1 And unto the angel of the church in Sardis write; These things saith he that hath the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars; I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.
Introduction
My friend Dr. Robert Cox told me that almost every institution, organization, or movement eventually goes through three stages. They start out as risk-takers—bold, daring, adventuresome, and with a sense of mission. As they grow older, larger, and more prosperous, they become satisfied with what they have achieved and become caretakers. They become more concerned about security and holding onto what they’ve got than about new conquest. In the final stage, they are ready for the undertakers. They’re dull, listless, and dead, even though they may continue to exist for years.
Go from risk-takers to caretakers to the undertakers—that’s the history of most movements and organizations. George Bernard Shaw said that the tombstone of most men ought to read, “Died at thirty—buried at sixty.” Dr. Albert Schweitzer once said that the supreme tragedy in life is to outlive ourselves. There are many people who continue to live physically long after the zest, enthusiasm, and spirit of adventure has died in them.
What is true of people is also true of movements and organizations. There are churches everywhere with a great reputation, stately buildings, and a well-financed program that are as dead as a doornail. “Ichabod” could be written over their doors, for the glory of the Lord has departed from them. John said of the church at Sardis, “Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead” (Revelation 3:1). Their practice did not match their reputation. The church had everything but spiritual vital signs like faith, sacrifice, spirit, and growth.
Some churches today never launch out in faith; they have lost their sense of mission.
They are like the church at Sardis. They have reputation without performance. They have a glorious past but the vital signs of life are missing in the present. They have stately buildings, well-trained choirs, adequate finances, and ample staff. But they lack the spirit, enthusiasm, commitment, sacrifice, and faith that ought to mark the church of the living God. They are what some people call sound churches. Sound asleep! They are ready for the undertakers. In fact it occurred to me recently that we spend years getting young preachers the finest training possible in our seminaries and instilling idealism in them. Then their first assignment is to go to one of these old churches where they are expected to resurrect the dead.
Long before churches are ready for the undertakers, they become caretakers. Their attitude is, “We are big enough, we built enough, and we borrow enough.” They develop a maintenance mentality, content to hold onto what they’ve got. General Patton once said that Field Marshall Montgomery was “more concerned with not losing the battle than with winning one.” A church that has reached the caretaker stage is at ease in Zion. They become little more than defenders of the status quo. We must guard at all cost against the danger of developing a maintenance mentality—the attitude of life that is satisfied to sit, soak, and sour.
Two preachers were in a cab driving across New York City. The cab driver was cold, cynical, and negative about all of life. After a while, one of the preachers referred to the other as “Doctor.” The cab driver, thinking this “doctor” was a physician, told the preacher about a pain he had in the back of his neck. He asked the doctor if he knew what might be causing it. The preacher said, “Yes, I think you have psychosclerosis.” “What’s that?” he asked. “It’s like arteriosclerosis—you know, hardening of the arteries. But psychosclerosis is a hardening of the attitudes. That’s your problem—hardening of the attitudes.”
That’s a lot of people’s problems. Psychosclerosis—the hardening of the mind—might be the biggest problem we have in America today. The church of the living Lord should never be content to be an undertaker or a caretaker. It should always be a risk-taker. Anything less than that is unworthy of the name “church.” General Patton’s motto was “Always take the offense; never dig in.” That must be our spirit and attitude also.
What is the great mission of the church? What is our calling? Our mission is the Great Commission. Jesus said shortly before he ascended into heaven, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world” (Matthew 28:19-20). This is ever and always our challenge and our duty. To fulfill this commission we must do three things: bring them in, build them up, and send them out.
1. Bring them in.
Our first responsibility is to bring people into the family of God—into the circle of the redeemed. We are to bring them to faith and trust in Jesus Christ, who is the one and only Savior. Thomas A. Kempis said, “Thou art the way, the truth, and the life. Without the way, there is no going. Without the truth, there is no knowing. Without the life, there is no living.”
We are to bring people one by one to faith and trust in Jesus Christ, the only Savior.
Our goal is not to build a big church. That would be self-seeking and unworthy of Christ or the Gospel. Our challenge is to reach every last lost person within our reach. However, we are often misunderstood because we must talk about numbers and think about numbers in order to be ready for the future. The best leadership and evangelism is built on anticipation and not reaction.
In 1848 the Canadian missionary John Geddie arrived in the New Hebrides islands. He would be in constant peril of his life but he won the confidence of the dangerous cannibals. He developed an alphabet and translated the New Testament into their dialect. One by one he taught the people of New Hebrides, and they gave up their heathen gods and superstitions. Several churches were built. By 1854 more than half of the 4,000 people had become Christians. The natives began to go to other islands with the Gospel.
John Geddie had witnessed with great power, and great grace had come upon them. When he died a plaque erected in his memory was inscribed with these words: “When he landed in 1848, there were no Christians; when he left in 1872, there were no heathens.”
Oh, that that might be said of us! God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. It is our responsibility to see that every last lost person within our reach hears of God’s love and Christ’s redemption.
We don’t need evangelism to save our necks or our nation. We need it to save lost souls. My soul is always stirred to its depths when I read the lines written by Henry Crocker in 1903:
Give us a watchword for the hour;
A thrilling word, a word of power,
A battle-cry, a flaming breath
That calls to conquest or to death …
To dying men, a fallen race,
Make known the gift of gospel grace.
The world that now in darkness lies,
Evangelize, evangelize.
2. Build them up.
Once we have brought them in, our work has only begun. We must then build them up to full maturity in Jesus Christ. Salvation is a germinal—not a terminal—experience. It is like a seed that is planted in the ground, germinates, and then begins to grow. It must be cultivated, nurtured, and cared for to reach its full potential. Once people have been born again they must then be built up spiritually. Paul prayed for the church at Ephesus that they might “be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man” (Ephesians 3:16). There are at least two parts to every one of us—the inner man and the outer man. The outer person refers to our physical being; the inner person refers to our spiritual being. There is an inner part of us that cannot be sustained by meat and potatoes.
That’s what Jesus was talking about when he said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). That inner, spiritual part of us must be built up and strengthened also.
There are three perils that confront every Christian. They conspire to keep us from being strong in the Lord and from growing to Christian maturity. The first is temptation. Satan will through trickery and deceit seek to lure us into sin and spiritual defeat if he can.
The second peril we face is that of error. Jesus warned that many false Christs and false prophets would come into the world with signs and wonders, and if possible deceive even the elect of God (Matthew 24:24). Today approximately three million people are involved in more than one thousand different cults in America alone. The false prophets and heretics are with us in abundance today. Someone has defined a heretic as a person who has a complete grasp of a half-truth.
The apostle Paul warns us not to be gullible like little children, unanchored and rudderless like ships at the mercy of every wind that blows, or like an East Texas farm boy playing poker with a Las Vegas gambler. We are not to be gullible, unstable, and sucked in by false doctrine.
The third peril is the circumstances of life. I was sitting in a hospital room recently talking with a lady who had been admitted for what they first feared to be heart trouble. A few years before, her husband had died in the prime of life after a long bout with cancer. A short while later one of her sons, unable to cope with his father’s death, committed suicide. As we talked that day, she told me about a mutual friend of ours whose husband had left her for another woman, and the ensuing divorce that almost destroyed her. As we talked I thought, “If a person isn’t careful, circumstances of life will destroy him.” Death, disease, divorce, and disappointments are everywhere. To survive and to thrive we must have inner braces for the outer pressures of life.
It is a part of the mission of the church to provide inner braces for these outer pressures. What are we to do? How are we to build people up? We build people up in part by teaching them the word of God. Paul admonished Timothy to teach sound doctrine. The word sound literally means “health-giving” truth. Jesus said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” As we must have meat and potatoes to strengthen the outer man, so we must have spiritual nourishment to sustain the inner man. That spiritual food is the health-giving strengthening word of God.
We build people up by providing a loving fellowship. When a baby is born, what do we do with it? Do we put it in a refrigerator? That’s a good place for a head of lettuce, a bottle of milk, or a pound of baloney, but it is poor place for babies. We can’t put new converts, “babes in Christ,” into refrigerator churches either. They need a warm and loving fellowship in order to survive and to thrive spiritually. The church provides that fellowship.
Finally, we build them up by providing an opportunity for involvement in the work of God. One of the reasons Christ gave us churches and gifted leaders in those churches is so that people might be built up into the fullness of the stature of Christ. So our mission is to bring them in and then to build them up.
3. Send them out.
Once we have brought them in and built them up, we must then send them back out into the world to live and to love—to witness and to work for Christ.
If we are to reach people for Christ, it is as important to ring doorbells as it is to ring church bells. We have got to dismiss the heretical idea that the church building is the best place to witness. The church is not the place of evangelism; it is the base of evangelism. It is the launching pad from which we reach out to the ends of the earth with the good news.
C. E. Autrey was right in urging us to give the church a chance to breathe by going outside. Remember, it is the Sermon on the Mount, not the sermon in the cathedral, that Jesus preached. The Lord never intended that the worldly should come to the church to find Christ. He intended that the church should be in the world sharing Christ. But the church is so organized today that she’s muscle-bound and so prosperous that she’s fat and out of breath. We’ve got to shape up and reach out like never before.
In the Parable of the Great Supper, the master who represents God sent out his servants three separate times to invite people to his great supper. The third time he told them to “compel” the people to come.
The word compel is a very strong word. It literally means “to necessitate.” Those servants would be going to people who ordinarily would feel unworthy, unwanted, and unwelcomed. The master said his servants must go and impress upon the people the fact that they are wanted and they are welcomed and they are worthy. That is our mission. As he sent his servants out, so we must send people out. We must send them to the crowded cities and the affluent suburbs. We must send them to the sleepy hamlets and down the quiet country roads. We must send them again and again. We must send them with a sense of urgency.
Love of adventure, conquest, and missions ought to characterize God’s people everywhere. It characterized the early missionaries. Luke describes Paul and Silas as men who “hazarded” their lives for the Gospel (Acts 15:26). The word hazarded is a gambling term. It means to lay something on the line. It means to bet your life. Paul and Silas literally risked their lives for the sake of the Gospel. They were so convinced of its truthfulness and its power that they were willing to die that it might go forward. That’s the way we should be.
The Lord expects that of us also. He said concerning his church, “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). Gates are for defensive purposes, not offense. Cities in the ancient world were built with walls around them and huge gates that could be closed at night or in time of war. In order to conquer the city, the invading army would have to storm the walls and knock down the gates. Jesus pictures his church as on the offensive, storming the very gates of hell. If the church of Jesus Christ is true to its calling it must always be on the offensive, attacking, and going forward. It can never be characterized by a maintenance mentality—satisfied to hold on to what it’s got.
The true New Testament church can never be an undertaker or a caretaker. It must always be a risk-taker and lay its very life on the line so that the Gospel might go forward. Our purpose is to bring people in, build them up, and send them out into the world.
In a speech before his troops, General Patton said, “I don’t want to get any messages saying ‘I’m holding my position.’ … We’re advancing constantly and we’re not interested in holding anything except the enemy.” That’s our spirit. That’s our determination.
Notes: In his book The Adventure of Living, Paul Tournier reminds us that if life is not an adventure full of risk and excitement, it is a mere dull and boring experience.
Remember the words of Theodore Roosevelt: “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure … than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”