The city of Sardis has an amazing history. It had an impregnable geographic position which made besieging it a pretty hopeless task. But Sardis was twice defeated by small groups of soldiers who mounted a stealth mission to go up a crack in the mountainside and on reaching the top, they found the city gates unguarded and let their comrades in.
The city of Sardis had a reputation of becoming flabby, lazy and complacent in the wake of their past successes. They lacked discipline and were disorganised: Trusting in their past successes, they were asleep in the light.
Sadly, the Church in Sardis seemed doomed to repeat its home-city's mistakes.
- They looked alive, but were pretty much dead.
- The little bit of life they had was slipping away.
- They had very little to show in terms of action.
But they didn't need anything new: they didn't need a new preacher, a new course, or a new angle - they just needed to go back to what they had received and heard. They had all they needed, but they were asleep in the light and needed to wake up.
It seems that one of the church's greatest enemies is comfort and success. The church in Sardis wasn't being persecuted and there were no false teachers misleading them. They had simply fallen asleep. They were flabby, lazy and complacent.
Have we become like this? We have been blessed by God and have enjoyed peace and prosperity and this has lulled us to sleep. We look alive, but actually we are dead. The Risen Christ urges us to:
1. REMEMBER: Go back to simple basics (don't chase "new" novelties)
2. OBEY: Put those simple basics back into action.
3. REPENT: Make sure we don't fall asleep again.
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Theo Groeneveld theo@emmanuel.org.za
You can see past EmmDevs at http://emmdev.blogspot.com/
