The Dead Church

Posted by benstewart on July 30, 2010

Glad to be back together, we dove into the letter to the Church at Sardis last night. The church is also known as the dead church because of a reference to having a living name with no life. Seems to be a growing trend today and instead of becoming aware of the situation as Christians, we grow secure in the numbers of dead churches or Christians and since there’s a lot of people doing it, it no longer seems to be an issue.

You see God on many occasions designates Himself as the One who operates the church through its leaders by the power of the Holy Spirit. What we find with the Church at Sardis is that they were moving because God acknowledges their actions, but they were doing so without the Holy Spirit. The once powerful and flourishing church had grown secure and began to allow sin to infiltrate the church first by tolerating it and eventually by embracing it. An interesting correlation between the city of Sardis and the church is that twice the city was conquered and both times because the people had become so secure that they left the town unguarded forsaking the possibility of an enemy attack.

As a group of believers today, we have grown into a comfortability of our religious routines and our weekly meetings and forget that the enemy continues to seek to destroy us. So the call to the church is this…

•Be watchful
•Strengthen the things that are left.
•Remember the salvation given to us.
•Hold fast to sound doctrine
•Repent

We all fall and we all struggle with things but God says that those who “have not defiled their garments” will “walk with [Him] in white; for they are worthy”. As long as we fervently pray and seek God’s righteousness acknowledging our shortcomings, then God will continue to bless His people. My prayer for us this week is that as a diverse group of collegiates from different backgrounds, we would unite around the truth and salvation that comes in Jesus Christ alone, that it might overwhelm us into action for the glory of the only One worthy.

Blessings,
Brandon