Most People Are Exactly Where the Enemy Wants Them—Comfortable

The ancient city of Sardis was destroyed, rebuilt, conquered, and liberated dozens of times throughout the centuries. A few decades before the writing of Revelation, the city was destroyed by an earthquake, only to be rebuilt by the Roman Emperor Tiberius. By the first century, the strong Jewish population living in the city enjoyed unprecedented religious freedom while under Roman rule. Historians agree that this irregular religious freedom was extended to the early Christians living in Sardis. Not much else is known about the city during the time of Revelation, but of the seven cities Jesus writes to, Sardis receives the strongest rebuke. Despite living in relative religious freedom, the church is spiritually dead. They're warned that if they don't wake up, repent, and return to the faith they had at first, then Jesus will come like a thief in the night, and they'll miss it. This is Jesus' letter to the church in Sardis. All right, Flatiron, so good to see you this morning. My name's Jesse, and I would love if we would all stand for the reading of the word of God together at all of our campuses. If you got your Bible, I encourage you to open up as we read together. We're in Revelation chapter three, verse one. Said unto the angel of the church in Sardis, write, this is the words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you're dead. Wake up and strengthen what remains and what is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. Remember then what you have received and heard. Keep it and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief in the night, and you will not know what hour I will come against you. Yet you have still a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments,

and they will walk with me in white, for they are worthy. The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life. I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels. Let he who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. This is the word of the Lord. So, Father, right now we pray with our Bibles open, with our hearts open, with our ears open. God, what this verse says, God, will you just wake us up? Whatever we've been sleeping to, whatever we've been unaware of, God, we pray that you would wake us up. It's in Jesus' name that we pray, amen. You guys can have a seat, and I'll start out by saying I wanna do a little history lesson because as you read that for the first time, there's a lot of words and a lot of things that may not make sense until you know the history of Sardis. Once you know the history of Sardis, it starts to make sense. The city of Sardis, it sat on top of a cliff that was so steep that no army could climb it. Nobody could really scale it, and so at the top of this city, there's no real need to build a wall, and so inevitably over time, the city stops guarding the wall closely. Here's why that matters, because Sardis was never taken by brute force, but twice it was taken by stealth. The first time was almost 700 years before this letter. There's a Persian king named Cyrus, and you can read about Cyrus in the Old Testament, but his army camped around the outside of the walls for two weeks, and they just get nowhere. They've got no answer for how they're gonna take this city, and then one night, this Persian soldier named Heroides, he's looking up at the city way up on this cliff. He's probably just more bored than scouting, but he saw this soldier from Sardis accidentally knock his helmet off the wall.

It falls all the way down 1,500 feet, and then he watches this soldier climb down a specific route on the wall, pick up his helmet, and then climb back up, and Heroides realizes, he goes, hey, if a guy can actually climb down here and climb back up, then a few of us can climb up as well, so the next night, he leads a small group of Persian soldiers up the same route in the dark along this crack in the rock that nobody bothered to guard, and when they reached the top, there were no soldiers, no resistance, nobody on watch. The guards were asleep. You might be thinking, okay, that's one time in history, few centuries before, and that's embarrassing. Surely, they fixed it, but they didn't fix it. A couple centuries later, an army took the city the exact same way, the exact same city, same cliff, same blind spot, same mistake, twice. You would think a city would learn. And I want you to write this down. The enemy doesn't need to attack you, he just needs to lull you to sleep. The enemy doesn't need to attack you, he just needs to lull you to sleep. That's where we're going today. That's gonna set the context for this entire talk. Because we're in week five of this series on the letters to the churches in the book of Revelation. And here's something I wanna make clear. These letters, each letter wasn't sent to each specific church. Instead what happened was they're all packaged together and they're circulated around the churches. And so each church is reading their own letter, but also the letters to the other churches along the way.

And you pick this up if you've been here the last few weeks. After every greeting, Jesus starts with an encouragement. He says something like, hey, I know your works and you've been so patient and so enduring. He says, I know your love and your faith and your service. He encourages them. I mean, even churches with heresy in the middle of them get some encouragement before he corrects them. And I want you to look at how Jesus starts the letter to Sardis. In verse one, in that next paragraph, he says this, he says, okay, I see you, I know your works, you have the reputation of being alive, but you're dead. Wake up. So we got no encouragement, no recognition, just Jesus saying, hey, I know what's happening, you look alive, but you're dead. This is like if you're in school and the teacher's going around just giving every single kid some encouragement, and then the teacher looks at you and then just keeps on going. Okay, it's like Jesus just skips right over them. This is one of only two cities that doesn't get encouragement from Jesus. And it's really interesting because the history of this is on the outside, everything looks good. On the outside, it looks like they've got it all together,

but inside, they've gone soft. Now here's what's happening underneath the surface. Jesus, he's talking about their reputation. Because Sardis is a city, they had a legacy, they had a history, they're a city that used to be great. They used to be vibrant. And they're still acting like they're the city that they used to be. They're still acting like they're still relevant. It's like the Dallas Cowboys, okay? Like, you guys know I love you out there, but seriously, call me when you want a championship in 30 years, okay? So they're acting like they're still relevant. And here's what happened. When they were conquered hundreds of years earlier, the Persians didn't destroy the city and said they did something smarter. The Persians took all of their weapons and they gave them instruments instead. So they took a culture that raised up soldiers who were ready for everything, and they forced them to only teach music, theater, and trade. In other words, they took their weapons and they gave them toys. Because weapons are dangerous. I mean, weapons can hurt somebody. But when you take a man's weapons and you give him toys, that creates weak men. And weak men can't keep you safe.

And now we're not just talking about Sardis. We're talking about our city, our country, our culture. Because culture has spent so much time telling men they need to tone down their masculinity, that their strength is something they need to apologize for, that they're too much, that they're toxic. They need to take their masculinity and put it up on a shelf. And so we've raised a generation who know how to be nice, but they don't know how to be strong. And our culture wants weak men because weak men feel safe. But they only feel safe until you realize you got a real enemy. When that real enemy comes, you need a strong man who's been trained for battle, who knows how to fight for the people around him. That's why at Flatirons, hey, you know this, we are unapologetic about speaking to the hearts of men. We're unapologetic about raising up men to fight, to fight for their marriages, to fight for their kids, to fight for their integrity, and to fight for those who have been forgotten. We believe that God, he put strength in men by design, and that strength is meant to be used and not apologized for. So the men of Sardis, okay, they don't just lose their weapons. They lost the will to use them. And a man, a marriage, a church that's lost its will to fight for anything,

that church is already halfway asleep. Because the enemy doesn't have to conquer somebody twice. All you gotta do, you just keep them comfortable. Sardis. had already gone soft, and the Persians just made sure it stayed that way. And today, our culture has been intentionally designed to keep us comfortable. And some of that is a good thing, okay? Like, I mean, first of all, AC. This week, I'm grateful for some air conditioning. Can I get an amen? Amen. Hey, everybody talks about Europe, like they're so advanced and everything. Then I found out like a month ago, Europe doesn't even have AC. They're like mad at us. They're jealous because we've got AC. We got some AC. Here in America, we get our food delivered. Our cars drive us. We barely even go to the store anymore. You just order off your couch. So we live in a culture that's been intentionally designed to keep us comfortable. But what if comfort isn't necessarily our friend? Michael Easter wrote a book called The Comfort Crisis. He says this. He says, as we experience fewer problems,

we actually don't become more satisfied. We just lower our threshold for what becomes a problem. The things that we used to be able to handle, we can't handle anymore because they're bigger problems. Our lives got comfortable. And maybe that is what the enemy wants to do. He wants to keep us scrolling and keep us ordering and keep us watching the news and keep us reclining back and keep us comfortable so he can lull us to sleep. The enemy doesn't need to attack you. He just needs to lull you to sleep. Here's the second thing I want you to write down on your cards. It is easy to fall asleep when you're comfortable. It is easy to fall asleep when you're comfortable. If everything in your life is going well enough, you're like, I got no real complaints, but at the same time, you can't remember the last time you actually felt something. It just feels like it's the same commute, the same shows, the same scroll before bed, the same just getting through the day. Maybe you're being lulled to sleep. If you're in a relationship and it used to have some fire and some passion, and now it just feels like maintenance and it feels like showing up and it feels like keeping the peace, maybe we're being lulled to sleep. Maybe you used to have things that you cared about, work, health, becoming the person you wanted to be,

but recently you know this about yourself. You're like, recently, I just stopped trying. Maybe you're being lulled to sleep. And this can happen with faith too. I mean, some of us, we've been coming to church for decades now, and we remember those seasons. They felt so fresh and it's like God's voice was so clear. And you could almost feel yourself growing week after week after week. And now we come to church because coming to church is something that we do and we just feel like we're growing day by day. Coming to church is something that we do and we read our Bibles, but it feels like it's kind of more of a checklist, checking off the box. We pray, we don't really expect an answer. And if we're honest, following Jesus doesn't really cost us much right now. There's not much risk, there's not much tension, there's no sacrifice that actually costs us. We're just comfortable. And if we're honest, it's getting a little boring. And we might be starting to fall asleep. Here's what I've watched happen from, in the lives of so many people that I care about at this church. The business starts growing and life gets busy. And church, whether that's small group or serving or attending, church goes from a few times a month to a few times a quarter.

And you got so much on your plate at work and parenting is an afterthought. And the kids just keep on getting harder and harder and harder. And the marriage is fine, but you're traveling and they're busy and you're just leading two separate lives and the stress just continues to keep building and building and building. And then that co-worker starts giving you the attention that you never get at home. And with them, it feels like you're actually doing a good job. It feels like you're actually appreciated. Somebody finally sees all the work that you do and everything that you carry. And in that moment, if you've been lulled to sleep, it's impossible to fight off that temptation. You give in and in 20 minutes, you lose what's taken 20 years to build, all because we fell asleep. If you've been lulled to sleep, you'll start to just. Justify things you never used to justify. You'll start making excuses, but you won't just make excuses, you start believing them for yourself. You won't notice how far you've drifted until you're already gone. And when you're asleep, the damage doesn't just land on you, it lands on everything you've built

and everyone you care about. We can't fall asleep. That's why Jesus says this in verse two. He says, wake up. He says, wake up and strengthen what remains and is about to die. For I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. So notice he doesn't say you're completely gone. He says there's still something there, there's still something barely there and we've gotta strengthen what's left. Now here's something that's interesting about Sardis compared to the other letters. In every other church, they've got a fight on their hands. They're dealing with false teachers, with persecution, with idolatry and every single one of the churches has an enemy that they're fighting, except for Sardis. You might go, well, that's gotta be a good thing, right? I mean, there's no persecution, the church is safe, it's at peace, it's doing okay, they've got religious freedom, this is okay. But Jesus looks at a church with nothing to resist as a church with everything to lose. Maybe you've been feeling pressure lately. You've been following Jesus, but it just seems like once you started following Jesus, once you started actually obeying Jesus,

it feels like life has gotten harder, friendships have gotten harder, integrity at work has gotten harder. And of all the conversations I have with people who are in this spot, they're like, my life just seems like it's getting harder once I started following Jesus. They're all wondering the same thing. They're like, does this mean I'm headed in the wrong direction? Why isn't this working? And in those moments, and if you're there right now, I wanna remind us what Jesus told his disciples. He said this in the book of John. He said, in this world, you will have trouble. Not might have trouble, not could have trouble, not maybe there will be trouble. He says, in this world, you will have trouble to expect it. Another time he said this, he says, woe to you when all men speak well of you. He says, if everybody likes where you're headed, maybe that's not necessarily a good thing. So try this on. Maybe pushback is proof you're headed in the right direction. Maybe pushback is proof you're headed in the same direction as Jesus. Because the opposite, if everything feels smooth, everything feels easy, everything feels comfortable, there's nothing to push against

and there's nothing pushing back, maybe that means you're not headed in the right direction. Maybe that means you're going with the flow of the world. And think about this. Why would the enemy make your life harder when you're already headed in the direction he wants you to go? So I want you to write this down. If you're facing resistance right now, you might be exactly where Jesus wants you to be. You might be exactly where Jesus wants you to be. So ask yourself this question. What is creating friction in my life right now because of Jesus? What's pressure am I facing because of Jesus? And if nothing comes to mind, that might be worth thinking about. Because Sardis wasn't fighting anything and Jesus says, he says, that's not peace. He says that you're actually about to die unless you wake up and you strengthen what remains. And then in verse three, he tells him what to do. He says this. He says, remember then what you have received and heard. Keep it and repent. And if you will not wake up, I'll come like a thief and you will not know at what hour I will come against you. Now that last part should sound familiar. Remember the story. I mean, Sardis is sitting on a cliff nobody can climb

and so the guards stop watching and a group of soldiers come in and they take the city and Jesus is saying, hey, guys, remember the history. This can happen again. Not to the walls though, this could happen to you. To you relationally, professionally, spiritually. And so he says to do three things. He says to, number one, remember. We gotta, he says, you gotta remember what happened back then. You gotta remember how this went. Remember your history. But not just that, remember what you've received, remember what you've heard, remember the things that have happened. the things I taught you at the beginning and keep on coming back to them, keep on coming back to them, keep on coming back to them. And then he says this, he says, keep it. Now, I love this part, okay, I did some study and the word in the original language for keep is this word tereo, this is the word that Jesus uses. And the word tereo, it means to keep, it means to obey, but it also means this, it means to stay on watch and to keep guard. Now, I like this about Jesus because I kind of have a dark sense of humor, okay, but Jesus could have picked other words that mean obey. There are a lot of other words for obey, but Jesus picks this one.

I like to think that he's sarcastic. He's like, hey, guys, do you remember when you got conquered? Twice? And he keeps on poking them, keeps on reminding them. He's like, hey, you gotta remember that time. You got to stay on guard with this. And then he says, repent. Once you remember, once you're guarding it again, repent. Repent means you change direction. Repent means you make the change. And of all these things, repent, keep, remember, none of it is new information. It's not like some secret that they've never heard. He's just telling them, go back to what you already have. And honestly, that's usually how this works. It's like when I go to the doctor and I'm asking how I can get in better shape, it's never exciting. It's always just the same thing. It's always eat better, move more, sleep more. If you do those things, you'll get in better shape. But I keep hoping to find a different answer. Maybe you're the same way. Every time I want a different answer, like a secret, but it's the same thing. We're hoping for some secret. Okay, we're hoping for something like made on TV, like the Shake Weight. You guys remember that?

You just shake the Shake Weight. Six minutes a day, you get ripped. Give me that eight-minute workout that's gonna burn off the triple smash burger and the s'mores milkshake I had last night. Like, give me the secret. Give me the secret to getting in shape. But there is no Shake Weight and there is no secret to getting in shape. It's just the same formula that we've gotta put into practice. And Jesus doesn't tell Sardis anything new either. He says, remember what you've been taught, guard it, turn back to it, wake up. So how do we wake up? When life feels the same day after day after day and your relationships, they just feel mundane and normal. When you go to your job and it's a good job, but you're longing for purpose. And when you want your faith to feel more like it did at the beginning, because now it's starting to just feel like a checklist. How do we wake up? What I wanna do is I wanna give you five things to look at. Five areas where you might need to grow. When you hear these, I know what half the room's gonna do. Half the room's gonna roll your eyes. You're gonna be like, this is what he's always doing. He's just always telling us the same stuff.

Like, Jesse, I've heard this before. Give me something new, okay? Give me a secret, give me the Shake Weight, all right? Give me the Shake Weight to waking up and following Jesus. And Jesus would tell us, we don't need a secret. We just gotta remember what he said. So I'm gonna give you five areas. And for us, some of these we're doing fine. And some of these, if we're honest, we're not. And for each one, I wanna give you a framework for this. I want you asking the same question. The question is this. Hey, is this a frequency problem or an intensity problem? So here's what I mean. Cara and I, my wife, we try to have a regular date night once a week where we get away from the house, get away from the kids. It's just the two of us. When the kids were much younger, it was a lot harder. But it's easier now that they're older, they can babysit themselves. Hopefully, the dates can include chips and salsa, tacos and margaritas, you know? And that's a good date. Can I get an amen? But there were still stretches, and there are still stretches today where for months, we'll skip it. We just don't prioritize it. We don't do what we know we should do.

And when we skip it, it shows. So if we start getting frustrated with each other easier, and I start getting my feelings hurt, getting offended easier, and it starts to, like, we don't wanna spend more time together. We wanna spend less time together. So you would call that a frequency problem. Going on dates needs to happen more often. But on the other side of it, we could go on a date every single week. We could show up, we could sit across the table, but we could never actually be there. You know, we can have the phones out. We could half answer each other. We're just thinking about work or the kids or whatever. And it's technically a date, but neither date is a date. Neither of us was actually present. That's just me and Kara, I know that would never happen on your all's dates, okay? We would call that an intensity problem. Means, okay, doing the thing, it actually needs more energy and more attention. So you got frequency and intensity. And as we walk through these five areas, I just want you to ask yourself, hey, is this a frequency thing? Like, I need to dial up the frequency of this, or is this an intensity thing?

I need to dial up the energy I'm giving to this. And you're gonna be hearing more about these five things more and more, but these are what it looks like to be fully engaged here at church. Because I can tell you, we are not a church that's interested in being lulled to sleep. So write these down. Number one, gather purposefully. Hebrews 10, 24 says this. So let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another in all the more as you see the day approaching. When we gather together at our campuses like this, we are remembering we're not doing this on our own. When we gather together, we prioritize God at the start of our week. When we gather together, we actually lean on the faith of others. And when we gather together, we meet in this place with God. And for many of us, church has become a commodity instead of a family. It's like a subscription we can pause whenever we feel like it. It's kind of like, the weather's nice outside. We got so much stuff to do.

We'll be there next week. Next week, weather's bad. I don't know if we should risk the roads. You know, I don't wanna get wet as we walk in from the parking lot. Honestly, sometimes it's just easier to watch from home, lean back in the recliner. So that would be frequency. That would say, hey, gathering with the church needs to happen more. Or maybe you're at church most weekends, but it's just kind of the same thing. You get there in the middle of worship, hear the message, slip out during the closing prayer so you can beat the traffic. What if you dialed up the intensity? What if you, dare I say this, what if you skipped Starbucks so you could get to church on time? I know, like, I mean, what if we got into the room early and we took a second, because in the middle of busy weeks and trying to get everybody ready to church, what if we just took two minutes before service to just prepare our hearts for what God wants to do? What if you moved up a section? What if you took notes during the message?

What if you raised your hand during worship? That's what we would call intensity, where the gathering gets our attention, not just our attendance. And so on that handout, I put next to each one of these, next to gather purposefully, there's a box, and there's a box for each of these. And I just wanna invite you, as you reflect on this, maybe you write an F in it if you're like, no, I need to dial up the frequency here. Or maybe you write an I in it, you say, okay, I need to dial up the intensity. Well, you can do that for every single one of these. Here's the next thing, serve selflessly. Galatians 5.13, we covered this last fall. For you were called to freedom, brothers, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love, serve one another. And when we serve, we stop being a consumer of what God's doing, and we start becoming a part of how he does it. So many of us, we show up, we get fed, we go home.

And I want you to know, there is nothing wrong with being fed. If you're new here, you need some time to just get fed. We are so glad you're here. But for all of us, at some point, Jesus is gonna wanna help use you to help feed somebody else. And for a moment, I gotta brag on the volunteers of Flatirons, because Flatirons runs on service. Flatirons runs on volunteers. Here's some numbers for you. We've got about 120 staff, and we have about 3,500 volunteers. And without those volunteers, there's no way we would be able to serve the close to 20,000 people who call this place home. Volunteers, we are grateful for you. We would literally have to close down everything if volunteers stopped showing up. They are essential. And so here's the truth. Consumers show up to get something. Servants show up to give something. And Jesus was the second. He was a servant all the way to the cross. And so that's where we're gonna follow him. The third is this.

It's connect deeply. Proverbs 18 says this. A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a. Brother. And I can't prove this, but I think this verse is prophetic of the 21st century. Because every single one of us has a list of hundreds of friends on our social media, companions on our social media, people that we know, and at the same time, how many of us long for a friend who would stick closer than a brother or a sister, somebody we could be real with, somebody who would be there no matter what. I read a stat that said today the amount of people who say they have no close friends, it's quadrupled over the last decades. They say that one out of every eight men you see on the street would say he has no real friends. The Bible says we need people in our lives. We need people to help us when we're hurting. We need people to encourage us when we're down. We need people to celebrate with us when things go right. You and I need people to pray with us when we don't have the words ourselves, and we need people who will actually challenge us when we're wrong. That means they love us enough to actually say something, so we need to connect deeply.

Here's the fourth one, number four, influence daily. Jesus said this, he said, for you are the light of the world. Let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who's in heaven. So Jesus never planned to reach the world by himself. His entire plan for reaching people was for ordinary people who would point to him in the middle of their everyday lives. And here's what Jesus has done. He has specifically placed people in your life so that you could be the person to tell them about him. And every one of us in this room, every one of us at our campuses, you've got influence through relationships, through work, through position, through your online platform. We've got influence. The question is, what are we doing with the influence that God has given us? Influencing daily means we pay attention to the people who are around us and that we're willing to take a step of faith to point them to Jesus. And then finally, here's the fifth one, give generously. Second Corinthians describes a group of people. It says this, hey, for in a severe test of affliction, this group of people, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty

have overflowed in a wealth of generosity. They gave according to their means and even beyond their means. So that type of generosity comes from someplace like deep, deep, deep in your heart. The Bible calls it abundance of joy. It describes these people, these people with almost nothing gave like they had everything. And I was thinking about myself and I was thinking about living in America. And sometimes I think the opposite could be said of me a lot of the times, that I'm someone with almost everything. And sometimes I give like I have nothing. God knew, he knew of all the things in the world that we would put our trust in, that we would start to rely on instead of him, that it was our money. And he said, the way that we would loosen the grip of money on us is we have to loosen the grip we have on our money. And so we ask ourselves this question, does the word generous describe my giving? Does the word generous describe my giving? Because our response to the sacrifice of Jesus is that we give generously. So real quick, if you're watching online in our campuses, look back through that list. Gather, serve, connect, influence, give.

I just want you to ask God, God, which one do you want me to start working on? Holy Spirit, will you guide me? Which one do I need to start seeing some improvement on? And when you're ready to take a next step there, our team is here to help. You talk to any of our staff members, email in and we would be happy to help you take your next step. But let's be honest, we could circle every one of those. We could memorize the list, we could memorize the scriptures, and we could still walk out of here exactly the same. A list doesn't wake anybody up. And when you're dead asleep, you don't wake yourself up. Something on the outside has to wake us up. For Sardis, it was a letter. For some of us, our wake up call, we remember it so clearly. It was papers being slid across the table. It's the diagnosis that we weren't ready for. It's a tragedy, and all of a sudden, it just made everything, it put it all in perspective. We've gotten the wake up call. And here's what I've been praying for this week, and I've been praying for all of us. I've been praying, God, would you just... Wake us up. God, would you wake us up? I've been taking breaks from writing

and taking walks and praying, kneeling in my office and praying, driving in and praying, God, will you wake us up? Because it is so painfully obvious to me, I can't wake anybody up. Church can't even wake anybody up. The right message won't wake anybody up. The Holy Spirit is the only one who can wake us up. Only the Spirit gives life to what's dead. That's why Jesus is so clear in the letters. He says, hey, he who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. So Jesus writes the letter, but it's the Spirit who has to wake us up when we hear it. And the Holy Spirit kept on drawing me to one part of the scripture over and over and over again. In verse two, Jesus says this. He says, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. He says my God there. And I just remember reading, I don't remember Jesus saying my God very often throughout his life. Like he says father a lot. He says Lord all the time. But here he says my God. There's only one other moment that I remember Jesus saying those exact words. You know what I'm talking about?

When he hung on a cross, he gasped for breath, and he cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And he hung on that cross to pay the price for all of our sin and all of our shame and all of our failures. And on that cross, I know what he could have been thinking. He could have said about Sardis. He could have said what he said about Sardis, about all the people he's looking at. He's looking at the disciples. He's going you guys abandoned me. He's looking at the people saying you guys turned me over. You guys did this to me. He could look at all of us and let us know how we failed, how we did not measure up. And he could say this. I have not found your works complete. He could have said it. But on the cross, in his dying breath, what does he declare? He says it is finished, which means the work was not completed by us. The work's completed in Jesus. The shame is placed on Jesus. The sin is covered by Jesus, and the price was paid in Jesus. And so Jesus cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And because of his sacrifice,

you and I are connected with him forever, and it is finished. That's his promise to anybody who would hold onto him. So let's finish this up in verses four through six. Jesus says, hey, of everybody in Sardis, yet you have still a few names in Sardis. People who have not soiled their garments. They walk with me in white for they are worthy. They've kept on holding on to me. The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments. I'll never blot out his name from the book of life. I'll confess his name before my father and before his angels. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He says, yet there are still a few people in Sardis who stayed faithful, a few people who stayed awake, just a few, but their faithfulness is what's keeping this church going. And I was thinking about our church in our time and how that might apply, and there's a principle called the 80-20 rule. I don't know if you've heard this, and it says typically in life, in business, whatever, 80% of the results come from 20% of the people. And I was wondering, is the 80-20 rule, is that true for us, too? When it comes to serving and giving here at Flatirons, the people who keep the doors open and the people who keep the lights on,

is it the same as the world where 20% of the people are doing 80% of the work? And I looked it up, I did some work this week, and it wasn't 20%, it was closer to 15. 15% of people doing 80% of the giving, 15% of people doing 80% of the volunteering. And it just got me wondering, if we can do everything that we're doing with just 15%, think about what we could do with 100. Think about what we could do. Think about the marriages that were headed for a courtroom, and instead ended up in a courtroom, they're sitting in marriage conference, and the first time in years, they're actually holding hands. Think about how many kids from broken homes could come to camp, and for the very first time. it's time they hear that they're actually wanted. Think about how many girls who are stuck in trafficking and they're just waiting for somebody to come pull this out of this hell that they're living in. And they get pulled out because we have safe houses that we've started and they've got one more open bed. Imagine what could happen on the front range if all 20,000 people who call Flatirons home would wake up, get involved, and start giving back what Jesus already gave us. Because there are people in our community, there are people here on the front range, people that we love, people that God loves, and they are not getting the help

and they are not getting the healing that they need because only 15% of us have jumped in. That means there's a gap in the wall. Somebody fell asleep on the wall and Flatirons, let it be said of us, not on our watch. We won't fall asleep on the wall. We won't be the guards who fell asleep. We will watch the wall and we will stand in the gap because our friends and our neighbors, people we care about, the entire front range, they are gonna stand in front of Jesus one day. They are gonna face a moment where their name gets read. And in that moment, there's only one thing that matters. It's not how much they accomplished. It's not how good they were. It's not their reputation. It's just this, is their name written down in the book of life or isn't it? Is their name written down or isn't it? And guys, this is a real thing that applies to all of us in this room, but not just all of us in this room, all of us in the front range as well. Where verse five says this, a moment's gonna happen where he says, the one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments. Which means all of our sin and all of our shame and all of our disqualifications and all of the things that we've done that make us feel dirty and not enough

and not good enough to even be in the presence of God. And Jesus says, I'm gonna take those clothes off of you. I'm gonna put my clothes on you and you get to put on my righteousness. You get to put on my identity. You are who I say you are, not who your mistakes say you are. And then he says this. He says, I will never blot his name out of the book of life. He said, man, in the future, you might make some mistakes. You might do some things that you said you were never gonna do again. You're gonna feel like you're disqualified. You're gonna feel like you should quit. But he says, hey, when I'm with you, there is no disqualification in the kingdom of God. When I'm with you, I'm gonna hold on to you as much as you're holding on to me. I'm gonna hold on to you more than you're holding on to me. He says, there is no disqualification. I will not blot your name out of the book of life. And then he says this. He says, and I will confess his name before my father and before his angels. I just want you to picture this. I just want you to picture what Revelation talks about, how there's this throne room and God sits on a throne and the angels are all around him. And the Bible says the angels are just crying out, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty over and over and over again.

Holy, holy, holy. And as all of this is happening, I just want you to imagine Jesus comes up. He goes, everybody stop. Everybody stop, because there's somebody I need to introduce you to. And I want you to meet Joshua right here. And I know Joshua's story. And I know Joshua came from a really hard childhood. Parents not there, parents abusive. It's a miracle he made it out alive. When he was in middle school, he had these thoughts telling him he's not good enough. These thoughts telling him he shouldn't be here. And in high school, he went to camp. And at camp, we had an experience together where I found him and he found me. And everything started to change in his life. And Joshua right now, he's in college. He's following me. And it's not easy. The people around him, they're telling him, hey, you should be hanging out with us. You should give up on that. Why are you paying attention to him? Why are you believing that anyways? But he is staying faithful. He is holding on. So I just want you guys to take a moment as I confess his name.

This is Joshua and he's with me. Father, that is a reality for all of us. But that's not just a reality for all of us. That's a reality that could happen for every single person in the front range where they're gonna stand before God. And are they gonna stand with Jesus or are they gonna stand on their own? Flatirons, let us be the church that wakes up, that stands in the gap on the wall, that tries to bring the hope of the gospel to every single person. Joshua that we can. And so in this moment, we're gonna take some time where we're gonna worship and we're gonna allow you to sit for a second if you need to. And then as you feel led to respond to Jesus, I just wanna encourage you to stand as we worship and sing. So God, our Father right now, God, my prayer is the same thing that you told us. Will you wake us up? God, for those of us in the room who feel like we've just got hard hearts right now, God, would you break through those hard hearts? God, would you take out that heart of stone? Would you replace it with a heart of flesh? God, would you break our hard hearts? God, for those of us in the room who feel like our hearts are just numb right now and we can't even feel anything,

God, would your spirit just move and help us to feel the work that you're doing in our lives? Maybe for the first time in decades. God, for some of us in this room, we're here, we're not sure about this entire whole church thing, Jesus thing. God, I pray that your Holy Spirit in this moment just wakes us up to the gospel, wakes us up to your Son Jesus and what he has done for us. God, will you wake us up, not just for our own good, but for the good of everyone around us and for the good of the entire front range? God, we love you. God, we worship you. God, wake us up. God, wake us up. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.