Something Smells Dead

One day, when I worked at Jiffy Lube, a customer came in complaining of a horrible smell in her car.  It wasn't oil related, but we weren't very busy, so we agreed to take a look.

I'm not mechanically inclined, but several of the other employees were.  (Thank goodness because it was an oil change place.)  They looked under the hood.  They checked all the fluids, the hoses, the brakes and the under carriage of the car.  They found nothing wrong.

The smell, however, was persistent.  Sometime definitely smelled funky.

Finally, after much prodding and poking, someone pinpointed the odor.  It came from the grill of the car.  After a few minutes, we found the culprit.  A bird had flown up into the radiator and died.  The rotting smell came from it's decay as the radiator heated up.  It carried that smell through the vents of the car.

Once the dead bird was removed, the smell disappeared.

This parallels what Jesus says about the church at Sardis in Revelation 3:1-6.  Everything looked good, but inside, they smelled of death and decay.  

They had gotten comfortable with the world around them.  They compromised.  They enjoyed the peace they had with their neighbors.  Somewhere along the way, that became more important than serving Christ.  So at their evaluation, Christ calls them dead.

They simply stopped functioning within his kingdom. 

So he gives them a warning.  Find those still alive and fix the decay.  If not, he'll removed the dead church and put a new one in it's place.  Just like the bird in the car.  Take it away, and all things are better.

That's a pretty stern warning.  Jesus has no room for dead churches or dead Christians.  If we are not serving and active, he'll bring punishment and replace the dead with something or someone alive.

We must heed the warning and be about his kingdom work.