The Church That Looks Alive

Automatically transcribed — lightly cleaned for readability. Wording is the preacher’s own.

Heavenly Father, this morning I'm so thankful that you have redeemed us and that you've made us into a new community. Lord, I ask that as we open our ears and our hearts, that you would speak to us through your word, that Pastor Cameron would be faithful to the message that you have for us, that we and him would be sensitive to the leading of your Holy Spirit today, and that we would be faithful to respond to the message you have for us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Good morning, everyone.

It's good to see you all this morning. I'm excited about small groups. I hope that you guys are able to find some time in your schedule. I know schedules are difficult and.

To carve another commitment into your calendar is difficult. I recognize that, but, you know, we all, we all, we all invest in our own lives in different ways. We invest in our, with our time, you know, we can, you can tell pretty quickly what a person's priorities are, but by where they, what they spend their time doing, right. You can tell what our priorities are by how we spend our money or our resources or what our minds are consumed with. And we all have ways in which we invest our lives and small groups are one way, that you can begin to invest in and intentionally build into your relationship with the Lord and your relationship with others in the church. It's a great way to meet people. And like pastor Luke said, we, just because you signed up for a small group, doesn't mean you in that group until Jesus comes back, unless Jesus comes back this fall. And then I don't think you're going to care about the small group anymore.

Yep. We'll have big group in heaven with him. So, we, we've been studying if you, if you've missed a few weeks or, it's your first time here, we've been studying in the book of revelation for the last handful of weeks. We're going to continue that this week. And then we have two more Sundays of that. And then after that, we're going to do a four week series on marriage and then, I think a six or eight week series in Proverbs. So we have some exciting things coming, and we're trusting that the Lord would speak through his word. But the study that we've been doing in Revelation has been to take a look at the first couple chapters, because within the first couple chapters, there are seven distinct letters, sent to seven distinct churches. In those letters those churches are represented at the beginning of the book of revelation as as seven lamps and each kind of each kind of like indicating or each each church being different and each issue being different and these letters are written, not by not by john or not by paul or not by any of the disciples but these

Letters are written to these churches by jesus himself, and they're being relayed through the apostle John. And, and, you know, we're going to, we're going to come back to, what the kind of the one main question that we asked in the promo video to this series, which was the, which is this, what if Jesus wrote a letter it's a conduit in, 2026, September of 2026, what would that letter say?

Some of the letters we read here or that we see are letters of like deep encouragement and gentle challenge. All right. Like I see what you're doing here is all the things that I commend about your life and about your practice and about your worship and about your belief and about your endurance. These are all great. And here's something that you need to pay attention to and fix and repent of. And then the kind of like the main message at the end of each letter is hey don't give up, endure persevere stay faithful because those who overcome will receive and every church kind of like gets their own version of what they will receive today we're going to read about the letter to the church of sardis you all know sardis right? Super familiar with Sardis. Everyone's been to Sardis before. Popular destination point for most Americans, I know.

But the church of Sardis, like these other churches, is in modern day Turkey, okay? Or Asia Minor. And the letter here is a short one, and it is different than all of the others in that Jesus is most harsh with the church of Sardis. Or maybe I should say, like maybe not necessarily like outwardly harsh he gets pretty harsh with, last week to the church of Thyatira and in two weeks the church of Laodicea he's exceptionally harsh with but in Sardis we see it's the only letter where Jesus does not commend them for anything, It's the only letter where he's not like, hey, I know and I see these good things that you're doing. Great job. It's like he just, there's just, I don't know if there was nothing there or if the issues that he was seeing and wanting to correct were so big that he was like, it doesn't even matter what good you're doing because we got to focus on this right now. But it's an interesting or a unique feature to this letter that exists. So let's read it. It's fairly short. It's six verses, Revelation 3, verses 1 through 6.

And to the angel of the church in Sardis write, these are the words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. He's referring to Jesus. I know your works.

You have the reputation of being alive. But you are dead, wake up and strengthen what remains and is about to die for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my god remember then what you received and heard, keep it and repent if you will not wake up I will come like a thief and you will not know at what hour I will come against you. Yet you still have a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments, and yet, and they will walk with me in white for they are worthy. And the one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot their name out of the book of life. I will confess their name before my father and before his angels.

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

And so you see right at the beginning that, unlike the other letters, Jesus doesn't go into first what are all the notable and commendable things about the church in Sardis. He says, I know your deeds, but offers no commendation. Now, it seems clear from what Jesus goes on to say, to the church that there probably was a point within their life that they had demonstrated a significant evidence or evidence of significant faith. So much so, probably in such explicit ways, that the church in Sardis had developed for themselves or had a reputation about them, a reputation of being alive, a reputation of being full of faith. There was a moment in time where things were going well. Where there was fruit being like produced, okay?

So it's not as if the church in Sardis or the people in Sardis were always like this way, but there seems to be a route, as we're gonna learn about even the city of Sardis and kind of their historical trajectory, there seems to be a route here where things go really, really well and everything is like on the up and up. And then for whatever reason, it just like drops off a cliff, okay?

So Jesus goes on to say he says I know your works you have the reputation of being alive all right yeah there are probably things in your past that are evidence of significant faith but, you are dead, what's interesting here we've said this in many in many of the letters that.

Jesus is always pointing out that he sees things as they really are and not as we want them to look.

Jesus is, Jesus always, we cannot hide from Jesus, We cannot hide our thoughts. We cannot hide the orientation and trajectory of our hearts. We cannot hide our sin. We cannot hide from Jesus. Even though the church in Sardis had a reputation of being alive, Jesus once again points out, But, but I know that you are actually dead. Now, when Jesus tells the church and Sardis, you are, but you are dead, we believe he's using a little bit of hyperbole here, you know, exaggeration for effect. And the reason that we believe that is because what he goes on to say, gives them or like pulls on the strings of their, of hope. It's like, he doesn't say you're dead. And like he was talking about Jezebel last week, and there's no more opportunity for you to repent. In the church of Sardis, he's like, you are dead. But if you wake up and you remember what you first heard and you return to it and you obey and you repent, right? There is, the door, the merciful door of the Lord continues to be open for a

Change in whatever it is that's going on in the life of the church here at Sardis. And he, when Jesus, he maps out this problem and then he says this to the church. He says, wake up. These two words, like really stark, really striking, really strong words in verse two of Revelation chapter three. I know your works, you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. And then he says this, wake up.

This term here to wake up is not like actually like they're, it's this kind of metaphorical sleep that they're in. This lack of alertness, this dryness to their faith. What Jesus is saying is like, hey, church, I need, church and Sardis cast off, this willful ignorance, this willful ignoring of these deadly dangers that threaten your spiritual existence. You need to open your eyes. You need to recognize the position that you're in. Sleep no longer. Get alert here.

There is a big issue here, big problem on the horizon. Now, that spiritual message to the church in Sardis has some historical context to it based on the history of that city itself. I got a picture of what remains of the city of Sardis here. It was built, you see that little knob on top there? That was the main, like one of the, what's remaining of the walls of the kingdom, but it was built on top of this big shelf. And it was very difficult to get to. There was really only one main way in and out of the city. And in about 547-548 BC, Cyrus, who was a Persian king, he attacked the city of Sardis. And the leader of Sardis at the time was a guy named Croesius. And typically what would happen in this time of history is that when winter came, the armies who were at battle went on vacation.

You know, basically there was this understanding that we don't attack each other during winter. We just stay in our tents, stay warm. Very interesting.

But Cyrus decided to kind of surprise Cruisius and the city of Sardis, and kind of disregarded all military convention and he didn't withdraw his troops for the winter season.

Instead, Cyrus went to Sardis and just began to attack it and besiege it. And Croesius, as like what the history books say, is that Croesius sat basically behind the walls in this willful, almost willful ignorance of the danger that they were in by this imposing army. And the reason that he sat so kind of ignorant, because he was like in this state of naively trusting the geography of the city that was unconquerable because of the high cliff walls. We only need to defend this particular point here because no advancing army can scale these cliffs, get above our walls, and get into our city from that way. So we only need to point our focus over here. He was so confident, the history books say, he was so confident in the safety of the city Acropolis, the main city, that he did not even bother posting guards on the steepest sections of the city. It's like, we don't even need to pay attention over there because no one can come up that way anyway. We won't even waste manpower by having anyone look and walk on top of the wall over there.

Now, as history goes, Croesius was known for his kind of bravado, or his false bravado. And one of the main soldiers in Cyrus's army, a guy named Ligoris, had studied his, military sieges like this. And here's what history is to say. History is an ancient history book. It says he, Ligoris, had considerable experience in war and had learned that as a rule, cities fall into the hands of their enemies most easily from some neglect on the part of their inhabitants when trusting to the natural or artificial strength of their defenses, They neglect to keep proper guard and become thoroughly careless.

Meaning this man, a student of war, was like, they're not going to guard that section of the city because they think it's unconquerable. That's where we're going.

Antelagoras and 14 other Persian soldiers climbed the cliff, climbed the city walls, unchallenged by any in the Sardis army, in Croesius's army. They made their way into the city center at night. They killed the guards behind the main doors, and then they opened the main doors, and Cyrus's army walked right through the front of it.

It was the complacency of Croesius to recognize where he may be vulnerable, to recognize where the enemy might attack. And for him to say, well, it's fine. We'll just focus. Our focus can be over here. We don't have to worry about areas in which we must be or could be vulnerable. And,

They laid siege to the city and they defeated Carusius and his army. You would think that this would be a huge, historically speaking, a huge wake-up call for the city of Sardis. Oh my gosh, I can't believe we were so foolish to let that happen.

But it actually happened again. 200 years later under Antiochus III where basically, the city did not learn its lesson and they were defeated in much the same way again, never to recover.

See, there was a complacency to the defense of the city that led Croesius' army and the whole city of Sardis to absolute destruction. It was a historical reality. I don't know if it was something in the water. I don't know if it was baked into the ground, but there was this sense of like, eh, we're just kind of gonna go with the flow. We're just kind of gonna drift through life. We've got this big city. It's like unconquerable. We don't really need to be, we don't need to really be too intentional in the present tense about its defense.

And what we seem to see here in the letter from Jesus to the church in Sardis, that this attitude of complacency was not just overtaking kind of the way that they saw their military presence, but there was some complacency that was settling into their hearts.

There was a sense of like, ah, you know, we can just kind of take it easy.

We can kind of bank on our past reputation as faithful people who have produced a lot of fruit. We have a great reputation, right? And the words of Jesus were like, listen, man, wake up. There is an army climbing up the cliffs and you're not looking for it. You're not paying attention you are about to be under siege and your hearts are so naively like focused in the wrong place that you can't see the danger, that is coming, and so now for the for the people in sardis this was not this historical kind of like military complacency was now a spiritual issue for them. They neglected areas of their spiritual life with a, hey, it's fine type of attitude. They fell asleep at the wheel of their faith and they were now paying the price on the inside, even though the outside to everyone else looks just fine.

Right? Outside, the reputation is great. Jesus is like, I see your heart and I know what's actually going on. And in your complacency, you're about to die.

Spiritual complacency, maybe you've never thought about it or maybe you've never considered it in this type of way. But listen, when we become complacent spiritually, we put ourselves in danger. We put ourselves in danger. I say this in a lot of different environments and a lot of different ways, but I hold to it here from a spiritual perspective. Human beings are not good at drifting in positive directions.

Meaning we don't normally drift in a direction that is good ultimately for our souls or that is representative of what it means to be a faithful follower of Jesus. Without extraordinary intentionality, without the rudder of the Holy Spirit guiding us through his word, without the community of faith without the rootedness, of communal life right when we just like I am just gonna drift I'm sure I'll end up in some good place because I'm a relatively good person right we put ourselves in danger like spiritual complacency is a huge issue.

Now spiritual complacency for you and I can look like a bunch of different things this is not a comprehensive list and it's not like, it's not even really an authoritative list but I just want to give you some examples of how sometimes we can fall into the trap maybe that sardis was falling into as well, recognize as well that like all of these letters are to churches not individuals,

Right so that when we maybe take some of these things that we see and hear Jesus talking about and we apply them to our personal lives, it's not that they aren't applicable and it's not that they can't land well. And it's not like there are some things that God is speaking directly into our personal individual hearts. I'm not saying that, but also don't, don't cast off the fact that God, that Jesus is talking to a community of people here, that there is a communal spirit that kind of sometimes can bubble up in a church that is not god-honoring not god-glorifying not faithful, because just like individuals don't often drift in a good direction neither do churches.

We don't drift in good directions, okay? And so we need to be aware of that as we like kind of faithfully read in the context what the letter is actually saying and what they're meaning by it or what Jesus is meaning by it. Because one way that you and I, conduit, can fall into a sense of spiritual complacency today, September 13th, 2026, is just like Sardis, we can depend on reputation,

Rather than a present tense pursuit of God. You know, like Sardis was like, hey, everyone thinks we're great.

We have a reputation of being alive. But Jesus is like, man, bro, I know the truth.

I mean quite honestly like there there's probably nothing that frightens me, more not frightens me but like,

There's nothing heavier or weightier for me as a pastor to be like, to feel like, oh no, we're spiritually alive and have Jesus be like, but you're not like that. That's the stuff of like 3am wake up calls and not being able to get back to sleep. Right. That's terrifying. Right. Right?

And this was the issue with Sardis is they were depending upon their reputation of the past and they had apparently abandoned a present tense pursuit of faithfulness and holiness.

And faithful witness in the city that they were in. And as a church, we, Conduit, could probably coast for quite a while on, on our reputation for maybe past community work we have done.

We could probably maintain that reputation in the community and with other churches, we could make past reputation, kind of like the stamp of legitimacy for conduit here in Jamestown in the region. But listen, that is nothing more than just spiritual complacency that put the church of Sardis in danger. And if we're always looking backwards to say, hey, look, we did this back here. Like we're that church, we're that church, we're that church. No, like enough of we're that church and more of like we are pursuing God in this direction. Like it's not about what has happened back here. It's about where are we going in present tense pursuit of God and his holiness. Like we want Jesus now.

I don't want to I don't want to like it's okay to remember and it's okay to be excited and honor the history but like what about right now like what about pursuing jesus now what about what god is calling us to now what about mission in the city in the region now what about right now.

And so we can get wrapped up in that. It's easier for me than it is probably for anyone else in the room because I've been here for it all,

Right? And we can like, oh, the glory days. I mean, listen, like the glory days are forward, right? The glory days are ahead, right? Ultimate glory days are ahead, right? But we believe by faith that the greatest things that God has for us and this region and this church are not behind us. They're ahead of us. And so why build everything upon a reputation when we can build everything upon a savior? Okay. So we can fall into this complacency of reputation of what has happened in the past. We can also fall, and this is a warning to us all, all right, as a church, but also as individuals who are, I mean, hey, we're trying to follow Jesus. Us, we're trying to be a light in a world that's dark, right? We're trying to be a light in a world that is progressively rejecting the truth of God.

And we can fall into what I'm just going to call doctrinal complacency, where the things that are foundational to, what are foundational doctrinal components to what it means to be a Christian, slowly become like a, well, you can kind of like, it doesn't totally have to be like that or totally have to be like that. Let me give you an example, okay?

We have this, this seems even silly to even say, but, probably one of the most significant doctrines that we have in the Christian faith is that Jesus is the only way to the Father.

Like Jesus is the only way to the father. He himself said this, I am the resurrection and the life. No one comes to the father except through me, John 14, 6. Acts chapter four, verse 12, salvation is found in no one else for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved, right? There is a, like, there, forget about even just like, there's a well-established, the well-established Christian doctrine of the exclusivity of Jesus for your salvation. It is not many streams to the same mountain that is God, right? It's not like a just believe, as long as you just are believing sincerely in your heart, it doesn't matter what you actually believe unless you believe it sincerely, right? There are many ways that this doctrine of the exclusivity of Jesus gets kind of attacked and gets, gets kind of chipped away at, but you know, like even I will say, I was not born at this time, so I'm taking, take, take my word for it. Right. 50 years when all the old people were alive.

Not us young people. Young, old, yeah. There's a lot of gray in this beard right now.

I almost shaved it this morning because I was like, bro, I look so old.

Okay. I digress. Okay. 50 years ago, 50 years ago, Jesus is the only way was mostly an abstract doctrine that Christians believed. And what I mean by that is like, it wasn't really pressure tested in, in, in our culture. Jesus is the only way. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for the, for the most part in Christian culture, that was, most Christians, even 50 years ago, didn't personally know any devout people of other faiths. And so the claim never really had to compete with a face or a person that you actually loved.

Right? It wasn't really regarded as something even to be considered like, well, of course, of course I'm a christian I believe jesus is the only way isn't everyone a christian does everyone believe that now that is that's changed now

That's changed now most of us a lot of us have a friend or a co-worker maybe someone in our own family someone who's really sincere super kind,

A great person and not a Christian. And suddenly the doctrine of Jesus is the only way it's no longer this abstract thing it's more personal now than it's ever been before, and to hold to that doctrine means that now that we must come to admit that someone that we genuinely respect is, apart from Christ, not right with God.

No matter how kind and how sincere and how genuine they are in their belief. And that can be a really hard thing for us to say out loud.

If you're not right with Jesus, you're not right with God. Period. Because it's not abstract for us anymore. It kind of gets personal. So a lot of Christians don't necessarily reject the doctrine that Jesus is the only way to the Father. They just stop bringing it up.

Most Christians wouldn't say, yeah, no, there's many ways to the Father. Most Christians wouldn't say that. But most Christians, it's not that they outright reject that doctrine anymore. They no longer feel the passion, the permission, the authority, the foundation to actually say that and believe that out loud.

So they still maybe check the box on the theological survey of their life, but it becomes just like a line that they recite, not a conviction that they've actually worked out and wrestled with and could defend if someone pushed back upon it.

We become complacent even in one of the most significant doctrines of the Christian faith that Jesus is exclusively the only way to the Father.

And we've talked about this reality, this other example. We've talked about it several times in the last couple of weeks because it's really prominent in the book of Revelation. We're going to talk about it more in this year. We're going to talk about, probably have a whole sermon series on it next year.

But what has become an issue of increasing spiritual complacency for Christians is in areas of human sexuality.

For most of church history, for most of church history, and, when I mean that, I mean like 1900 years, 2000 years for most of church history, the Christian sexual ethic wasn't something that believers really had to defend among people that they loved. It was just assumed. This is just what we believe about how God has created people, about who God has created people to be, and about how we live out our lives faithfully as sexual beings.

If it was challenged, it was challenged out there in the culture. It was a debate that was kind of separated from my life personally. But we all know that's not the case anymore, right?

That's no longer the case. Human sexuality and the conversations around it and the, and the kind of the interaction that those who follow Jesus are kind of, wrestling with now is like, how do we walk in faithfulness, not become complacent spiritually to what feels like a tidal wave,

Of differing opinions and perspectives on what it means to be a man or what it means to be a woman or what sexual, what is the purpose of sexuality and what is the permissibleness of sexuality and all of this. So it means now for you and I, if we seek to hold a traditional Christian sexual ethic, that we are holding a belief that probably touches someone that we dearly love.

It probably is not abstract anymore. It actually is actually planted in the soil of our lives now. It's not a stranger. In an argument, it's a person at our table.

And that is also a hard thing to hold on to. And so a lot of Christians, just like the Jesus belief, don't necessarily reject the Christian sexual ethic. They just stop saying it.

They stop thinking it through. They stop wrestling with the complexity of it, in light of what I believe about scripture and what I believe about who God has created people to be.

But listen once it's stopped being a conviction that you wrestle with it starts being a subject you just avoid,

And when you begin and then and that is the reality of what spiritual complacency does nothing necessarily is outright renounced it's just not maintained,

It's not that like the people at sardis said we're not going to even consider that this is like they just didn't watch that way they just didn't watch down that cliff they just didn't maintain a defensible barrier there it's not that it didn't exist in their minds anymore it's just that they no longer thought that was a place where they had to pay attention to what their heart was saying and doing. And that's, that's what spiritual complacency does is it tricks us to look in a different direction so it can slide in, it chips away at what we believe to be true. So it can be replaced by something a little bit more soft and gentle that feels better for us in the moment, but listen, ends up bringing death.

One of the ways, so we become complacent in our reputation. We can become complacent in our doctrinal beliefs, right? But we can also become, and this is like, listen, American church, listen, listen, okay? Listen, we become complacent in our comfort.

We no longer read the New Testament and read it through what does following Jesus actually demand of my life?

What does it mean to be under the lordship of Jesus? We call that, the language there is counting the cost. Are we rightly counting the cost of what it means to follow Jesus? And my contention is, is that most, most Christians in the West, we'll just say most Christians in America have not rightly counted the cost of following Jesus in comparison to what the New Testament scripture says,

Not counted the cost. Now, don't get me wrong. This is both a blessing to the church, right? That we don't sit in a place here where we're not underground right now.

With the curtains drawn and no amplification, right? We're not afraid that people are gonna show up right now and shut us down and arrest us, right? And is that a blessing?

Untold blessing, right? Right? Untold blessing to us. But listen, don't always understand blessing that is given to us by our like political situation. And don't equate that with a blessing as it is to our spiritual condition. Okay? Because what may be a blessing in our political situation, might be a curse to our spiritual condition because every bit of urgency about our faithfulness to Jesus has been stripped away because we don't need to be urgent because the government protects our rights to meet.

We don't have to have a sense of like, we are subversive to a culture that hates the Lord and we are bringing the light of the world to a dark place. We are setting up a colony of heaven right at the gates of hell. This is who we are. We are underground, but the Lord is victorious, right? That has been the predominant environment of the New Testament church since the beginning, just not in the West.

We have become so complacent in our comfort that we actually believe that this is the dominant fruit of christian life, we're following jesus faithfully when everything is going easy for us and is super smooth, because the goal of the goal of faithful life is to is to is to is to like Like have no hardship, no issues, no persecution, no suffering.

But listen, persecution, hardship, sacrifice in this kind of area. So like if we are complacent in this way, complacent in our comfort, when we do run up against persecution, suffering, hardship, difficulty, people hating us because of our faith in Jesus, we automatically receive that as well. I must be doing something wrong.

I must be doing something wrong because if I was truly faithful in following Jesus, life would be smooth. Life would be easy. Everything would just kind of line up. All these doors would open. And that's simply not the witness of the New Testament. The witness of the New Testament is you better count the cost of what it means to follow Jesus because it costs everything. It can cost your family. It can cost your reputation. It can cost your relationships. It can cost your life. It will cost your life because you will have to die to yourself so that you can come alive to Jesus. It costs everything. It is not a religion of comfort. It's a religion of the cross. And we pick up our cross to follow Jesus daily in death to ourselves so we can be alive to him.

Does anyone know the country with the highest Muslim population in the world? Say it out loud I haven't heard it yet,

It's not a trick question. Nope, not the United States. It's growing. It's not the largest one.

Saudi Arabia, India. Nope, neither of those. Getting closer with India. Not Turkey. Nope. Just give us the answer. I don't know. This is kind of fun.

Kind of unknown, really. This is kind of like an unknown fact for most people. If you're not like, I love geography. Obviously, I love world religion, but the country with the highest Muslim population in the world is the country of Indonesia. Okay.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Great job. Yeah. An Asian country, all right, highest, highest population of Muslim people in the world. Christianity, not friendly to Christianity.

Not not not a friendly country to christianity I came across I came across the questionnaire that indonesian christians are asked pre-baptism, so in a country where the majority of the population is Muslim and is hostile, to the Christian faith and Christians,

Jesus is still. Saving people there, quickly and in droves, right? But what it means to become a Christian in Indonesia is a little bit different than what it means to become a Christian in Jamestown, okay? And so here are some of the questions that they ask some of the converts to Christianity in Indonesia. Are you willing to leave home and lose the blessing of your father?

Are you willing to lose your job? How, and just like as we're listening, how many of you would say yes to these? If you were sitting in a baptism class with Pastor Luke and I, and we asked these questions, are you, are you willing to, to leave home and lose the blessing of your father in order to be baptized?

You have a really good job. It's providing for your family. You've been there for a long time. Are you willing to lose your job?

Are you willing to go to the villages and to the actual people who persecute you, persecute you, forgive them, and then share with them the new life that you have in Christ?

Are you willing to give an offering to the Lord? Are you willing to be beaten rather than deny your faith? Are you willing to go to prison? Are you willing to die for Jesus? You see, in a culture of comfortable complacency, we would look at those questions and be like, well, obviously if all this is happening to me, I'm losing the honor of the blessing of my father. I've lost my job.

I have to like give up my resources. Like I'm being beaten. I'm going to prison and I'm like, my life is on the line. Obviously like God is mad at me and I'm doing something wrong. I'm not doing this Jesus thing the right way right but for the majority of christians in the world in the eastern world the non-western world the reality is that their their their life is like I've surrendered my life, it's not I'm no longer here to be comfortable I'm here to serve the lord,

So we become complacent in our comfort we can also become complacent in our disciplines habits of building intimacy with god.

Become not present tense, proactive disciplines, but simply become fire extinguishers for when times go bad, right?

Become placed in the discipline of prayer. But man, when something is going bad in my life, man, I'm great at prayer. I become complacent in the discipline of like feeding on his word until I have a decision that I don't know how to make. And then I'm just like, God, there's got to be an answer here somewhere, right? We become complacent in the discipline of being a part of spiritual and Christian community until the bottom's falling out of our life. And they're like, man, I got to go someplace where I know that I'm loved.

And so we can become really complacent, spiritual complacency, just like the church in Sardis is dangerous for us because it can touch so many areas in our lives. Now, what does Jesus say next to the church in Sardis? What does he say when they're like, man, I don't like, you better wake up. Like get out of your complacency. He says this, he says, strengthen what remains in verse two.

Strengthen what remains as in and is about to die. How can we understand that? There was obviously aspects of the life in Sardis that was like faithful and that like they had something at some point.

But to strengthen what remains and is about to die, the opposite of complacency is intentionality. The opposite of complacency and ignorance and kind of just like this laissez-faire attitude is like this wind in my, like, Lord, be the wind in my sails, be the rudder of my ship, be the captain of my soul. I am here. I am ready. I am doing these things. I am involving myself in these practices. I am seeking and pursuing you. I'm building an intentional faith. I am being alert to my heart first. Strengthen what remains, getting out of complacency. We gotta be alert, right? Rather than being ignorant, we gotta be alert. Look, Lord, help me to examine my heart every single day.

Know my heart, Lord. Point out any offensive or wicked way in me. I am the greatest salesman for my sinful decisions that I could possibly ever want, right? I can rationalize everything in my life. I can, I, you know, so Lord, I need you. I need my Lord. Let's be alert to my heart through your Holy spirit. Make sure you're pointing out any sinful or wicked way in me, because I am not going to simply tolerate sin in my life. Because from last week, what does tolerated sin do? When we tolerate sin, it leads to spiritual complacency or acquiescence. Acquiescence leads to hardness and hardness leads to death.

So be alert to my heart, Lord. Help me be alert to what is happening in here. Help me be alert to what is who I have declared or what I have declared as Lord of my life.

And we often think of this in a super, we over-spiritualize this all the time. I think it's a tool of the enemy that like always leads us to kind of over-spiritualize, things that are kind of actually really simple questions. If I'm being alert to lordship in my life, I'm really just being alert to what rules every other aspect of my life. Like, here's one thing you can ask. What is the one thing that everything else revolves around in your calendar? Yeah.

What is like the one thing never gets moved, no matter what, it doesn't matter what's going on. It doesn't matter if there's something at church. It doesn't matter if there's something to build your faith. It doesn't matter if there's something with your spouse. It doesn't, it doesn't matter. This is the one thing. This is the priority. Other things get canceled. This thing never gets canceled. That's a pretty good way.

What's the orientation of like our, how are we spending our money and our resources? What's the outgo of our life going towards? What shapes my priorities.

So I'm strengthening what remains. I'm building an intentional faith. I'm being alert to my heart. I'm being alert to what is like, what is the Lord lording over my heart. I'm being alert to my relationships. I'm being alert to my habits and my disciplines. Am I, am I drifting or am I pursuing the Lord through prayer? Am I pursuing the Lord through the reading of scripture? Am I pursuing the Lord by getting involved in community? Am I refusing to say, ah, it'll be fine, but I'm saying, no, I'm intentionally putting a stake in the ground and saying today, this is what I'm going to do. I'm making the decision, not because of how I feel, but because I know that if I do not remain alert to my heart, that I can fall into spiritual complacency.

Jesus says in verse three here, remember then what you have received and heard, keep it and repent.

And then he says, if you will not wake up, I will come like a thief and you will not know what hour I will come against you.

Jesus says here really clearly, this is not the first time that Jesus has said something like this. He speaks about it like a lot in the gospels, but he basically tells the church in the Sardis he's like hey look listen if you don't wake up, if you're not if you don't start making some intentional decisions with your life and with your faith if you don't come out of the spiritual willful ignorance complacency state that you are in I you're going to be surprised at my coming, and listen no though in all of scripture those that are surprised at the coming of Jesus are not surprised for a good reason.

Those that are surprised are not surprised for a good reason. Because those who aren't surprised are like, yes, I've been waiting for this. I've been preparing my heart. I've been living my life in holiness.

I've been prepared as a bride for my groom to come. I'm like, I have been ready, not surprised. In fact, I've been living my life in active anticipation that Jesus is coming back.

That there is a king on a white horse coming for me. He's coming like a thief in the night. He's gonna surprise people, but he's not gonna surprise me because I'm watching. I'm watching with my heart. I'm watching with my eyes. I'm watching with my life. I'm watching with my family. I'm watching with my worship and my lordship and my resources. I'm watching, Lord, we're like, come Lord, here I am.

Let us be ready. Not be surprised. But to be like to celebrate. We'll leave us with this last question as the worship team comes back up. Question that we started the beginning of the series with. The question that we started the beginning of this message with.

Jesus calls out the church in Sardis. He says, you have a reputation of being alive but you are actually dead.

What kind of church will we be known as, Conduit? If Jesus could write us a letter, what would it say?

Heavenly Father, Lord, we pray, that our letter would find us well. Not perfect, but as a bride who is anticipating the coming, but as a bride anticipating the coming of the groom, we have prepared ourselves in faithfulness. We have prepared ourselves in holiness. We have prepared ourselves, Lord, by aligning our hearts, remaining alert, Lord, to you.

Lord, let us avoid the trap of spiritual complacency that says, you know, it's fine to just drift along, but Lord, put in us a deep, almost rabid passion, a present tense, right now, pursuit of you, Lord, in holiness.

In Jesus' name, amen.