Archive for November, 2005
Philadelphia: The Church of The Open Door
Revelation 3:7-13
Sunday, November 27th, 2005
Giving Thanks In The Day of Distress
Psalm 77
Sunday, November 20th, 2005
Our Thanksgiving celebration has a long history. In our day we have lost touch with much of the meaning of Thanksgiving. Today Thanksgiving has been largely reduced to indulging in lots of delicious food and watching football games with our families or friends. For those first folks who “gave thanks” many years ago, they did so with a great awareness of God’s preserving hand that had kept them alive and provided for their every need.
Jesus Sees Beyond Appearance
Revelation 3:1-6
Sunday, November 13th, 2005
This morning we are making another stop on our tour of the seven churches of Revelation. We’ve visited Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, and this week we will stop off in Sardis for another lesson from our Lord. The original city of Sardis was located about 35 miles southeast of Thyatira. The city sat on a high, rocky hill in a series of hills that jutted out from Mount Tmolus, overlooking the Hermus River valley. The hill that Sardis was built upon rose some fifteen hundred feet above the valley floor. The city was surrounded by almost perpendicular rock walls on three sides. This made the city almost invincible, almost. The city was fortified like very few cities in the ancient world.
The Tolerance of Thyatira
Revelation 2:18-29
Sunday, November 6th, 2005
Today we are arriving at the next stop on our tour of the churches addressed by our Lord and Savior in Revelation 2-3. Our last visit took us to Pergamum, but today we will nestle down in the flatlands of Thyatira and pray that we will have ears to hear what the Savior is saying to us as we study what He said to the folks in Thyatira.