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The Five-Fold Podcast
Five-Fold ministry for today. In this podcast we will attempt to determine biblical timelines as they correlate with current events. We will examine the offices of the Five-Fold ministry and gain biblical direction for the world today.
The Five-Fold Podcast
Upholding the Faith Amidst Cultural Shifts: Lessons from Sardis
Awaken from your spiritual slumber and rediscover the enduring strength of faith with me, Michael Weedman, as we navigate the ancient paths of Sardis in our Revelation Church study. Our latest episode peels back the layers of history, exposing the once-potent city of Sardis, its integral role within the Persian empire, and its transformation into a bustling Greek metropolis. As we reflect on the Church of Sardis's urgent warning from Revelation Chapter 3, we examine the dramatic cultural shifts that challenged early Christians, the severe scrutiny under Emperor Nero, and the haunting echo of that message for believers today. Bear witness to the prophetic call for vigilance and the untold consequences of complacency in one's spiritual journey.
In a society where secular currents are eroding the foundations of the American church, this episode stands as a bulwark, stressing the dire need to cling to the rock-solid teachings of Jesus Christ. I dissect the perilous trend of cultural assimilation and the stark contrast between the church's divine promises and the seduction of modern-day idols. Esteeming the role of the Fivefold Ministry within the fabric of today's Christianity, we extend an invitation to join us in a weekly commitment to fortifying your walk with God. So, let this episode serve as a beacon, guiding you towards the rewards reserved for those who steadfastly navigate the waters of faith amidst the tides of cultural shift.
What is happening everybody, welcome to tonight's episode of the Five-Fold Podcast. I'm your host, michael Weidman, and I am excited for tonight we are continuing on our Revelation Church study. We are on Chapter 3. The next church is the church of Sardis. Don't go anywhere. You're going to like this. Oh yeah, oh yeah, hey. Good evening and welcome to this episode of the Five-Fold Podcast. I'm your host, michael Weidman, and I would like to say thank you for taking the time and joining us tonight on the podcast.
Speaker 1:The Five-F focuses on the fivefold ministry and the importance of that ministry in today's society. We believe that there is still a need for apostles, for prophets, for pastors, for teachers, for evangelists. They haven't ceased. There's still an operation today and necessary for the success of today's church. So join with us as we dive into this episode of the Five-Fold Podcast. As darkness prevails around us, god is shining a light on the radio waves of mankind. A group of diverse individuals from all walks of life have come together to start Of God and Men. Of God and Men is a central hub for content creators sharing the hope of Jesus Christ in the form of a podcast. Pastors, evangelists, counselors, school teachers and emergency personnel have all come together to bring you a network of inspiration. Join us as we face all areas of life with the gospel of Jesus Christ and what's happening everybody. Welcome back to this evening's episode.
Speaker 1:I am excited to continue on our Revelation Church study.
Speaker 1:We are on Chapter 3. The next church is the church at Sardis. So let's go ahead and get into the Word and see what the book of Revelation has to say. Revelation, chapter 3 and verse number 1. Unto the angel of the church in Sardis, write these things, saith he that hath the seven of the church and Sardis, write these things, saith he that hath the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know thy works and thou hast a name that thou livest and art dead. Be watchful and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die, for I have not found thy works perfect before God. Remember, therefore, how thou hast received and heard and hast fast and hold fast and repent. If, therefore, thou shalt not watch, I will come upon thee as a thief and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee. Thou hast a few names, even in Sardis, which have not defiled their garments, and they shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy he that. Overcome it the shame. The same shall be clothed in white raiment and I will not blot out his name of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my father and before his angels. He that hath ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. So we've come to this next church, the church at Sardis, and what I want to do for a minute is I want to talk about this church at Sardis Again.
Speaker 1:I am in the process of writing a commentary on the book of Revelation, and you guys have been helping me. Whether you know it or not, you are, uh, you're helping me write this book. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to share out of this, um, out of this book I'm writing. I want to share my page here. This is the map of the modern day Turkey, which was the Asian miners that John was writing these letters to. As you can see down here on the far left, you've got the Isle of Patmos. This is where John is writing from. We've already gone over Ephesus, smyrna, pergamum and Thyatira. Now we're at Sardis, which is just south of Thyatira, which would be east of Smyrna, just northwest of Philadelphia, which we'll get to later on in these episodes. So we are talking to the Church of Sardis and remember, we're going to talk about what the name means. First off, the name Sardis means a precious stone. The name Sardis means a precious stone and Jesus introduces himself to this church as he that hath the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. The Church of Sardis is located in what is modern-day Sart, turkey.
Speaker 1:Sardis was once part of the great Persian kingdom, but was liberated in 340 BC by Alexander the Great. Sardis then became an important Greek city, central to the worship of Artemis, who was the Greek goddess of the hunt of the wilderness and fertility. Sardis also held the largest Jewish synagogue outside of Jerusalem. The Roman Empire considered Christianity a sect of Judaism during the early years of Christianity, which is why Christianity was a legal religion until sometime around 60 to 70 AD, when the emperor Nero noted that Christians were a dangerous force against Rome. Now, let's remember this real quick, this is kind of a little commercial insert the Roman Empire, who was over the entire area at the time of the first century.
Speaker 1:They basically if you weren't Romish, that's not even a word if you weren't Romish Romish, that's not even a word. If you weren't Roman, if you weren't religious, like the Romans were serving all these false idols, serving all these gods, your religious views were outlawed. Now they had a, a rule. I guess you'd say an exception. That's the word I'm looking for. I'm sorry, my words will come to me sometime today. They had an exception for Judaism. Judaism believed different than the Romans. They weren't polytheistic, which the Romans were polytheistic. The Jewish people were monotheistic. They believed in one God the hero Israel, shema Israel, adonai Elenehu, adonai Echad, hero Israel, the Lord, our God, is one. Because they did not believe the same, the polytheistic beliefs of the Romans, they weren't serving other polytheistic gods, they were serving one God. They had an exception and that rule was acceptable to the Roman people. The emperor allowed the Jewish people to worship freely their monotheistic beliefs, their belief in one God.
Speaker 1:Now, when Christianity was born here's an important thing to note Christianity did not all of a sudden start serving three different gods. Right, there was no three separate beings. That were three separate gods. That would be polytheism. Right, there is one God. There is one God who was manifested in the flesh of Jesus Christ, who was revealed to us in the flesh of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, who was revealed to us. In the flesh of Jesus Christ there was one God who came and dwelt into the people of God. That same spirit that dwelt in Jesus, that raised him from the dead, now dwells within us, according to Paul. So this reason Christianity was allowed to exist in the Roman world. Well, number one, jesus established it. So what Jesus has established, even if man wanted to try, he couldn't snuff it out. But beside that, the reason why Christianity was a legal form of religion is because they were a monotheistic, a singular.
Speaker 1:The Roman people considered it just to be a sect off of the Jewish religion and serving the same God as the Jews. And now we have to realize this we serve the same Jehovah that Moses served. We serve the same God that Elijah served, that David served. We serve that same God. We're not separate from Judaism. We're not separate. We were birthed out of the Jewish religion, christianity. Even though our belief is different, we believe that Jesus is the Messiah, that he is our spotless lamb of God that was slain for the sins of mankind. Even though we believe in Jesus, we are not separate from the Jews. We serve the same God that the Jewish people serve. However, we serve him in the form of Jesus right, the manifestation. We believe that Jesus is our Messiah.
Speaker 1:So, moving forward from that, the message of Jesus to the church at Sardis was this I know your works, that you have a name, that thou livest and art dead. In other words, you say you're alive but you're dead spiritually. There is truly no deceit like self-deceit. You talk yourself into believing that you're fine, but you're really not. Jesus said this. He said remember, therefore, how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast and repent. If, therefore, thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I come upon thee. So what does this mean? Many of us have been taught that he is speaking of the rapture of the church right, that he'll come upon as a thief in the night. We've heard that saying before. If they don't repent, they'll be left behind. However, if you study the history of Sardis, then you'll find an interesting story Actually two interesting stories, to be a matter of fact, that represent this thief in the night.
Speaker 1:So King Creosis was one of the kings that ruled the city. He built massive fortifications around the city and made it impenetrable. When King Cyrus came to attack the city. He found that there was no way to penetrate the walls of the city, so he encamped his armies around the city. One evening, while King Cyrus' soldiers were patrolling, one soldier noticed one of the soldiers of the city on the wall. Looking over, this soldier dropped his helmet over the wall and to retrieve the helmet he walked down a set of stairs, opened a secret door in the wall, got his helmet and went back in. So with this information, king Cyrus sent his armies to the opposite side of the city to draw the soldiers of the city away and, as they'd done, his elite soldiers I guess you'd call it his navy seals of the time went in through the secret door and took the city Just when King Creosus thought that he was safe. He was not. This not only happened once, but it happened twice in the history of the city, when they rebuilt the city fortifications. When the Persians sieged the city, they noticed vultures camping around the edge of the wall. They then noticed soldiers throwing dead bodies over the wall and leaving that portion of the wall unprotected. The Persians attacked the unprotected gate and took the city.
Speaker 1:Jesus is reminding the people of Sardis you think you're alive, you think you're well, you think you're fine, but you're not. Unless you repent in an hour when you feel like you're safe, god, unless you repent in an hour when you feel like you're safe, I'll come against you. This is the warning to Sardis. What Sardis is doing is cause or excuse me. What is Sardis doing that has caused God to call them dead? Why would Jesus tell them unless you repent, I will come upon you.
Speaker 1:See, archaeological finds in the synagogue located in Sardis shows clues of a blend of Jewish and pagan and Christian worship alike. The church at Sardis wasn't like the church at Pergamos and Thyatira, who just simply participated in immoral festivals and worshiped Jesus away from pagan practices. The church at Sardis had broken down the walls of separation between them and pagan worshipers. They had allowed the practices of the ungodly to become a blended part of their worship. They said they were alive in Christ, yet they were dead. Just as those who had not accepted is allowing the practices of paganism, the practices of idolatry, the practices of those other forms of religion to infiltrate their worship. No longer were they worshiping Jesus in truth and in spirit, no longer were they worshiping Jesus as the way Christians should be worshiping Jesus, but they had allowed the other religious stigmatisms to come in and to be part of their worship. They weren't just separate in service.
Speaker 1:You know the church at Pergamos and the church at Thyatira. They had been part of this culture and they had allowed the culture to weaken their everyday life. But this came a little deeper. This went into their worship itself. They weren't just coming to church on Sunday and doing things right and then going out Monday through Friday and living like the devil and then coming back and repenting and doing things right, which is also not good. Don't do that. They were actually involving paganism in their worship. And this is what archaeological finds have found in the city in the synagogues, in the churches in that city. They have found the blended culture.
Speaker 1:And here's the important thing that we, as the church of 2024, have to understand we are in this world, but we are not of this world. God does not want us to allow that blended culture to come into our services, to allow that blend of paganism, that blend of idolatry, that blend of lack of faith to come into our services. We have to stand firm in the truth of God and we have to not allow those things to weaken our spiritual man and infiltrate our worship. Jesus said strengthen the things which remain that are ready to die. He was recognizing that there was still some hope in Sardis, but it was about to die. He also said thou hast a few names, even in Sardis, but it was about to die. He also said thou hast a few names, even in Sardis, which have not defiled their garments, and they shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy. Nothing, nothing that there he was noting. I'm sorry again, I'll get my words out here in a minute. He was noting that they were.
Speaker 1:There were still some who had not allowed the practices of their fellow Christians to defile them, to get their garments dirty, to defile their garments. This is still true today. Not every church is allowing paganism to come into their church, not every church. We're not building altars to different gods in our sanctuaries. We're not doing that. That's not what I'm talking about. We're not taking time to sacrifice to other gods. That's not what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:But a lot of churches across America today have gotten to the point where you can't tell the difference between the world and them. They're allowing that culture to infiltrate into there and it's no longer about Jesus, but it's about me. It's no longer about Jesus, but there are still some who have not allowed their garments to be tarnished, to be dirtied by the practices of these so-called Christians. The promise to the church of Sardis is this he that overcometh the same shall be clothed in white raiment, and I will not blot his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my father and his angels. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the spirit say to the churches. Hold tight to the truth, hold tight to what is going on today. Hold tight to the word of God in the midst of the culture, in the midst of sin, in the midst of idolatry. Hold tight to the word of God because we are running out of time and we don't want to be caught, like this church at Sardis, and be overtaken as a thief in the night.
Speaker 1:Hey, I want to say thank you for joining us tonight on the Five Fold Podcast. I pray that you've been blessed and that you have enjoyed what you've heard. Join us every week as we release new content concerning the Fivefold Ministry and their place in today's church. You don't want to miss this, the Fivefold Podcast. God bless.
