In the dark days of the Judges, the Lord gave Samson to Israel as a champion to fight the Philistines. He was a lovable hero for God’s people, performing miraculous feats of strength and heroic exploits that every Sunday school child knows by heart.

But Samson fell into sin. He succumbed to lust and pride, and foolishly divulged the secret of his strength: his hair. Ultimately, it was not the haircut that cost him his strength, but the fact that he broke a vow to God. When the Philistines attacked him again, Scripture tells us he was easily captured because “he did not know that the Lord had departed from him. Then the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes; and they brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze chains, and he was a grinder in the prison” (Judges 16:20–21).

What a tragic statement: “He did not know that the Lord had departed from him.” His sin turned him into a miserable wreck—blind, pitiful, and imprisoned, slaving over the grinding mill in chains for the remainder of his life.

That was the church at Sardis. At one point they had been alive and powerful, but they began to court the world and tolerate sin. Over time, they became weak and blind, unaware that God had departed from their midst.

So many churches today are the same. They’re dressed up and organized. They give every outward appearance of life. But inside, the whole congregation is blind and bound in the chains of their sin. To churches like that, the Lord says, “You have a name that you are alive, but you are dead” (Revelation 3:1).

Evidently, the church at Sardis was still going through religious motions. Maybe they helped with some of the city’s social ills; maybe they did some philanthropic work or provided services to the community. But the Lord says, “I know your deeds.” At the end of Revelation 3:2, He adds, “I have not found your deeds completed in the sight of My God.” That’s another way to say their deeds are unsatisfactory. Their pious pantomime wasn’t fooling the Lord; their good works were unacceptable. The church might have been socially distinguished, but they were living a lie. Inside it was a spiritual graveyard, and their good works were a poor disguise for an ecclesiastical corpse.

Mostly Dead

Christ’s commands to the church reveal that there was still some vague spiritual life in Sardis. He says, “Wake up, and strengthen the things that remain, which were about to die; for I have not found your deeds completed in the sight of My God. So remember what you have received and heard; and keep it, and repent. Therefore if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come to you” (Revelation 3:2–3). There’s no use telling a dead man to wake up.

So the Lord speaks to those few remaining believers in Sardis. He gives them five commands to rescue the church from its death spiral and prompt the necessary reformation and restoration.

The first is simply to “wake up” (v. 2). This was no time for spiritual lethargy. They needed to shrug off their spiritual indifference and leap to action. It’s a call to look around and accurately assess the situation. There could be no more passive acceptance of the status quo. The church was dying; much of it was already dead. Wake up and be alert. It’s time to work.

His second command is to “strengthen the things that remain, which were about to die” (v. 2). This is a call to rescue what they can from the dying church. To peel back the years of dry rot and decay and salvage whatever they could of its former spiritual value. Any virtue and godliness that still remained, any embers of their love for Christ that could still be fanned—strengthen those things.

In verse 3, Christ commanded them to “remember what you have received and heard.” By this point, the New Testament canon was closing. All the gospels and epistles had been written. We know Paul’s letters were circulating through the church (see 2 Peter 3:15–16); certainly others were as well. The Lord is telling any remaining believers in Sardis to think back on the spiritual truth they had received and not let their hearts grow cold to His Word. In effect, “Remember the truth of Christ’s glorious gospel; remember the teaching that the apostles suffered and died to deliver to you.” This is similar to Paul’s charge to Timothy: “Guard what has been entrusted to you” (1 Timothy 6:20). The believers in Sardis had to recover the preciousness of God’s Word if they hoped to revive and rescue their dying church.

But it’s not enough to merely remember the truth. Christ also commanded that they “keep it” (Revelation 3:3). Like we saw in the church at Pergamum, it’s not enough to know the truth. The Lord commands us to obey it as well. Remembering the truth would not help the church if they were not living it out.

Finally, the Lord ordered them to “repent” (v. 3). On top of everything else, those in the Sardis church needed to confess their sins and turn from them. Without repentance, none of the other changes would have lasted or made a lasting difference in the life of the church. They had to break with any patterns of sinfulness and come to a right relationship with God if there was going to be true revival in the church.

And the Lord warned them what would happen if they failed to fulfill His commands: “Therefore if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come to you” (v. 3). When the Lord talks about coming like a thief, it’s a picture of His imminent judgment. It means He is coming without warning, when they least expect it. Later in Revelation 16:15, we read, “Behold, I am coming like a thief. Blessed is the one who stays awake and keeps his clothes, so that he will not walk about naked and men will not see his shame.” In his second epistle, Peter warns, “The day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up” (2 Peter 3:10). That’s a warning of God’s final judgment on the world. Christ’s words to Sardis are a much more localized promise of doom. If the church does not repent and reform, He will come at an unknown moment to bring mayhem and destruction upon them.

This same threat applies to all dead churches. If they fail to wake up from their spiritual slumber, strengthen their love for God, remember the truth of His Word, live lives of obedience, and repent of their sins, they face the horror and terror Paul described in 1 Thessalonians 5:2–3: “For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night. While they are saying, ‘Peace and safety!’ then destruction will come upon them suddenly like labor pains upon a woman with child, and they will not escape.”

(Adapted from Christ’s Call to Reform the Church.)