pastor's article 09-22-24

Today we come to the fifth church that Jesus sent a letter to. As we do, we must ask ourselves how this letter speaks to the church of today. The church of Sardis is a dead church, as Jesus said, so let’s think about what that means.  
If we were to take a trip to London, among the sites we could visit would be the Metropolitan Tabernacle. The tour guide would tell us that this is the place where the great Charles Haddon Spurgeon used to preach. He would tell us that the 5,000-seat auditorium there was never large enough, that it was packed to overflowing Sunday after Sunday in Spurgeon’s day. He would tell us how on Sunday nights, they would ask church members to stay home because so many visitors wanted to come that they filled the building.
But today, that church is only a shadow of what it used to be. If you were to visit the Metropolitan Tabernacle now, basically what you would hear is wonderful stories of “the way it used to be.” The good ole days.
Such could be said about the church of Sardis in our text this morning. At one time, they had a reputation for being exciting, alive, vibrant and on fire for God! But as Jesus Christ writes to this church in Sardis, they were all reputation and no reality. They were all form and no force. They were glorying in past splendor and ignoring their present state. They focused on past reputation rather than present reality.
It is wonderful to have great stories of what God has done, but living in the past can blur the reality of the present and hinder the work that needs to be done for the future. We have more opportunity to reach lost people today than we have ever had. We must make serving the Lord a top priority and be sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit of God. Pray God will lead, empower and bless our obedience to Him.
Pastor,
Rev. Wayne Marcus