“Write this letter to the angel of the church in Sardis. This is the message from the one who has the sevenfold Spirit of God and the seven stars: “I know all the things you do, and that you have a reputation for being alive—but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what little remains, for even what is left is almost dead. I find that your actions do not meet the requirements of my God. Go back to what you heard and believed at first; hold to it firmly. Repent and turn to me again. If you don’t wake up, I will come to you suddenly, as unexpected as a thief.
Yet there are some in the church in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes with evil. They will walk with me in white, for they are worthy. All who are victorious will be clothed in white. I will never erase their names from the Book of Life, but I will announce before my Father and his angels that they are mine.
Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches.”
Revelation 3:1-6
I have had a couple of readers who asked for the map of the seven cities again so it is readily available to you; here it is again.
Sardis was just 80 kms from Ephesus to the north-east and only 30 kms from Thyatira to the north. It was the most well known city of the seven because it was founded in 600 BC under the reign of the Lydian king, Croesus, who was known as the richest king in history. The city was well known and famous under Croesus. Sardis was still the greatest city in Asia Minor under the Persians, being the seat of the satraps, the representatives for the Persian kings. It still retained its great reputation in Roman times. Why so durable and consistent? Because of where it was situated. It overlooked the Hermus valley which connects the Anatolia Region with the Aegean. The Hermus River wound around the base of Mt Tmolus which then formed a natural moat at the base of the mountain to protect the city which was situated 500 metres above the south end of the river valley. Sardis sat on a natural promontory which stood unconnected to the mountain behind it. It was protected by sheer cliffs on all other sides. It had a long continuous history of ruling the valley as the prime city in the region. It was older than the famous city of Troy to the north and had the reputation for being impregnable. The inhabitants of Sardis believed they would never be conquered. As a result Sardis had grown as the hub of communication for the main route connecting Smyrna, Thyatira, Laodicea and the Lycus region. It was located at the Aegean end of Great King’s Highway which extended to Susa in Babylon in the Fertile Crescent in the East.
The river at the foot of Sardis is said to have had gold in it. This is the reason why Croesus, the Lydian king was so wealthy. Sardis was actually the first city to mint its own coins which had the image of the Lydian Zeus on them. Other gods worshipped in Sardis were Dionysus, Athena, Aphrodite, Tmolus and Hermus (the latter two related to local heroes). There was also a local cult to Koré. Sardis was no different to other Roman cities when it came to the multiplicity of gods worshipped as we have seen in this series. The thing which characterised Sardis the most was their self-sufficiency, self-confidence and self-indulgence birthed from the feeling down through the ages they would never be conquered given their ideal location. The location was perfect for connectedness to the hinterland and beyond. The climate was ideal, the economy had been strong for centuries and the culture of human habitation with commerce and trade was well established. What more could you want from your city. It had a long history of peace and prosperity.
There was a significant Jewish quarter in Sardis as a result of Antiochus III, the Seleucid Ruler, encouraging co-operation with the Jewish community. Flavius Josephus reported that the Roman Proconsul in Sardis granted the Jews the right to practise their unique religion in Sardis and even allowed them to send financial offerings to the temple in Jerusalem. As a result Sardis had a strong Jewish contingent living in the city. Sardis was destroyed by an earthquake in 17 AD. Ten other cities in the area were affected by the earthquake in that year but Sardis suffered the heaviest damage. The city was rebuilt again within 18 months funded primarily by the wealth from within the city itself. Tiberius had helped them rise from the ruins to the point when in AD 26 Sardis competed with Ephesus, Smyrna and Pergamum for the privilege of erecting an Augusteum, a worship centre to the emperor. But they lost to Smyrna, yet they eventually gained the privilege of building a second and third worship centre for the emperor at a later time. They were known as a solid religious centre to the gods and emperor worship as well. After the earthquake the Jews contributed a significant portion of the finances to rebuild the city.
Sardis bred complacency and as a result the inhabitants felt they were going to occupy this perfect fortress forever and would never be defeated. After they rose from the devastating earthquake by their own wealth and strength, what could defeat them? They boasted they could defend their city with just a dozen soldiers. They would never be defeated. What is fascinating about this city and its inhabitants is the paradoxical contrast between unsubstantiated expectation and reality. The well developed sense of assurance and protection as a result of their geographic position had to be held in tension with historical realities. It seems the urban dwellers of Sardis had a long history of believing they would never be conquered. But the strange thing is that it kept happening over and over down through the centuries and each time history was repeated. Cyrus the Medo-Persian king was the one who defeated Croesus in 549 BC. After building a Persian city on the same site it was conquered by Alexander the Great in 334 BC only to be conquered again by a Cretan in 218 BC. In 1402 AD Muslim hordes surrounded the city and once again it was captured.
The question that begs to be answered is how could such an impregnable city, so favourably perched on a promontory 500 metres above the valley floor and surrounded by sheer cliffs be captured again and again down through the years? The answer is complacency. I have already told you the inhabitants boasted that they only needed a dozen soldiers to defend the city. How did Cyrus invade such an impregnable city? The answer is he bribed a young man who lived in Sardis to show the Medo-Persians the secret way into the city. During the siege the soldiers guarding the city were glancing occasionally at the cliffs protecting the city but kept their main focus on the south side where a narrow passage gave access to the city. The boy had shown Cyrus the secret way into the city. A similar thing happened at a later time when a soldier guarding the top of the citadel dropped his helmet and it lodged halfway down the cliff. He went down to get it and climbed back up again. The invaders were watching him and figured out the way up to assault the fortress on the acropolis. Each time this city fell, the complacency of the occupiers was the seed of their demise.
In the next Gem we will turn our investigation on the church in Sardis and how the culture of the city had crept into the church, at which point we will pay careful attention to the words Jesus spoke into the lives of those in the church of Sardis. If you are like me, you must wonder why such a strong church like Ephesus which had been led by Paul and John could slip to the point of losing their first love. Or how the church in Thyatira could possibly allow the teaching of a jezebel in their midst knowing it would corrupt them from the inside out. We also have a window into the church in this city through Mileto who was the pastor of the church about 100 years later. We are reminded again of the refrain that Jesus uses to close each of these introductions to the letter to the churches – the same content for each of the churches but also the same warning for those who have ears let them hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches. Once again I say, all of these churches received the same letters and each could hear what was said to each church. All had ears, but some didn’t hear. None more so than the members of the church in Sardis, who had the lessons of history telling them to beware of the way in which their city had fallen multiple times. Yet their complacency blocked their ears and blinded their eyes to the reasons for the fall of their city in past times.
Beware 21st Century church member. We too need to heed the warnings Christ spoke for all 7 churches; including your church and mine in the 21st Century. Many commentators think these seven churches are a metaphor for the churches in the dispensations down through the ages. I will touch on that thought when I have completed the coverage of the seven churches. But I am sure you can see these seven churches received the message from Christ for the times in which they lived. It is inescapable that when Jesus told John to “Write down what you have seen — both the things that are now happening and the things that will happen, they really were things that were happening at the time. The match between Christ’s words and what we learn of the background to each church is too precise to be ignored. I will apply it more specifically to the church in Sardis in the next Gem.
The only thing that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.
Georg Hegel
Complacency is our biggest weakness; it creeps upon us when we least expect it and when we should be most alert. It lulls us into a false sense of security.
Ian
Self-confidence is contagious, self-sufficiency limits you to your own resources while self-complacency makes you think you have arrived.
Ian
How could Sardis allow its situation to be repeated at least three times in their history and not learn the lessons? They were asleep in the light; lulled into a false sense of security. Appearances masked their reality.
Ian