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Draw your attention back to Revelation
chapter 2 this morning. Beginning in verse 12, we are
going to read the text of the third letter that Christ had
John record to the churches in Asia Minor. Revelation 2 verse 12. And to the angel of the church
in Pergamum write the words of him who has the sharp, two-edged
sword. I know where you dwell, where
Satan's throne is. Yet you hold fast my name, and
you did not deny my faith, even in the days of Antipas, my faithful
witness, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells. But I have a few things against
you. You have some there who hold
the teaching of Balaam who taught Balak to put a stumbling block
before the sons of Israel so that they might eat food sacrificed
to idols and practice sexual immorality. So also you have
some who hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans. Therefore, repent. If not, I will come to you soon
and war against them with the sword of my mouth. He who has
an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
To the one who conquers, I will give some of the hidden manna,
and I will give him a white stone with a new name written on the
stone that no one knows except the one who receives it." Let's
go to the Lord in prayer. Our gracious Lord and heavenly
Father, we thank you that we have another opportunity to come
before you as a body this morning to worship you, to look to your
word, to lift you up, that we might see the greatness, the
glory of God. the express image of God in Jesus
Christ, the God-man, the Son of God, who came and who redeemed
us, who sacrificed Himself for us, who paid the debt of our sins
that we could never pay, that we might be reconciled to You,
God, as if we had never sinned. Lord, we pray that You would
just speak to us here this morning, that the Holy Spirit would make
His presence known with us, that we might feed on the Word here
this morning, Lord, that we might be given some of that hidden
manna here this morning. Help us to be faithful. Help
us to be true to Your Word. Help us to be proclaimers of
truth. and help us not to be in love
with this world. It's in your precious and holy Son's name
we ask these things. Amen. Well, when we write a letter
or an email, we usually begin by addressing the person who's
going to be reading it with some kind of pleasantry, some kind
of word of kindness. We would start it, dear so-and-so,
I'm glad to be writing this letter for this or that reason. Or I
might say, it was so great to see you the other night, and
then I continue on with the contents of my letter. Well, when the
reader first starts to read that letter or that email, not many
people write letters anymore, when they first start to read
this, they can have some sense of hope that this is gonna be
a pleasant letter. This is gonna be something that
they can read and not have a lot of angst or a lot of anxiety
in reading it. This is not what we have here
this morning in our text. The letter opens with a sense
of threatening, with an impending confrontation, if you will. The
words of him who has a sharp, two-edged sword. In our world
today, and in the mind of, I think, most churchgoers, in most professing
Christian churches, they could never imagine receiving
a letter from Christ addressing them in this manner. To most,
Christ is all love. He's warm and fuzzy. He's all accepting. Let me paint
a little bit of a picture from something that I was privy to
recently. There was a person who made a
post on social media regarding the acceptance of abortion by
those who call themselves Christians. The original poster of this that
was shared by this individual stated that they did not believe
a real Christian could support abortion. And I think that's
100% accurate. Well, this person shared the
post and received a response, and I will share with you part
of that response. And listen closely. This person,
and I quote, said, also don't question my beliefs because I
support women choosing to take control of their own bodies.
I love Jesus and Jesus loves me. He's accepting and loving,
not judgmental. End quote. After a few additional
words, including some cussing, the writer of this response,
went ahead and blocked the person who shared the post without ever
receiving a response or reaction. But did you catch the words that
this young person used? I love Jesus and Jesus loves
me. He's accepting and loving and
not judgmental. He's not judging. He is the judge
of the whole world. And by right, by authority, by
victory that He has won, He has the right to judge as He sees
fit. Go back and read Revelation 19
and tell me that Christ Himself is not the judge. This Jesus of this young lady's
imagination is not in any way the Jesus that is described in
scripture. It's not the Jesus who addressed
the letter to the church at Pergamum that said to the angel of the
church in Pergamum, write the words of him who has a sharp
two edged sword. I pray that the Holy Spirit will
grant us to hear this morning and to have hearts to believe
and to hear what He says to us in this text from His Holy Word. Listen to me, we are not free
to worship a God of our own making, even if we call Him by the name
Jesus. Jesus, in fact, has revealed
Himself to us through His Word. He is the Word. And if we are
Christians, if we are true Christians, true followers of Jesus Christ,
we must reflect and shine a light in this dark world of who Christ
truly is. We must shine the light of what
He says is holy and what He says He hates. We are His church and we must
worship Him in spirit and in truth. Not according to our whims,
not according to our desires, but according to what He declares
His truth to be. We can't have our truth. All truth is His truth. As we start to look at this,
there seems to be here in our text this morning to the church
at Pergamum, the exact opposite issue of what the church at Ephesus
had. The church at Ephesus, they were
all about doctrine, but they had lost their first love. Here
in Pergamum, it appears that they are showing a love, but
have failed in doctrine and in truth. We'll see this as we look at
this text here this morning. We'll see what I believe is one
of the major problems in the church today. a church, a professing
church who is so eager to show love and acceptance of others
and their beliefs. So we have a group of people
who call themselves Christians who don't want to be looked at
as being unloving. They don't want to be looked
at as being unaccepting of others. and they want to show love so
much that they have failed miserably at reflecting who Christ is. Instead of standing for truth,
instead of being fixed and immovable as to what God says is right
and holy, the church has capitulated, compromised, and surrendered
to the world in fear of being seen as unloving. in fear of what the world might
think and do to them, instead of being in the fear of the Lord. I wish we had all day to look
at this text. Unfortunately, we don't, and
I don't want people to get to the point that they, I mean,
we've got four more letters to go, right? So I don't want to
get too bogged down here this morning, but I want us to take
a look at our text here this morning. And let's glean from
it what we can. And let's pray that the Holy
Spirit will use this in our lives to draw us closer to Him, to
be more resolute, more faithful, to stand stronger in the faith.
Let's look at the historical context or the overview of Pergamum
as we begin. The city was located, as are
the other six cities that the letters were addressed to, in
Asia Minor, which is now modern-day Turkey. The ruin of the ancient
city can still be found today in the village of Bergama. The city is approximately 15
to 20 miles from the Aegean Sea. and it's alongside the Caiacus
River Valley, about 65 miles north of Smyrna, which was the
previous letter that Christ sent through John. This would have
been that next destination on the postal route that we have
talked about that had that circular, that clockwise route throughout
Asia Minor. Pergamum was a very ancient city,
and it was the seat of Roman government in Asia. Pergamum,
or Pergamos, some of your, and I meant to mention this earlier,
but some of your Bibles may have it as Pergamos. It's Pergamum
in the ESV translation, it's the same place. But it contained
the second largest known library in the world. During that day,
you had two libraries, Alexandria and you had Pergamum. This library
contained over 200,000 volumes of handwritten books. It was
second only to that library, the most famous of which is Alexandria
in Egypt. A very interesting story comes
out of this, though. 400 years prior to the writing
of Revelation, the king of Pergamum tried to hire the librarian of
Alexandria away from Egypt. His name was Aristophanes. And
the king of Pergamum's goal was to make Pergamum's library the
best in the world, to exceed even that of Alexandria. And
the king of Egypt, when he found out about this, was so mad that
he put a trade embargo on papyrus, which was the type of paper, we'll call it paper for
lack of a better term, the thing that you wrote on to create a
book. So Pergamum no longer had this
material available. Well, the scholars in Pergamum
were then unable to make the books that they were making to
build up their library, and they developed a new type of material
from animal skins called parchment. And this allowed books to actually
last longer. It was several hundred years,
a couple hundred years before that actually caught on, but
it allowed Pergamum to keep creating books for their library. And
it actually was referred to as the Pergamos Charta, was what
it was referred to. In English, we make a contraction
of those words, which we get the word parchment from. So Pergamum
actually means parchment. Pergamum was the center for emperor
worship and Roman deity worship. Pergamum had a necropolis, which
is a high hill or citadel, which is often used as a place of worship.
So often you would have a city down below and a necropolis or
this big hill up above. And on that hill is where all
of the temples would be erected. The high place. And the city
boasted temples to the Greek deities Athena, Zeus, Dionysus,
Asclepius, Hera, Demeter, and Persephone, and temples were
also constructed to Egyptian deities. The coins that were
used in Pergamum bore the images of Athena, Zeus, Dionysus, and
Asclepius. The great altar to Zeus was built
on the Acme or at the highest point there of this Acropolis. And more recently, this temple
to Zeus, this altar to Zeus was excavated in 1878 by the German
Archaeological Institute. This would have been the most
visible monument to people as they came across the valley.
The altar has been preserved and is in unbelievably good condition. You can go online and you can
look at this. And it's displayed in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin,
Germany. Its decorations, its carvings,
its statues depict scenes from the battle between Olympian gods
and the giants, as well as scenes from the life of Telephus, the
city's legendary founder. Another interesting note to history,
after viewing this altar to Zeus there in Berlin, Hitler's architect
of the Third Reich used it as a model for a stage and structure
which was built for Nazi party rallies. and it was placed in
Nuremberg, Germany, where the Nazi party had all the rallies.
A lot of the videos you see of Hitler speaking, he is standing
on something that is modeled after the altar of Zeus. The city was also home to Galen,
who was the second most famous physician of the ancient world
behind Hippocrates. It is here that the church of
Pergamum receives this letter from Christ
addressed to them with the title, The Words of Him Who Has a Sharp
Two-Edged Sword. It is here that attention is
drawn back to Revelation 1, verse 16. If you look back there, in
his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a
sharp, two-edged sword. And his face was like the sun,
shining in full strength. In that day, one, there were
people that were put over the city as magistrates, and they
were given authority to wield the sword in judgment. This would
be a very, very familiar reference to the people who lived in Roman
territories. It is showing that this one,
this one who has this sharp two-edged sword, has been given authority
and power to execute judgment and to carry out a sentence. And it's here in verse 13, Christ
says, I know where you dwell. Christ knows where this church
at Pergamum dwells and the difficulties that surround living in such
a place. I heard one minister preaching
on this a while back that seemed to be insinuating that Christ
somehow was giving them a pass or was more understanding of
their failures due to the city in which they dwelt. I don't
think that that is the tone at all to what Christ is telling
the church here when he tells them, I know where you dwell. I believe that when we as individuals
who also suffer from sinful passions and desires view other Christians
in other areas We need to give them grace to understand that
we may have the same type of failures given living in a certain
place. But Christ doesn't view things
the way that we do. I think what he is getting at
here is that Christ is the dispenser of grace, of mercy, as the one
who has accomplished redemption for us and gives out grace through
the Holy Spirit that is equal to the grace needed in whatever
area His people are. I believe in China today. China
grace is needed. In the Ukraine, Ukraine grace
is needed. In Russia, Russia grace is needed. And in America, America grace
is needed. Equal grace Excuse me, grace
equal to the need, given the area where Christ's people live,
where His church exists. It is that grace that enabled
some in the church at Pergamum to hold fast to His name and
to not deny His faith, as we read in verse 13. Notice Christ
says here, Yet you hold fast My name, and you do not deny
My faith. Christ says, My name, My faith. These things are His. They are
not ours. If we have faith, it is the faith
of Christ that is given to us. We hold up His name, not our
own. So it is grace which allowed
some of them to hold fast, to stand firm, without denial, even
in the days, as our verse tells us, when Antipas was killed. Antipas, Christ says, is my faithful
witness who was killed among you. Antipas was given grace
equal to the task. He was given Pergamum grace to
remain steadfast and not deny the name of Christ. It's a precious thing to me to
reflect on something here from the lips of Christ. He knows
Antipas. He speaks his name. He knows
Antipas as his faithful witness. We know absolutely nothing about
Antipas from history. He's lost to us, save for this
single mention from the lips of Christ. There's a fable written about
him, but nothing that actually records history for us other
than Christ's words. I think this needs to be a lesson
to us. You know, I look out and I see
a lot of ministers, especially on social media, and they seem
to want to lift up their name. They want to be famous. They
want to have a status, a celebrity status. Why is it so important for us
to be remembered? And I'm not saying, please don't
get me wrong, I'm not saying that we don't want to have a
legacy to our children. But that legacy that we should
want to have is teaching our children about Christ, about
His Word. Right? But for my name to be
remembered by the world, what eternal good What does that do? So many ministers want to be
known, want to be celebrated, yet Antipas is forgotten to history,
but Christ says, he was my faithful witness. You know what mattered? It wasn't
that Antipas was known to the world, but that Christ knew Antipas. My faithful witness who was killed
among you, you know, there are some who use the name
of Jesus who don't know Him. Think back to what I shared with
you earlier. as we were introducing this message in the introduction.
This one who says, I love Jesus and Jesus loves me. There are
some who use the name of Jesus who do not know Him, who are
not known by Him. Matthew 7, 21 through 23, not
everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom
of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is
in heaven. On that day, Jesus speaking,
says, on that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we
not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name
and do mighty works in your name? And then I will declare to them,
I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of
lawlessness. Antipas is not this one. Antipas
was known by the Lord and was his faithful witness. Antipas instead hears the words
of Matthew 25, 23, when his master said to him, well done, good
and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a
little. I will set you over much. Enter
the joy of your master. This was Antipas. It's all we
know. Christ's faithful witness. Well, we have recorded for us
in the last part of verse 13, "...even in the days of Antipas,
my faithful servant, who was killed among you, where Satan
dwells." This is a difficult and troubling
repeated word in verse 13 in the message from Christ to the
church in Pergamum. We know that when something is
repeated in scripture, we better take notice of this, right? That
we should look more intently at something when it's repeated.
Well, we find this allusion to the throne of Satan and where
Satan dwells in this verse. Christ says, I know where you
dwell, where Satan's throne is. Christ says, even in the days
of Antipas, my faithful witness who was killed, where Satan dwells. There have been several reasons
and explanations pointed out by the commentators and expositors
of Scripture for this allusion. I find good reasoning in most
of them, and I find the best reasoning actually is for all
of them to be added together and viewed almost with the Aristotelian
phrase, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. So
we could look at each one of these individually and see where
this might be a reference to why Christ says this is where
Satan dwells, where the throne of Satan is, But I think when
we put all these together, the whole of understanding is much
more powerful than all of the parts. So let's look at a couple
of them, mainly three of them here. One of these explanations, one
of these parts, is the fact that there was a tremendous amount
of idol worship in the form of Greek and Greco-Roman deities
and Egyptian deities there in the city. Obviously, this is
forbidden idolatry to the people of God. This is idol worship. This is sacrificing to idols. Sacrificing to those who you
call God who are not. Making these images out of your
hands into something to signify your God and then worshiping
it. The second, and this is one that
has a lot of weight to it, even on its own, but the second is
that there's this emperor worship taking place in the city. And
I think it's interesting, in three of the letters to the churches,
we have a reference to Satan. If you'll remember, in Smyrna,
in the letter to Smyrna, in verse nine, And the slander of those
who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. Now remember, we talked about
what a synagogue is. It's a place of worship. So the
Jews who are not, who had condemned the Messiah, who had rejected
the Messiah, are not viewed as Jews by Christ. And they are worshiping that
at that point which Christ says is Satan. It's as bad as those
who worship the emperor. It's as bad as those who worship
Zeus. You've rejected the Messiah. You've rejected the Son of God.
And then we have here in our letter to the church at Pergamum,
and then in Let me find this again here.
In the church to Philadelphia, in chapter three of verse nine,
behold, I will make those of the synagogue of Satan who say
that they are Jews and are not, but lie. So I think that dwelling in this
area where emperor worship was prevalent probably has a lot
of weight to it in why Christ says Satan dwells here. But there's
one more, and this is the one I found to be extremely weighty
in my opinion. They were worshiping and sacrificing
to a Greek god named Asclepius, or Escalapius. It's Latin Escalapius,
the Greek is Asclepius. This is somebody who I think
we should know a little bit more about. He was a Greco-Roman god, the
god of medicine and the son of Apollo, according to Greek tradition. He was worshipped in the temple
dedicated to him, and the sick came to sacrifice for healing
and receive medical treatment there at the temple. Within the
temple, snakes were free to roam, and one of the secret healing
rituals was to be placed in a tunnel underneath the temple and be
given some sort of drug that would induce this this coma-like
effect, this just being out of it and receive visions of Asclepius. And the snakes would gather in
that tunnel, and they would slither all over the bodies as they were
in this sort of trance from the drug, from the medicine. Well,
his symbol is actually very familiar to us today. We see this often
at hospitals, in ambulances. I for years thought that this
was a reference to Moses in the wilderness when he lifted up
the brazen serpent when they were bit by the snakes. That's
not what the symbol for medicine is. It's the symbol of Asclepius. This idolatrous, this false god
that was being worshipped under the symbol of a snake, a serpent,
here in Pergamum. Even the Hippocratic Oath the
original Hippocratic Oath. It has been changed, it has been
altered, it has been updated, but the original Hippocratic
Oath began by saying, I swear by Apollos Soter, which means
the Savior, by Asclepius, by Hygieia, by Panacea, and by all
the gods and goddesses making them my witness. Asclepius, worshiped under the
form of a serpent whose actual form and whose actual name is
Satan. Revelation 12, 9, And the great
dragon was thrown down, the ancient serpent, called the devil and
Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. He was thrown down to
the earth and his angels were thrown down with him. Revelation
22, and he sees the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the devil
and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. Taken as a whole. The whole is greater than the
sum of its parts. And there are more reasons. There
are five that I was able to find. These three are the ones that
I think are the most powerful reason for Christ saying, this
is the seat of Satan's throne. This is where Satan dwells. In verse 14, Christ then says,
but I have these things against you. There are some there who hold
the teaching of Balaam who taught Balak to put a stumbling block
before the sons of Israel so that they might eat food sacrificed
to idols and practice sexual immorality. So also," verse 15,
you have some who hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans. Evidently
there were believers in the church of Pergamum possibly even the
leadership in the Church of Pergamum who tolerated teachers who were
spreading a sinful, unbiblical, idolatrous lifestyle. The leaders
in the church had evidently failed in the area of church discipline
to protect the flock Christ's body, the church, and the influence
of these teachers, these false teachers, was acting like a cancer,
ravaging a healthy body like a cancerous disease. Remember the church in Ephesus
commended for what? What were they commended for?
for testing those who called themselves apostles and are not. Christ, and found them to be
false. They tested them, they found
them to be false, and they rejected them. So the commendation for the church
at Ephesus comes the condemnation for the church in Pergamum. They have allowed this cancerous
teaching, this disease to spread among them. Well, Balaam here
and the Nicolaitans seem to be tied. Remember we talked about
the Nicolaitans in the first part of chapter two in the letter
to the church of Ephesus and we said we would circle back
to that. Well, we're circling back to that. There seems to
be a tie here. The Nicolaitans were somehow
in with the same type of teaching as those who held to the teaching
of Balaam. If you remember Balaam, the history that is given to
us in the book of Numbers 22 through 25, the king of Moab,
this Balak, the king, and his people had seen the children
of Israel conquering as they came through the wilderness. as they were taking possession
of the promised land, right? And they feared, because they
feared that they were going to be conquered. And so the king
of Moab, he sent messengers to Balaam,
actually twice, to try and entice and pay Balaam to curse the children
of Israel. And you remember the incident
where Balaam is allowed to finally leave and go with these messengers
the second time, and God even uses Balaam's donkey, who he
was riding, to speak truth to Balaam. Unfortunately, that's
kind of where we usually leave the story. There's a whole lot
more to the story. There's a whole lot more to the
history that is recorded for us here in Numbers. Well, Balaam went on three different
occasions to three different mountains, each time offering
seven sacrifices to God. And he received the word of the
Lord and gave that truthfully in an oracle to Balak. The Lord
would not let Balaam curse his people. He would not do that. We find then, we learn from our text here and
additionally from the text of 2 Peter 2.15 and Jude verse 11,
that Balaam loved wealth and although he wasn't allowed to
curse the children of Israel, He put a stumbling block before
them, which led to what takes place in Numbers 25, one through
nine. The people of Israel began to
whore with the daughters of Moab and were drawn into sexual immorality
and taking part in the feasts of food sacrifice to the pagan
gods of Moab, namely Baal. This led to a plague sent by
God, which killed 24,000, and did not end until a man named
Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest,
when one of these men brought this Moabitish mistress into
the Temple of Meeting, into the Tent of Meeting, And Phinehas
went and grabbed a spear and slew both of them. And the wrath
of God was subdued. And he relented of this plague. This was exactly what was occurring
in Pergamum. By those who held the type of
teaching that Balaam used with Balak to cause a stumbling block
to Israel. These same type of things are
what undoubtedly the Nicolaitans in verse 15 were also doing. They were also by their works
and teachings similar to those in the church in Thyatira, which
we will look at next, who were seduced by a woman, Jezebel,
to sexual immorality and to eating foods offered as sacrifice to
idols. This was a huge problem in the
church in Pergamum. and the church being led to tolerate
and take part in those things which Christ hated. Remember in the church of Ephesus,
Christ isn't a judge. He said of the works of the Nicolaitans,
I hate them. I hate them. They're evil. They're
unholy. They're not what pleases me. Remember Paul's words in the
letter to Galatians in Galatians 1, 6-10? I am astonished that
you are so quickly deserting Him who called you in the grace
of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. not that there is another one,
but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel
of Christ. But even if we or an angel from
heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach
to you, let him be accursed." Literally, let him be damned
to hell. As we have said before, so now
I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the
one you received, let him be accursed. Repetition is important
in Scripture. Twice, let him be damned. For am I now seeking the approval
of men? or of God, or am I trying to
please man? If I were still trying to please
man, I would not, Paul says, I would not be a servant of Christ. This teaching that was allowed
to continue in Pergamum was a gospel contrary to the one preached
by the apostles and by Christ himself. This is not the true
gospel. This was a worldly gospel, a
satanic gospel, a gospel contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ,
our Lord. See, in reality, the society
at Pergamum had no problem with Christianity. Now listen to me
here, and let me finish this. They had no problem with Christianity.
What they had an issue with was the exclusivity of Christianity. You could worship whatever gods
you wanted. You could worship Christ as long
as Caesar was Lord. The problem was Antipas, remember
back to Polycarp from Smyrna, how am I going to say Caesar
is Lord? 86 years I have served Christ
and He has done me no harm. How am I going to do that? Remember
Joseph in Egypt? How am I going to sin against
my God? You could have worshipped any
and all as long as it wasn't just Christ. The gospel of Jesus
Christ, the true gospel, the gospel preached by the apostles
that Paul was talking about in Galatians is an exclusive gospel. It's a narrow way. The only door
is Christ. All other ways lead to death. In a hell prepared for the devil
and his angels. The devil who dwells in Pergamum. Christ is the way, he's the truth,
he's the life. No man comes to the Father except
through him. Christ and Caesar are not Lord. Christ is Lord. Acts 4.12, and
there is salvation in no one else. There is no other name
under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. 1 Timothy 2.5, there is one God
and there is one mediator between God and man, the man, Christ
Jesus. So verse 16, he says, therefore
repent. Repent of this evil, turn from
this evil, say the same thing as God says about this evil teaching. The false gospel, the worldliness,
and giving in to the world. Repent. Can you just hear the
excuses? What are the excuses we hear
today? Well, if we're gonna reach the world, we've got to be like
the world. Well, if I'm gonna reach this group, I have to look
like this group. I have to talk like this group.
I have to be in the area where these people are to reach them. I have to be like them. I have
to know more about them. Excuses. This is the same spirit
that we see in the world today that was occurring in Pergamum.
Repent. James 4.4, you adulterous people. Do you not know that friendship
with the world is enmity to God? You want to be friends with the
world, you make yourself an enemy to God Almighty. Therefore, whoever wishes to
be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Repent of your adultery with
the world. Repent of doing what Israel was
doing in Numbers 25. Repent of whoring with the children,
with the daughters of Moab. With whoring with our secular
society, which is the enemy of God. to use medical terms, excise
it. Remove the cancer is what Christ
is telling the church here at Pergamum. Repent, be done with
it, get rid of it. Get it out of the church. There's
no place for worldliness here. There's no place for false worship.
There's no place for capitulating to the world's demands. Not within the church. Not within
God's people. And Christ is telling the church
at Pergamum, repent or else. It is a scary thing to think
that Christ would come quickly and war with those in His church. It's not real clear whether this
is warring with the church or those outside the church and
leading them astray. I believe it's probably a little
bit of both. Because there were those who would have made themselves
as if they were part of the church. Those who would one day stand
and say, Lord, didn't we do this? Didn't we do that? Depart from
me, I never knew you. You workers of lawlessness. This was once again, wasn't a
suggestion to repent, it's a command. And it has a threatening promise
attached to it. He warred with Israel. Did he
not? He warred with them when they
were guilty of this and 24,000 perished. Verse 17, who has an
ear to hear? Let him hear what the Spirit
says to the churches. Once again, we are commanded
to hear what the Spirit says to the church, not a suggestion.
And then we have a wonderful promise. Last part of verse 17. To the one who conquers, to the
faithful one, I will give some of the hidden manna. Well, the
manna, if you remember, in Exodus 16, God sent bread from heaven. and he fed the wandering people
of God. Well, some of that manna was
hidden in a pot and placed in the Ark of the Covenant. Israel
was on their way to a land flowing with milk and honey. Yet, as
they wandered in the wilderness before they got to the promised
land, They were grumbling and complaining, starving and hungry. And we have recorded in Exodus
16 that God gave them manna from heaven, bread rained down for
the people to gather and be fed. This manna is what sustained
them throughout their journey in the wilderness until they
reached the promised land. Christ is that hidden manna. Sent from heaven to give us life,
to sustain us as we travel through this barren wilderness on our
way to the promised land. John 6, 33-35 says, For the bread
of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the
world. They said to Him, they said to
Christ, Sir, give us this bread always. And Jesus said to them,
I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not
hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. John
6, 48 through 51, I am, Christ says, the bread of life. Listen,
your fathers ate manna in the wilderness and they died. This
is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat
of it and not die. I am the living bread that came
down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread,
he will live forever. And the bread that I will give
for the life of the world is my flesh. You know, the Jews believed that
when the Messiah would come back, they would find that Ark of the
Covenant and take that manna from inside the Ark of the Covenant
out of that pot and feast on it. They missed the fact that
Jesus Christ is that hidden manna. Hidden because you have to be
given eyes to see Him. Well, the white stone with a
new name There are numerous explanations for this, and some of them I
believe have merit. I won't go into great detail
on all these for the sake of time, but I think the ones that
have been the most relevant, that would have been the most
relevant to that time that this letter was written, and in the
area in which it was written, is that there was a white stone
given to the victors in the games. And that white stone was a sign
of victory and an entrance into the celebration at the end of
the games. The victory celebration. After
they had endured the hardship of the games, of the event, and
had been victorious. A white stone was also a vote
in the courts for innocence. or to cast a vote for an acquittal
of the one suspected of crime. Christ has won the victory. and enabled us to stand justified
before the Father, reconciled to Him judicially as though we
were innocent through the substitutionary atonement that He offered on
the cross for His people. A new name, a name only known
to the one who receives it, Again, there are numerous attempts to
understand this and I wish we had time to go down the rabbit
trail of all these, but I believe that The most probable explanation
for this is it's tied to Revelation 3.12. The one who conquers, I
will make him a pillar in the temple of my God, never shall
he go out of it, and 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 from my God out of heaven and my own new name. I think that's what this ties
to. Well, to sum these up, to conclude here this morning, what
are we to understand from this? Well, I think the first thing
is we need grace for the time and place in which we live. Equal
to the challenges that we face in our own time and place. I think second, we must not capitulate
to the world and its desires. Do you see the similarities with
what was going on in Pergamum to what is going on in the professing
church in America? How many of our so-called pastors
and church leaders are giving in, are capitulating with the
world and the world's desire in an effort to not be viewed
as unloving? Think about what is truly loving. If you were a doctor and you
really cared about your patients, and they came to you and something
that they were doing was causing them harm, harm unto death, what
loving doctor would tell them to continue in doing that which
is causing their condition? It is not unloving for us to
share the truth of God's Word with the world, even if they
hate it. Even when they hate it. Well, do we have a problem with
idolatry and false worship in America? Within the church in
America? You know, I'm way over time,
but I want to get this in. This issue that is so prevalent
right now with abortion. Think about what that is. Millions of babies being sacrificed
to the false god of sexual immorality. I'm going to keep doing what
I want to do. I'm going to keep worshiping
myself, body, my sexual desires, the desires of the flesh. And
if I get pregnant, I'm just gonna sacrifice my baby. That's what's going on in our
country by the millions today. Oh, my body, my choice. Make my own decision. Don't tell
the woman what to do. For your own pleasure, you're
offering human sacrifice to yourself. Do we have a problem in America
with false worship and idolatry? I'm not sure the condition at
Pergamum was any worse than what we are dealing with today in
America. And you know what? If you suggest
the exclusivity of Jesus Christ, you're in danger of the same
thing that's going on in the church at Pergamum. where Antipas,
my faithful witness, was killed among you. What about the little things?
Are we compromising with the world? Are we compromising so that we
can be at peace with the world? Sports gods. Actors. Music. The list goes on and on. Money. Success. Fame. I'm going to bow
down to those things? Oh, but I'm still a Christian.
No! It doesn't work that way. No
man can serve two masters. You can't do it. Either you don't
really know who Christ is, or you're in major need, as all
of us are, to live our lives in repentance. Our lives as Christians should
be characterized by repentance, turning away from sin and to
our Savior. turning to the Word for knowledge
of our sin and conviction, to the Holy Spirit to come for us
and lead us with power away from our sin to look at the One who
is the author and the finisher of our faith. And we must live knowing that
Christ is our way. He is our hidden manna. He is that which is provided
for us, that which sustains us through the wilderness of this
world, no matter what it brings us. If it brings us the fate of Antipas,
and Polycarp, and 11, 10 of the disciples, and Stephen, Precious in the sight of the
Lord is the death of his saints. Absent from the body, what? Present
with the Lord. What's the worst they can do
to me? Send me home to my father? Send
me to the promised land a little quicker than what I thought? He wins the victory, and those
who are with Him are called, chosen, and faithful. He who
has ears to hear, let him hear. Let's pray. Lord, we thank You
for the time that we've had. Lord, we pray that You would
just hide Your Word in our hearts, that we might not sin against
Thee. Lord, that Your Word might convict us of the sin in our
lives. that it might lead us to repentance and to faith in
the one who has provided for us, who sustains us, who gives
us bread from heaven to feed on as we wander through this
wilderness. Lord, give us grace needed to live our lives here in this
world that is contrary to you, this wasteland, this wilderness,
this land that is opposed to you until we reach the promised
land. We thank you. Thank you for your gifts. Thank
you for your grace and for your mercy. In your name we pray.
Amen.
The Compromised Church at Pergamum
Series The Revelation of Jesus Christ
| Sermon ID | 522221729457939 |
| Duration | 1:05:24 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Revelation 2:12-17 |
| Language | English |
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