Our Common Purpose

Presence of the Lord is just real sweet in here and my tail is wobbly knees. That's how I know, dad. And goosebumps. That's how you always know it's the Holy Ghost. That's a Pentecostal joke.

You know, I had a verse, a couple of verses running through my head this week and it wasn't what I was planning to minister on, but they recurred to me, you know, again. And I feel like it might be a helpful just two verses for somebody here in particular. And so it has to do, anything to do with my message, but I feel like I just have to share it. It's actually out of second Chronicles 31, we're going to read the last verse of chapter 31 and the first verse of chapter 32. So you know when they the Bible is written that those aren't chapters.

So the last verse of 31 flows right into the first verse of 32. And here's what it says. Talking about Hezekiah. Well, I'll go 29. This is what Hezekiah did throughout Judah, doing what was good and right and faithful before the Lord his God in everything that he undertook in the service of God's temple and obedience to the law and to the commands he sought his God and worked wholeheartedly.

And so he prospered after all that Hezekiah had so faithfully done. I'm going to say this the English way, Sennacherib, because that's just fun to say, like Zumzumin Sennacherib. Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came and invaded Judah. He laid siege to the fortified cities, thinking to conquer them for himself. And what I want to point out to you is the contrast between those two verses.

After Hezekiah had done faithfully all that God had called him to do, he prospered. And after Hezekiah had done faithfully all that God had called him to do, the enemy attacked. So if you're undergoing that and you don't understand, I have done everything that the Lord has told me to do, and now I'm getting sued.

Don't lose heart because those attacks will come. There will be times when it'll be fine and there will be times when it won't be fine. And it's all good anyway. As we were never promised that we wouldn't suffer any kind of trial, this world is full of trouble. What we are promised is that he will deliver us out from every trial and temptation, right?

So don't be discouraged. And I feel like I needed to share that with somebody in particular. You're okay. You have done everything right. And that's the reason you're being attacked.

And you will see the deliverance of Lord. It's all going to be good. And now the movie folks. Now the what I was brought here to do.

Let's just pray.

Father God, we honor your word. We honor your word. It is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our paths. And your Word we will hide in our heart that we might not sin against you. Father, sanctify us with your word.

Lord God and Holy Spirit, we invite you. We invite you into this place. We invite you. We want you. I can't do it without you.

It's just words coming out of my mouth unless you breathe life into them, you know, you know, you know. So I acknowledge you as the teacher and I ask you to help me teach and to help your people hear what the Spirit is saying. I thank youk for that Jesus name. Amen. And Amen.

Well, I'm kind of a history nerd. I do love to study history and I would subscribe to the notion that people who ignore history are doomed to repeat it because there just do seem to be cycles of things that happen in the world. And so today I want to start out tonight by giving you a little history lesson. Because not only if you poll high school students and you find the class that they like the least, it is history. And that they like the least in history, it is ancient history.

So tonight we're going to talk about ancient history because you are my prisoners. And I'm going to talk about what I want to talk about.

Actually, it's a Tale of Two Kings, not A Tale of Three Kings. Any of you read that book, Tale of Three Kings. It's a tale of two kings. It's a true story. It's a tale of King Croesus and King Cyrus.

Now, I like to in terms of placing it historically for me, I like to place it in terms of where it would fit into the word of God. And so where this would fit into the word of God would be the children of Israel would have been displaced from Israel. Both Israel and Judah, they would be living in exile and captivity all around the Mediterranean Sea and parts east under the Babylonian empire. So there is no Israel or Judah. When this is happening and this happens, I would say about mid century.

Century mid 500s BC for those of you that I know are taking notes and want to know about that. Hi, Josh. It's my little peanut man. I just do that to annoy him. Anyways, so King Croesus is the king of a nation called Lydia.

And for a hundred years Lydia had been the crown jewel of the world. Very wealthy, wealthy nation. Lydia was the first nation to. They invented coinage, right? Metal coins.

Why we have coins today comes from Lydia. You ever have that question on Trivial Pursuit or Jeopardy, you're welcome. You'll have that. Lydia. They were the wealthiest nation in the world.

And Lydia is in what would now be called Turkey. Then it was Asia Minor, now Turkey. That's King Croesus. King Cyrus is the king of an. Of the emerging Medo Persian empire.

And that should sound more familiar to you because that's. That's in the Bible. The Medo Persian empire. Right. The Medo Persian empire is mentioned actually twice in the word of God or referred to twice in the word of God.

In Daniel chapter two. It is the. The chest and arms of silver in Nebuchadnezzar's dream. Yeah. Daniel chapter eight.

It's the ram with two horns. Cyrus is mentioned by name 23 times in the Bible. And he is the king that will issue the edict that will allow the Jews to return back to Judah. And he will say, you must rebuild the temple. Cyrus, the Persian, Persia.

The is what would be today Iran. Right. Do you realize like what, what Babylonian and all that beauty is actually Iraq? Does that strike you as odd? Like I think would be Bali or something like that.

You know what I mean? Because don't you think of that's kind of deserty. But actually that's all that's to happen in place right over there. Well, Cyrus has his eyes on expanding his empire right now the Babylonians are in charge. So he's thinking, nah, I think I'm the next.

I'm the next big thing here. And where I think I need to go is I need to go into Lydia because I know how much money they have. Well, word gets decreases that Cyrus has his eyes set on his country. He's a little nervous about it because he knows they're a formidable force. So being a religious man, he sends a messenger down to the great oracle of Delphi.

I called you that today, didn't I? But not in a good way. And they sent us to the Oracle of Delphi. And so this was a woman who claimed to hear words directly from the Greek God Apollo in Corinth. There all them Greek things are happening.

Zeus and all those guys up there. And so he sends a messenger there and she says, I do have a word for Croesus. Tell Croesus, if he crows, if he crosses the Halys river and goes into Persia, he will destroy a great nation. Well, Croesus hears this. He's very excited about that, encouraged about that.

But he's still no full. He knows that they have the Persian army is large, larger than his. So he gets his buddies in Egypt and Babylon and Sparta and he says, you know, we got to stop this guy because he has his sight set on taking over the word. Why don't you send me some troops and we'll just. Let's just nip this in the bud with this guy.

We're all content with our own land. He's the one that's being the aggressor. We need to stop this guy. They say sure. So they send their troops.

So the first the thing I this right here, what's this called? Map, please. And now. Okay, so I am your geography girl. Those of you who've seen me minister, I will tell you geography is a big deal in the Bible.

It is a big deal. And then I also think it helps you understand what we're talking about. So see, you have to the left there, the Lydian empire. And then where the red line is, that's the Persian Median. Median empire, Medo Persian Empire.

So what Croesus and Sparta, Babylon and Egypt does there, he takes his army, they're the blue and they cross. See where that like I highlighted. That's a custom made map right there. Folks. I want to tell you that is the Hallas River.

He crosses the Hallas river and they begin to battle with the Persians. Here's the thing, it always ends up in a draw. So they have skirmish after skirmish and nobody's really winning and nobody's really losing. Well, what happens is it's starting to get winter. And so back in the day you did time out in the winter, right?

You didn't war in the winter. We're probably familiar with that verse talking David, when that unfortunate incident with Beth Sheber where it says in the spring at the time when kings go to war. Because what they would do is they would take a break in the winter because their weaponry couldn't function. It was just too hard to battle. They would take a break, time out, go home, winter was over, they'd come back in the spring.

So it's wintertime. Croesus assumes, okay, we're going to take a break, tells the guys from Sparta, Egypt and Babylonia, you guys go on home, meet me back here in the spring. He takes his troops and he follows that dark Blue line all the way down to Sardis, which was not a bad idea because Sardis was a fabulous city that was built on a very high mountaintop. It was a citadel, and it was surrounded by sheer cliffs that it couldn't be scaled. I mean, it was a phenomenal place.

So he takes his men, he goes, let's go. Let's go wait it out in Citadel. Citadel, let's go wait it out in Sardis, and then we'll head out for the spring and all will be fine. That would have worked, except Cyrus didn't go home.

He pursued Croesus all the way to Sardis. Because this guy is not the type that's going to quit. He thinks outside of the box. But when he gets to Sardis, he finds that everything he's heard about it is true. You cannot get in that citadel.

There's no way they can scale those walls. There's no weapon they have that could make them get in there. He's not deterred. He still thinks in his mind, there's got to be a way in there. So he calls his men together and he said, I'll tell you what, if any of you can find me away to get us into there, I will make you a wealthy man.

Well, there's always some enterprising young people in your organization. All they need is some motivation. And so the troops went out. Well, this one enterprising young man, he comes to a party. Party's walking around this citadel and he's looking, just shaking his head, and he comes to a party.

In parts of the citadel, they had guards set in these large walls. But this one part there was not. There was nobody there. And he's thinking this would be a perfect place to invade the city. There's nobody there, but no way we're getting up there.

All of a sudden he hears a noise. Clink, clink, clink. He looks up and he sees a helmet falling from the top and it's bouncing off the mountain. Clink, clink, clink. And it falls.

He sees. It falls to the ground. He looks up and he sees a Lydian soldier with no helmet bending down like this, watching his helmet fall to the ground.

Persian soldier just sits there and watches. What in the world? And in a short period of time, he sees that Lydian soldier come out of a Secret passageway about 2/3 or 3/4 down that citadel. He comes out of that passageway and that at that point, he was able to scale, down he goes, he gets his helmet, puts his helmet on, gets back up into the Citadel. Aha.

So the Persian soldier goes back to Cyrus and says, I can get you in, King. Follow me. So they go to the citadel. Cyrus waits until night. And single file, one by one, man by man, they scale up that same part.

They go into the passageway and they overtake the city.

What was interesting, or what is interesting about that, is that the oracle of, of Delphi was correct. What did she tell Croesus? If you cross the Halys river, you will destroy a great nation. But the great nation he destroyed wasn't Persia. It was his own.

So why am I telling you all this story? Well, this great city called Sardis, it's actually kind of a shame, right? It went down with, not with a roar, right? But with a whimper. This wealthy, well protected city went down quite easily.

And a sleeping community with an army inside of it woke up to a full invasion. And once you took Sardis was the capital. Once you took the capital, somebody took D.C. right? You know, it's going to be rough. You take the capital of a small country like that, it's over.

Now. Lydia belonged to the Persians. And the tragedy is that the army that should have been alert, they knew they were in a war that should have been alert and aware that, hey, we're still in a war. They all went to sleep. They had a false sense of security that left them dull to the potential of danger.

Tonight we're going to look at a letter Jesus wrote. Guess to whom? Sardis. The church at Sardis. And we're going to see that the same set of circumstances that presented themselves 600 years before this letter was written are presenting themselves again to the city of Sardis.

Only it's a spiritual disaster that's awaiting them. The same unhappy fate will await the people if the that city is under the same kind of danger that Sardis was in, in a natural way, because the people who are supposed to be in that city to protect it are asleep. And Jesus is going to ask these people to please wake up.

Revelation, chapter three. We're going to start in verse one. This is a letter that is part of the book of Revelation. And it's a letter, part of seven letters that Jesus dictated to John. There are seven letters to seven churches in seven different cities.

All of these churches, by the way, and see where Sardis is. That whole Asia Minor area, all these cities are there that he writes the letters to. There's a number of ways that people have interpreted these letters. One of them is that they are representative of all the churches everywhere at any time. And you can look at them that way.

And so that's how we read that some people interpret them as they are representative of chronological time periods of the church, the major characteristics. So, for example, the first letter is the letter to Ephesus. So that would represent the church that started at the day of Pentecost. And the last letter is the church to Laodicea. And that would represent the characteristics of the church when Jesus returns.

You know, I imagine that could work if you are just considering the evolution of the Western churches.

I don't know if that template would work if you were looking at churches on other continents, Africa or Asia. So the last church, Laodicea, they're the ones. I have everything I need. You know, life is easy. I could see the Western church fit in that model.

You know, we have life pretty good. But I don't think the church in China or Niger might feel that way. So for me, these letters, I take this philosophy. If the shoe fits, wear it, right? If you see yourself in this letter, then see yourself.

And for the good and for the bad, every letter ends with the same verse. Let whoever has ears to hear, hear what the spirit is saying to the church is. So it kind of has a broad reaching. It reaches out broad. So for me, yeah, it's for everybody.

The letter to Sardis is unique, not for what it has in contrast to the other churches, but for what it doesn't have. What is missing in this letter that is in every other letter, and that's the mystery we will unfold as we go on. Shall we go to the text, Revelation 3 to the angel? I'm just going to read it all first and, you know, then I'm going to have to break it down verse by verse or I'll go crazy. 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 found your deeds unfinished in the sight of my God. 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. 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. 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. Whoever has ears to hear, let them him hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches. Let's just start with a couple of things that are just kind of fun to know, or not fun to know, controversial and kind of cool to talk about.

To the angel at the Church of Sardis. These are the words of him who hold the seven stars. There is some discussion about is the angel human or celestial, right? So is the, is, is, is Jesus talking about a human messenger or a celestial being? And I will tell you that that Greek word Angelos, of all the times it's used in the New Testament, it is used both to refer to a celestial being and to human messenger, but far more times to refer to a celestial being.

Personally, I mean, this is nothing I would want to arm wrestle somebody over. But you know, personally, I think, I mean, I could totally buy it's a celestial being number one, because in chapter one of Revelation, verse 16, it talks about Jesus holds the chapter seven stars and he walks among the candlesticks. And then verse 20 says the seven stars are the seven angels. So, and that picture is kind of glorious and heavenly and celestial. So to me that does look like just a regular guy.

And then the Monday morning ladies. So when I read that now remember we learned about like the divine council. Doesn't that sound divine council? Ish. Like can't you see Jesus pulling together his earthly imagers, right?

His earthly creation and his heavenly creation and saying, hey guys, let's do this together, right? So like I have no problem being that being a celestial person. It, you know, I think it'd just be kind of, I think be just kind of cool Jesus. The seven spirits of God. There aren't seven different spirits of God.

It's better to say the sevenfold Spirit of God. Maybe it's connected many times to Isaiah 11, 2 talking about the Messiah he's going to have. The Spirit of God will rest on him. 1. The Spirit of the Lord is one.

The Spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge and the fear of the Lord. The bottom line is in Jesus is the fullness of the Spirit and the authority over all the churches. So he is qualified to correct and he is empowered to help. And this is the picture. And when you see him the way he's described in chapter one, he's got a mixture of clothing as a priest and as a judge, and he's just equipped to do it all.

And the time has come for him to function in these various Areas. And he goes on to say this to these Christian folks here, I know your deeds. You have a reputation of being a lie. But you are dead. That's rough now.

I love it. They have a reputation. What does that mean? That people on the outside, they think they're the cool church. Yeah, maybe.

They have a nice building, they're growing, they have outreaches out. I mean, they're just. They're doing everything wonderful. And as you know, people, we judge by the outside. That's not how God judges.

God judges the heart. He judges the motive. Doesn't that ever make you get serious about why you're doing something? He's going to expose the motives and of your heart. I don't like to be.

I don't want to be embarrassed in heaven and yelled at and stuff. I try to keep it clean, man, I'll tell you, I just for. Just because I don't want to get yelled at in front of everybody. I would hate that. So anyways, God looks at the heart and despite what these people are doing, it doesn't meet his criteria.

Jesus criteria of a life giving work. There was a gentleman I knew. This is going back a lot of years, Michael, you know who I'm talking about. He was, and this is going way back in Ohio and he was part of a very large denomination where we lived and he was in high leadership there and he oversaw a very large outreach to the homeless in our community. And I just happened to be around him at one time and someone had asked him, what are you doing to meet the spiritual needs of these people?

I'll never forget what he said. He goes, these guys come here to eat. They don't need religion shoved down their throats. And I would agree with, no one needs religion shoved down their throats. But I thought, what a cynical, egregious thing to feel.

I felt bad for him that this is how you look at being the arms of Christ and feeding people. And then I thought this would fit the category of perhaps a dead work before the Lord. But who am I to judge? But I'll tell you, this is not why this church is dead. The clues to why Sardis is dead is connected to what's not happening there.

And it comes at the end of the letter. So hold on. Verse two, Wake up. Strengthen what remains that is about to die for I have found your deeds unfinished. I don't like that better that translation.

Unfulfilled in the sight of God. A dead work that's unfinished. If you finish a dead work, it's still dead. You know what I'm saying? So unfulfilled.

There's some other words that I think if you look in your Strong's concordance, you can put them in there. And I think nicely, you know, like the Lydian army and the citizens in the citadel, these Christians have a. Have a false sense of security about how they're living. They're so confident that what they're doing for the Lord is meeting is right and pleasing in his sight. They have no idea of what's waiting at the door.

And it's not good. And here's a shocker. It's not the enemy.

Verse 3. Remember therefore, what you have received and heard. Hold it fast. Fast. Well, verse three tells you how you do.

First two, wake up. Strengthen what remains and is about to die. Oh, how do I do that? You remember what you have received and heard. What have you received?

You have received the Spirit of God. What have you heard? You have heard the gospel of Jesus. You have heard Jesus's teachings. You have heard the Old Testament.

Remember what you have received and heard. And hold it fast again. I hate to nitpick, but it's really. The word keep is actually better there because keep means to do. It doesn't mean I believe it.

I believe it. I'm holding it fast. To keep God's word is to do God's word. So remember what you have received and heard. And do what you have received and heard because you're not doing what you have received and heard and that's why you're dead.

And he says and repent. And if we can just talk a minute about repentance, because I think we can conflate the word repentance with confession and in particular confession of sin. And they're really two different words with two different meanings. The confession of sin is to acknowledge something that we have done wrong right before the Lord. And when we do that, he is faithful and just to cleanse us and he forgives us and cleanses us from all unrighteousness every single time.

That's confession. I confess that I have done this wrong. Repentance includes confession, but it is more. To repent from something is to change the way you look at it to the extent that you go in the other direction. So what happens if we confess, confess and we don't engage in repentance?

What we find is we get in a cycle of sin, confess sin, confess. Because we haven't renewed our minds in a way that is allowing us to look at what we're doing. And how we're doing it. And the only way that happens is by hiding the Word of God in your heart. The Word of God.

When you begin to meditate on the Word of God, it transforms the way you look at life and look at what you're doing. Nothing else has the power to do that by the Word of God, but the Word of God. And it is a process, but you will see that it will begin to transform you. And things that you could not resist, you begin to be able to resist because you are a changed person via the Word of God. And so I just wanted to stop there because it's.

You get sad. I get sad when I say people caught in that, you know, vicious cycle. So grateful God never loses his ability to forgive, right? But you want to see people walk free. You want to walk free of that, right?

And that really, you got to do the work. You got to do the work of putting the Word into your heart and letting it change you. And so when. When Jesus is telling this church to repent, he's not telling them, now say you're sorry. He is telling them, change.

Change what you're doing. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief and you will not know at what time I will come. Like King Cyrus surprised people in Sardis. Like a thief in the middle of night, King Jesus is going to do that same thing. That is that same imagery as it stands, this church has been sleeping and it's not doing what it is supposed to do.

And that is what, as the army of God in whatever city you find yourself in, you have a calling to provide life and protection in that city. We are part of an army. And in our local city, and we are called to be salt and light to those within and those without. We bring stability to a region. We're supposed to be awake and this church is not awake.

And they live in a bad place, right? That whole area is just not like Utah where the Mormons live. Not that you should be Mormon or anything, but, you know, they're pretty. Pretty holy, I guess. I don't know.

Never been around a lot of Mormons, but anyways, I definitely went down a road I wish I hadn't. Don't put your head down. You're embarrassed for me, aren't you? Josh? I know, too.

He's like, oh, my mother, help your Jesus.

Did you know? Let's go on with our notes. The thief in the night imagery, right? This isn't an isolated reference to refer to when Jesus comes. Jesus talks about it himself in the Gospel of Luke.

And Paul uses this imagery beautifully in First Thessalonians, chapter 5, verses 1 through 3. Now, brothers and sisters, he says about times and dates. He is in context, talking about the return of Jesus. We do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord, that is OT Old Testament code for when Jesus returns, the day of judgment will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying peace and safety, destruction will come on them suddenly as labor pains on a pregnant woman.

And they will not escape. My brothers and sisters, do not be deceived. That's not the word, that's just me being passionate. Judgment is coming for both the world and the church. That's what the Bible says.

And so we have to be sober about the way we live, really sober about it. And how do I know that? The Bible tells me so. In Second Corinthians, chapter 5, verse 10, Paul is writing to Christians, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.

I mean, when we talk about a come to Jesus moment, that's a thing. Paul writes to Timothy, live in such a way so that you will not be ashamed at his coming. So what's the converse at that, right? You could be ashamed or not ashamed when Jesus comes.

I wish I could be happier about it, but it's the word he gave me. What can I tell you? Verse 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.

And here we are. Here we are, right here. Here we have the answer to both questions. What is missing in the letter? And.

And why they are called dead? What is missing in the letter? You know, all these letters have a very similar format, right? There's a kind of a Greek format that a letter is written and every one of these letters have a similar format. Hi.

I like you. Here's what you're doing bad. Here's what you're doing good. Here's what you're doing bad. If you overcome, here's what's going to happen.

We have come to the part of the letter that's the wrap up and there has been nothing preceding the wrap up. There's nothing that he said in this letter that addresses any trouble that is coming from outside the church that's causing the problems. Nothing that's coming from inside the church. There's no bad doctrine, there's no persecution, there's no trouble at that church. And I generally don't like to make an argument from absence like this is not here.

So this is the point. But I think this omission is huge. This church, the people in this church are living in a way that poses no threat to the kingdom of darkness. You think you're having fussing in your church, you're gonna have it. If you've got a lively church that's doing something for the kingdom, you're gonna have persecution in your church.

Hurrah. That's a crown to you. But if you're living large and everybody thinks you're swell, the world thinks you're swell, and everybody's just, just doing a la de da da da life, I think there's a problem.

They have nothing to contend over or contend for. We are born to contend. When we don't have anything that we struggle to keep, we take it for granted. Granted. Always confuse granted with granted.

Granted. And these people are just living large. And that's, that's Jesus can't even address a trouble they're having or a bad doctrine they're having because they're not having any problems. You think that's good? That's not good.

That's the sign that something's dead.

Why are they called dead and told to wake up?

Their clothes are soiled.

Dirty clothes in the Bible represent sin.

You read just a section out of Zechariah, chapter three, verses three and four. Now, Joshua, this is not Joshua fought the battle of Jericho. But when they returned to Jerusalem to build the, rebuild the temple, he was a high priest. Now Joshua was dressed in filthy clothes. As he stood before the angel, the angel said to those who were standing before him, take off his filthy clothes.

Then he said to Joshua, see, I have taken away your sin, and I will put fine garments on you.

The Christians in this church have dirtied themselves with the ways of the world. Someone who is apart from God isn't. Doesn't have dirty clothes. They're naked. Right when Adam and Eve, right when they lost their fellowship with God, what's the first thing they notice?

Oh, boy. Yeah. Us. We. We soil our clothes.

When we become like the world and engage in what the world does.

When, When a church is missing any kind of problems, whether inside or outside, it's, it's an indication that, that those church people are kind of fallen asleep. And, and when the culture dirties up the church, instead of the church cleaning up the culture, that's a Problem.

It's hard for me to look at our nation overall and not wonder, how did this happen?

And personally, my generation, I'm not one. I'm just all these Gen Xers and these. Whatever they're called, you know, we raised them.

You better not be bad. I'll take you out, I swear.

What did we do? It was on our watch. I feel a personal responsibility about it. The degradation. There was a book, one of the Supreme Court judges.

Well, he didn't get confirmed, but he wrote Slouching Toward Gomorrah. You know, since the 60s. It started in the 60s, and since then there's just been this little by little degrading of the culture. Gosh, what were we doing? What were we thinking?

And now it's out of control.

Verse 5. The one who is victorious will, like them, be dressed in white. You see that word victorious? That's a clue. We're in a war.

Do not be deceived. It's not la dee da time. Playing our harp on a cloud. We are in the midst of a spiritual war. We don't battle flesh and blood.

We don't battle people. But we battle principalities and powers and other p. Words that do bad stuff in the night.

They want to take the church out. They want to take you out. They want to rob God of his creation. They want to rub God's nose in the filth that is humanity and say, there, that's what you created.

And we can either participate with that or we could stand against it. Not against people, although sometimes that'll happen, but against the spirit of it.

And look what he says here. I will never blot out the name of that person from the Book of Life, the one who is victorious, but will acknowledge that name before my Father and his angels. Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Now, regarding. About having one's name blotted out of the Book of Life.

You know, that's a whole kind of discussion on its own. And I've heard both sides of it. Let me just make a recommendation to you. From what I understand, the Bible says I wouldn't count on living any way you want to live and having things end well for you and just making a happy little trip from the here to the there without having to answer for some. Some gnashing teeth or something.

I don't know what's going to happen, but I got a feeling it's bad. Why would you take that chance? I wouldn't. All right. What's the point of all this Sardis was a dead local church, which is counterintuitive to everything we are called to be.

We are the army of God and every Christian. That means each one of us is commissioned with the same two basic mandates. We have a common purpose to, to offer life to those who are dead. And that is to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ where in our community, where we live, and two, to protect and preserve life in our communities. And when I say protecting life, I mean something so much broader than abortion.

Do you know that the presence of. Of righteous people in a community has the power to save it? I have a biblical example. Brother John mentioned it this weekend and he did two different messages. So it depends on what message you were here.

First search service or second service. When we come to second service, we still listen to first service. Pastor J.M. melanie. We're so holy.

Anyhoo, he mentioned Sodom and Gomorrah. And you know the story. The Lord comes down with two angels, right? He comes down to tell Abraham and Sarah got big things for you too. And Sarah's going to have a child.

And she laughs. She gets yelled at. She lies to God, said she didn't laugh. He goes, oh, yes, you did laugh anyways. But he's not mad at her, so she still has a baby.

So when he gets up to leave with the two angels, they're walking and. And they're going to go to Sodom. And he says to the two angels, he said, should I hide from Abraham what I'm about to do? And you don't say what the two angels said, but they probably said, no, you should probably tell him. So he tells Abraham, Abraham, the cry out of Sodom is so loud in my ears.

It's so wicked and vile and dirty. I have to go down for myself to see if it's true. And Abraham is able to connect the dots on what's going to happen if he goes down there and sees what it's through. And he waits him and he goes, you know, hey, I know I'm just dust and all that, but see, here's the problem. Abraham's nephew lives there.

Lot lives there with his wife and two daughters, okay? So it makes Abraham a little bit nervous. So he says, you know, I far beat for me to question you, but would you destroy a City if 50 people were righteous in that city? Would you destroy a whole city? And the Lord said, no, if there are 50 people there, I won't destroy the city.

Abraham walks away. And he knows about Sodom like everybody knows. About Sodom. And he begins this bartering thing with the Lord. 45.

How about 40? They go down and down. Finally he gets down to 10 people. He musters up his courage and he says, lord, if there are 10 people there that are righteous, would you spare the city? Because I'm thinking, he's probably thinking, okay, that's four.

There got to be at least six other people in that city that are holy. So I don't want to really pinpoint. I'm talking about lot in my me and mine. So I'll say 10. Keep it in round numbers.

And the Lord said, you know what? Not for the sake of 10 people. I won't destroy the city. Well, what happened to Sodom?

Do you realize in a city I've read so many different numbers of what that population of that city could have been, and I'll just go with the lowest number I saw was 600. And I mean, I couldn't believe that because, you know, when the angels came down there, it said that every man from every part of the city, both young and old, found out that the angels were there and they all surrounded Lot's house. I mean, this is before social media. I mean, how could that word get around? It can't be thousands and thousands of people, but.

So let's just say they had a population of 600. If that was their population of just 1.6% more people were righteous, perhaps that city could have been saved and redeemed in some way. But do you understand how a righteous, more righteous people in that city. City could have saved that city from destruction? And let's just.

Let's just. Yes, he brought Lot out, but it was no better roses for Lot when he came out. Was it his wife turned a stone that had icky story with his daughters? I mean, it just. Yes, he took them out, but it warn't pretty.

We can't lose sight. I have a bunch of P words. I had the spirit of Pastor J come on me with alliteration. He's a master of alliteration. Watch this.

Count how many P's I have. We can't lose sight of the purpose, power, potential we possess to protect and preserve life in our local communities. And let me tell you something, we can get distracted by what's going on out here and want to change what's going on out there. And in areas where we have that are interesting, but we have limited power and we waste resources and time and energy out there. When God has put us here, there will be people who have a national Calling.

Our pastor has a national calling. The bishop ministered last week. He and his wife are traveling nationally. Yes, there are foreign missions, and we should support foreign missions. But for the.

For most of us, we are here, this community. We're put here for a time and a purpose.

You know, Michael and I have moved a little bit in our later years, really. But every place we moved, we felt it was God ordained and that we were put in a particular house, a street, for a reason. And we get very protective about our neighbors. We feel like they're ours to watch over. You know, we look for ways to help them.

Right. Michael is amazing. He operates in the. He has a gift of helps. And if you have a gift of helps, one of the things you can do is you can anticipate somebody's going to need help with something before they know they need help with something.

Right. If you have that gift and he's like that, and so he can be outside and next thing, I wonder, where did he go when he's two doors down helping somebody with doing something? Because he just knows that person needs help. For Christmas, we go, you go down to cinnabon. For $15, you can get these nice little six little cinnabons.

We wrap them up, put a card, God bless you to across the street, the ones that were close to Easter. We give stuff for the kids. I mean, we look for ways to be a blessing. Recently, we got a letter. They wanted some help.

The HOA wanted some help with the landscaping to cut down costs. We showed up. We brought our tools and our gloves. We showed up. You know, when that storm, that storm was bad on Monday, I don't think we've seen a storm that bad since we've lived here.

And I'll tell you what, we did what the Bible said to do, and we spoke to that. We went out that back door like, oh, Jesus. We told that story of, you go. You will not cause destruction in this house, in this neighborhood, on our street, in Jesus name. We can do that because the Bible tells us that the fervent, effectual prayer of a righteous man avails much.

Elijah was a man of like passions. He prayed and the heaven held forth its rain. He prayed again, and the heaven released its rain and the earth brought forth its crops. Jesus said, greater works than these shall you do, because I go to be to my Father with my Father who is in heaven. He spoke to storms.

That's something we can do. You will not come here. Then we put on praise music, really loud Shabab, praising God what's our new favorite song? I'm good. And you witnessed it.

I never know the right words. That one. And praise God, we were fine. But it wasn't just for us. It's like, you're not coming here, my neighborhood, because I'm here to be good and to do good.

I'm here to protect this. This place. And I'll tell you, if they. We got a letter from the HOA and they told us they were to use our streets for one of those funky parades with that vulgarity going on, we'd go up for that meeting, too, because that's part of protecting our neighborhood. And, you know, you can disagree with somebody without anger.

I love the way love life approaches their descent to abortion. There's never anger involved with it. It's just the righteous proclamation of what is right and giving people some other options. They're not just cursing the darkness. They're providing a way out.

But we're called here, and sometimes we're looking. And even, like with elections, we get so. And I know it's so fun to hear, y'. All. Everybody has their favorite podcast and who they like to listen to, but the reality is that we have the most influence here in local elections, school boards and commissioners.

Michael and I take that very seriously. And there's never an election. We don't vote. And I'm going to tell you something. It's tedious figuring out where different candidates stand, but that's our responsibility.

I mean, to vote in a way that reflects what we feel this person reflects the godly ideals that we have. We make time to find out, because that's our job. That's what we're called to do.

I'm going to make a statement to you, and you might find it shocking, but I'm going to stand by it. Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party came to power because the majority of the German Christian churches were dead. You don't hear that in history books, but it's true. Nevertheless, 90 plus percent in Germany in 1930 would have identified as Christian, Catholic, or Protestant. And when all that ugliness was going on, that Christian nation either looked the other way, those Christian churches looked the other way, or they actually invited that evil into their church.

There were some who stood opposed. I would recommend you read anything about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. One of the. One of the first religious groups that stood opposed were the Jehovah Witnesses. They were like, but let me tell you, you better be willing to pay the price when you stand opposed, because they plucked all those men out of their homes and sent them to the front line never to be seen again.

I mean, I think Brother John appreciated what he talked about. Being a martyr, you can't go into living life. The gospel is offensive. How could you pretty up the way our. Our Lord died like a criminal.

The Holy Spirit makes it life giving.

I'm going to close with this. Erwin Lutzer run to win. That's back in the day. Who's who. That's old.

Old people know about Erwin Lutzer. I would say mature, refined Christians know about Erwin Lutzer.

He wrote a book, When a nation forgets God. And it was. He retells the story of one Christian living in Germany. And I'm just going to read from it. This is what the Christian said.

I lived in Germany during the Nazi Holocaust. I considered myself a Christian. We heard stories of what was happening to the Jews. But we tried to distance ourselves from it because what could we do to stop it? A railroad track ran behind our small church.

And each Sunday morning we could hear the whistle in the distance and then the wheels coming over the tracks. We became disturbed when we heard the cries coming from the train as it passed by. We realized that it was carrying Jews like cattle in the cars. Week after week the whistle would blow. We dreaded to hear the sound of those wheels because we knew that we would hear the crowd cries of the Jews en route to the death camp.

Their screams tormented us. We knew the time the train was coming. And when we heard the whistle blow, we began singing hymns. By the time the train came past our church, we were singing at the top of our voices. If we heard the screams, we sang more loudly and soon we heard them no more.

Years have passed and no one talks about it anymore. But I still hear that train whistle in my sleep. God forgive me. Forgive all of us who called ourselves Christians yet did nothing to intervene.

God forbid we come in here and sing while evil is driving by our backyard.

The Christians at Sardis were worldly and useless. They cruised through their God ordained time period and produced nothing. Let me show you a picture of Sardis today. Emmy, you want to change the slide, honey? Yeah, that's Sardis.

God forbid we leave Kannapolis looking that way.

Six Christians would have made a difference in Sodom and Gomorrah. 6.

There is power in every one of you to make a statement, stand for righteousness. And I'm not talking about going on the high seas. I'm talking about on the street where you live, in your neighborhood, your hoa, your community, your schools. Your city government, that's where the power to protect and preserve life, that's where your most power potent in your power. We are put on earth to do good and be good.

When people see our good works, who do they glorify? God.

So to close, and this is a somber moment, and I want you to know you are empowered to change the world from here. But it has to start here and it has to start in your home. Right? I want to protect my neighborhood. So I'm not going to be doing some ungodly thing in my home and invite some devils in my house that are going to traipse around my street.

Right. So it has to start in your home. But I want to give you an opportunity to go to the Lord and ask him, number one, if there's some dirt on my clothes I need cleaned up, am I soiled? Hey, let's get that cleaned up. Number one, am I living my life so that I am salt and light in my community?

And if I am not living in that way, Father, I want a strategy. The Lord has told Michael and I specific things to do for the guy across the street and a couple over there and the ones over there, that is our street and our community, and we're serious about that. We love them. God's put us there to preserve them. Do we have a little tinkly?

Tinkly? Do we have time for that? Oh, you're stealth. Put some. I hope I'm not in trouble, but if I am, I'm going to hear from God.

Music? No, that's just me. Let's stand up. Glory be to God. Glory be to God.

Father, we thank you for your word, Father. You always give us hope. You always give us hope. Hope.

Father, I'm so glad that you have put me here, that you have put my family here.

I'm glad I'm at this church, Father.

I am so grateful that this church does not fit the description of Sardis. Thank you for the that, Father. Thank you for that, Father. I know these people. I know this man and woman of God.

I know this staff. Thank you, Father.

Help us to take it up a notch, dad. The days are ugly and dangerous, but we will be victorious. Glory be to God.