"And to the angel of the church in Sardis write, 'These things says He who has the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars: "I know your works, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead." (Revelation 3:1–2)

I would like to think with you today about the subject:

Welcome to part ten of our summer series, "What's the Difference?"

Over this summer, we are looking different religions, competing worldviews, and alternative versions of Christianity, asking one defining question: What's the difference? What actually separates them from us?

The longer at look at this stuff, the more I am convinced of one great truth:

Nothing else even comes close.

I say this with love. I say this with respect.

I'm going to say something that sounds harsh, but I'll just put it out there.

You could say that this series is exploring why our biblical viewpoint is right and why other viewpoints are wrong.

I have the spirit of Jesus when I say this, because Jesus drew those lines without apology.

 

For Jesus, some ideas are true, and some are dangerously false. So He kept calling His friends from error to truth and from darkness to light.

But the one thing we have to stay away from is pride. Arrogance.

So yes, I think the evangelical system of theology best explains the revelation of the word of God, and is the best way, by far of honoring all the biblical data, and bringing a person to mental health, emotional health, and true spiritual power.

 

But...

But if being right makes us proud, then something has already gone terribly wrong.

Grace does not produce people who stand over others saying, "Look how much better we are."

Grace produces people who fall on their faces saying, "How in the world did the Father run to embrace me, the chief of sinners?"

AND... the follow up to that... "So now, I want everybody I love to find the treasure I found when I found Jesus."

And that is why I'm putting this talk here in the middle of this series. Before we continue to look at everybody else's errors, Jesus puts His hand on our wrist and checks for a pulse... is there a heart that beats with love for lost people?

So let's go to Sardis.

Before Sardis was a church, it was an empire. It was the capital of ancient Lydia, the legendary home of King Croesus, a man whose wealth was so vast that his name became a historical proverb.

The city was built on a series of sheer, vertical cliffs rising hundreds of feet above the valley floor.

Sardis was a citadel in the clouds, an impregnable fortress that looked down on the rest of the world with absolute, unbothered contempt.

The citizens of Sardis believed they were safe because they had a reputation for being invincible. But that very reputation became their cemetery.

In 549 BC, Cyrus the Great of Persia marched to the base of those cliffs. He could not attack them, so he waited, planning to starve the city out.

But one day, one of his soldiers, watching from the rocks below, saw a Lydian soldier accidentally drop his helmet over the fortress wall. The soldier quietly climbed down a hidden, narrow crevice in the cliffside to retrieve it, thinking nobody was watching.

He reported the incident and Cyrus knew there was a way up and in.

That night, Cyrus sent a small, detachment of men up that exact crevice. When they reached the top, they found the walls completely unguarded. The watchmen were asleep. Why guard a wall that everyone knows cannot be reached?

Sardis fell in a single night without a fight. The Bible says:
"Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall." (1 Corinthians 10:12)

Three hundred years later, Sardis grew strong, wealthy, and overconfident again. A Greek general captured it the same way. The city fell twice because its people trusted their reputation and lost their mission of guarding the gates.

And then, two hundred years later, a church stood there—Christian believers, just like us in Redding.

Jesus tells them, "I know your works."

I can see what you do.

I can see your church calendar.

I can hear your worship songs.

I can see your good works in the community.

You are very busy, very active, and very impressive looking.
You have a name that you are alive...

 

Then Jesus delivers a devastating diagnosis: "But you are dead."
It's the Church of the Living Dead.

We are living in a moment where people feel chronically unrooted, unseen, and overwhelmed.

Especially if you are younger...

You have been told to build a meaningful, successful, stable life without the scaffolding previous generations took for granted.

Families are fractured, communities are thin, the economic ground is shifting, and the old pathways of adulthood have crumbled.

You are handed towering possibilities but no foundation for it.

You are told to invent yourself, curate your brand, prove your value, and secure your significance.

So, you do your best. You build your own modern citadel.

You construct a cliff of reputation, career metrics, looks-maxing, and digital curation. You make sure your public name says that you are alive, thriving, and in control.

But under the vertical cliffs of your external success, in the quiet hours of the night when the screen is glowing six inches from your face, you are exhausted. The living dead.

Jesus knows.

I started as a pastor at a historic church in Chicago called North Side Gospel Center. It was legendary.

It was the birthplace of Awana, the international children's ministry that has reached millions of kids across the globe.

The founder of Awana was retired, but still there when I arrived.

He mentored me. He encouraged me. He taught me grace.

In its glory days, North Side Gospel Center was an evangelistic powerhouse. It was radical, cutting-edge, and wildly imaginative. They used contemporary music (Honky Tonk and Ragtime) when no one else would, they ran massive social ministries, and they poured their lives out for the bringing of salvation to the city around them.

But by the time I walked through those doors, the glory days were a distant memory.

The church had fossilized around its past. It had become a shrine to its own history.

They preserved the old songs, structures, and cultural norms. Walking into the church was like walking into a time machine.

Meanwhile, the neighborhood outside their art deco build had changed dramatically.

The kids walking past the church steps were wearing Metallica and Black Sabbath T-shirts, speaking different languages, and carrying different hurts.

The world had moved, but the church had become a museum of yesterday's grace.

When I was in graduate school, I wrote a paper about that church. I called it Lost Radicalism. That was the quiet tragedy of the Center.

They did not start that way. They started with fire. They started with hearts on fire, a radical passion lost people.

But over decades of success, the gaze of the church shifted inward.

They became focused with preserving what they had, maintaining their facility, and serving the preferences of the people who were already inside.

The evangelistic pulse grew weaker, and eventually, that life left the building.

Today, North Side Gospel Center is gone. The building was given away.

That is the story of thousands of churches that have come and gone because they thought about evangelism the way Sardis thought about its walls: they took it for granted.

Any church, any college, any Christian institution can go that way.

Pathway Church
I need to pause right here and say something incredibly joyful about Pathway. God is doing something undeniably real in this house.

This past year alone, 1,104 people trusted Jesus Christ as their personal Savior through the ministry of this church.

Next weekend, 32 more people are going down into the waters of baptism to declare their union with Christ.

That is not superficial church activity; that is resurrection. That is a pulse... strong, steady, healthy.

All the glory goes to God.

Our evangelism, ministries, theology, love, and church are healthy. And that is exactly when the temptation comes to let down our guard.

I will not pastor a church that spends one minute glorifying the memory of what God did yesterday.

I have zero interest in running a museum for yesterday's grace.