesus? Are you sardonic? Are you hypocritical? Do you have a name that you live and yet are dead?

Well, as I said, the epistle ends on an up note because the epistle says the Lord Jesus comes that he might indeed cleanse his saints. Those saints in white at the end of this epistle, they’re the ones in Revelation 19 who ride out with Jesus. Remember those with white garments riding behind him to go into all the world and to bring that cleansing effect of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and to either take people out or to establish them in the Lord Jesus Christ.

What’s in a name? Emphasized over and over. Your name. Your name. Your name. Jesus Christ is who we celebrate at Christmas. He said he saves us from our sins. But he is Christ, the anointed King, and he will rule over his people. He saves us that we might serve him. He saves us that we might exhibit good works. He comes with the power, the flow of the Holy Spirit to make a new creation.

The sevenfold action of the spirit, the fullness of the spirit comes at Christmas time. That’s what we celebrate. And he comes to bring manifest himself by fruit in your life and by good deeds that are motivated not by pride but rather a desire to serve the Lord Jesus Christ. He comes with his blood to make atonement for our sins, to cleanse us, to create a new creation—make a new creation out of the world and then to apply that new creation and the strength of it to all things.

He comes indeed that he might push back the effects of the curse, that we might be clothed, and that the earth—remember I said that the fifth day the teeming things in the sky and under the sea. And then the sixth thing, the cattle that dress up the earth. Jesus comes that we might be dressed up with the fullness of the manifestation of the spirit in everything we put our hand to do—priestly, kingly, and prophetic.

Yeah, he comes and makes us real worried. We don’t want to be taken out. We don’t want him coming as a thief in the night to us. But we do want him coming to evaluate us and to cause us to wake up and to cause us to reconsecrate ourselves anew to works that we might be clothed in good works. Not that we stand before his presence in those works—we do only in the works of Christ—but that we might manifest, as the world is manifested by a dressing from God and garments from him. That our lives may be manifested by garments of good works of consecration to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Preparation and great celebration.

Let’s pray. Father, we do thank you for the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, for his coming to the world, world to indeed effect a new creation. We thank you Lord God that as cosmic as the entire created order and as personal as that—each one of us as we have become Christians by your grace—have become also a new creation. And as that original creation and the subsequent one is clothed with the manifestation of the spirit, we pray father that as we celebrate this season we would do so clothed with the good works that Christ has called us to do. In his name we pray. Amen.