Wake Up And Enjoy Life! Series

Scripture: Revelation 3:1-6; John 11:38-44

Theme: Wake Up and Enjoy Life

INTRO:

Grace and peace from the God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit!

Did you know that last year (2022) over three million people died in the United States?

Did you know that last year (2022) over 69 million people died all over the world?

Did you know that over 2,400 stores will close in the United States this year? Some of those include such big names stores as Bath and Beyond, Party City, Big Lot’s, Foot Locker and Best Buy.

Already, we have had four major banks fail and over 130 hospitals are in the danger area of closing their doors forever.

Wow! Such happy news for a Sunday morning.

Considering all of that did you also know that thousands of new stores will be open across the United States as well. There will be new Dollar General Stores along with new Costco’s, Aldi, IKEA and Publix stores.

Did you know that the world’s population did not shrink but in fact increased by more than 70 million people. That means while we lost 69 million, we also welcomed nearly 140 million babies last year.

Did you know that over 5 million applications are being filled this year to start a new business?

So, what does all this mean?

It means what we read about in Ecclesiastes 3:1 is true – “There is a time to be born, and a time to die.”

It’s just life. It’s reality.

This year it is true that there will be thousands of churches that will close their doors for the last time. It is also true that there will be thousands of new churches that will be opening their doors.

Of the churches that we have looked at in Revelation some of them had various problems but none of them had cobwebs over their doors. None of them were at the point of near death.

Today’s church – the Church of Sardis – was in deep trouble.

Even though it was less than 60 years old, it was already on its way out.

Jesus doesn’t tell us what it was doing wrong. He refers to the fact that they were living on their past reputation but that doesn’t really key on any one factor that was causing their slide into oblivion.

Some years ago, Thomas S. Rainer wrote an excellent little book to help churches that were in trouble. It is called Autopsy of a Deceased Church and 12 Ways to Keep Yours Alive.

Over the years, I have had the privilege to work with several churches. Some of them were vibrant while others of them were not so vibrant. Sadly, a couple of them no longer exist. Some years after we left, a couple of them just slowly wilted away and finally closed their doors.

One of them was quite a mystery.

It had plenty of finances. In fact, it had an ample number of resources. It owned land, it had a renovated parsonage, and it had a good number of dollars in the bank.

Everything was set up for it to thrive. However, it adopted the idea that it was going to die. Somewhere along the line the thought of its demise took root and continued to grow.

It found itself just going through the motions. It stopped trying. It stopped reaching out. It stopped doing anything that would help it grow. And it died.

I remember when we first got there it was meeting in this horrible location. They had lost their original building and were meeting in one of the worst locations I have ever seen a church try to meet. They had money to be in a better place, but they didn’t want to spend it.

I remember asking for a welcome mat to be bought so that at least people walking into the place would see something nice. For the three years I worked with them as their interim pastor that welcome mat was never bought.

I was offered a used mat to put out, but they just didn’t believe that they could afford a new mat even though they had thousands of dollars sitting in a bank making very little interest at the time.

They just gotten into this rut and were beginning to spiral downward. I finally realized that I couldn’t help them anymore and moved on. They had one more person who tried to work with them before denominational leadership finally dissolved the church and used their assets to start a new church in another location.

It was all a shame. The town where the church was located was busting at the seams. New people were arriving every week. New businesses were sprouting up everywhere. It was a great place to raise a family, work and you would think of growing a church.