Dennis Tuuri

Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Revelation chapter 3. 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, 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 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 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. And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia, write these things, says he who is holy, he who is true, he who has the key of David. He who opens and no one shuts and shuts and no one opens. I know your works. See, I have set before you an open door and no one can shut it. For you have a little strength, have kept my word, and have not denied my name.

Indeed, I will make those of the synagogue of Satan, who say they are Jews and are not, but lie. Indeed, I will make them come and worship before your feet and to know that I have loved you. Because you have kept my command to persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of trial, which shall come upon the whole world to test those who dwell on the earth. Behold, I am coming quickly. Hold fast what you have that no one may take your crown.

He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. And he shall go out no more. And I will write on him the name of my God in the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from my God. And I will write on him my new name. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. And to the angel of the church in Laodicea, write these things, says the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God.

I know your works that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth. Because you say, “I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,” and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire that you may be rich, and white garments that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed, and anoint your eyes with eye salve that you may see.

As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore, be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and dine with him and he with me. To him who overcomes, I will grant to sit with me on my throne. As I also overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

Let us pray. Father, it is our heart’s desire to hear what you would say to the churches today. We thank you, Lord God, for your evaluating presence amongst us. And we pray that your Spirit may do his work through his word to bring us to repentance and restoration as you renew covenant with us and prepare us, Lord God, to go forward more than conquerors in the spirit and power of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In his name we pray and for the sake of his kingdom. Amen. Please be seated.

Younger ones, we need to transact some business today. I need to have a little transaction go on here. I want to focus on a specific action as the application point of this sermon. I’m keying off of the instructions of our Savior to Laodicea. He informed them that they needed some transaction work going on with him on the Lord’s day.

Now, I’m not talking about buying and selling literally. I’m talking about the transaction that occurs as we come before God. Buying from him purity and holiness and consecration as we come before him, repenting of our sins, truly repenting from the bottom of our hearts, consecrating ourselves to live lives of repentance before him, and thus receive strengthening from on high, the eyes that discern, the clothes that indeed provide our covering and our beauty and glory in the context of the world round about us, and the strength that we need from him because we are about to die. Our sins would kill us. We need to transact some business today and I’m going to talk for an hour here or so, probably as I usually do, but really there’s a fairly simple application point. It’s fairly simple and it’s an action.

Ideas are important. Knowledge is important. But ultimately God calls the church to act. God says as he comes to the churches in Revelation, “I know something about you,” and he doesn’t say, “I know what you’re thinking.” I mean, that’s involved in it, but what he says is, “I know your works.” So as God comes with us today, he’s an evaluating presence in terms not of our intentions, not of our commitments relative to our speech, ultimately not how well we’re thinking about him, but what we’re doing. And that’s the judge ultimately of our thoughts and our actions.

I spoke on Psalm 131 last week at Christ the Sovereign Covenant Church. I spoke here on that psalm a couple of weeks ago, and I couldn’t help but think this last week about the Titanic, that movie that swept the Oscars. There are icebergs. We’re in an iceberg field. That church has its particular icebergs. One has been hit. This culture is headed toward an iceberg field. Surely they loom and they loom not too far in the distant future. We’re going to take on water as a culture, and it’s going to go through that fourth bulkhead and it’s going to fill the fifth, and the culture that is not Christian, that is opposed to Christianity, is going to go down.

We don’t know the manifestation, but we know that God is faithful. The question is, what will this church do? Will this church be a repentant church and will it survive the icebergs that God has in his sovereignty and love and mercy chasing those whom he loves? Will we hit those icebergs and react in a biblical way to the calamities and the judgments that God brings upon the culture and the chastisements that he brings upon his church?

And I can make that more personal. How will your family fare? You know, you’re not in isolation. We’re a church. We’re individuals. We’ve got our own icebergs that are bobbing and floating around us. Some of you have hit some. Some of you may be taking on water even as I speak. And what I want to do is urge you to action.

Psalm 131, the way it’s structured—remember that short little psalm has so much in it. At the center of that psalm are actions, works. “I do not exercise myself. I do not walk around and take action relative to matters outside of my sphere of calling that God has given to me. I’m not going to play boss today. I’m going to let him be the boss. I’m not going to play president. I’m not going to play pastor. Those guys have offices. I’m in a particular office. I’m going to man my station.”

Now, God may promote you. There’s nothing wrong with that. But while you’re in a station, man it dutifully. You got to put off exercising ourselves in things that are not in our proper sphere of calling. And we got to put off things that are too high for us, things that are beyond our intellectual capacity or our state of wisdom. And we cannot let ourselves worry about all that stuff when the ship starts taking on water. What we do have to do is put on certain actions of quieting ourselves and calming ourselves.

Actions. And as we take on those actions that are consistent with God’s word, God provides us this state of being the weaned child with restful hope. The state results from the context of the actions we take. Now, I know there’s a synergy involved there, but you understand the stress of Scripture and here in the book of Revelation as well is, “your works.” Well, you know, I’m going to urge you to some action.

And the action today is repentance. The culture—the Christian culture that quiets and behaves itself in the context of Titanic-sort-of problems and icebergs—is the ones that’ll get through. They’ll be like, you know, the old man and the woman in bed, you know, calming themselves in the face of sure death, or the mother reading to her two young children. Or even perhaps we’ll be called to particular action. Whether Jack Dawson was called to save his wife, you can’t do that stuff calm and assured in the face of certain death. Or to take action to save someone else if you let yourselves get all out of kilter and start flailing about.

You also can’t do it if you don’t do what these scriptures today we read command us to do, which is to be a people that engage ourselves in acts of repentance every day of our lives.

So the action I’m calling you to today—to put on to the action I spoke of a couple weeks ago, the calming, quieting, putting off bad, putting on the new man—the action today is one of repentance. It’s the same kind of thing, isn’t it? Repentance is a putting off and it’s a putting on.

Now, this action, it’s easy today. You know, we have a prayer time. It’s formal. So I’m not asking a lot from you, but you know, it’s kind of an installment plan sort of a deal because I think that what we should be doing—I believe the scriptures tell us what we should be doing—is every day of our lives should include some period of evaluation, formal or informal, about how well we’re doing compared to God’s standard in the word. And it involves then a degree of prayer of confession to God for our shortcomings.

I’m asking you to consider spending 15 minutes a night for the rest of your lives as you walk in this earthly body, and doing this thing that God says is so central to what the church of Jesus Christ is supposed to be—and that’s repentance. It’s to look back on the day and reflect on the sins you did that broke God’s law and reflect upon the sins you committed that didn’t fulfill God’s law. What is sin? The catechism tells us it’s any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God.

It’s not enough just to abstain from yelling at your wife. You have to positively love your wife. That’s a degree of speech communicating kindness, love, affection. It’s not enough to put off improper speech. You got to put on proper speech. That’s repentance. We’ll talk about that more toward the end of this sermon. But that’s the goal.

The application real easy upfront is that you commit yourselves today to engage in daily consideration of what sins you need to repent about to the Lord Jesus Christ. How have you offended his holy majesty on this particular day? And then on Monday and then on Tuesday? Because we do in many ways.

Now this is a message that every church should preach throughout the world. Church of Jesus Christ is to preach a message bringing people to repentance for their sins. Certainly as they enter into fellowship with God, but also in terms of that ongoing sanctification. But unfortunately, it’s not a message that is preached, or it’s a repentance that is not biblical repentance.

The big picture we had of that these last few weeks, as I mentioned before, is Billy Graham’s statement relative to Bill Clinton. These are public figures. I don’t know them. I don’t know who they are. I’m talking to you about the public representations of who these men are. It is worth noting that World magazine this past week had an article by Cal Thomas on Billy Graham’s statements relative to Bill Clinton.

First of all, I should tell you what happened. If you don’t know, Billy Graham on TV apparently said that he forgave Bill Clinton for his sins. “He’s a young, vigorous sort of fella and the girls throw themselves at him and it must be tough, you know, in his position,” so he forgives him. And Cal Thomas then wrote an article that World magazine published called “Go and Sin Some More”—kind of a takeoff on what we’re supposed to hear: “Go and sin no more”—because there’s no mention of repentance.

Well, the church today in general in America—I think most churches need to preach repentance more often than we do. We live in a culture that says everything’s okay.

Now, bit of a distraction here maybe, but I also spoke last time I was here two weeks ago about Proverbs 31. And I said that it’s a picture probably of the Church of Christ. Christ being represented by Lemuel, he who is for God, and the bride of Christ—and what her actions are supposed to be like. Proverbs begins, the book of Proverbs does, with a series of statements warning against adultery, warning against sexual relationships for young men.

Peter Leithart in an article commented on these things and their relationship to the false church. You know, adultery is linked in the scriptures to idolatry. And the harlot bride in Proverbs is kind of imaged again in the book of Revelation—the harlot church. And the harlot church, you know, in Proverbs, she sort of allures people to her, right? And she brings them—brings the lover to her house at evening time—and she’s got the ox killed and ready to be fed to people.

The picture there, and Leithart points out, is a worship picture. The house is, in its first instance, the house of God that we go into. And the false bride lures the naive young man into the false church with her beauties and her charms. There’s no speaking from her lips of the need for the man to repent of anything. What she’s promising him is delight, satisfactions, an easy life, a fun time. “Let’s get together in the worship of God and have a fun, delightful time and not worry about your sins.”

It’s an evening when the evening sacrifice is supposed to occur. If we’re Old Testament people, we’d understand that when we read Proverbs. And it’s she’s got this mention of the ox being slaughtered. There’s a sacrificial meal that’s going to be entered into on the part of the false church and the naive man who’s being lured to her. And I would just tell you that we must be very careful that we don’t become a false church and lure people here through giving them satisfactions and delights without calling them to repentance.

The church of America today is by and large characterized by—I’m not speaking of every one of them, but by and large—there are many churches in this land that their whole point is they want to tickle you under the chin, have you come in and they’re going to tell you what great people you are and how you should just have a great old time doing whatever you do. “Go and sin some more.” We must not be like that.

We must call each other. We must exhort each other. And the church must proclaim a need for repentance as a daily manifestation of our lives before God.

All right, let’s move to the first outline. This is the review of the bride’s mirror. We’ll go through this fairly quickly and then we’ll focus on the last couple of churches and then we’ll talk about repentance.

So, first on your outline now—the bride’s mirror. Remember we said that this is really the third review, and it’s okay because the first one we focused on Revelation chapter 1. The last time we did this, a month or so ago, it was Revelation chapter 2. We did those four churches basically, and now we’re going to do Revelation 3, the last three churches.

So Revelation 1, remembering now, talked about the centrality of Jesus Christ—was a dominant theme—the centrality of victory, the new creation. Remember John is in on the Lord’s day. He’s the new Adam and he meets Christ, the new Adam really, who is covenantally the ultimate—the penultimate covenant keeper, the Adam for us. It’s new creation language being depicted. And then we talked about the importance of Lord’s day worship, the importance of the churches and the pastors.

This revelation of who Christ gives is not given in isolation from the church. It’s given showing the importance of the church or the manifestation of the proclamation oracle of God to bring people into a better state of union and communion with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, these same truths are pictured every Lord’s day for us in the day of Sabbath enthronement, the day of Christ coming to be with us, to usher us fully into the rest as forgiven sinners, and to enthrone us on thrones, judging the 12 tribes of Israel. That’s what the Lord’s day is about in Genesis. That’s what it’s about in Revelation. That’s what it’s about every Lord’s day for us.

When that happens, Christ is central to what we do. And the proclamation and the good news of Jesus Christ—the centrality of him—is that there is victory now. His reign will be manifested increasingly in history. The letters to the seven churches all contain a revelation of Christ, don’t they? Some aspect of who he is. And they all contain the statement that the church is to be overcomers, conquerors, victorious, more than conquerors through Christ.

So these same truths are played out. So in this new creation of these new churches, come forth from our Savior there to the victorious Christ-centered people. Revelation 1 continues with an image of the appearance of the groom himself. And then we have in chapters 2 and 3 these various churches where Christ goes to him.

Let’s review them quickly. These seven churches—Ephesus means desirable. That’s what the word means. And I’m going to play a lot off the names of these churches to help us remember them and put them into our, you know, our minds and into our hearts. So we read this stuff in God’s word and meditate on it, we’ll understand what it means.

The Ephesus church shows that we are the desirable bride of the greater Adam, the greater gardener. Remember the garden and Adamic images in that first letter to Ephesus. And we’re to have as our motivation in life a love that submits and propagates. He will feed us. The Ephesus church—God says to the Ephesus church, “What you’ve done wrong is you’ve left your first love.”

So what Ephesus should remind us of is the necessity of having at the center of our being the love of the Lord Jesus Christ that submits to our husband and desires to have children for him. It’s a love that is submissive and it aims at propagation. Remember that Ephesus was this big missionary evangelistic center at first, but by the time of the writing of this epistle, they’d become somewhat the chosen frozen. He’d gotten into a lot of church court actions, which he says is good. “You want to hate those that hate me, and you want to discipline them,” but your motivation has gone totally wrong because you no longer love me. You’ve left it.

You know, you hear people talk about getting growing kind of cold in the Lord and I just sort of feel, you know, spiritually cold. Well, I think it’s important when we start feeling that way that the way God describes it—at least as Ephesus—is they left their first love. Probably didn’t feel like that to him, but he said, in a corrective way, they left their first love.

The Ephesus church had some beauty. She had hard work. She had patience and zealousness. She had a hatred of evil. But her imperfection—and it was a glaring imperfection. It was a fatal imperfection unless she repented of it—was that she had left her first love.

What does the groom give her to revive that love? He gives her his presence. He’s there in the context of the churches. He’s in the context of our lives if we but seek him. He is there. And if we look with the eye of faith, we behold our groom and we are renewed in our love for him. We remember what we were before we left our first love as Ephesus remembers.

She’s called to do actions. She is to remember and to do. Her sin was an action. She left her first love. The recovery is an action. She is to remember and do the first things. We’re to do justice and we’re to love mercy. Ephesus got perverted about their standard of justice because they no longer loved the Lord Jesus Christ. They no longer love the personification of mercy and grace—Jesus.

We’re to have a love for Jesus Christ that is infectious. We’re to be a happy bride. The happy bride speaks of her husband to all those that listen. She babbles on about him. That’s what a lot of young brides do. She loves him. And we should have a love for the Lord Jesus Christ that is infectious, that desires to speak to our neighbors and our friends of the beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ, and as a result become a missionary and evangelistic center in the context of our neighborhoods and our culture.

I was up at Christ the Sovereign last week. They’ve got a wonderful little church building that God has in his providence provided them to rent there in the middle of Auburn. And I thought to myself, “I wonder if they thought about going around the neighborhood here in this nice building, nice place people can go see them, their names up there.” And I thought it’d be a good idea maybe to have them think through around the neighborhood and just inviting people to come worship Jesus, you know, going door to door.

And then I thought this last week as I came back, you know, I thought about doing that here several years ago. Thought about why don’t we make a little tract of some kind of thing, get some folks, those in the area particularly, going door to door a couple of times, you know, take our children out and just invite people to come worship with us here. I think we need to do that.

I don’t know about that particular action, but we need to have this love for Christ that is certainly submissive and a hatred of evil, but that loves him and wants to propagate, wants to have children with him. Okay? Wants to talk about him in the context of our culture and world. You can burn out in the context of the sort of world we’re in. A world that is filled with despisers of Christ, a world filled with people who profess Christianity and say to each other, “Go and sin some more.”

It’s real easy to get burned out and think nothing’s going to happen. What’s the point? Nobody’s going to respond anyway. But you know, if your motivation is pragmatic—okay—but if the motivation is love for the Lord Jesus Christ—then we should engage ourselves in those sort of actions.

Ephesus—love. Smyrna—the church of Christ is anointed or martyred up. Remember Smyrna—the root is myrrh. She is the perfumed bride, the one who suffered as we shall never have to suffer. Whose sufferings give meaning to our sufferings for him. If we’re abased with him we shall surely reign with him. That’s the message of Smyrna. He gives us resurrection life. That’s what he promises in the context of Revelation chapter 2 to Smyrna.

She’s remarked as patient, patiently persevering. Ephesus—the reminder is love. Smyrna—the reminder is patient perseverance. So she was doing that pretty much. Now, he kept—he told just keep doing that. Hold on. Not going to be long. I’m coming. And he tells us that, too. “Titanic may hit an iceberg. You start to sink. Hold on. It’s going to be okay. Hey, I’m coming. It won’t take long. The suffering won’t be long.”

Patiently persevere in the context of sufferings. Her beauty was her works—her suffering and poverty if need be for the sake of her husband. The perfumed bride’s imperfection was—it’s not obviously stated—but it’s a temptation to quit. It’s temptation to grumble. It’s a temptation to get upset about the problems that come upon us and the tribulations and the difficulties.

So God’s gift to her is resurrection strength. Jesus was dead and he’s alive. He’s going to strengthen us. So we’re to be a bride that has love for Christ, be a bride that has patient perseverance in the midst of difficulties, knowing that the groom will indeed bring us out of them. If we abase ourselves with Christ, he’ll surely exalt us. Hang on in the midst of temptations to quit. Christ is coming.

Holding on in faithful obedience motivated by this love of Ephesus, right? That’s why we hold on because we love our Savior and we trust him and we know that he is sovereign. Motivation of love for our Savior gives us the strength to act in faithful obedience, patiently persevering. It’s a fine Christian character attribute. It makes for a lovely wife—love for her husband and a patience in sufferings.

On the other hand, if we don’t love our husbands, we left it and we don’t suffer patiently and we complain and grumble and dispute, it makes for a blemished bride. Remember Jesus did not suffer so that we wouldn’t have to suffer. He suffered so that our suffering would have meaning.

This is a period of time and many Christians celebrate Lent. And it’s a contemplation of the sufferings of the Savior. And when you go through difficult times and when you go through sufferings that you have no control of, you must—well, must—the proper thing to do is to enter into a contemplation of the sufferings of the Savior. He deserved none of it. You deserve all of it. He deserved none of it. So when you suffer for righteousness’ sake, you are blessed to enter into the sufferings of the Savior.

Now, it doesn’t end there because he suffers and then reigns. And we’re going to suffer patiently with Christ, entering into his sufferings if need be. Nobody understands. Everybody’s judging us the way they see. They think we did wrong, this wrong, that wrong. You know, know that you did everything right. You can’t convince people of that. People don’t know you. People aren’t inside your soul. But God knows. Jesus knows.

And if you’re suffering unjustly, you suffer with him. And you understand more of what he did for you. You enter into the sufferings of the Savior. He suffered that our sufferings might make sense, that we would understand them, that we might contemplate them better. So we move into those sufferings.

Now, I’m not saying when we come out of the sufferings everything’s okay. Okay. Jacob wrestled with God one evening and he became Israel, the one who rules for God, being ruled by God. Jacob limped the rest of his life after that wrestling night. He walked away limping into a rising sun, victorious. God said, but limping. Jacob would limp all of his life after that wrestling night. He’d have to wrestle against an ungodly father who wanted to give the blessing to his favorite, not to God’s choice. He’d have to wrestle against a brother who wanted to kill him. He’d have to wrestle against men who would cheat and defraud him.

And he’s still wrestling in a sense because he’s still the target of much criticism from Christians who don’t have half of his perseverance and strength thousands of years later. Now, I know he screwed up in some ways. Know he messed up. But understand that he was a man. He was a picture for us of suffering the way the Lord Jesus Christ would suffer for us. And our sufferings reproduce irradicable limps in this life.

We may have things happen to us that will change the course of our lives. We’ll have a limp, but we limp victoriously. You see, if we enter into Christ’s sufferings, hold on. Christ is coming. He says, “God resists the proud, but he gives grace to the humble.”

Love in Ephesus, patient persevering in Smyrna. Pergamus—the third in this series—strength and discipline. Pergamus means fortress, high tower, strong place, outpost for advance. We are to be an outpost bride who is to conquer in Christ’s name, rooting covenant breakers out of the church and city. We are to both divide and heal as we move in terms of maturation and differentiation. He gives us entrance into his tower and its enablements.

This outpost bride had beauty. She had work. She bore her husband’s name. Christ says she did not deny her faith in the context of persecution, but she did have a stated imperfection. She abided those whom her husband hated. Remember, Pergamus is the first of these three churches in the middle of the epistle who have discipline problems. And in Pergamus, there’s only a few that they have problems with, but they’re letting them stay. They’re letting them, you know, be unfaithful to God in the midst of the assembly, and that’s wrong.

So God gives them—Jesus gives him a gift. He gives him a two-edged sword, to cut us under and then to heal. The Bible is two-edged.

This third church tells us that it’s kind of like, think of these first three together. We’re to have a love for the Lord Jesus Christ that is infectious. We’re to have a willingness to patiently suffer in the context of trials, center into the cross of our Savior, and we’re to understand that this isn’t for the end point of just sort of suffering for the sake of Christ with no victory. We’re to be an outpost, strengthened bride to challenge the godless cultures in the cities in which we find ourselves.

Love, perseverance, and conquering. Those are these first three churches. And they’re a picture of what we’re to be individually in the context of our Christian life. And as well as what the church is to be in the context of the culture that God has committed to us. The church must be committed to war and division for the sake of the truth, for the sake of the one we love, for the sake of the one that we patiently suffer for.

The church must be willing to enter into cultural war in the context of the world in which God has placed us for the sake of the proclamation of Christ’s name. A passive woman is a blemished bride. A dominion woman, a strong woman is a godly bride. We don’t want women who are passive to the extent of never saying anything to their husband and always just doing what he says and not thinking and not being strong women. That’s not it.

Abraham had a godly wife who spoke to him frequently. Now, she didn’t dishonor him. She called him Lord. She was submissive. But understand that God told Abraham, “Take the woman’s advice”—over and over again. It was his wisdom in the sight of God. God gives us strong wives. And it’s a good thing. And this church has strong women in it. And I praise God for that. And it’s a picture of the church.

Remember, we’ve talked about this before. The Armenian wedding ceremony. Armenia—not Armenian. Armenia. What they did is, you know, the husband and the wife both would get swords at their wedding ceremony. Other cultures, they’d be both crowned. The queen on the chessboard is not weak. She is powerful. And the church in the context of the world is represented by that queen. And Pergamus reminds us the church is supposed to be a fortress, an outpost bride who is pressing the claims of her husband over the land that she considers and buys through the worship transaction with God.

Asks for it, commits herself to serve in the context of the purchase of that land through the preaching of the gospel of Christ. We’re supposed to be a strong outpost bride.

Thyatira—what happens if you don’t do it? You become a stinky, smelly church. Thyatira means the odor of oppression—is what it means, the name itself. Number four—we’re to be a pleasing aroma to Christ, maturing in our working love, faith, and hope. When we abide covenant breakers, we abide those with the stench of oppression about them.

Perseverance in the small things of life will yield Christ’s gift of reign. Remember, it’s the little things that we’re maturing in obedience to. Our love is supposed to grow. Our patient persevering in sufferings is supposed to grow as we get older in the Lord, both individually and as a church. And our sense of conquering is supposed to grow as well.

But at Thyatira, it hadn’t. In Thyatira, they were abiding. Half the church now were apostates and opponents to the groom that the bride no longer loved. You see? And God tells us that if we will not conquer, he will have us be conquered. If we’re not salt, we’re going to be thrown out and become stuff underfoot of others with no ability anymore to do anything. God says you either conquer and overcome or you are conquered and overcome by those with the stench of oppression.

You either exercise godly dominion in the context of the culture, in the context of your home, in the context of your neighborhood, or you’ll be dominated by an ungodly culture as things mature and develop. So Thyatira sort of rounds this fourth one out. Love, strength and perseverance rather, strength, and then you either have to use all of that and put it all together to conquer for Christ or you’re conquered and oppressed by the culture in which you live.

And the way we do that is in the small things of life. “Well, how am I supposed to do that, Dennis? How am I supposed to conquer poorly?” You do it by being faithful in the little details of your lives, in your homeschooling, in your vocation, in the way you drive, in the way you take care of the orderliness of your home, in the small things that you say to your husband, in the small things that you say to your children, in the small things you might say to your neighbors and relatives, in the small ways you encourage one another to faithfulness in the Lord.

I’ve been doing this for a while, and what I found in terms of what we need, what I think what people really need to mature and grow good in the Lord or in terms of encouragement now—is pastoral encouragement coming down from the officers of the church—but it’s also congregational encouragement. People do best that I’ve worked with who have difficulties, and we all have difficulties. If they’re getting wisdom and counsel from elders but that they’re getting a great deal of encouragement from a friend at church as well. Do you have someone here that you encourage and exhort to small actions of faithfulness? If not, search out somebody, find somebody to encourage and strengthen because this—remember we won’t go back to the text—but the text told us it’s in those little small areas that all this is accomplished.

Okay. So we go on to the fifth church. The church we just read about at Sardis. The Sardis church is a sardonic, sarcastic, bitter bride. And we’re not supposed to be like that. We’re to be biblically pious. They, you know, Sardis had dirty garments. We’re supposed to be pure in thought, word, and deed and engaging in good deeds, fruit.

And if we’re not, we are the sardonic church whom Christ will blot out from the book of life. If we repent, he will give us the white robes that are our good deeds. Okay, so Sardis is a picture of the failure, but it also tells us of what we should be. We should have not defiled our garments. We should be properly pious.

I’m going to talk about this a little more next week when I talk—I’m going to talk on glorifying God for Palm Sunday, focusing on the accounts in the Gospels of Christ’s triumphal entry. But children, as you come to worship God, if you don’t have a pious and reverent attitude to God on the Lord’s day, you will probably not have a pious and reverent attitude to God the rest of the week. And if you don’t have a pious and reverent attitude to God in the context of this first portion of our service, this more formal portion of our worship service, you probably will not have a pious and reverent view of God the rest of the day as you play with your friends.

It all kind of starts right here. This is like that little starter stuff you put in sourdough bread. I don’t know how to make sourdough, but I—the little starter thing you started it all with—that worship is like that. So, children, if it’s hard for you to hear a long sermon, I’m sorry about that. If it’s hard for you to sing those words, to read them and then sing them. I know it’s tough. You know, as you’re growing up learning to read, you may not know how to sing those. It’s hard maybe saying those responsive readings. It’s hard being quiet and focusing upon God during the prayer times in the worship service.

I know they’re hard things for you to do, but believe me, you can do them. You’re more than conquerors through Christ who gave himself for you. And I would urge you during the formal worship of the church particularly to have pious, reverent attitudes. Don’t let the white garments that the Lord Jesus Christ has provided you—okay, he gives you purity. Don’t let that become spoiled in the very worship service by improper attitudes, by doing things that you shouldn’t be doing.

You know, if you’re four or five or older, you should be attending to God, thinking about God. If I don’t make sense to you anymore, that’s okay. Read the text of Scripture I’m talking about. Try to figure out where I’m at. Not, you know, blaming you for my problems, but I am saying that God uses crooked instruments and I am one. This worship service has imperfections to it. But I want you to focus upon the need to be pious and reverent before God. And here in the worship service particularly, you can right now glorify God by having thoughts and actions that think about God in the context of worship and not allowing yourself to be distracted.

And you know what? I think if you do that, if you spend an hour here really focusing on God, thinking hard, trying to keep attention, not, you know, playing thumb wrestling or throwing spit wads or going and meeting a buddy in the bathroom, whatever it is we all tend to do. I think the rest of your day is going to be better. I think you’ll find you won’t have as many fights when you play together outside. And your play will be a little more pious and reverent, too, properly so. Same is true of us adults.

Well, God wants us to be a pious, reverent church that doesn’t despoil her garments. And the place where all that starts is in Lord’s Day worship.

Now, the sardonic bride had some beauty. She once had received and heard. She still has some in the context of her who are not defiled. But she has tremendous imperfections—an empty profession of faith. He gives to her—Christ brings to her—the fullness of the Spirit and the assurance of his preservation of those who are in him.

Now if in a way you can look at this as—this fifth church, the fifth and sixth churches as being the options after you’re done with the first four. Look at the one outline that’s got these little ones, twos, and threes on it. And we’ll sort of show you what I’m trying to show you here. One, two, and three. Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamus. Love, perseverance and suffering, and strength. Okay. Three, four, and five. And that’s like, you know, the middle three.

You look at it that way. Pergamus, Thyatira, and Sardis—remember we said these three churches, the problem churches had problems with exercising discipline. They’re supposed to conquer, but in each case, they became less able to fight off sin and apostasy. They had, as some people say, they had AIDS in these churches. They couldn’t fight off infections from opposition to Christ. They had a false love. They were oppressed and they became sarcastic. There’s a downward spiral and Sardis—the sardonic church has actually become sarcastic or bitter in the context of the church.

Now if you look at it one, two, three, and four. We’re to have love. We’re to be persevering patiently for the Savior. We’re to be strong, faithfully waging war. And if we don’t do that, if we say no to those, then we become the sardonic church. We become the church that is bitter, sardonic. Maybe a few people left, but mostly it’s ready to be taken off the face of the earth.

But church number six—if we are loving Christ, patiently persevering in sufferings, seeing ourselves as an outpost strength bride, willing to engage our culture, willing to engage the idolatry in our own heart. Then we’re the Philadelphia church. The Philadelphia church is the brotherly love church, loyal to Jesus Christ and loyal to the brothers in the Lord.

The sixth church is the positive example. The first four churches give us the model. And then if you don’t do it, you become this church that’s going to be wiped out. You do it and you become the brotherly love strong church that God gives an open door to. Philadelphia—door is open. No man can shut it. You’ve got a little bit of strength, but I’m God and even your enemies are going to come and worship in the context of the Philadelphia church.

That’s what we want to be. But we get there through loving, strengthening our hand, patiently persevering, and conquering the idolatry in our culture and in our hearts. And then we’re Philadelphia. Then we’re the brotherly love church.

Now, in point of fact, we’re not like that either one—hopefully we’re not the sardonic church, but we’re also not probably ultimately the brotherly love church in perfection either. What we are is a church that engages in sin occasionally and we’re—because we’re composed of people who engage in sin and also are committed to the Lord Jesus Christ—so what the final church tells us is that it kind of puts together all these things. At Laodicea, it is the wretched one, but it’s also the one Jesus promises to come and have dinner with and to have rule over—rather to seat that church on his throne if they but hear him and open the door as he knocks.

You see the contrast in what we just read at the end of chapter 3. “You are the wretched one. You’re miserable. You need lots of help. You need to transact business with me today.” He says, “You need to rely upon me for your glory, me for your discernment, me for your purity of life, me for your wealth. You haven’t done that. You’ve taken your own way of accomplishing security for yourself and you’re thinking your own thoughts. You’re consulting the philosophers of the day to make discernments. We need to transact some business. You need to repent.”

But you know what? If you repent, if you are smitten in your heart for what you’ve done and you turn to me this very day—hey, he says, “I’m knocking at the door, and if you open the door, I’m coming in. You got union and communion with me. I’m going to feed you my blood, my flesh, and I’m going to set you on thrones. You’re going to sit on my throne. You’re going to be Sabbath enthroned. We fail in terms of love for Christ.”

I watched the movie The Apostle, Robert Duvall. The opening scenes—he’s driving down the road and he’s with his mother and there’s a car crash and they pull off and stop the car. “Stop the car.” And he goes over and there’s a fellow bleeding to death and a girl that might already be dead. You don’t know. And he starts quoting the scriptures to him and he says, “You got to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior. You got to repent of your sins.” He takes the opportunity presented to bring the gospel of Christ to a crisis situation before someone dies. Okay? And the picture of the movie is that the young man repents and it seems like the girl might have heard it too and becomes a Christian. You don’t know for sure.

I bring that up because it’s love for the Savior that wants to speak of him and be his servant when we see car crashes on the freeway that I’m talking about here. It’s love that wants to speak of the beauties of the Lord Jesus Christ. And you know…