Revelation 3:1

And unto the angel of the church in Sardis write:

When we come to Sardis in the panorama of church history, we come to the Reformation. And to understand why that matters, we have to feel just how dark the age before it had become.

The period of Medieval Catholicism had descended into deep corruption. When Sergius III became pope, he brought in what history calls the Rule of Harlots. His mistress openly accompanied him to the papal palace. That alone tells you how far things had fallen. Then came John X, who carried on the same kind of corruption until he was killed in his bedroom while committing adultery. After him came Benedict IX, who entered the papacy at twelve years of age through simony, the buying and selling of church offices. He became so corrupt that the people of Rome finally drove him out. Henry III then appointed Clement III, not from Rome, saying in essence that no priest in that city could be found free from the pollution of fornication and simony.

That was the atmosphere. Dark. Diabolical. Depressing. But sometimes when things get that dark, the Lord begins stirring hearts that are hungry for something real. There were good Catholic people who began to sense that something was terribly wrong. A longing began to rise for a return to truth, a return to purity, a return to the Bible.

Into that setting came John Wycliffe, born in England in 1330. He was an Oxford scholar and a Catholic priest, but he began to write boldly about the need to move away from papal decrees and back to the Scriptures. He challenged teachings like transubstantiation and continual sacrifice, and because of that, Rome turned against him. Though Wycliffe himself remained protected at Oxford, his followers, men like John Hus and Hugh Latimer, were burned at the stake. Yet even in their deaths, the fire was not put out. In fact, their suffering helped ignite a spark of Reformation that would continue to spread.

Then in 1483, in Eiselben, Saxon Germany, a coal miner and his wife had a son and named him Martin. His father had no intention of seeing that boy spend his life in the mines, so Martin was sent to the university to study law. But one day, while walking on campus, he was caught in a violent thunderstorm. Terrified, he cried out to St. Anne, the patron saint of coal miners, and vowed that if he were spared, he would become a monk. He survived, and true to his word, Martin Luther entered seminary.

After two years, he earned his doctorate. But the more theology he studied, the more he realized he could never make himself righteous enough to gain God’s favor. That realization drove him into intense effort. He beat himself. He slept outdoors in freezing weather. He fasted for long periods. He tried to squeeze holiness out of human striving, but peace would not come.

That is what happens when a man is trapped in religion without grace. The harder he tries, the more exhausted he becomes. The ladder keeps going up, but he never reaches the top.

Still empty inside, Luther decided to make a journey to Rome. But on the way, he became dangerously ill with a fever. While recovering in an Alpine monastery, one of the monks saw the struggle in his heart and urged him to read the Book of Habakkuk. That is interesting, because Habakkuk was a man who wrestled too. He had questions. He had burdens. He was trying to make sense of what God was doing. And when Luther came to Habakkuk 2:4 and read, “The just shall live by faith,” the light came on.

That was the turning point.

He realized that if a man is ever going to stand right before God, it will not be because of his own effort, his own suffering, or his own merit. It will be by faith in what God has done and in who God is. That truth broke the chains in his soul. But when Luther finally arrived in Rome, the excitement he carried quickly turned to shock as he saw the hypocrisy and abuses all around him.

So he returned to Germany knowing he could no longer stay quiet. In 1517, he nailed his ninety five theses to the university door in Wittenburg, directly challenging the pope and the system that had buried the simplicity of the gospel under layers of corruption and control. Rome eventually answered with a threat. Retract or die.

Luther burned the response.

Then in 1521, the Diet of Worms was convened. The church knew it had a problem, because Luther’s voice had grown too influential to ignore. He was given another chance to take it all back. Instead, he stood his ground and gave the answer that still echoes through history: “Here I stand. I can do no other, so help me God.”

That stand helped shape everything that followed. It gave rise to the Jesuits, a movement committed to enforcing papal authority at any cost. But it also helped fuel a sweeping return to the Bible across Europe. Luther in Germany, Zwingli in Switzerland, Knox in Scotland all became voices crying out for people to come back to the Word of God.

And the response was fierce.

Places like Bohemia, Austria, and Hungary became early centers of Reformation sympathy. But the bloodshed that followed was staggering. The upheaval that erupted in the wake of the Reformation was brutal and far reaching. It changed nations. It scarred generations. Its effects reached so deeply that the bitterness of those conflicts sent roots into later struggles, including the divisions seen in Bosnia and Northern Ireland.

That is why this matters. This is not just dusty history. It is the backdrop for Sardis.

Sardis means remnant, and that fits perfectly. The city itself was built on a thousand foot bluff. It was wealthy. It looked secure. It seemed invincible. Yet in 549 B.C., Cyrus conquered it. Then it was conquered again three hundred years later. So when Jesus speaks to Sardis, He is speaking to a place that had a reputation for strength, but a history of collapse.

There is the warning.

Something can look strong and still be weak.
Something can appear alive and still be dying.
Something can have wealth, history, and reputation, yet be standing on borrowed time.

But there is also hope in the very name Sardis. Remnant.

The Lord always keeps a remnant. Even in the darkest periods of church history, when religion becomes corrupt and institutions become hollow, the Lord still has people who want truth. He still has hearts that hunger for His Word. He still has men and women who are not satisfied with appearance, but want reality.

That is what the Reformation was at its core. A call back to the Bible. A call back to faith. A call back to the simplicity of the gospel. A call back to the truth that the just shall live by faith.

And that call still matters now.

Because the temptation is always the same. To lean on reputation. To trust the system. To admire the structure. To assume that because something looks established, it must be alive. But Jesus looks deeper than buildings, titles, and history. He looks for life. He looks for truth. He looks for a remnant.

Beloved, may we be part of that remnant. May we not settle for the appearance of life. May we come back again and again to the Word of God, to the grace of God, and to the finished work of Jesus Christ.

That is where life is found.