Strengthen What Remains

Strengthening What Remains

I. OPENING ILLUSTRATION:

Resilience is the ability and the process of overcoming life-challenging and threatening experiences and events. Bouncing back does not happen overnight. The ability to live with what is left after trauma is something that not everyone possesses and so many people stop living and let life pass them by. Jesus says to the church at Sardis:

II. TEXT:

Revelation 3:1-4 (NIV)

1 “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. 2 Wake up! [better: Be watchful] Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have found your deeds unfinished in the sight of my God. 3 Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; hold it fast, 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.

4 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. 5 The one who is victorious will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out the name of that person from the book of life, but will acknowledge that name before my Father and his angels. 6 Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

II. INTRODUCTION:

The church at Sardis was considered to be alive and well, but actually it was on the point of death. Christ admonishes the congregation to wake up to their perilous conditions and take steps to restore their former vitality. Otherwise they will be visited with unexpected judgment. As with all of the short letters to the churches in Asia Minor there is a promise to those who overcome (Robert H. Mounce, The Book of Revelation NICONT, pg. 91).

The acropolis of Sardis was on a rocky spur of Mount Tmolus. Two times in the city's history it was captured because it's guards failed to detect enemy soldiers who snuck in by climbing up a crevice in teh cliffs and opened the gates. Rev 3:2-3 is a warning to the congregation in Sardis that they could easily fall in the same way the city had twice fallen. It was important to be watchful and awake (Apostolic Study Bible, pg. 255).

They were slumbering spiritually and Jesus's answer to them overcoming was first of all to, "Be watchful." It is important that we live our lives with our eyes opened spiritually.

Jesus speaks often in His parables about being watchful. On the night when He was betrayed as He prayed in the garden, He pled with His disciples to be watchful and pray. The apostle Paul speaks of being watchful. The writer of Proverbs warns,

Proverbs 24:30-34 (NKJV)

30 I went by the field of the lazy man, And by the vineyard of the man devoid of understanding; 31 And there it was, all overgrown with thorns; Its surface was covered with nettles; Its stone wall was broken down. 32 When I saw it, I considered it well; I looked on it and received instruction:33 A little sleep, a little slumber, A little folding of the hands to rest; 34 So shall your poverty come like a prowler, And your need like an armed man.

In the last section of Rev 3:2 Jesus says that there are things in the lives of the congregation that their deeds were unfinished. Far too often in our weariness we can slumber and it can keep us from finishing what we begin.

While it is God who begins a good work in us and creates in us the desire to finish, we must use the means of grace at our access (Phil 1:6; 2:13).

How often do we begin a project, a spiritual discipline, a ministry effort only to become weary in well-doing and fail to finish what we have begun?

Right in the middle of Jesus's words to the church at Sardis that they should be watchful and that they their works were unfinished He speaks a word that I believe is a present word for us today: "Strengthen what remains and is about to die..."

The Lord desires that we truly live. He professed that He came to give Life and Life more abundantly (john 10:10). Too often what we begin, and as we live life fighting the world, the flesh, and the devil, our energy wanes and we do not finish. Here Jesus tells us to strengthen what is left, the remnant. This can be our physical resources, our time, our talent, and so forth...