On the last Sunday of the year let us end 2015 right using God's Word to bring new life and hope to our church as we anticipate the upcoming New Year. After the Apostle John writes Christ's message to the first four churches in Revelation 2 (churches in Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, and Thyatira), the Lord continues His missives to the final three in the third chapter. Christ first addresses "the angel [messenger or pastor] of the church in Sardis" (v.1), an ancient city in Asia Minor. Sardis (modern Sart), the capital of the Lydian kingdom, was a most important commercial city and known for its great wealth and fame. It lay about fifty miles east of Ephesus at the junction of five main roads, making it a center for trade. It was also a military center, for it was located on an almost inaccessible plateau. The acropolis of Sardis was about 1,500 feet above the main roads, and it formed an impenetrable fortress. The city endured many wars, usually victorious because of its geographic location. From a religious standpoint it was a center of pagan worship and the site of a temple of Artemis, one of the "nature cults" that built on the idea of death and rebirth. Sardis was also known for its primary industry of harvesting wool, dying it, and making garments from it, a fact that has bearing on Christ's message to the church. Sad to say, the city at that time was but a shadow of its former splendor; and the church, unfortunately, had become like the city, populated and operated by spiritually dead people - it was alive in name only. Is it possible then for a church to look alive from the outside and yet dead from the inside? Is there a living hope for a dead church? It is only the Great Physician who can pronounce every church's true condition and prescribe the corresponding cure. Look at Christ's spiritual diagnosis of the church in Sardis.

Read the sermon outline:
http://www.gcf.org.ph/resources/2015_12_27/2015_12_27.pdf

Read the study guide:
http://www.gcf.org.ph/resources/2015_12_27/2015_12_27_sg.pdf

Learn more:
http://www.gcf.org.ph/