(To hear a podcast of this sermon, please go to www.pacificviewbaptist.com and click on Sermons from the menu on the left.)

Revelation 3:1-6

“Wake up and get with it.”

Intro…What comes to mind when you see a picture like this?

Lazy, sleepy, that’s fine when it’s bed time, but when we need to be awake and alert….

In a culture like ours in America and especially Southern Ca., it’s easy to get complacent and lazy in our faith, need/desire for God.

For a lot of people there just isn’t an urgent need for God.

“Bill”….good job, about ready to get married, video games, (the bane of men’s existence) church? Ehh…don’t really care…

Text: Revelation 3:1-6

Big Pic: “Wake up and strengthen what remains and is about to die.”

IOW, Have some conviction (every great oak tree started out as a couple of nuts who stood their ground)

And the “couple of nuts” in today’s story come from v. 4…

Maps of Turkey, Asia and Sardis…

v. 1-2 What they were doing wrong:

The city of Sardis had been captured twice in its history because the guards or watchmen neglected their duty and weren’t paying attention.

The church in Sardis had a problem with misguided complacency and a lack of vigilance. (lazy)

The people were spiritually asleep. They were in a deep spiritual coma.

They may have had a “reputation” of being alive, but they were spiritually dead.

What a horrible thing to be known for as a church…my friends who are new to town and had to walk out of a few churches before they found the right one.

How often things can look good from the outside, but are dead on the inside. Matthew 23:27-28

Their works were not complete in the sight of God.

How do we avoid being a spiritually dead church?

Well, it starts with each individual, prayer, QT’s, the transfers into our worship service, bible studies, EVERYTHING…

v. 3-4 What they (we) need to do right:

Remember what you have received and heard. The fundamental truths of our faith.

My discussions with friends on FB this week on the marriage issue…

In my answers I always came back to the fundamentals on what I know is true.

Keep it (close) and repent. (Hold tight to the truth and admit when you are wrong).

They may have been approaching death, but they were not beyond the reach of Christ.

v. 3 Again, Jesus gives them (us) fair warning:

“If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief …”

This is a familiar simile used in Luke 12, 1 Thess. 5, 2 Peter 3 and Rev. 16:15

I’m sure we’ve all had something stolen…Caleb’s laptop

Getting something stolen is an awful surprise.

Seeing Christ return without being ready would be an awful surprise.

Feeling God’s wrath and judgment when you should have repented comes as an awful surprise.

Jesus is reminding the people in the church of Sardis that twice in its history they had been sacked and looted.

It’s like he’s saying, “Let’s not let history repeat itself.”

It’s one thing when something catches us by surprise and it’s not our fault.

It’s whole ‘nother deal when we’ve been warned and we still don’t repent.

Let’s take a look at the “couple of nuts” in vs. 4.

People who have not soiled their garments.

That’s what little, immature kids do…LilyAnna with the egg stain…

She was walking funny cause she had soiled her garments.

When we are walking with God, we walk upright, straight and proud in white garments.

When we continue to walk in white garments (truth) our salvation is secure. v. 5

That’s called eternal security, one of the tenants of our faith.

Total depravity, (we are sinners in need of a loving God)

Unconditional election, (there is nothing we can do to earn our salvation)

Limited atonement, (not everyone will be saved)

Irresistible grace (predestination)

Perseverance of the saints (eternal security)

v. 6 At the end of these letters to all seven churches, Jesus says the same thing: “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

That’s a wake-up call! Wake up, stop being lazy, get with it!

Listen up!

What keeps us awake? God himself.

v. 1 “seven spirits of God” is a description of the Holy Spirit who issues an ultimatum to each of the seven churches.

The Holy Spirit will also appear as the Lamb’s seven eyes sent throughout the earth. (5:6)

The seven stars signify the churches true identities.

God will always know our true identity.

We may look good on the outside and fool others all the while being spiritually dead on the inside.

Conclusion:

Inside out lyrics.

Revival defined.

"Revival is the visitation of God which brings to life Christians who have been sleeping and restores a deep sense of God's near presence and holiness. This comes from a vivid sense of sin and a profound exercise of heart in repentance, praise, and love, with an evangelistic outflow."

The gospel changes us from the inside out.

(To hear a podcast of this sermon, please go to www.pacificviewbaptist.com and click on Sermons from the menu on the left.)

Revelation 2:18-29 “Repent from immorality”

Intro… ”REPENT”, “Hell, fire and brimstone”, “Southern Baptists”

Knowing when to repent keeps us from falling into the trap of immorality.

Sexual sins and repentance are “preachy stuff…”

Text: Revelation 2:18-29

Big Pic: We need to run from anything that seduces us away from Jesus.

Thyatria:

A politically and culturally marginalized city.

It had economic strength in metals and fabric.

These guilds or organizations celebrated their patron deities with the occasional festival.

Consequently, Christians may have been tempted with the message of a “prophetess” (Jezebel) who promoted illicit sex and food sacrificed to idols.

v. 19 What they were doing right:

Love, faith, service, perseverance.

Those are timeless qualities that all churches should have.

What is something from the bible that is still relevant today? Here’s a great example.

I know it’s hard at times…Swami’s lady

v. 20 What they were doing wrong:

Tolerate that woman “Jezebel.”

Remember last week when I said that tolerance was one of the words we need to be cautious of in the church today?

They were having the same problem in Thyatira.

This “Jezebel” woman represented all that was wrong.

“She’s a Jezebel” (jezebel.com “gossip, culture, fashion, and sex for the contemporary woman”)

This self-proclaimed prophetess endorsed idolatry and immorality.

She closely resembled Jezebel of Tyre who married Israel’s King Ahab and violently imposed Baal-worship. (1 Kings 16--)

This “Jezebel” was leading people astray in the church of Thyatria.

She also symbolizes the prostitute Babylon who seduces through pleasure and luxury and ruthless violence (Rev. 17:3-6).

She is a symbol for all seductions that pull us away from Jesus.

Basically the church lacked discernment and tolerated heresy.

Now, as bad as all that sounds, what’s important to remember about our faith is that God always gives us a chance to repent.

At any moment we can stop our sinful behavior and get right with God.

And when we do that, Jesus welcomes us with open arms.

v. 21 Jesus gives her time to repent, but she refuses.

Oh, and that is our story so many times too.

If you’ve spent any time in the Christian faith, you most often know what is right and wrong.

Repentance is so vital to our continued growth and fellowship with God.

Today is communion Sunday, great timing…

There are consequences for not repenting and getting right with God.

Jeremiah 10:24

In the text today, the consequences are dire: “throw her onto a sickbed…those involved with her will be thrown into great tribulation…strike her children dead. “

And don’t think for a minute that God couldn’t do that to me or you today because of our lack of repentance.

v. 23 When we experience God’s wrath, it’s a reminder that he searches and knows our minds and hearts and that we’ll pay for our misdeeds.

The fear of the Lord. Proverbs 9:10, Psalm 112:1.

v. 24 So that’s a fair warning to all of us. God’s wrath can be avoided.

Don’t hold to any false teaching or be seduced into immorality.

We need to avoid the “deep things of Satan” so-o true…

“Deceptive promises of secret spiritual knowledge through false religions.”

Playing around with immorality starts off innocent enough and before you know it, you are in deep, way over your head, drowning in sin.

v. 25 Hold fast to what we know is true. Cling to the truth, it’s our life line.

Holding on to the Bible

When we are content with the gospel, we have nothing to fear.

v. 26 What’s the reward for those who hold fast and are not seduced by the “Jezebels” of today?

We will be conquers (defeating temptation).

We will have God-given authority over the nations, ruling them with an iron rod.

We’ll also receive the Morning Star (Jesus) .

V. 29 If we are wise we’ll listen up.

Application:

What if Jesus wrote a letter to the church in Encinitas?

Would he consider us faithful?

What would we get scolded for?

What keeps us from getting seduced away from Jesus is holding fast to the truth, the word of God.

Old School Bible pic

A Mormon for President?

Mitt Romney and the weird and sinister beliefs of Mormonism.

By Christopher Hitchens

I have no clear idea whether Pastor Robert Jeffress is correct in referring to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, more colloquially known as the Mormons, as “a cult.” There do seem to be one or two points of similarity. The Mormons have a supreme leader, known as the prophet or the president, whose word is allegedly supreme. They can be ordered to turn upon and shun any members who show any signs of backsliding. They have distinctive little practices, such as the famous underwear, to mark them off from other mortals, and they are said to be highly disciplined and continent when it comes to sex, booze, nicotine, and coffee. Word is that the church can be harder to leave than it was to join. Hefty donations and tithes are apparently appreciated from the membership.

Whether this makes it a cult, or just another of the born-in-America Christian sects, I am not sure. In any case what interests me more is the weird and sinister belief system of the LDS, discussion of which it is currently hoping to inhibit by crying that criticism of Mormonism amounts to bigotry.

To give some examples. The founder of the church, one Joseph Smith, was a fraud and conjurer well known to the authorities of upstate New York. He claimed to have been shown some gold plates on which a new revelation was inscribed in no known language. He then qualified as the sole translator of this language. (The entire story is related in Fawn Brodie’s biography, No Man Knows My History.* It seems that we can add, to sausages and laws, churches as a phenomenon that is not pleasant to watch at the manufacturing stage. Edmund Wilson wrote that it was powerfully shocking to see Brodie as she exposed a religion that was a whole-cloth fabrication.) On his later forays into the chartless wilderness, there to play the role of Moses to his followers (who were permitted and even encouraged in plural marriage, so as to go forth and mass-produce little Mormons), Smith also announced that he wanted to be known as the Prophet Muhammad of North America, with the fearsome slogan: “Either al-Koran or the Sword.” He levied war against his fellow citizens, and against the federal government. One might have thought that this alone would raise some eyebrows down at the local Baptist Church. …

Saddling itself with some pro-slavery views at the time of the Civil War, and also with a “bible” of its own that referred to black people as a special but inferior creation, the Mormon Church did not admit black Americans to the priesthood until 1978, which is late enough—in point of the sincerity of the “revelation” they had to undergo—to cast serious doubt on the sincerity of their change of heart.

More recently, and very weirdly, the Mormons have been caught amassing great archives of the dead, and regularly “praying them in” as adherents of the LDS, so as to retrospectively “baptize” everybody as a convert. (Here the relevant book is Alex Shoumatoff’s The Mountain of Names.) In a hollowed-out mountain in the Mormons’ stronghold state of Utah is a colossal database assembled for this purpose. Now I have no objection if Mormons desire to put their own ancestors down for posthumous salvation. But they also got hold of a list of those put to death by the Nazis’ Final Solution and fairly recently began making these massacred Jews into honorary LDS members as well. Indeed, when the practice was discovered, the church at first resisted efforts to make them stop. Whether this was cultish or sectarian it was certainly extremely tactless: a crass attempt at mass identity theft from the deceased.

The first time I visited Salt Lake City, in 1970, the John Birch Society bookshop was almost a part of the Tabernacle. Ezra Taft Benson, later to be the president of the church, was a member of its board of 12 Apostles—and sought their approval—when he served in Eisenhower’s Cabinet for eight years. He was, if not a member of the Birch Society, a strong endorser. His pamphlet, “Civil Rights: Tool of Communist Deception” is well-remembered. This was the soil that nurtured Cleon Skousen and the other paranoid elements who in the end incubated Glenn Beck.* I merely make the point that the Mormon Church has a distinctly politicized record, and is in a weak position to complain when its leaders are asked political questions that arise directly from their membership.

So far, Mitt Romney has evaded most questions by acting as if he was being subjected to some kind of religious test for public office. He’s been supported in this by some soft-centered types who think that any dislike for any “faith group” is ipso facto proof of some sort of prejudice. Sorry, but this will not wash. I don’t think I would want to vote for a Scientologist or a Moonie for high office, or indeed any other kind, and I think attempts to silence criticism of such outfits are the real evidence of prejudice.

The Mormons apparently believe that Jesus will return in Missouri rather than Armageddon: I wouldn’t care to bet on the likelihood of either. In the meanwhile, though, we are fully entitled to ask Mitt Romney about the forces that influenced his political formation and—since he comes from a dynasty of his church, and spent much of his boyhood and manhood first as a missionary and then as a senior lay official—it is safe to assume that the influence is not small. Unless he is to succeed in his dreary plan to borrow from the playbook of his pain-in-the-ass predecessor Michael Dukakis, and make this an election about competence not ideology, he should be asked to defend and explain himself, and his voluntary membership in one of the most egregious groups operating on American soil.