“To the angel of the church in Sardis write:
These are the words of him who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead.Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God.Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you.
Yet you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy.He who overcomes will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out his name from the book of life, but will acknowledge his name before my Father and his angels.He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”
(Revelation 3:1–6 NIV)
Introduction
What does it mean to be alive? What does it mean to be dead? These would seem to be easy questions but like a mirage on the road, the easy answers seem to disappear as we get closer to them. It is still a challenge for scientists and philosophers to define life in unequivocal terms. Defining life is difficult—in part—because life is a process, not a pure substance. Any definition must be sufficiently broad to encompass all life with which we are familiar, and it should be sufficiently general that, with it, scientists would not miss life that may be fundamentally different from life on Earth. There is equal difficulty in defining death. When does one die? When they stop breathing, the heart stops or the end of brain activity? While doctors generally use the cessation of brain activity, that is not without controversy as under certain conditions brain activity can stop temporarily. What about those of us who believe in an afterlife? How does the spirit and the body affect our definitions of death? We could take this discussion in a number of directions, but we are going to focus on what the Bible says about life in terms of the church.
Sardis
Sardis was an important city. It was a city that prided itself on its strength. It sat high atop cliffs that were extremely difficult for an army at climb. Once there was an army that was attempting to invade Sardis. The people of Sardis remained confident that no one could get up the cliffs to attack them. One enemy soldier watched the walls and cliff, racking his brain on how Sardis could be taken. Then he saw a soldier on the walls of Sardis drop his helmet. The enemy soldier watched as the man climbed down a path to get his missing helmet. The enemy soldier took note of the path and that night took some other soldiers up the cliff and found the walls completely unmanned. Sardis was taken because of the overconfidence they had in their own natural strength. It seems as if some of that pride had entered into the Christian church at Sardis. Unlike some of the other cities that we have looked at, it does not seem that these Christians were in danger from persecution due to refusal to worship the Roman emperor. They may have looked at their position of strength in terms of religious freedom and felt truly alive. Perhaps they were respected by their non-Christian neighbours and they may have been doing better financially than their Christian brothers and sisters elsewhere. Whatever the circumstances, they had a reputation for being alive. However, Jesus saw right through this and declares them to be dead. I want you to imagine if Jesus wrote a letter to our church. The last thing we would want to hear from Jesus is that we were dead. Jesus was talking about something different from outward appearances. Jesus was talking about a vitality in relationship with God, a passion for people and a spiritual fire. The image of life is used for these things throughout the Bible. In the book of Ezekiel, God brings Ezekiel to a battlefield filled with dead bodies. Ezekiel was feeling bad enough as his land had been invaded, may people including Ezekiel had been sent into exile. Things looked extremely dismal for the people of Israel. However, God used this battlefield to show what he was capable of. As Ezekiel watched, the bones were joined together, covered with muscle and skin, and when God breathed spirit into them they were returned to life. In the same way, God was going to breathe new life into the seemingly dead Israel. In the New Testament, we find the idea of life very often, especially in the Gospel of John. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16 NIV) The thing to realize is that eternal life in the Bible is not just about the continuation of life beyond death but a quality of life to be experienced now and continued in the afterlife. Jesus says “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10 NIV) When Jesus describes himself, he speaks of the “bread of life” (John 6:48), “resurrection and the life” (John 11:25) and “way, truth and the life” (John 14:6). Jesus‘ purpose was to bring life, and to bring life to every area of our being. Anything less than that was death and that was where the church at Sardis was.
We Need Life
What about us? We cannot leave this as hypothetical. We need to know if we are alive or dead. As evangelicals, part of our heritage is that of the revivals. But what are revivals? Revivals are not just more frequent church services, loud preaching and exuberant worship. Revival is when life is breathed in and we know that we stand before Christ fully alive. Here are some ways that we need to be alive.
Physically Alive
We as a church need to be physically alive. What do I mean by that? As a congregation, we need to have some people here or we are a dead church. All of us are getting older, and so we must continually bring new people in. By inviting your friends and family, telling people about what we do, you are helping us to have a physical presence in this community.
Emotionally Alive
It is great that we have some living bodies here, but we need more. We need to be emotionally alive. By emotionally alive, I mean we must care about what happens to each other. We must choose to say words that build up rather than tear down. We must pray for one another and take care of one another’s needs. We must have a love for our congregation. But we must have a love for our community and for our world as well. We should feel as if we have an investment in other people’s lives and that we mourn and rejoice with others.
Mentally Alive
We need to have people and to have people who care and love. But there are other people who do these things who are not Christians. We need to be alive in the sense of knowing the truth. Mentally we must be growing as we learn more about God and what he wants for us. We should be more aware of God’s presence in what we see around us and new understandings of Scripture should be coming to us. We should be getting more confident in our faith, able to answer more questions and better able to explain what we believe. Jesus said “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32 NIV) When we say ‘amen‘ at the end of a prayer, we are not just saying we are done praying. We are saying that we have just prayed is truth. This truth is not known just by the emotion of the moment but our knowledge of who God is.
Spiritually Alive
We could have a group of people together. We could love one another and have a good understanding of the Bible. But that would not mean that we are necessarily alive fully the way Jesus wants us to be. We need to be spiritually alive. This means that we have a vibrant and loving relationship with God. We can sing hymns and songs with the best voices and the best instruments, but if we do not mean the words, it is a waste of time. We can pray the most beautiful prayers, prayers filled with Scripture, prayers that would put poetry to shame, but if we do not know the one we are praying to, it is a waste of time. We can have encyclopedic knowledge of the Bible, but if we do not see it as God’s revelation to us, his reaching out with his love, then it is just another book. We must be fully alive spiritually.
Conclusion
What does it mean to be alive? It is more than outward appearance. Think about the city of Sardis sitting upon those cliffs. Strong and alive. But all it took was the dropping of one helmet and that city was defeated and dead. Here we are as a church. It is easy for us to look alive, but Jesus sees the truth. We need to be alive physically, bringing in new people. We need to be alive emotionally, having love for one another. We need to be alive mentally, knowing the truth. We need to be alive spiritually, loving the God who loves us with an immense love. That is the abundant life that God has in store for us.
