AS 7 IGREJAS DO APOCALIPSE | Igreja de Sardes | Estudo Bíblico | Lamartine Posella

Hello, my dear people! How are you? Today I'm bringing the sixth message of the series on the Seven churches.

It's the fifth church, but it's the sixth message. Before I begin, I'd like to tell you, that if you haven't subscribed to my channel, you can do this, go there, like, click on the bell, and share if you enjoy the message. This series on the seven churches is really interesting because.

in fact, there were seven churches in Asia, to which Jesus adresses himself to, but each one of those churches represents a period, prophetically, in the history of the church, that begins in Pentecost and ends in the rapture. Today we're talking about the church in Sardis. It's in Revelation 3:1-6, which says, “To the angel of the church in Sardis write: These are the words of him who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars.

I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have found your deeds unfinished in the sight of my God.

Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; hold it fast, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you. Yet you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes.

They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy. The one who is victorious will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out the name of that person from the book of life, but will acknowledge that name before my Father and his angels.

Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Let's go! There are so many beautiful things to share with you.

I would like to start by talking about the city. The city was at approximately 48km from the city of Thyatira. It was captured by Cyrus the Great, the Persian and how did he manage to capture a city located in a high place, in a plateau?

He found a secret passage through the mountain and went up with his army. What is also interesting about this city is that it's where a coin was first minted, it was also known by its wealth and especially the wealth that came from the tapestry. Jesus presents himself as a counselor, someone who gives advice, and He presents himself in this way, "'To the angel of the church in Sardis write: These are the words of him who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars.

I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead" Obviously that image, seven spirits of God, doesn't mean that God has seven spirits, actually this was taken from Isaiah chapter 11 in which God presents seven different aspects of His Spirit, of His capabilities, such as the spirit of wisdom, fear of God, revelation, and so on. What is Jesus trying to say here? That He knows everything.

He has all the wisdom, all knowledge, and when He writes to that church, The church in Sardis, He writes knowing their spiritual reality, their struggles, and so on Jesus gives a compliment to that church in verses 3 and 4, He says, "Yet you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy. " That time in history still had a great influence of idolatry, but this is already a post Reformation church, so here He is also talking about other kinds of contamination, such as corruption inside the church, moral corruption, and Jesus says that there as some in this church who were not contaminated, and therefore receive that compliment.

It's important for us to know that God will always have a remaining at any time, any church, including in our days, which is the worse of all times, we'll get there when we talk about Laodicea. But what condemnation Jesus brings to that church? It's in chapter 3 verse 1, “'To the angel of the church in Sardis write: These are the words of him who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars.

I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. " That is the image of the Protestantism. They found great truths, extraordinary ones, The truths that Luther, Calvin discovered, but they started to be corrupted latter, and the theology started to be adapted to the needs of the world and the nations, and started to open concessions.

That is so true that even inside the Lutheran church a resistance movement started called Pietism, which was a group of real Lutherans, who we can call the root Lutherans, who understood that Lutheranism had become a religion of dogma, but had no more passion, fire, and the genuine conversion so they created this movement of resistance called Pietism, but here we're not talking about Lutheranism, we're talking about the church in general, so the truth is that the rituals substituted true spirituality, so the message to Sardis proves that the Reformation, even though it was a great Reformation, an amazing initiative from God, from the Holy Spirit, and from the reformers, it didn't reach its goal of restoring the 'church, the ideal of the New Testament, from the primitive church, that passion, God's power, the messages based on the doctrine of the apostles and so on. Well, Jesus' advice is, be vigilant. in verses 2 and 3 He says, "Wake up!

Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have found your deeds unfinished in the sight of my God. " So the Lord always gives an opportunity for people to repent, and when He talks about strengthening He's talking about the importance of training, discipling, the person until they have the maturity to resist alone against the heresies, the deviations, the deceits, and temptations. He says, "Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; hold it fast, and repent.

But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you. " Here you can clearly see that although He is addressing the 1st-century church, He is also addressing, prophetically speaking, the church from that time of the Reformation, that goes until about the year 1700 AD, but He's also talking to the church of our days, because Jesus is saying, "But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you. " Here He's clearly talking about the rapture.

So how about the challenge that Jesus gives to the church? He actually gives them two challenges. He says if you're faithful your name will remain in the Book of Life, and the second challenge is, stay faithful, remain, repent.

Why? Because your name your name will be acknowledged by Jesus before the Father. Beautiful, right?

It's incredible, but in every church, Jesus talks about repentance, talks about the opportunity He gives us to go back to the right vision, to the word of God, to a life of holiness, and we must have this awareness, we must surrender our struggles, our dilemmas, our temptations and seek the Lord so He will help us to be faithful while we wait for Him to come. Well, what is the period of the church in Sardis? It's the period from Luther's Reformation 1517 until 1700 AD.

I would like to talk about some tremendous men, who God raised up at that time. The first one is Martin Luther, the main reformer. During his life he studied law and he became a bachelor of law, but at one point he decided to enter the priesthood carrier to become a priest or a monk, but in 1508 he became a teacher in the Wittenberg University, so he moved there and He found out in Romans chapter 1 verse 17 the great Reformation truth which states that the righteous will live by faith, so this started to cause a series of constraints and indignation because the Roman church was building and needed to pay for St.

Peter's Cathedral so they started to sell indulgences. What does that mean? It's selling forgiveness for the dead, and also the living.

The person had committed a serious sin, so he would pay the indulgence and receive forgiveness. It included the dead, a son whose father, mother, grandfather had died paid to ensure that his ancestors would go to Heaven. That was obviously a heresy.

The Bible doesn't say that it was possible to do that and Luther, because of the indulgences, wrote 95 theses and posted them at the Wittenberg Cathedral in Germany, on October 31st, 1517. At the moment the Reformation was born and it spreaded through entire Europe, due to the press. Gutenberg's printing press had been created.

Luther started to publish his writings, small books in German and made a partnership with the most important artist of that time, who started making covers for his books, and he became a powerhouse. He certainly used the technology of the time. He would be a Youtuber today, One of the great communicators of the media who use the new communication technologies.

Because of that, and because of God's grace the Reformation spreaded to the entire world. Beyond that what are the great gifts that Luther left for humankind? He left the truth, the theses on the universal priesthood of the believers.

So the separation between clergy and laypeople, between professionals of the faith and laypeople does not exist! We are all priests, called by God to preach the gospel in every nation. The second thing he left for us and defended with all his strength is that the Bible is the only authority for the Christian faith.

Why? Because during that time the Catholic church already used their tradition as an authority instrument, so in some moments where God's word would disagree with the tradition, the church would keep the tradition because they considered the tradition to be above the scriptures. Luther was against that and he was firm about it and he also talked about justification by faith only and not by work.

People, Luther was a great man, a great reformer, but we have other important reformers such as, Zwingli, Calvin, John Knox, Roger Williams, besides other men who God raised up during that time to spread the word of God and above all else the vision of salvation through grace and through faith. The justification by faith. Well, we're coming to an end and I would like to ask that you share this video to many people and now the two final churches are my favorite ones.

Philadelphia and Laodicea. Stay tuned, connected, because soon we will bring the next message and once again I ask, please share with everyone. Besides historical knowledge, spiritual applications, God will talk to you and many more people through these letters and churches.

I love you all. Sending much love to your heart in the name of Jesus.