Who We Are As People, Who We Are as Churches! Part 5

 5. The Sardis Church

“To the angelof 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. ² Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God. ³ Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, 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.

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. ⁵ He who overcomes will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out his name from the book of life, but will acknowledge his name before my Father and his angels. ⁶ He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” (Revelation 3:1-6)

This is a representation of many denominations that act as if their gift to speak tongues places them above others. They can’t just tell you something, they must add all of the homiletic techniques they learned in their dead seminaries. This church is filled with what many identify as spiritual arrogance. They place a great deal of emphasis in the gifts of the Spirit, or at least that is what they think; so they strive to move with such gifts during their Sunday services. The concerns with this church are that:

1)    God has nothing good to say about them.

2)    The door is open for people to speak in tongues, but interpretation, at times, is manipulated. When it comes down to prophesying, the doors of opportunity and expression seem to be closed. For them, it is all about the baptism of the Holy Spirit; but such baptism is only limited to speaking in tongues.

This is a church that has a very sneaky way of coming against the Prophetic voice as they are blinded by one thing and one ting only: “Speaking in tongues.” They are the kind of folk that spiritualize everything; they claim to constantly hear from God, always having a word from the Lord, but they are truly filled with stupidity. They claim to leave everything in the hands of the Lord, but in the process they are very selective in what to surrender and at the same time are very irresponsible. In terms of leadership skills, this church is perhaps the worst; in finances they are terrible stewards as they never consider counting the cost for anything. This is the named and claimed group; the problem is that they don’t have much to show for. They have a million bills, always behind in payments, but they place all in the name of suffering for the Gospel. However, they are unable to see that they are stepping into things that the Lord never told them to step into.

This kind of church is usually hurting financially because they are constantly attributing things as “the Lord said,” that God did not. Much control and manipulation is seen in this kind of church as they are constantly explaining what the Lord said and did not say and why; especially when it is obvious that it was not the Lord. Because of their arrogance, they always come up with some seemingly spiritual reason why what they said that the Lord said did not come to pass.

This church will eventually endure great suffering as the Lord will allow them to reap what they are sowing to humble them and to get them to a point where they can truly hear His voice. The message for this church is “be humble, for the Lord is seriously resisting your arrogance.”

TO BE CONTINUED…