Transcription of the Video: The Salt of the Earth

The city of Sardis stands at the crossroads of the great Roman province of Asia Minor. It's an interesting place to visit. You find a unique blend of people who were faithful to God: Jewish people and their synagogue and Christian people and their church with great paganism, huge temples including one to Artemis, a gymnasium devoted to the emperor. 

The Apostle John wrote to this town and said to them, "I know your reputation. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God."

What led John to such strong words to this community of faith in Sardis? Was it because they were slowly compromising what they believed, what they stood for with the pagans among them? Or were there other reasons why that became such a powerful teaching for these believers who chose to live on the crossroads of their world?

What a beautiful place on a mountainside - Mount Tmolus - in southern Turkey. We've come here, though, for a reason, because in Biblical times, particularly the time of Jesus, this place was known as the Roman province of Asia Minor, the most prosperous, powerful, fertile province in all of Rome. It was also probably the most secular and the most pagan. This beautiful land that you see around you, with all its fertility, were part of the real riches and power and paganess of that early world. 

Amazingly, the church came here. You remember those disciples that we talked about a Caesarea Philippi who wanted to be like Jesus. Somehow, some of them or their students that they taught came to places like this and they changed their whole world. Believe it or not, early Christianity grew the fastest right here in Asia Minor. Behind you is a fairly high spur of what's known as Mount Tmolus (or Tomulus). Actually, originally, the city that we're sitting by was up on top of that mountain. It was called Sardis. Later, it was built down the side of this hill. You see some of the ruins probably from the Byzantine Period here and all the way to the bottom where there are some Roman and Hellenistic ruins that you can see in the distance.

In front of us is the Hermus River valley. And just over here, another smaller river that runs down out of Mount Tmolus, called the Pactolus River runs and joins the Hermus River. And right where those two met at the foot of Mount Tmolus are the ruins of the city that at that time was called Sardis, a very beautiful place. 

If we would say that in the period we call the Old Testament it was Hittite kingdom, we'd probably be accurate. Then it fell under a group of people called the Lydians. Now around 550 BC, the most famous of the Lydians was king here in Sardis. His name was Croesus. And Croesus was known as being the richest man in the world. He was conquered by Cyrus the Persian around 550. 

If you look behind you is an enormous hill, and you can just see in certain places on the right over there, the remains of the city wall kind of hanging over the edge. A lot of that hill has crumbled away, so a lot of those walls are gone. But when you get up there, you'll discover there was, at one time, a whole city up there. 

Now Cyrus the Persian came here and Croesus, the rich guy, was king. And Croesus had his soldiers up there and Cyrus came and laid siege. Well Cyrus couldn't capture the place. Then one afternoon on the other side, a soldier in the Persian army named Hyroeades was sitting in the shade of the tree and watching. And as he watched, a Lydian soldier leaned over the wall and his helmet fell off. It went bouncing down the side of the hill. The Lydian looked both ways. No one was there apparently, so he didn't think anybody saw him and he climbed down the wall and down the side of the hill, got his helmet, and climbed back up. 

Now Hyroeades was apparently quite a bright Persian. And he thought to himself, there must be some kind of a secret trail or a way up there. And they must not think anybody knows about it. So he went to his commander, told Cyrus, "There's a certain place you can get up." And Cyrus thought that was a great idea. So history records in the middle of the night, his army crawled up that little path where the soldier went for his helmet, surprised the Lydian army, and Croesus's powerful and rich city fell. That was the end of Croesus.

In fact, the ancients talk about how once Croesus became rich, he became apathetic and lazy, so they weren't really as careful about their defense as they ought to be, and they paid the price - the surprise and their death.

Now in my opinion, that is the metaphor John uses to speak to the church of Sardis. "Watch out! Wake up," he says. "I'm going to come like a thief at a time you don't expect. It will all be lost." 

And I think the people thought, "We understand this." 

And maybe we could even extend the metaphor because if John is drawing on that common experience of Sardis, he's probably also implying, "Be careful that you stay watchful and alert and alive to what's going on in your Christian walk; otherwise, you'll get apathetic. You'll make a mistake and the whole thing will fall to pieces."

Now there's a question I'd like to ask before we study some things about that city. The first question would be, who planted this church here? Honestly, we don't know. Paul apparently traveled through this valley at least once, maybe more than once. John wrote a letter in the Book of Revelation to this church. But by that point, it already had been in existence for some time apparently. We don't honestly know. 

It may have been one of the disciples, one of Jesus' closest friends. It may have been Paul. It may have been some nameless person that happened to be in Jerusalem on Pentecost and heard the first giving of the Spirit and came here and shared the word. What we do know is that there was a significant church here in the time of the first century. And that to me is amazing in such a rich and powerful place that Christianity came from its rural setting, from its Jewish roots and came here and made such a powerful impact. 

The other question we could ask is, "Why here? Why a church in Sardis? Why such a great big metropolitan, rich pagan city?" Because this is where culture was. This is where it would make a difference, worth remembering if we would seek to be like them.

The other thought that struck me as I was thinking about, "Why here," is there was a very large Jewish community in this particular place. And that gave those early missionaries and teachers a place to start. Because those Jewish people understood who the Messiah would be. They understood the message. They understood that the Messiah would come not only to redeem but would come to bring morality and truth and justice - things that the pagans would never have understood from their religion.

Let me take you down here to the ruins of the city itself. You'll walk on a wide, paved road. And on each side a row of columns right at the edge of the road, spaced equally. Big, strong, powerful Greek columns. And from those Greek columns to the wall beyond would be a roof, a shade, or a place out of the rain or out of the sun. And then beyond the wall would be doorways into small shops - almost like a modern shopping mall. 

But what's been found on that street is really fascinating. You can identify that a number of the shops are Jewish and a number of them are Christian. In some of the Christian shops were found crosses or a lamp shaped like a fish, the symbol of Jesus, a plate with a cross on it, a ring with a cross on it. In a couple of the shops were found Jewish Menorahs and Jewish names on inscriptions. One shop has a cross right on the outside door so when you would walk by, there was no question that shop family or owner was a Christian. One has a Menorah just inside the door. So if you stepped inside the shop, it was very clear that was a Jewish person.

But fascinating in those shops are a number of pagan articles that have been defaced, a Kybele (or Cybele) - lion lamp. Now Kybele was a pagan goddess. But she was often symbolized in the form of a lion or at least a woman sitting on the back of a lion. And there was a lamp shaped like a lion, had a dish in his mouth for the lamp. And on his back must have been the Kybele. And the owner - in this case Christian - had taken the Kybele off of that lamp, patched it up and used just the lion. There are several like that. There's a beautiful dye vat with large Christian crosses. If you look closely, there are inscriptions on the stones that make up the dye vat. And the inscriptions indicate that those stones were pagan tombstones devoted to pagan gods.

And here the owner decided to use them but he found he could scratch off and replace the paganess. It raises such an interesting question to me. That those God-fearing shop owners were doing two things. They were making really clear that they stood for God - the Jew with the Menorah, the Christian with the cross was right out in public. "We believe in the Book." And at the same time, they were taking pagan articles and attempting to reclaim them somehow to say, "Maybe this paganess isn't anything." That's compelling to me that those nameless people, here they were trying to stand in the face of an extremely pagan culture and say, "I believe in God. I believe in Jesus. I'll make it public. And I will reclaim the things that are anti-Jesus and God." What a contemporary type of message. 

If you come around the corner from that street, you make a turn, and there's a side street. You walk a little ways, come to an enormous complex. You can see it clearly from here, the large outdoor part of it is encircled with a colonnade. You can see some of the columns are still standing. There's an open area about five and a half acres in size. And then just beyond it, to the west, is a very large enclosure several stories high. And beyond that, additional ruins. 

Now that complex was a combination of the Greek gymnasium, Roman bath house. The gymnasium was, in their culture, university. In the outdoor part called the palaestra, sand floor. Inside of that colonnade is the place where people trained their bodies - in the nude of course. Because the Greeks believed that the ultimate in beauty is the human body, particularly the human body in action. Jews and Christians must have really struggled with that one. But you could come and learn to wrestle and throw the discus and throw the javelin and to run and to box and the other games that trained one's body. 

Around the outside are many small rooms just beyond those colonnades which served as classrooms called a didaskelion. There are three levels of classrooms. There's the younger level where children learn to read - by reading about the Greek gods of course. And in the second level where they learned literature about the Greek gods and math. And in the upper level where they learned Greek philosophy.

Now it was in the gymnasium that the Greek world passed its world view. World view meaning, "What is the nature of who I am and where I live?" And the Greeks believed very strongly that the human being is the center of the universe. 

That was a very anti-God view, because God says, "I am the center of the universe. I decide what's right and wrong. Truth is measured by my work. Beauty is what I've created or given you the ability to create." 

And in conflict, that Greek gymnasium stood and said, "No. The human being is the center of the universe."

Just beyond it, you see an enclosed area with colonnades and a very large apse called the Marble Court - the whole thing was. Or the Emperor's Court. And that statue of the emperor made clear to those people who were in the gymnasium that the emperor is the one who protects and sponsors the world view that's taught in the gymnasium. 

That's very powerful. Sometimes I think in our culture we can just learn or study in our modern gymnasia called schools or universities and that there isn't a world view involved. There is a world view. Because everything we learn is either devoted to God or devoted to self.

Beyond that Marble Court with its beautiful columns and colonnade is the bath house. You walk into these enormous baths - first a cold bath, then a warm bath, then a hot bath. Just absolutely gigantic. You can imagine the immorality associated with that. In fact, the ancient rabbis of this area wrote against two things - one the wine festival of Dionysus and two the immorality of the bath.

But amazingly, in the corner of the gymnasium, a very large synagogue. In fact, the largest synagogue in the world that's ever been found from its time. You walk into the forecourt. There's a very large fountain called a krater. It looks like a huge basin standing in the middle. You would take water and put it on yourself to say, "Before I come into the presence of God to listen to his Word, I need to be pure and clean. I need to be devoted to him. That particular krater down there, that fountain was actually listed on one of the town lists as a public fountain. I wonder whether those Jewish people were saying, "Join us. We welcome you. We're not shutting you out."

As you come in, there are two beautiful shrines. The one on the left was probably the Torah closet where the scrolls were kept for the worship. The one on the right, some think was also for scrolls. Others think, no. That's probably where the Moses seat was - the person who was going to sit to read the Torah that particular day. But it's absolutely spectacular and facing Jerusalem. Very clearly, the Word of God's central. 

You walk into the large synagogue. On the walls, beautiful pieces of marble, making it a beautiful building. And in the center, four stones that stick out of the floor. There was probably originally a canopy there. It may have been what's known as a Bimah (or Bima) - a platform where the rabbi would come or the person who was reading the Torah would come to stand to read the Torah in the midst of the congregation. 

If you walk a little bit further on the far end of the synagogue is a small apse with several rows of seats called chief seats where the wise and important people of that synagogue sat. Jesus once said, "Don't take the chief seats when you come into a place." Ordinary people like us would sit on the floor, and the really wise and important people would sit in that little apse.

But just outside of that is something that I find very fascinating. There's a large table which is unusual in a synagogue. We don't know what they used it for. Maybe they read the Torah there too sometimes. But on the ends of it are Roman eagles. One of them is defaced. It has its head knocked off. It raises a question. The eagle was a symbol of the power and the evil of everything that was Rome What's it doing in a synagogue?

And next to that very large table are two pairs of lions - the symbol in Sardis of Kybele, the goddess of fertility. What are those lions doing in a synagogue? And maybe the bigger question is what is a synagogue doing in the gymnasium?

I have two thoughts. Maybe those Jewish people were saying, "We will build in the gymnasium because what that represents is in conflict of what we know to be truth. So let's not hide God's Word off in a corner. Let's not put our synagogue off in some little residential place. Let's put it right in the middle of the university. And inside, let's take these lions which used to stand for paganess and let's make them mean the biblical meaning." 

"Israel is a lion," says the Bible. Judah is a lion. Dan is a lion. And the rabbi said, "The Messiah will be a lion." Those lions don't stand for Kybele. Those lions stand for God. And God is eagle's wings. He carries me out of my trouble on eagle's wings. Those eagles remind me of God.

If so, what that Jewish community was doing was attempting to be front and center with its message with the heart of this pagan culture to say, "That's wrong. What we know is right. Let us share it with you."

Or were those Jewish people so comfortable with paganess that it didn't matter? "Everybody's doing it. We'll go to synagogue and be right with God, and then we'll go to gymnasium and enjoy the games and the message and the bath and whatever went with it." I don't know. 

But I need to take you to one more place. If you go along the bank of the Pactolus River, going towards the south, very soon you come to the most ancient ruins that are found in the area of Sardis. But right in the middle of there is a very large Kybele open air shrine. Kybele was the goddess of fertility. The Bible calls her Asherah. She brought fertility through sexual activities.

Now when the Greeks got here, they took the Kybele and they built a very large temple to their goddess of fertility. Her name is Artemis. It's a gigantic temple. In fact, it's one of the seven largest Greek temples in the whole world. There are huge columns and column bases. There's not much of it standing anymore, but to walk in there, you realize the popularity and the power of that Artemis cult. 

As you walk through the columns of that temple, they stand more than 55 feet high. Powerful. It feels so strong. You realize what kind of an impact that had. And you come to the back where the columns today are the most impressive - right in the corner is a little, tiny church in the temple.

Now to be sure, the temple was probably pretty much at the point of not being used anymore by that time. But those Christians built a church there. In fact, to get in the door, you have to walk between the columns of the temple. Now the question that raises in my mind is really the same one as the synagogue. Why there?

Were those Christians saying, "This Kybele stuff is nonsense. It's pagan. It's sick. We're going to go where people need our message the most, and we're going to show that Jesus' way is different and better. Let's build a church in the most pagan place in town." Boy, I'd like to think that was the case.

Or when it came time to build a church, did that make a nice secure foundation, and who cares if this is pagan? Because, "We're pretty comfortable living with paganess."

People, God has called you and me to in the sense of Sardis, be synagogue builders, church builders. God has called you to be in your culture as he's called me to be creating faith in Jesus - Christian communities where culture is at its most pagan, its most anti-God. We ought to be putting our synagogues, our churches in the university, in Hollywood, on Madison Avenue, on Wall Street, on Main Street of every city. Because God wants us to bring the simple message of the love of Jesus and the morality of a fulfilled Torah to a sick society. 

Jesus once told those disciples or whose students came here, "You are the salt of the earth." There's a custom in the Middle East in which salt is mixed with animal droppings and used in the fire. The salt makes it burn hotter and longer. I'm not 100% sure that's what Jesus had in mind when he said, "You're the salt of the earth." But it may have been part of it. In that case, to be salt means you've got to be mixed with stuff that's pretty ugly. But you've got to stay salt.

And so as I look down here and I see that beautiful synagogue and those defaced lions, as I see the little church in the Artemis temple, I'm torn. Because on the one hand, I'm so pumped that those people wanted to put their faith where life was. On the other hand, I'm so concerned that they compromised.

What did they do? I can't answer. But listen to what John said, "You have the reputation, Sardis, for being alive. You've got your church in the temple. You've got your synagogue in the gymnasium. You're putting the cross on the doorpost of your house. You look good. But you're really dead. You've really given in and become part of it. Wake up! Strengthen that which remains. Because you haven't completed your works before my God."

Christians, wake up. God wants us to build at the heart of our culture and our community and our world. We must be so careful that we don't compromise in the process. You are the salt of the earth.