20. The Kingdom Parables – The Fifth – The Hidden Treasure – Part 4 of 4
This interesting Parable has been examined in regards to meaning, to its matching church, and to Church History as can be done for all these Parables of the Kingdom. This last message is looking at the reasons why the Reformation saw “deeds not completed” and “having a name, but dead”. This is a shorter message.
[M]. THE POSITION OF THIS HIDDEN TREASURE AND SARDIS IN CHURCH HISTORY.
Sardis means “the escaping ones” and in God’s time, (in the 1500s) the escaping ones got through the clutches of the Roman Catholic Church dominated by enormous wickedness. We saw a little of that in the last Parable.
Before we go any further let us be clear about what the Lord wrote to Sardis as it is so important:-
{{“I know your deeds, that YOU HAVE A NAME THAT YOU ARE ALIVE, BUT YOU ARE DEAD.”}}
AND
{{“for I HAVE NOT FOUND YOUR DEEDS COMPLETED IN THE SIGHT OF MY GOD.”}}
The letter reveals them to be alive but dead, works not complete, had a name but had to wake up. (Revelation 3:1-3). Sardis represents the church history period from 1517 - 1750 A.D. and then on to the present. It is the period of the Protestant Reformations and speaks of those “escaping ones” coming out of Rome’s clutches, living in a time of great evil and paganism. Works not complete - they did not go far enough but set up state churches and became lifeless. (W. Kelly).
William Kelly says, [[“Sardis describes what followed the Reformation, when the glow and fervour of truth, and the first flush of blessing had passed away, and cold formalism had set in.”]]
Miller’s Church History adds, [[“the period of church history that is associated with Sardis commences with the Diet of Spires in 1529 A.D. Scarcely had the Christians tasted the blessings of deliverance from Rome’s oppression, when they fell back into a state of bondage to the governments and princes of the world, and consequently, into spiritual deadness. In their anxiety to obtain complete deliverance from the threatening power of the Pope, backed by Catholic priests, the reformed Christians placed themselves under the protection of the Protestant princes. This was their failure.”]]
When Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the church at Wurtemburg on 31 October 1517, many thought a new era had commenced, but Protestantism, with all its schisms, sectarianism and lifeless formalism, fell far short of New Testament Christianity. Its initial promises never came to fruition; its appearance of spiritual power masked a spiritual weakness; it professed to have life but was spiritually dead. (Revelation 3:1). The period of church history represented by Sardis, commenced early in the 16 th century and continues to the present.
F.C. Ottman writes, [[“When the voice of Martin Luther thundered through the German Empire, it found an echo in many hearts, distressed with the existing system. The protest of these reformers against the abuses of the church were articulated in the Augsburg Confession. Over against these articles of protest were written the decrees of the Council of Trent (Catholic). The Reformation, of which many had dreamed and longed for, had come at last and was manifestly the work of God. The Protestants, bound together by the courage of their convictions, stood firmly against the evils they had long endured. If anyone, however, hoped for a united Protestantism against Rome’s despotism, he was doomed to disappointment. Zwingli and the Swiss Reformers differed from Luther and his followers in regard to the Lord’s Supper. Calvin, later on was not able to reconcile these two systems to each other. Nor to his own. The sacramentarian controversy was the destruction of unity. The Lord’s Supper, which was to be the fullest expression of Christ’s Body, became the subject of a heated controversy, and split the Protestant church into fragments.”]]
The Reformation was commendable but was not a proper return to the teachings and practices of the Apostles as set out in the New Testament, and resulted in a whole host of breaks and disputes that have splintered Protestantism into thousands of fragmented sects and denominations. This imperfection and incompleteness of the Reformation is what has made Protestantism (the State Churches) into having a name as being alive, but are dead! The Reformation early lost its vitality and power and lapsed into an orthodox formality. Spiritual energy finally disappeared and denominationalism took the place of a living organism. “The clanking of ecclesiastical machinery soon superseded the virile spontaneity of the first awakening.” Milligan comments, “She has been proud of her external ordinances and has thought more of them than of living in the Spirit, and walking in the Spirit. True piety has declined and, as a natural consequence, sins of the flesh have asserted their supremacy.”
On the matter of “not finding your deeds complete” it is sad but the Reformation held onto some of the Roman Catholic doctrines and practices. Its ecclesiastical machinery was partly modeled on the Catholic system. The wearing of robes and vestments continued instead of being done away with. The whole system of eschatology, done away with by the Catholic church, was not revived. The great prophetic sections of the bible and the prophetic books of the Old Testament were written off as allegory as taught by the Catholic Church, following Augustine in the main.
The rigid division of clergy and laity was still maintained; the whole hierarchical structure of the organization by some Denominations was retained or mostly so. The immersion of believers, clearly a New Testament practice without exception, was ignored and the Catholic practice of sprinkling was continued. There are others too to show the works were not complete. It is sad it turned out that way.
A Google search produced the following – [[“While Protestant reformers rejected many Catholic doctrines, they retained and sometimes adapted practices like the importance of the seven sacraments, the belief in salvation through God's grace and faith, and the central role of the Mass as a form of worship. The Catholic Church also maintained its practices, which some reformers also kept to a degree, such as a hierarchical structure and devotion to saints. The reformers rejected the authority of the pope, but some traditions were retained, particularly in reformed churches like the Church of England, which preserved practices such as the use of elaborate liturgy and church music, and still having the centrepiece of the altar in the churches.”]]
Today it is quite sad to see the state of the Reformation churches around the world. The major denominations that developed from the Reformation are as follows. The Lutheran Church; The State Reformed Churches such as the Swiss Reformed Church; The Presbyterian Churches; the Anglican (Church of England), (and out of that Methodists), and many other subsidiaries of those.
There are many separate identities such as the Evangelical Reformed Church. I don’t intend trying to give a breakup of these frankly, because I do not know the state of play.
However among the Denominations mentioned above, in all of them, there is a deadness and departure from the faith. This does not apply to every church or division within the denomination, and some of them are holding to the standard of the bible. It is a very mixed bag.
We can hear the Lord saying, {{Revelation 3:3 “REMEMBER therefore what you have received and heard and keep it, and REPENT. If therefore you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come upon you.”}}. The original Reformers some 500 years ago knew what it was to escape from Rome and from the wickedness of doctrine and practice. Sadly now some of those who are in the once “escaping” churches have turned to wickedness and paganism and liberalism and formalism once again.
Sardis matches the fifth Kingdom parable - the Treasure buried in the field. This Treasure is Israel (Not the Church!! Or salvation!!) and one day soon Israel will come to be unearthed, escaping out of this world into a unique relationship with their Messiah/King. Israel is the earthly seed of Abraham and the Church is the heavenly seed. They are distinct from each other but both owe their existence to the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ.
A very special promise was given to Abraham in this verse – {{Genesis 22:17-18 “Indeed, I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed AS THE STARS OF THE HEAVENS, and AS THE SAND WHICH IS ON THE SEASHORE, and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies, and in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed because you have obeyed My voice.”}}
God does not waste words by saying the same thing twice in two different ways. There are two distinct seeds here, in these verses, a heavenly seed represented by the stars, and an earthly seed represented by the sand. The Church is the heavenly seed, and Israel is the earthly seed. What could be clearer than that? The Hidden Treasure is Israel, and the Pearl is the Church!
To reiterate, this church (Sardis) represents the escape from Rome’s clutches and covers from A.D. 1517 right down to the present. It covers the period of the Reformation.
The Parable of the Buried Treasure is Israel, hidden until the appointed time which is the Second Coming. The next parable, The Pearl of Greatest Price, is all about the Church. It is very beautiful but until next time, God bless His word.
