Revelation 3:3

Revelation 3:3. The exhortation to Sardis is to remember, not the simple fact that she had received, but how she had done so, after what manner thou hast received, the earnestness, the faithfulness, and the zeal which had marked the first stages of her spiritual life. The change of tense in the next clause is interesting.

Didst hear. She had ‘received,' and she still retained possession of the truth; hence the perfect. But she no longer ‘heard' in that sense of obeying so common in the writings of St. John; hence the aorist pointing to a specific moment of the past. There is always a reason, whether we can discover it or not, for such changes of tense (cp. on Revelation 7:14). If, however, the church at Sardis will not obey the command to ‘watch,' she shall not escape. The Lord will come as a thief. It is not the suddenness or unexpectedness of the hour

only that is thought of under the image of a ‘thief,' for that image has rather its expression in the last clause of the verse. It is the object with which the thief comes that is in view, to break up and to destroy. Thus the Lord ‘comes as a thief;' and the hour shall not be known till He is come (comp. Luke 12:39; 1 Thessalonians 5:2; 2 Peter 3:10).