The Revelation 3:1 | Episode # 1021

September 8, 2025

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

The Revelation 3:1

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

If you would like to revisit today’s Bible study, please visit our website at https://hopealive.buzzsprout.com/ to download the transcript. 

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison and you're listening to Hope Applying God's word to your daily life.

Hi, this is Chad Harrison and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years.

I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life.

I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up.

His word to you and allow you.

To see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today in Jesus name.

We're in. We're in the Revelation and it's chapter three. And it is an important chapter because remember, we're dealing with the churches. And remember, we, we.

The way we look at these churches is obviously it's a church age that actually exists.

It's a time period that actually took place in the Kingdom.

It is also a message to individual churches because you can find churches that fit this type of the different aspects of the different churches. You can see churches that have, that have these.

Have, you know, have these issues that God's dealing with. And then obviously we always want to take God's word and personalize it and make it something personal,

make sure that we use God's Word to speak, that His Holy Spirit speaks to us in our personal lives.

So remember, when we're doing that, we're going through these churches.

Make sure you kind of look at all three.

And these three churches are very interesting for the reason that they kind of deal with the age of the church that involves the Reformation.

Okay. They're the time period in the church history that deals with the Protestant church also.

Not just the church before Rome kind of took over the church, not just church during the Roman Catholic period,

which exists on to now. But these three churches are the churches that have existed after the Reformation, the Reformation churches, and on forward.

And so they both have, obviously would have Roman Catholicism, but they would also have all the aspects of Protestantism. And so he says to the angel of the church of Sardis, Wright, now there's a lot of churches that have that name.

And I actually know a pastor of one of those churches.

I'm not sure exactly why the naming of the church like this, because the name,

the. What God, what Jesus says to this church is, is. Well, it's kind of interesting. He says, and to the angel of the church of Sardis, write these things, says he who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars.

Now, in the Old Testament, and I probably not mentioned this in the Old Testament, the seven spirits or the sevenfold Spirit that is mentioned in the book of the Revelation is hearkening back especially to the major prophets,

because a few of the major prophets use this understanding of the Complete Spirit or the Sevenfold Spirit or the seven Spirit spirits. It is. It is a. It is a idea in the Old Testament of the Holy Spirit.

It's speaking about the Holy Spirit. And so he says these things,

who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars? What he's saying is, I am. Now you need to hear me. I am functioning for this church in regard to the Holy Spirit.

And I'll say this because my mom kind of called me last week and asked me a question about some idea for us in our church. We come in seeking the Holy Spirit.

We come in seeking the presence of the Holy Spirit.

We come to church trying to find God's will for our lives as revealed through Jesus Christ in His word by the Holy Spirit. Okay, but the Holy Spirit is important.

There are those who believe that much, if not all of the working of the Holy Spirit ceased at some point in time,

during the time period where the apostles were operating in the world.

And she asked me some questions about that. And I just explained those things, that there are those who believe, believe that the work of the Holy Spirit kind of stopped during that time period.

I also told her that my seminary professor, New Testament Theology professor at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, that's where I had my seminary degree, got my Master's of Divinity degree.

He taught that when we got to the doctrines of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament,

he went to the passage, which is a fairly well known passage.

It's a really well known passage in 1 Corinthians that deals with.

When I was a child, I thought like a child, I acted like a child. I reasoned as a child. When I become adult, I put childish things away from me.

And that passage is used to say that once we got the full Bible, once we got all of Scripture, that we had arrived and then we didn't need the Holy Spirit and the power of the Holy Spirit operating the way it is.

It's a cessationist view, that's what they call it.

And it's important because I think Jesus is talking about that here,

that secessionist view. The problem is that he identifies what it's going to be like when you have this maturity.

He says,

now we see as a glass Darkly, then we shall see face to face.

Now we know in part. Then we shall know even as we're fully known.

Okay. All right. So the obvious question is,

has the work of the Sevenfold Spirit through the seven stars, which is the message of God to the churches, which is the word of God?

So he says, I'm the one who holds the Holy Spirit and the Word of God.

Have we ceased from looking through a glass darkly? And now we see clearly.

Have we reached to the place where we know in part? Where we used to know in part, now we know even as we're fully known?

Well, the answer to that question is no.

It's an obvious no.

I mean, it's an obvious no.

So that passage is talking about something that is going to happen in the future in which we're going to be fully knowledgeable about the will and the way of God, and we're going to be fully knowledgeable about the work of God, and we're going to see things with clarity as God sees them.

Okay, now if you say you see things with clarity as God sees them,

well, you're very lucky because I don't. Okay.

I don't see it with clarity at all. In fact,

sometimes during my sermons, at the start of the sermon, I'll have a view,

one view of things. At the end of the sermon, I'll have a modified view of those things, which means that I was learning something during the sermon myself.

So if that's going on with me,

I'm pretty sure that nobody else has the full knowledge of God at work in their lives and in their minds right now. In fact, I know that that's pretty much not the case.

And so obviously there can't be a cessation of the Holy Spirit's work because the only way you can be revealed anything by God is through the Holy Spirit. The Bible says that the natural man hath not have not understood or considered.

It's. It's actually the idea is not only just to come to a knowledge of, but the idea is even to consider the knowledge of.

So when. When he says the natural man hath not understood or considered, it really means considered and understood. The natural man has not considered or eat or understood the things of the Spirit.

They're only revealed by the Spirit.

Okay? They're only revealed by the Holy Spirit.

So if you're seeking for it in your. In. In your own flesh or in your own natural mind, you're not going to receive it.

You're not going to receive it.

And so this church, he says to them,

I have the Holy Spirit and I have the word of God. And I'm revealing that to you now. Don't you hear me?

He says,

I know your works,

okay?

I know your works. Remember,

these are not works of the flesh.

These are works of faith. That's the idea here,

that you have a name, that you are alive,

but you are dead.

That's terrible,

right?

In fact,

the word for life and death here have the connotation of either having breath or not having breath.

Okay? Which. If you say. If you say. Well, why is that important, Pastor? Because if you go all the way back to the garden, when he made man form man out of the dust of the ground, what did he do?

He breathed, Ruha. That's right.

Iruha breathed in him the breath of life.

So what he's saying here is you have a reputation of having the breath and you don't.

Now that's a stark dead.

Okay? When we get to Laodicea, you're going to find out that he would rather you be one or the other. Here he says you have a reputation for being alive,

but you're dead.

Okay?

Now he's not going to. I want you to hear me.

He's not going to tell them how to fix this because they can't.

You can't fix being dead.

Only God fixes being dead.

You can't fix that,

and they can't either.

As you go today, I pray that.

The Lord will bless you and keep you,

that he'll make his face to shine upon you, and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.