All right, now we read the first half of these letters, or better, messages, and so let me read the second part of this, chapter three now, as we begin our reading. So, Revelation three, verse one, let us hear God's word. To the angel of the church in Sardis, write, these things says he who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your works, that you have a name, that you are alive, but you are dead. Be watchful and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die. For I have not found your works perfect before God. Remember, therefore, how you have received and heard. Hold fast and repent. Therefore, if you will not watch, I will come upon you as a thief, and you will not know what hour I will come upon you. You have a few names, even in Sardis, who have not defiled their garments, and they shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy. He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the book of life, but I will confess his name before my father and before his angels. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write, these things says he who is holy, he who is true, he who has the key of David, he who opens and no one shuts and shuts and no one opens. I know your works. See, I have set before you an open door, and no one can shut it. For you have a little strength, have kept my word, and have not denied my name. Indeed, I will make those of the synagogue of Satan who say they are Jews and are not, but lie. Indeed, I will make them come and worship before your feet and to know that I have loved you. Because you have kept my command to persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of trial, which shall come upon the whole world to test those who dwell on the earth. Behold, I am coming quickly. Hold fast what you have, that no one may take your crown. He who ever comes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go out no more. I will write on him the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from my God. And I will write on him my new name. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. And to the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write, these things says the amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God. I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish that you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth. Because you say, I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing, and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich, and white garments, that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed, and anoint your eyes with eye salve that you may see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore, be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him and he with me. To him who overcomes, I'll grant to sit with me on my throne, as I also overcame and sat down with my father on his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Amen. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Amen. As we begin here today, I want to make reference to the common saying about the forest and the trees. And as we often hear, we don't want to miss the forest for the trees or something to that effect. And we can become so focused on the individual things in the woods that we miss the bigger picture. You might recall from The Hobbit when Bilbo and the dwarves were ready to enter into Mirkwood and Gandalf was there and told him he was not going to go with them. And Gandalf and Bjorn both advised them to stay on the path. Don't go off the path. Many times they say that. Don't get in the water in the middle, the stream that flows through. And they give a kind of sense of how long it's going to take. And so they give them, if you will, the big picture view before they head in. And once they get in there, and especially once they cross the stream and one of the dwarves falls in and they have to carry him and all that, and then they get to the spiders and they get off the path and so on and so forth, they lose their way because they're so focused on these individual things and they've forgotten the big picture. Even when Bilbo goes up on the tree to look around, He still can't get a sense of the forest because he's in a bit of a valley. Well, with that in mind, I think it's helpful for us as we come to these individual trees, as it were, of the seven churches, to give a bit of a forest view before we enter into the woods, so to speak. And no, this is not Mirkwood, it may be the Greenwood, but nevertheless, I think it's helpful for us to step back and focus on some big picture things today, and it'll help prepare us for going through each one of these verses. So hence reading chapter two and chapter three as we begin. Now, we of course now have come to the conclusion of chapter one. There are two main sections. Chapter one, verses one to eight is the opening introduction, and then verses nine to 20 are the words regarding the opening vision. We have learned a number of things so far. We have learned a methodology, a method to understand revelation. And primarily, our approach needs to be one of symbols. So even just last week, we talked about the number seven, which points to completeness and wholeness. We talked about the churches that yes, refer to churches here, but also emphasize the universal church. We talked about stars that refer to angels, but even that is symbolic of the heavenly reality of the church. Even though we are here on earth, We are already in heaven because of our union with Christ. We talked about white hair pointing to wisdom and blazing eyes to penetrating insight, and so on and so forth. We've also, of course, observed God as Trinity, Jesus, God the Father, and the seven spirits, referring to the Holy Spirit, and of course we'll see more reference to that here. We have heard several truths to encourage us, to encourage God's people during their hardships. Jesus is standing among the lampstands. He holds the angels. He is eternal. He is all sovereign among many of the things that we've seen. We've also seen humility. This vision of Christ is awesome and it drove John to the ground. We too ought to respond humbly when we come before our God to pray and to worship. But in the midst of the humility, of course, there is encouragement. And then lastly, here by way of overview, we have reviewed the four main approaches to the book of Revelation, trying to understand this book. Now obviously my position influences my interpretation. But the goal here, of course, is to let the text guide us to the proper understanding. And we have seen several things here in chapter one that really only can be best understood in the idealist approach to things. The historical evidence points away from Preterism, the symbolism points away from Futurism, and the connections to the Old Testament, especially Daniel and Zechariah, we have seen direct us away from the Preterist, Futurist, and Historicist views in some ways. And so, as we saw last week in our understanding of verses 19 and 20, this is a reference to the whole book, not just to the past, the present, and the future, as a futurist might say, but to the whole of the churches throughout history. And so chapters two and three are speaking to us, not just by extension, not just by way of general application, but they're speaking to us directly, these messages of Jesus. So as we turn to these seven messages, to these seven churches, let us now address some of these big picture thoughts and ideas. And so the first one then, as you notice there on your outline, as I tried to unfold for us last time in verse 19, okay, We do not want to see the things that John has seen to refer to the first vision, the things that are that refer to chapters 2 and 3, and the things that will be to chapters 4 and following, but it's referring to the whole book. If you're going to be consistent, the Preterist view, the Historicist view, and the Futurist view are going to apply these teachings here in chapters 2 and 3 to the churches of the first century only. And they don't have anything to do with us except by way of very general principle and application. Unless we happen to be alive when the tribulation comes, then the future's view will have some application for us personally. When held consistently, their view then is that chapters two and three do not really have much to say to us today. except by way of general application. But thankfully, they're very inconsistent. It's a good thing that they are not consistent in this way. You will frequently hear futurists speak of our current churches acting like a particular church here, especially the Church of Laodicea. The preterists will often then speak, you read Chilton or Gentry or something, and they'll talk about how these words to the churches of the first century can find application for us today. And the historicists will do the same thing, and they often talk about the seven eras of these seven churches. I'll say more about that here in a moment. But once again, consistently, it's only the idealist approach that takes the messages of Jesus to these seven churches and say, this is designed for every church throughout all of history, not just the churches of the first century. It does include that, but it is more than that. And this is the only view that consistently says that. But again, thankfully they're inconsistent. It's like the Baptist who will dedicate a baby or a Congregationalist that will establish a leadership board, or the Arminian trusting in God's sovereign plan, thankfully they're inconsistent with their theological system. Which means then, to my second point here, When we learn about each one of these churches and Jesus' message to it, we must apply it to ourselves. This is not merely a history lesson. This is not merely general principles either. But we must seek to learn how Rocky Springs Church is a recipient of these letters. We must try to understand how I, as an individual, am a recipient of these messages. Now, obviously, some of the details are going to differ, and not everything in every one of these messages is going to apply to us. But, again, these messages are designed to speak to us directly. So, for example, notice in chapter 2, verse 7, it says, He who is in ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. And you see that in all seven of them. It's not just to that particular church that needs to hear the message, but we all do. All right, now the third point. And I mentioned this just a moment ago. Some will speak of the seven churches as referring to seven eras of church history. Now, if you read up on this, you'll find that there's a fair amount of disagreement as to when one era ends and the next one begins. But here is something along the lines of what you will hear. The church, the message to the church in Ephesus refers to the first century church. The message to the church in Smyrna refers to the time of more or less the beginning of the second century up till the time of Constantine because it was during that time especially where the church was persecuted. And again, it'll vary. Some will say earlier in the first century, some maybe not. The message to the church in Pergamon. This then refers to the era of church history from approximately Constantine up till into the Middle Ages when the Catholic Church is now firmly established. The message to Thyatira will refer to that time frame from roughly the middle of the Middle Ages leading up to the Reformation. The message to the church in Sardis then refers to the time of the Reformation up to the Enlightenment. And then the message to Philadelphia refers to the 18th and 19th century missionary movements. And then the message to the church of Laodicea is from the 20th century up till the modern day. And that then, typically in this view, would say the lukewarm church will become apostate and then the tribulation will come. Now as I said, there tends to be a fair amount of disagreement on when things begin and end, but overall this idea of an era that the messages are communicating are not just for that church, but it's referring to an era of church history, maybe a century or a few centuries or something like that. Now I do think there are some helpful things in this view, but I think overall we have to say that it falls short. Because notice how it ignores the rest of the world. What about the church in the Far East or in Africa or something like that? It focuses on the West. I do think it is helpful because it is designed, inconsistently I would say, but it is designed to apply these messages throughout church history. I think that's a good thing and we're going to see some of these truths. But I think it's a bit hard to say that every detail of these letters applies to that segment of time. I mean, even just the Church of Ephesus, if this is referring to the first century, okay, were all the churches of the first century loveless? Were all of them orthodox? And I think the answer is, of course not. So though I think this era approach can be somewhat helpful, I think we need to be very careful with it. And so as we try to apply these words to our church and even to ourselves individually, there is an era of a church too, right? We've been around for 66 years as Rocky Springs Church. Hey, some of us have been living for that long or longer. And we go through eras as individuals, as churches, and we can find application in different ways and so on. So again, I think there's some benefit in talking about this, but I think overall, it is problematic. And so we'll address some of that as we go along. All right, now let's go on to point number four. The second and third chapters of the book must not be taken out of the rest of the book. It seems like an obvious point, but what often happens is when people come to these two chapters, they kind of isolate it. And many times you have, oh, we're going to have a sermon series on Revelation. What do they do? Chapters 2 and 3, and then maybe we don't talk about anything else. But we must see how chapters 2 and 3 are tied in with the rest of the book. And so again, what I talked about last week, for those who say, write what you have seen, referring to that first vision, and the things that are referring to chapters 2 and 3, We just have to be careful as we take it that way, because it's all designed to go together, one overall message. You'll sometimes hear in this context also that John sent a separate letter to each one of these churches, and at a later time it was combined, they were collected and put together or something like that. But that just, I think, misses some obvious things. They all fit together, and they all are referring to this time between the first and second comings of Christ. Let me point out a couple things that we've already seen. First of all, notice the death and resurrection of Christ is mentioned in verse 5. It's also mentioned in verse 18, in chapter 1 I should say. And now we're going to see it here in these two chapters, note especially verse 8 here in chapter 2. In chapter 1, we see about the second coming of Christ in verse 7. It's assumed, at least in verse 17, And we're going to see it in every time Christ says, I will give you something, all of that's pointing to a second coming and the new heavens and the new earth. Notice also this. In each one of the churches, we see a description of Christ that takes us back to chapter one. So here, chapter two, verse one, he holds the seven stars in his right hand. He walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands. Well, that's chapter one, verses 13, 16, and 20. And verse eight, I'm the first and last who was dead and came to life. Well, that's chapter one, verses 17 and 18. And we could keep going. It's designed to be put together. Do not separate it. You may think, well, yeah, that's kind of an obvious point. But unfortunately, the obvious point is not always held up by people who try to interpret this. Jesus is among his churches. All of them. It's been true since the first coming. It is still true throughout history and it will be fulfilled ultimately when he returns. We are never alone. Christ is always with us by his spirit. This is comforting as we wait, as comforting as we suffer, whether we live in the time of the tribulation or not. Or just the first century. Now we could go the other direction too, but we haven't talked about chapters four and following yet. So let me just tell you and point out one idea. And that is, in each one of these messages, we see a promise. And we're gonna see direct connections to chapters 20 through 22. And so again, it's all tied together here. All right, now, let's continue then to our fifth point. You know, sometimes when we talk about the seven eras, or when we talk about the symbolic nature of the text, that we can forget or overlook the fact that these were real churches of the first century. They were real people, real events, real hardships. In fact, we have reason to believe, based on the historical documentation, that when the Jewish war started in the 60s, That's when John fled that area and came to Asia Minor and settled in Ephesus. We also have reason to believe that he visited all these churches at some point. And so, again, these are real. Let's not symbolize them so much that we forget this. And so we're going to spend time talking about the historical context for each of the churches. And every message refers to the historical context of that place and those people. Some of them we know, we understand. We have other things to help us to see this. Other things maybe we don't know yet. But as we do this, it'll help us not only to understand, but then to apply it to ourselves. And so this is why I give you a map. This is why we've watched these videos in Sunday school, to help us, remind us that these are real churches. in the first century. All right now the next point and you might say this is a bit of splitting hairs but I think it's a helpful distinction to make and that is let's not call these the seven letters to the seven churches, call them the seven messages to the seven churches. Now one of the commentators I read was making a pretty strong case for doing it in this way and he said Two reasons in particular. First of all, notice you don't have the normal elements of a letter in chapters two and three. Look at chapter one, verses four to six. Well, there are the normal elements of a letter of the first century. John, seven churches in Asia, grace to you and peace, and so forth. This is what you'd normally see in a letter of the first century. You don't see those things in chapters two and three. So don't call it a letter. Call it a message from Christ. Now the second point that he emphasizes is this. Using the term letter can suggest that John wrote each of these to the seven churches as its own letter and the other churches did not see it, except maybe a few years later or something. But look at chapter one, verse 11. What you see, write in a book, singular, and send it to the seven churches. One message. sent to all the churches okay furthermore again in every one of these letters it ends he was an ear that i'm here the spirit says to the churches okay it's one message overall, one letter overall with the seven individual messages given to these seven churches. Now again, this may be a bit of splitting hairs, but I do think it's a helpful thing to keep in mind here. This is one message. Do not isolate chapters two and three. I said that a few moments ago, but unfortunately many people do, and it leads us to misunderstand or maybe under understand. All right, now, the seventh overall thing to address here has to do with the structure of each one of these messages. And typically, you'll hear people say there are seven parts to each one of these messages. And I think that's a helpful way of looking at it. I think that's what the text is pointing us to see. Some will say more, some will say less, but I think we should understand this as seven, a complete message. And what I'm going to give you now is from Dr. Wolvard, and he is a futurist. He is a dispensationalist, but I think his summary of these seven parts is very helpful. And he begins each one of them with the letter C. So the first one is the commission to write. And so every letter begins with that, the angel of the church of whatever, write, okay? Then secondly, we have the character of Christ. And so you'll see something like here, verse 1 of chapter 2, these things says, he who holds the seven stars and so on. Look at verse 8, these things says the first and the last and so forth, right? So we have a description of Christ and his character. Thirdly, the commendation for obedience typically begins with, I know. Right? Look here again in chapter 2, verse 2, I know your works, your labor, your patience, and you cannot bear those who are evil and so forth. So a commendation, you're doing this well. Now, there are two exceptions to this. The Church of Sardis and the Church of Laodicea do not have a clear commendation for their obedience. And because of that, it stands out. Now, the fourth one, then, is condemnation for disobedience. Typically, this begins with the word, but, or nevertheless, like we see here in chapter two, verse four, nevertheless, I have this against you, and so on. Now, again, there are some exceptions here. The Church of Smyrna and the Church of Philadelphia do not have an explicit condemnation for disobedience. So once again, it stands out. The fifth C is correction. You might say also a call to obey in some way, because obviously Smyrna and Philadelphia are not needing to correct sinful things, but they are called to obey, to remain faithful and so forth. And so you see, for example, here in chapter two, verse five, remember where you have fallen, repent and do the first works and so forth. And then the last two, we see the sixth one, the call to hear, right? He who has an ear, let him hear. And then seventhly, the challenge to overcome. He who overcomes will receive some kind of blessing. Now you'll notice that for the first three churches, that's the order, call to hear, and then the challenge to overcome. But in the last four, that switches the order. The overcome is first, and then the call to hear. So basically the first two go together, the addressing to the church and the character of Christ. The next three go together, commendation, condemnation, and correction, and then the last two go together. So just notice how it's presented to us. As we see this going in, this forest view when we come to each individual tree, we'll know better what to look at. All right, now, another point to address here, again, is a big picture, is that you often hear a summary of a quality for the church, a summary word or two regarding the message to those churches. So even in my Bible, every one of them has this. So the Church of Ephesus, it says the loveless church, the message to Smyrna is the persecuted church. and so on and so forth. So let me keep going here. Some will say for the Church of Ephesus, it's the Orthodox Church. Sometimes you'll hear something different there. For Pergamum, it's often described as the compromising church. Thyatira is usually the corrupt church or the tolerant church. Church of Sardis is often called the dead church. Church of Philadelphia is often called the faithful church. And the Church of Laodicea is often called the lukewarm church. Now, on the one hand, this is helpful to give a general sense, but on the other hand, it can be very simplified, overly simplified. It's more complex than that. And also, this summary way tends to lead toward the seven eras approach, which, as I've already said, can be problematic. Notice that two of the seven are, for the most part, faithful. Two of the seven are, for the most part, unfaithful. And three of the seven are, for the most part, a mixed bag. But again, even that's an oversimplification. All right, now, another point here to mention. Some people want to see a chiasm for these churches. Now, remember, chiasm comes from the Greek letter chi, so it looks like an X. So the first and the last one go together, the second and the next to last go together, and then there's one in the middle. So, I'm not overly convinced of this, but some people will say this. Look at Ephesus. You see this threat to remove the lamb stand in verse 5. Well, in the last one, Jesus is going to spit them out. And so it's a strong threat in the beginning and the end. And then the second and the next to last, there's no rebuke at all for those two. The middle three are a mixture, and Thyatira is right in the middle, and it's the longest message. Okay, there may be some truth to this, but remember, I've also already told you that the seven churches are along a mail route. They're just in order. You start in Ephesus, go north, then head south and east. So I'm not sure how hard to push that, but some will. But as for the next one, I do think that there's something to this one, and that is a covenant message, a covenant connection. You remember in the Old Testament that there are the various covenants, the covenant with Abraham and Abimelech or the covenant with God and Israel with Moses or David or whatever, and there are different elements for the covenants. I think we see that here. Let me show you here briefly. The first element of the covenant is the preamble. Who's in the covenant? Okay, well, Jesus is the one speaking in every one of these messages, and then each church is mentioned by name. So there you go, right at the beginning. The historical prologue is the next element, and this is a brief history of the relationship between the people and the covenant. And Jesus says in all these messages, hey, I know. And so there is that relationship there. Then of course you have the stipulations, these calls to obey. You need to do X, Y, Z. We see blessing and cursing here, especially the blessing. If you overcome, you will receive this blessing, but there's also some threats there, too. As for the sign of the covenant, this one may be the hardest one for us to see, but if you look at chapter 3, verse 5, it talks about being clothed in white garments, and circumcision and baptism point to cleansing, so maybe we could see a connection that way, but maybe that's a bit of a stretch. As for the covenant meal, look at chapter 2, verse 17, we're going to be able to eat the hidden manna. And in chapter 3, verse 20, we're going to eat with Christ. That's what the covenant meal is all about, is having a feast with our Lord. And then those who hold to this view will point to the Spirit speaking to each of the churches as being the witness for these different messages. Now obviously there are Old Testament connections, Israel and the temple and so forth, but there does seem to be a covenant connection. And one of the commentators put it this way, each message is like an edict from our king, our suzerain, our sovereign. And each message is a covenant lawsuit describing whether or not each church is keeping covenant. So I do think there's something to this, and it is something that I will draw out as we go along. All right, now lastly, in this broad view here this morning, many people will say that chapters two and three is the most literal part of Revelation. And in one sense, you can understand why they say that. But don't we see a lot of symbology here too? We see all these descriptions of Jesus. We see the promises to the overcomers. Those have symbolic meaning. We're not talking about actual Balaam and Jezebel in one of these churches. This is symbolic for those people. The door in chapter 3 verse 20 is symbolic and on and on we can go. Do not be deceived by many who say we should take these chapters literally. No. Let's not change, but do what we've been doing since chapter one, verse one. This is part of a letter that is written, the overall message of Revelation. And so yeah, there's gonna be some literal parts to it because of that. But it's also a prophecy, remember chapter one, verse three. And so there's foretelling and foretelling, initial greater and future fulfillment, ultimate fulfillment. And then, of course, there are the symbolic apocalyptic elements. And so do not change your method of interpretation once you turn to chapter two. Keep the same method that we learned in chapter one. Because if you don't do that, it'll lead you to places that I don't think are consistent with what the text is teaching us. All right, so here's some broad thoughts, okay? an overview, and I'm going to make reference to some of these things as we go through each one of the churches. Let me end here with three thoughts. The first one is this. This is very much a description of Israel. As we read through these different messages to the seven churches, we could say, well, yeah, I could see how this applied to Israel in the wilderness or in time of the judges or, you know, whatever. And it's not surprising because Israel had faithful and unfaithful times and people. There's a remnant, some that are holy, some that are nominal believers. You see that in Israel. You see that in the church. You see that even today. So this should not be a surprise to us. The second point to mention here then is this. In my Bible, I have the so-called red letter edition. And every word in chapters two and three are words directly from Christ. This isn't John saying, you know, I haven't heard Jesus saying this, so let me tell you about it. No, Jesus said, John, write this down. Now, every word of scripture is from God. But some of them are quotes from God himself. And here, these two chapters are completely quotes from Jesus. These are messages directly from our king, the king and head of the church, to his church. And so let's read them carefully. And then lastly, let me read here a moment. This is from Dr. Osborne and his commentary. And he quotes a man named Harrington and he puts it like this. These messages peg revelation firmly to our world. It is a word of hope. addressed to people who need hope, people who may falter. The messenger's messages, excuse me, like so much in the New Testament, brings us encouragement. There's never been a perfect Christian community. Christians have been faithful and heroic. They've also been frail and vacillating. It is not enough for us to find comfort in the word of Philadelphia. We must also hearken to the word of Laodicea. Thought it was a nice summary there to reinforce what I've been saying. Every one of these messages is speaking to us in some way. And so, Lord willing, next week we will begin looking at what the message to the church in Ephesus has to say and what it has to say for us, too. So, we have done this broad view today, and we'll pick up with verse one next time. Let's pray together. Lord, we again are thankful for your word. And in this case, we are thankful for this section and the massive amount of information that is found here. And so Lord, as we come to it, give us a proper viewpoint, a proper perspective. Help us, Lord, to have this big picture view as we begin to look at the individual verses of these messages. And so, Lord, we pray that you would give us not only understanding, but then, Lord, that you would give us the ability to apply these words to ourselves here today, that we would then be faithful. that we would then honor you and heed your word to us. We are thankful, Lord, that you are among us by your spirit, that you are walking among us as it were this very moment, holding us in your hand. And this, Lord, gives us comfort. It also should cause us to sit up and take notice. And so, Lord, we pray to this end. that you would, through these verses, grow us as a church here at Rocky Springs. You would grow us as individuals, as families, as your people. And so we pray for your mercies here in this way, for your honor, and for your glory, and the advancement of your kingdom. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.