And unto the angel of the church in Sardis write: These things saith He that hath the seven spirits of God, and the seven stars, I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest and art dead. Revelation 3:1
At Christmas time, we used to visit our grandparents, my mother’s parents, who had a television set. One of the things we looked forward to was the annual presentation of Charles Dickens’ The Christmas Carol. One of the opening scenes in the old movie was a streetscape that led to the front door of the counting house occupied by Ebenezer Scrooge and his office clerk Bob Cratchit. The weather-weary sign hanging over the door proclaimed the business to be that of Scrooge and Marley. However, we find as Scrooge encounters the fund-raisers, that Jacob Marley has been dead for seven years. In fact, the novella opens with the proclamation that Marley was dead, to begin with. So the business, which was still living, bore the name of a man that was dead. This is just the opposite of the Assembly in Sardis, which was dead but bore the name of One Who was living. What caused the Assembly in Sardis to die? The same things that will cause our Assemblies to die, if we let them.
The Assembly in Sardis is long gone, although the city, known today as Sart, in modern-day Turkey, is still in existence. As far as we know, there are few, if any, Christians in that place. They wouldn’t dare to show themselves as such, because of the opposition from the Muslims. Was that the cause of the death of the Assembly that used to be there? We don’t know, of course, but like all of the other Assemblies to which the messages in Revelation were addressed, the Christians in Sardis were the targets of persecution. Persecution does one of two things to Christians: it causes them to stand up for Christ and suffer for Him if necessary, or it causes them to run away or to cave in. Is that what happened in Sardis. We don’t know, but we do know that they were a dead Assembly.
Dead Assemblies also are caused by embracing false doctrine. There was plenty of false doctrine around Sardis, including those who were teaching the need to return to the law of Moses, as well as all of the heathen idolatry from which the Christians had been saved. Once false doctrine enters one door of an Assembly, truth exits by another door. True worship ends, the Gospel is silenced, and faithful Christians are ridiculed and exiled. Did this cause the death of Sardis? It causes the death of Assemblies today.
One of the worst causes of Assembly mortality today is indifference, or apathy. This was probably a problem in Sardis, although we will never know. But think of the ways in which indifference, or apathy, destroy the effectiveness of an Assembly. When little effort is put into preparing for worship and Bible study, little worship occurs and little is learned from the Scriptures. When little interest is shown in the Gospel, little effort is put into prayer, or inviting people to meetings, or distributing tracts and calendars. The disease of apathy carries a very high mortality rate for God’s Assemblies, and for individual Christians, too.
Like the saints in Sardis, we need more than the Name to keep us alive, we need to faithfully serve that Name. -Jim MacIntosh