“To the angel of the church in Sardis write”. Revelation 3:1
We come to the fifth church the Lord addresses in Revelation 2 & 3,
the congregation called by His name in the city of Sardis.
Sardis was founded over 1200 years before Christ was born. The city was located was about thirty miles southeast of Thyatira and about fifty miles north-east of Smyrna on a major commercial trade route that also served as an important military road. It sat on on a plateau some 1,500 feet high above the valley of Hermus, (a fortified hill, surrounded by steep cliffs of the Tmolus mountain range), the city enjoyed a natural fortress that was considered impossible for an
invading army to penetrate. Due to those natural fortifications it became known as “Sardis, the Impregnable.” Eventually Sardis became prominent as the capital of the Lydian kingdom.
The major industries in the city were textiles including the production of carpets and dyed cloth. (Sardis was believed to be the first place where wool was dyed.In other words the wool was made to look like something it was not.) Sardis was most renown for its gold. King Croesus, known for his immense wealth, was Sardis’s most famous ruler. It is also believed that Sardis was the first place where gold and silver were minted into coins of standard weight. The nearby Practolus River provided the city with fresh water and a ready supply of gold ore.
Sardis was rich but it was also very sinful. In the 5th century BC Herodotus, wrote sarcastically that Sardis was a city of “tender-footed” people who could only play on the cithara, strike the guitar, and sell by retail. William Barclay says that Sardis was a city of peace, “the peace of lethargy and evasion.” In short the people in the city were given to pleasure and leisure. It was also religious. A large temple dedicated to the worship of the goddess, Cybele was in Sardis. The temple, one of the seven largest in Asia Minor, was supported by columns 60 feet (20 meters) in height and more than 6 feet (2 meters) in diameter. Cybele was honored and worshipped in the city with all kinds of sexual immorality and impurity. According to William Barclay, “The combination of easy money and a loose moral environment made the people of Sardis notoriously soft and pleasure loving.” Its people were notoriously loose-living, pleasure seeking and luxury loving. Thus Sardis was viewed, even by its pagan neighbors, with contempt. Sardis became the sin city of Asia Minor. By the time of Christ idolatry was rampant in Sardis. It worshipped anything that would provide ease or pleasure, even the government. (A large temple to Caesar and to the Empress Livia were also in the city).
By the time the Lord gives John this letter to Sardis, the city’s resources and reputation were rapidly declining. The city leaders knew what was happening but refused to acknowledge the signs of death all around them. They held on to their past greatness. They told others Sardis would return to its former glory. They did not acknowledge the decay that ultimately destroyed them. A false vision of past greatness filled their hearts with pride, hope and lethargy but most of all blindness to the truth. Inside the city was a church that was beginning to look like it.