The title of the message this
morning is The Danger of No Repentance. And you might consider it this
way, put it in its context. Man by nature reacts to the preaching
of the true gospel in different ways. Now all those ways are
ways of unbelief. I mean, there's no such thing
as somebody being closer to salvation than another person. I always
think about, for example, John chapter three and John chapter
four. I love the way that God the Holy
Spirit inspired the apostle John to write, put that down because
in John chapter three, the Lord is talking to Nicodemus. You
must be born again. You know who Nicodemus was? He
was a religious man. He was a member of the moral
majority. He was a Pharisee. And he was
even a little more pliable and receptive of the work of Jesus
of Nazareth than some of the other Pharisees. You remember,
he made a statement to Christ. He said, nobody could do the
miracles you do except he be sent of God. So Nicodemus You
know, some others of the Pharisees said that Jesus was of the devil. But Nicodemus said nobody could
do what you're doing except to be sinner of God. Now Nicodemus
did not believe the gospel. He didn't believe that Jesus
of Nazareth was Messiah, God in human flesh, the savior of
sinners, the Lord our righteousness. But he was a little bit more
pliable and receptive of these issues than some of the others.
Well, could we say that Nicodemus was closer to salvation based
on his works or his attitude than the others? And the answer
is no. Well, if you look at John chapter 4, who's Christ talking
to? He's talking to an adulterous woman, an infamously, publicly
adulterous sinner. And basically, he tells her the
same thing in different words. He talks about the water of life.
But basically, he told Nicodemus salvation is by grace, not by
works. He told the woman at the well
the same thing. Somebody might say, well, Nicodemus was closer
to salvation than the woman at the well. And the answer is no.
None of us are any closer to salvation based on our works
than any other sinner. It's all of grace based on the
righteousness, not of men. but of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, I'm saying all that to say this. You'll have different reactions
amongst unbelievers of the gospel. Some will just out and out reject
it. When I first heard it, that was
me. I mean, I just totally rejected it. Didn't want any part of it,
hated it, and set my mind to prove it wrong. That was me. Others may be indifferent to
it. We just don't care. I don't care
what you say. It doesn't matter to me what
you believe. I'll believe what I want to believe. I'm going
about my life. But then there's others who may be somewhat interested
in the Bible and who will see the truth of it and receive it,
at least mentally or intellectually, but without coming to repentance. And that's the problem I believe
that is addressed here at the church at Sardis. That's why
I entitled the Danger of No Repentance. And I've got in your lesson there
about the city of Sardis. It was a city of pride. It was
the capital of a region in Asia Minor called Lydia. It was situated
on a huge hill. The people there claimed, the
leaders, they thought of themselves as, we live in a city that cannot
be conquered. It's impregnable because of where
it was located. So in essence, as I put there,
they were a proud, overconfident people. And they had some reason
in the human mind to think that. And what we see there is, as
one writer said, that again and again, the self-satisfied and
boastful inhabitants of Sardis had seen destruction coming upon
them as a thief in the night, most suddenly and unexpectedly.
He's talking about an earthquake that hit the city and destroyed
it, showing they weren't impregnable. And so what you have here is
a picture of a people who are confident and proud, but It's
not based on anything substantial. And so the condition of the church
in Sardis reflects the condition of the city. And listen to what
he says in verse 1, chapter 3. And unto the angel, the minister,
the messenger, of the church in Sardis write, these things
saith he that hath the seven spirits of God. Now you remember
that term the seven spirits of God was also shown over in Revelation
1 and verse 4, the seven spirits. And we talked about that then,
I gave you an Old Testament reference I think out of Isaiah. What does that mean, the seven
spirits of God? Well, it is a way of referring
to the Holy Spirit, specifically in completing the work that He
does in the new birth. The number seven is a symbol
of the perfect work of God, the completed work of God. That's
why when we talk about the Sabbath, You know, they work on six days,
and on the seventh day, the work was done, and seventh day, it
was completed, and you rest on the seventh day. And our Sabbath
is Jesus Christ. He did all the work, the work
was fully completed, and we rest in Him. And that Saturday Sabbath,
that seventh-day Sabbath, I said Saturday, but it's seventh-day
Sabbath back in the Old Covenant, that was a picture of a true
believer's rest in Christ. I have in Christ completion,
for in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and you
are complete in Him. And so I have all the righteousness
that God requires of me for salvation, for justification. It's imputed
to me, but it's the righteousness that Christ completed. I'm complete
in Him. Holiness, sanctification, all
of that I have in Christ. the complete forgiveness of sins.
So that's what the number seven indicates, a completed, finished
work. It's not he's done all he can
do, now the rest is up to you. That's an incomplete work. But
Christ is the completion of our salvation. Well, what about the
seven spirits of God? Well, it's a way of referring
to the complete work, the perfect work of the Holy Spirit in the
new birth. And what is that complete work? Well, we know the Holy
Spirit imparts spiritual life from Christ, spiritual knowledge,
and by that He brings us to where? He brings us to conviction of
sin, conviction of righteousness, conviction of judgment, and He
drives us to Christ by faith in Christ and unto repentance. What this is showing here is
that the whole work of God in dealing with His people is to
bring us to repentance. Now you see, you remember over
in 2 Peter 3 and verse 9 where it talks about God is not willing
that any of us should perish, that is, His people, His sheep,
but that all should come to repentance. So in the conversion of a sinner,
here's a person, for example, who comes and says, well, I believe
what you all preach. but they haven't been brought
to repentance of their former religion, their dead works, their
idolatry, their false experiences, their religious experiences.
That's what he's talking about here. You have a name that you
live, you claim you believe the gospel, you claim you're trusting
Christ alone, but you haven't repented. It's like this, you
cannot turn to Christ for salvation without turning away from idols. And what he's saying is you're
trying to incorporate the truth into your old experiences, your
old beliefs. You're trying to mix your idols
with the truth of God. You haven't repented. And you
remember what Paul said in Philippians chapter three? He said, I count
all things but dung that I may win Christ. In other words, In
other words, the gospel was not just a higher or a better way
of salvation that he already had. Remember he said, before
I trusted in the fact that I was a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee
of Pharisees, circumcised day to day. And that was okay, but
now I believe in Christ, but I was saved back then? No. No, he said, I count all things
but loss. Well, I was an idolater back
then. And that's the completed work
of the Holy Spirit in regeneration and conversion in the new birth,
bringing a sinner to see not only that Christ is his only
hope, but everything else was a false hope. That's the problem
at Sardis. Look at verse 1 again. He says
the seven spirits of God, the seven stars, that's the ministers,
The preaching of the gospel is designed by God for his people
to bring us under repentance from dead works and idolatry
and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He said, I know thy works that
thou hast a name that thou livest, but you're dead, spiritual death.
You have a name, you claim the truth, but you're dead. That's what he's talking about.
The faith was a mere profession and not the confession that leads
to repentance unto life. And that's a real danger in the
last days. Look at verse two. He says, remember
therefore how thou hast received and heard and hold fast and repent. Go back, he says. I'm sorry,
verse two. Be watchful. That means be careful. Think about these things. Don't
just let this go by. This is important now. This is
something you need to consider and think about and pray about
and read and study about. He says, be watchful and strengthen
the things which remain. The things which remain is their
confession of the truth. In other words, this is not a
people who claim to believe a false gospel. They claim to believe
the true gospel. They just haven't repented of
the false. That's what I believe he's talking about. And so when
he says strengthen, that means to cultivate it. It means to
grow. Think about this. This is not just another facet
of what you already believed. This is something entirely different.
Think about it. Sinners are either saved by God's
free and sovereign grace or they're saved by their own works, their
own will. The two cannot mix. Sinners are
either justified based on the righteousness of Christ imputed
or a combination of what he did and what they do. They can't
mix. It's one or the other. It's not
the same. I think about this in the realm
of baptism. We teach baptism. You know what
baptism is in the Bible, don't you? I'm talking about the ordinance. It's believers' baptism. Isn't it? And what do believers
believe? They believe the truth. So, somebody
says, well, I was baptized when I was eight years old. Well,
did you believe the truth? If you didn't, you weren't baptized,
you were just dunked in water. Now, that's what it is. Baptism
is a confession of what? The truth, not a lie. I know
when I first walked an aisle, you know why I did it? I did
it because a buddy of mine did it. And I had no idea what I
was doing. I didn't want to go to hell,
I knew that. And I knew that would make my mother and other
people glad that I did it, but I really didn't have any idea
what I believed. I knew the name Jesus, and I
went up there and the preacher said some things in my work,
but I had no idea what I was doing. I was not a believer then.
I wasn't baptized then, I was dumped. I just took a little
bath. And that's right. You remember
when the Ethiopian eunuch asked Philip, he says, what doth hinder
me to be baptized? What did Philip ask him? Do you
believe? Believe what? What I just preached
to you from Isaiah 53 concerning the person and finished work
of Jesus Christ. That's what baptism is. But see,
we've kind of, in these last days, that's kind of been muggled
up, especially in this country, because we kind of, false religion
has kind of clouded up baptism like a rite of passage. And I'll
see it all, and I think it's sad, you know, and I'm not just
saying this to be critical now, but people get these little children
up the aisle, And they get them into the water, and they make
a profession of faith, and no matter what happens to them after
that, they always go back, well, I made my profession, I made
my, that's not, there's nothing like that in the Bible. At all. To me, it's the equivalent of
Catholicism baptizing babies. So, this is what I'm talking
about. This is a confession of the truth. And he says, there
are things that remain that are good you need to strengthen.
That's the preaching of the gospel, the preaching of Christ. Don't
let go of that. But you let go of that other,
that false religion. He says in verse two, he says,
be watchful, strengthen the things which remain that are ready to
die. Now here's what happens. What happens is a person who
claims to believe the truth but never comes to repentance, what
happens eventually? The truth gets lost. The truth
goes by the way. That's not the important thing.
Just like I had a fellow who claims to believe the gospel
tell me, he said, I agree with you. He said, but it really doesn't
matter what people believe, it's how they live. Well, what's he
saying? Well, the gospel doesn't matter.
It's what you're doing. The gospel gets lost. And that's
what he means, the things that are ready to die. He said, for
I have not found thy works perfect. That means complete before God. He's not talking about our morality
there because nothing about us is perfect in that way as far
as moral perfection. He's talking about completion.
You've not yet been brought, you've not yet come to repent.
You claim to believe Christ. You claim to know the truth.
You claim to believe it. But you haven't come to repentance. I haven't found your works perfect.
Now somebody says, well, how could you say repentance is our
works? Well, it's not our works in the origin and source of them
and the power of them, that's the work of the spirit in us.
But he puts it that way because it's the work of the spirit upon
the sinner being brought to faith in Christ and being brought to
repentance. And therefore, you remember John
the Baptist told the Pharisees and the Sadducees, he said, bring
forth works, meet for repentance. That's what he's talking about
here. In other words, we as believers, we have works. God has ordained
that we should walk in them. works that are appropriate for
repentance would say this, none of our works save us. None of
our works make us righteous. None of our works bring us to
any acceptance before God based on them. It's all Christ. So
look at verse three. He says, remember therefore how
thou hast received and heard and hold fast and repent. That's
the gospel. Think about this, he said. Remember,
consider the word of God in the gospel. Remember these great
truths and what they mean and the impact of them, that it's
not just a blend or a higher form of false religion. You know,
somebody says, well, you know, I was saved when I was 12 and
I grew into the doctrines of grace. Well, where did you grow
from? The doctrine of works? That's
a false gospel. And that's what he's saying,
hold fast. Don't let go of these things. Don't treat them lightly.
This is life and death. The gospel is a matter of life
and death. It's not just a matter of some,
well, you believe what you believe and we believe what we believe.
And he says in verse three, if therefore thou shalt not watch,
If you're not going to be watchful in these areas, if you're going
to let this just slip on by, I will come on, I will come on
thee as a thief and thou shalt not know what hour I will come
upon thee. Now that's, that's, he's talking
about his judgment upon them there. You know, the Bible talks
about Christ coming again as a thief in the night. And really
what that's talking about is how unbelievers who do not think
he's coming will be. We don't know when he's coming
again, but we know he is. So he won't come on us as a thief
in the night in that sense. We don't know the day, we don't
know the hour, and we shouldn't be concerned with that because
the Bible doesn't reveal it, but we know he's coming. We live
in expectation, but now unbelievers don't. And here's what he's telling
the church at Sardis. He said, those who come, those
who just float along and don't come to this completion, don't
come to this repent, don't watch these things and understand the
impact of it. He said, I'll come when you least
expect it. Now we don't know exactly what he's talking about
there as far as the church at Sardis. It may be the fact that
he removed the church. Look at verse four. He says,
thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled
their garments. Now the garments there, I didn't
put this in your lesson and I don't know why, because in studying
this, this is so appropriate. But back in Isaiah chapter 61,
verse 10, there's a reference to the garments of salvation.
That's Isaiah 61. Let me read that to you. And
of course, that Isaiah 61 is a prophecy of Christ. Christ
coming to redeem his people. This, Isaiah 61, this passage,
part of this is the passage that was being read when Christ went
back to his hometown synagogue in Nazareth. And they stood and
they read from this. In Isaiah 61, verse 1, it says,
The spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord hath
anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek. He has sent me
to bind up the brokenhearted. to proclaim liberty to the captives,
the opening of the prison to them that are bound, to proclaim
the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our
God, to comfort all that mourn. And remember Christ read that,
and he looked up at the people in the synagogue, and he said,
today this is fulfilled before your eyes. And what he was saying
there is, this is talking about me. And remember what happened. Their reaction to him was take
him outside and throw him off a cliff, but he walked through.
It wasn't his time. It wasn't the way he was going
to die. So this whole thing is a prophecy of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Now, the whole point of what
this prophecy is about and his coming to do the great work,
the whole point of his preaching was to show that the self-righteous,
unbelieving Jews had perverted the Word of God. They didn't
just have another version of truth. Their truth was a lie. And that's why John the Baptist
came preaching the baptism of repentance. That's why when Christ
came, he says, repent and believe the gospel. In other words, In
other words, he was showing there, you know a lot of people today,
I was writing this in this new book on what is a Christian,
a lot of people today will talk about how Christianity is an
offshoot or a branch of Judaism. Well, it's not. Judaism, like
every other religion other than true Christianity, is a false
gospel. It's salvation by works. You know, what did the Jews boast
of that proved their salvation? Number one, their physical connection
to Abraham. Number two, their physical circumcision. And number three, their keeping
the law of Moses. That's a false gospel. And what
did John the Baptist say? What did Christ say? What did
the apostles say? Repent of that and come to Christ. But there were many of those
Judaizers, remember, who grabbed hold of the truth and claimed
to be saved by grace, but they wanted to retain the Old Covenant
law. They wanted to get the Gentiles
circumcised. See all that? They hadn't repented.
That's the complete work of the whole, to bring them to a repentance.
But Paul, you remember what Paul did, you know? He withstood Peter
to the face over that issue. He came to Jerusalem and he didn't
give them even an hour. to entertain that. He says, oh
no. He said, that's wrong. That's idolatry. And that's what
the whole issue is. Well, look at Isaiah 61 10. This
is when he talks about defiling their garments. He says, I will
greatly rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall be joyful in my
God, for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation. He
hath covered me with the robe of righteousness. as a bridegroom
decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself
with her jewels." He's talking about the garments of salvation,
all which are based upon the imputed righteousness of Christ.
When I hear that truth, if I grab hold of Christ as the Lord my
righteousness, but I wish to retain my works or my experiences,
my false religion, what am I doing? I'm defiling that garment. And
that's what he's talking about over here in Revelation 3. You've
got a few names in Sardis which have not defiled their garments.
They have been brought to repentance. You know people talk about, I
hear them say, well this preacher tried to mix grace and works.
Do you know you can't do that? What is a mixture of grace and
works in the scripture? Read it in Romans chapter 11.
A mixture of grace and works is nothing more than works. That's it. You can't mix the
two. If you're clothed in the righteousness
of Christ, you really cannot defile that garment because that
means the Holy Spirit has brought you not only to faith in Christ,
but repentance of dead works. And that's who he's talking about.
He says, they shall walk with me in white. That's the purity
of Christ. What can wash away my sins? Nothing
but the blood of Jesus. For they are worthy, he says.
Now in the context of the gospel, in the context of the covenant
of grace, in the context of how God saves sinners, in the context
of how God justifies the ungodly, how are we worthy? Worthy is
the lamb that was slain. He's going to be talking about
that in Revelation 5. Their worthiness is not themselves,
their works, or even their professions. Their worthiness is Christ. These
are truly saved people. And then he says in verse five,
he says, he that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in
white raiment. That's the, that's the imputed
righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. Those who have been,
what is the evidence that a person is one of God's chosen? What
is the evidence that a person is one whom Christ redeemed?
What is the evidence of a person having been justified based on
the righteousness of God in Christ imputed? They're brought to faith
in Christ unto repentance. God's not willing that any of
them should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
And they walk in white. He says, and I will not blot
out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his
name before my father and before his angels. A lot of people take
that verse. You know, the book of life is
the book of God's elect. It says in Revelation, I think
13, it says their names were written there before the foundation
of the world. And Christ came to redeem them.
And when he says, I will not erase their name out of the book
of life, it doesn't mean that a person's name is put in, then
erased out, and then put back in, and all of that. That's not
what the scripture teaches. I think I told you about the
preacher I heard on TV. He made that statement when he
was talking, I think he was talking about Revelation 13 there, talking
about the Lamb's book of life. And you know, it talks about
people being judged out of the books. That's the ungodly, that's
the unjust, because they'll be judged based on their works.
And then those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of
life. That's those who are in Christ, saved by the grace of
God. And the man said, he made this statement from the pulpit,
he said, we can speculate. Now that's his first mistake,
you know that. But he said, we can speculate that when you're
born, God writes your name in the book, And then when you commit
the first sin, God erases your name out. And then when you accept
Jesus as your personal savior, God writes your name back in.
Now, where is that in the Bible? It's not. That's not in the Bible. But they use verses like this,
your name blotted out. That means erased out. It's not
literal in the sense that God's up there writing names in and
writing names out. What it means is this, is that
those who are truly in Christ by the grace of God, washed in
his blood and clothed in his righteousness, it is impossible
for them to be blotted out of the book. That's all it's saying.
You cannot be lost if you're in Christ. Now Sardis, he says,
you have a name that you live, but you're dead. Talking about
the majority of the people, but you have a few names who have
not defiled their garments. They trust Christ alone for all
salvation, for all forgiveness, for all righteousness, for all
eternal life and glory. He said, I'll confess his name
before my father and before his angels. Christ will stand as
our mediator, our substitute and surety, our intercessor.
Just like Joshua the high priest back in Zechariah 3, the angel
of the Lord stepped up and spoke for him. That's what it means
when Christ says, I'll confess you before the Father. This is
one of mine. This is one of my sheep. This
is one whom I died for. His debt is paid, her debt is
paid, and that's salvation. And so then he concludes this
with the same conclusion that he makes there. He that hath
an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.
If you have ears to hear, listen, heed, act upon this, what the
Spirit says unto the churches. All right.