going to be reading from Revelation chapter 2, and it's a translation based on the majority text on page 20 of your bulletins, or you can follow along in your Bibles. You'll notice just slightly different wording. Hear the Word of God. And to the messenger of the church in Pergamos write, These things says he who has the sharp two-edged sword. I know your works and where you live, where Satan's throne is, and you hold fast to my name and did not deny my faith during the days in which Antipas was my faithful witness who was killed among you where Satan lives. Nevertheless, I have a few things against you because you have there those who hold fast the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak, to throw a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat things offered to idols and to fornicate. Thus you also have those who hold fast to the doctrine of the Nicolaitans as well. Repent, or else I will come at you swiftly and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches. To the one who overcomes, I will grant to eat from the hidden manna And I will give him a white pebble and on the pebble a new name written, which no one knows except the receiver. Amen. Father, we thank you for your word. And it is our glory to possess Bibles and to be able to study them. And we pray that you would sanctify us by your word, that you would Give the illumination of your Holy Spirit so that we can see, not with blind eyes, but with eyes quickened and enabled to quickly receive. Father, sanctify us and cause our hearts to rejoice in all that you have for us. We pray for your anointing upon me that you would keep my mouth from stumbling and enable me to faithfully preach your word. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. Well Bible versions very typically do what my version New King James here does and they label this the compromising church. But was it any more compromised than the Church of Thyatira? No. It was compromised much less. In fact the bulk of the church loved the Lord and remained faithful to the Lord in many ways. It was not a liberal church. Now I will grant that if they didn't repent of their sin they would soon become a church like Thyatira and if Thyatira did not soon repent they would eventually become a liberal or an apostate church. But take a look at verse 13. I know your works and where you live where Satan's throne is. and you hold fast to my name and did not deny my faith during the days in which Antipas was my faithful witness who was killed among you where Satan lives. He told them you hold fast to my name. Now the Greek word is krateo, and it means to hold strongly or to hold victoriously or to hold steadfastly. Its central meaning is power. So here was a church that had powerfully held onto Christ's name and did not deny the faith when pressured to do so, even in the face of martyrdom. This was a church that was involved in spiritual warfare to some degree and they were on the front lines of the battlefield. This city was the hub of Satan's worldwide activities and so Jesus speaks of Pergamos as being the place where Satan's throne is and the place where he dwells. Now sometime in the future when I give a sermon showing how the book of Revelation is structured as a spiritual war manual. I hope to piece together a lot of these different strands and show the significance of this passage for our overall spiritual warfare. But for the purposes of this sermon, I just want to point out they had gone into the lion's den, so to speak, and they were trying to evict the lion from that den. Well Satan doesn't take too kindly to that and he did everything he could to destroy the church. Now initially he used severe persecution. Apparently Satan moved the authorities there to kill Antipas and to make a public example out of him perhaps through a public torture hoping to bring fear to the church. That Antipas must have inspired courage in the church because there's no evidence that they had fear. The fear did not seem to be one of their problems. They held powerfully and victoriously to Christ's name and they did not deny Christ's faith. Now church tradition says that Antipas was a disciple of the Apostle John. He was the first bishop to be appointed as the moderator of Presbytery and he taught his church how to engage in spiritual warfare against the demonic. One of the lines of evidence that we have is when he would go to these temples and be preaching, the demons would scream. It was like they were terrified. They would cry out and say that they were going to leave that city because Antipas was forcing them out. And so their spiritual warfare outside the city was apparently having an enormous impact. And so Satan changed his strategies. Persecution didn't seem to be having too much effect. So what Satan tries to do is to get God himself to fight against the church. Well, the only way God's going to fight against his people is if they have a sin that is unconfessed in their midst. You may remember that Achan was the reason that Joshua lost the battle of Ai. So verse 16 says, repent or else I will come at you swiftly and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. Now you'll notice there an odd change from you to them. The word repent is addressed to the you, that's to the church as he's speaking to them through the leadership. But the them is addressed to the antinomians in their midst. If the leadership failed to discipline those whom God wanted discipline, God would come at the church, which means the church itself would come under discipline. But even if the church failed to discipline these antinomians, God was going to continue to fight against them. First Corinthians 11, Jesus speaks of some of the different ways in which Jesus fights against church members. Some of them were weak, some were sick, some had even died. And so it speaks of Jesus fighting against a certain segment of that church. So he's making a distinction between two sets of people, and he handles them in different ways. There are antinomians that he has absolutely no interest in. He's going to fight against them with his sword. And then there's the church leadership, which is in trouble for neglecting or ignoring the antinomians, for refusing to fight against those whom Jesus intends to fight against. Now we saw in the last section of the Church of Smyrna that it really is important for Christians to have each other's backs during times of persecution. But that does not apply to all who profess to be Christians. It does not apply to the Nicolaitans. They were no doubt persecuted by the Jews and by the Romans just like the good guys were. And the church mistakenly had the backs of these Nicolaitans. They may not have agreed with them, but they were in solidarity with them. And Jesus calls the leadership to repentance for failing to cast out these Nicolaitans. So in the last section, we saw that it's good for Christians to have each other's backs during persecution, but there are limits to that. When the termites come into the church, masquerading as Christians, God calls us to exterminate the termites, right? And later during this sermon, we're gonna look at those termites in verses 14 through 15. But in comparing the admonitions from the sermon that looked at Smyrna, what Jesus gave to Smyrna, what Jesus gives to Pergamos, I think the most obvious application is that Christians are not called to have the backs of heretics even when those heretics are being persecuted. Okay, we should not be sending money to modalists and to Roman Catholics and to other heretics being persecuted in other countries simply because they call themselves Christians. We are called to have the backs of the true church. And I really find it sad that evangelicals are standing in solidarity with heretics in other countries. It's just not looking at the situation through spiritual eyes. In any case, and the thing you need to keep in mind, Jesus is fighting against those heretics and we're supporting them with money. It's not right. It really is not right. But I wanted to set the context that this was not an entirely compromised church. It was a church that was willing to fight against Satan in the world out there. From church history, it seems that they were having an incredible success in doing that. But they failed to fight against Satan's works within the church. They were so nice that they couldn't bear to exercise discipline despite the fact that these compromises were absolutely horrible. Antinomianism. doctrinal infidelity, eating things offered to idols, sexual immorality. I mean, how can people whom Jesus himself says are holding fast to his name, they're not denying the faith, Jesus says that, how can they turn a blind eye to those who just as vigorously are holding to the exact opposite? And yet this is a syndrome that happens in every age. It's why so many denominations have gone into apostasy. The apostates were once a tiny minority who pleaded for kindness and patience and tolerance. And the good pastors, they just didn't have it and seemed too mean-spirited to discipline these people, so they left them alone. And over the decades and the generations, The bad guys, the liberals took over and they kicked the good guys out of the denominations. Now it grieved the good guys, the bad guys believed what they did, but they didn't do anything about it. This is the Pergamos syndrome. And if the Pergamos church were to continue in its ways for very long, it would soon become the Thyatira church. And if it continued even then, it would soon become an apostate church. By the way, the Thyatira church we're going to be seeing next time The reason it went worse is it was harboring within its leadership evil people. The moderator had no business being a church officer at all, the way his wife, Jezebel, and we're going to be seeing that was his wife, the way that she was acting. And yet, even in the leadership, it was tolerated. But over the last 150 years, very few evangelicals have engaged in church discipline and the results have been absolutely disastrous. And what I want to do this morning, I want to illustrate this problem with the issue of abortion. And the reason I've picked abortion is because everybody in the evangelical church today, it seems like, recognizes this is an evil. This is a monstrous evil. I suspect no pastor would get away with preaching a pro-abortion sermon. He might not be disciplined but he'd probably be shown the door in some way or another. So nowadays we see this is a really clear-cut thing. But did you realize that prior to the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade pro-abortion decision in 1973 that most of the evangelical church was soft on abortion and refused to discipline pastors who clearly, clearly promoted abortion. Christianity Today, which has been thought of as the flagship magazine of evangelicalism, I think it's always been neo-evangelical, not really evangelical, that's what they have the reputation of as being the flagship magazine for evangelicalism defended abortion as early as 1968. That's five years before Roe v. Wade. In an article called A Protestant Affirmation that magazine declared on behalf of the Evangelical Church Whether or not the performance of an induced abortion is sinful, we're not agreed. But about the necessity of it and permissibility for it under certain circumstances, we are in accord. How could they get away with a statement like that? I mean, these leaders were actually a minority, but they were never disciplined. It was because of the Pergamos syndrome. Let me read from an article in 2013 by Al Mohler, who's A guy that's done a lot of good in the evangelical church. But he wrote it that year because that was the 40th anniversary for the Roe v. Wade decision and he lamented the sad state of affairs on this issue of abortion within evangelicalism back in the 60s and 70s. It's not that the church as a whole was for it. They probably were not. It's that they had in their midst leaders who were advocating abortion and they were getting away with it. In fact, the pro-aborts gained enough numbers that in some denominations, some evangelical denominations, the denomination as a whole actually defended it. Moeller says, but prior to Roe v. Wade in 1973, evangelicals were, with a few notable exceptions, confused and uncertain about the question of abortion. Two years before Roe, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution calling for, quote, legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such circumstances as rape, incest, clear evidence of fetal abnormality, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother. Wow, it's almost like the Southern Baptist Church wrote the language for the decision that was going to be made by the Supreme Court two years later. I wouldn't dream of doing that right now, but because the antithesis has been drilled into the consciousness is probably the reason there's a shame, a certain shame about it today, but that was not true back there. Mueller goes on, the resolution reveals two very important aspects of this story. First, that the language of the emotional, mental, and physical life of the mother was already in use, and second, that the convention called for the legalization of what would become abortion on demand. After Roe, the language about emotional and mental health would be used to allow virtually any abortion for any reason. And we wonder how could any organization, any evangelical denomination take such a scandalous position? Pro-abortion? Really? How could they not discipline such leaders? It should be shocking to us. I think it should be just as shocking as verses 14 through 15 are shocking to our sensibilities today. How could Pergamos, that could not have been a church more than six years old, because Acts ends in AD 60 and this is 66. So it's a very young church, planted by the apostles presumably. How could this church have allowed these kinds of things, antinomianism, sexual immorality, doctrinal error, but they did. And they did so for the same reason that denomination after denomination has gone from faithfulness into unbelief. The Episcopal Church, the PCUSA, the American Baptist, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Methodist Church, many, many others. If Satan cannot win the battle against the church by persecution, he will try to introduce termites into the church to undermine it, and the Pergamos Syndrome is too nice to kill the termites. You know, we speak of this nowadays as You know, one of the evidences of postmodernism, well, let me tell you something, it's been around for longer than postmodernism has. It's a situation where the good guys don't have the heart to fight against other people that seem good as well. And they hope to coexist and still keep the house faithful. But it doesn't work that way. Satan is guaranteed to win in every denomination that maintains the Pergamos syndrome. So how do we avoid it? Well, the first admonition Jesus gives to us is don't go into the battle alone. It might have been very tempting for people to just bail on the institutional church when its leaders are refused to discipline such high handed sin as what was going on in Pergamos. And this is what's happening all across Christianity is people are bailing from the institutional church because they are rightly offended. They're rightly disgusted with what the church puts up with. And so they go and they they worship as a family in their living rooms. Have no membership in a legitimate church. They're not under the authority of legitimate ministers of the gospel and rather than receiving the sacraments from the church which Jesus insists in every one of these letters he insists that it must be through the church. These so-called house churches have stolen the sacraments and fathers serve communion and they serve baptism they baptize their children and it is such a clear violation of jurisdictions. But secondly it is dangerous to go into battle alone. John says, and to the messenger, and we saw before this is not the heavenly messenger, this is an earthly messenger, an officer of the church, and to the messenger of the church in Pergamos write, these things says he who has the sharp two-edged sword. So Jesus is giving his message to the whole church through the messenger that he has not given up on the church and the clear implication is we shouldn't give up on the church either. Now are there churches that we should leave? Absolutely yes. Revelation 18 verse 4 calls upon the Jewish Christians to leave the synagogue system which had become apostate and if Pergamos became apostate all of the churches that were faithful would have a moral obligation to leave that church to the apostate church in Revelation 18 verse 4 Jesus says come out of her my people lest you have fellowship with her sins and lest you receive of her plagues. So he's not denying that the synagogue of Satan had true believers in it his people were in it but he calls them to leave. When a church becomes apostate, failure to leave that church makes you in some sense a fellowshipper with their sins. Covenantally, you may not be guilty of the sins yourself, but you're a fellowshipper of those sins. You're going to receive the judgments that that denomination receives as well. So even though I have met genuine believers in the Roman Catholic Church and in apostate Protestant churches, I always call them to leave. You don't have an option. You must leave. Once the Council of Trent anathematized the true gospel of Jesus Christ, it became a synagogue of Satan. And once the PCUSA, just as one example, at the highest levels, at their highest courts, they affirmed ministers who deny the deity of Jesus Christ, deny the true gospel, deny the inerrancy of the scripture, then I think the true churches within the PCUSA have a moral obligation to leave, to come out of her. But that was not true of these seven churches. They were not yet apostate. And so there's gotta be a measuring stick by which you can see who is apostate, who is not apostate. They were in need of reformation, but it was better to stick with imperfect churches than to face the battle against Satan alone. You need the protective canopy of the covenant, and that is what church membership provides. Hebrews warns us that when we forsake the assembling of ourselves together, it's very easy for us to end up in apostasy. Whether you're cast out of the church through excommunication or whether you leave the church on your own, the end result is the same. You're outside of the covenant. You're on Satan's turf. You're on extremely dangerous territory. So make sure you don't go into the battle alone. Jesus did not promise to build his parachurch ministries. He promised, I will build my church. and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And this is a message that's desperately needed today. The church has been minimized. It's been almost swept to the side as being irrelevant, unless it's a church that happens to have an awesome band and awesome quote-unquote worship. And I would say, no, music does not constitute worship. Worship as a whole, well, we won't go down that rabbit trail. Secondly, make sure you battle in the strength of Jesus Christ and not in your own strength. The second half of verse 12 says, These things says he who has the sharp two-edged sword. You're not helpless in facing persecution outside the church. And you are not helpless in facing compromise within the church. There are things that can be done. And Jesus leads the way into this spiritual battle. I think it's important that we know that we are fighting with Him instead of fighting against Him. Verse 16 makes clear, Jesus will fight against members of the church that refuse to repent of their sins. His sword is not raised in vain. And Jesus wants us to get on board with his fight wherever his fight might be. So I think this is both an encouragement and it is a challenge. It's an encouragement because we don't have to do this alone. Jesus is there. Our defender is leading the way in the battle. But it's a challenge as well. If you're going the opposite direction that your defender is going, you're not in the safest place. The safest place is right behind your defender. But more importantly, we must fight these battles with spiritual weapons, not carnal weapons. We must fight with the strength we receive from the Lord, not in our own strength. And we must use the strategies of His word, which, by the way, that sword of His mouth, that's the Bible. It's the strategies of His word. It's not the worldly strategies that so many churchmen use when they play politics in the church. So the church must make sure she is battling with Christ, in the strength of Christ, with the strategies of Christ. But then verses 13 through 16 make it clear that we must take into account the demonic when we fight side by side with Jesus. There was a reason why Jesus calls the woman in verse 20 Jezebel. commentators believe she was a literal woman there but most commentators do not believe that was her real name they think that was a symbolic name and just as a for example if I was to call one of you Jezebel I doubt you would think I forgot your name I can forget names right but I think you'd immediately recognize I'm comparing you to the wife of Ahab, who was a manipulative wife, moved by demonic to undermine and to manipulate and to control. So you'd know immediately, I was accusing you of being manipulated by the same demons that she was. That's what John is going to be doing with the church of Thyatira. Well, he does something similar in verse 14 when he speaks of the doctrines of Balaam. So we shouldn't be looking for some historical figure who had the name Balaam in the first century. What he's doing is he is saying, look, the doctrines that you guys are teaching follow the same demonic influence that Balaam the occultist was driven by in the book of Numbers. Now he was a guy that pretended to serve God but his teachings his practices were actually moved by the demonic. Now he talked about Jehovah and he may have thought he was following Jehovah but he was actually being moved by the demonic. So by making these references Jesus is making the church aware that the problem that churches have been caused by demons influencing people. I think we're on really dangerous ground when we fail to recognize the principalities and the powers that lie behind the struggles that the church faces. There's a lot of churches where people are running from fire to fire trying to put out these fires by dealing with the humans who are igniting these fires. Well you can't ignore the humans obviously But you got to look behind those and see the demonic and their spiritual weapons that God has given to us that we need to be engaged in. And Ephesians is quite clear. If you're not fighting the demons, you're not going to be very effective in these battles. And I hope to develop an entire sermon, perhaps even a series of sermons that shows how revelation teaches us how to engage in battle against the demonic. It's a fascinating feature of this book. Now, let's Let's look at how they face some of these dangerous battles very, very well. Church history says they did it very well, but I think verses 13 and following show that as well. I know your works and where you live, where Satan's throne is, and you hold fast to my name and did not deny my faith during the days in which Antipas was my faithful witness, who was killed among you, where Satan lives. Now the church was admirable in the way in which they faithfully withstood demonic attack from outside. Satan could not get them to be afraid. He was not able to get them to retreat. He was not able to get them to give up their works of ministry. Jesus says, I know your works. They continued the works of ministry despite opposition. And where did they do those works? I think this is really significant. They were penetrating Satan's territory. They lived where Satan lived. They were on the front lines of the battle and they were not backing off one inch. In fact, the church was extending the kingdom of Christ and they were parked right on the headquarters of Satan himself. Church history says that the demons were terrified of Antipas. I mentioned that they screamed when he came around. And I think by going into this territory, seeking to plant a church there, they were taking seriously Christ's words that he would build his church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it. Now gates are defensive mechanisms. So if Satan has erected gates to try to keep the church out, He's afraid of the church. He's afraid of the kingdom of Jesus Christ, right? And that church was there trying to batter down the gates of hell. This is the first of many hints in this book that Satan will lose the war. Now he might win a few battles, and he's won quite a few battles in America, but he is destined to lose the war. Christ's call in the Great Commission is to make every nation a Christian nation that thoroughly lives out all of God's Word in everything that they do, and the trajectory of history is to have every demon cleansed from the land and Satan himself bound in the pit. That's the direction that it's going. Here, they're trying to do their part. They've gone right into the Satan's lair. They're trying to evict him, and Jesus praises them for that. Now, here's the question. Why did Satan have his throne in Pergamos rather than in Rome? You would think, since Rome is the capital city where every part of the empire is being controlled, that that's where he would have it. But here, it's quite clear that he's not living in Rome. He's living in Pergamos. Last word of verse 13. He lives there. The more literal rendering is he's currently settled down there. And early in the verse, it says his throne was there. This is where Satan is calling the shots for his worldwide empire. Why? Well, I cannot be dogmatic on this, but I believe that Satan previously had his throne in Rome. And I get this from my understanding of Daniel. But when the church of Jesus Christ invaded that area, it was engaging in spiritual warfare against the gates of hell and being quite successful. Now here's what you need to realize. If you are genuinely a Christian, you're regenerate. you have at least one angel that is assigned to you. Even children, Matthew, what is it, 10 verse 18, says even our covenant children have an angel that is assigned to protect them. So anytime there are new believers coming into a region, there are more angels that are coming into that region as well. And so with this growth of the church, which the book of Acts indicates it was growing tremendously, and Philippians and other passages indicate even Caesar's household was beginning to have numerous believers. The Praetorian Guard was coming to Christ. So there's this growing army of godly angels that has invaded Rome. Now Romans 16 verse 20, assures the Roman Christians and the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly." Now, some partial preterists, they say, well, that must be a reference to the Christianization of Rome 300 years later. I don't think so. The word for shortly is tachos and the Greek dictionary defines it as a very, brief period of time. I don't think it's referring to something 300 years later. Satan himself is about to lose some major battle in Rome. Romans was written in 55 AD, about 11 years before this book of Revelation was written, and the church was being so successful that he says, The turning point is about to happen. Satan's about to get crushed under your feet. He's going to be on the retreat. Well, Revelation 2.13 uses the present tense to indicate Satan is right now settled down in Pergamos, and it may well have been a strategic move on his part. He still has generals underneath him who are going to do everything that they can to defeat the church in Rome. In fact, God, we will discover later in this book, God is going to unleash an incredibly powerful, incredibly evil demon from the bottomless pit and put him into Satan's hands and Satan is going to allow that demon to inhabit Nero and turn Nero into the beast. But there is clearly a demonic dimension to the beast. Revelation 11, verse 7 speaks of, quote, the beast that ascends out of the bottomless pit. And Revelation 17, 8 speaks of, quote, the beast that is about to ascend out of the bottomless pit. Now that is not Satan. It's not Satan. This is a horrific, demonic leader that is under Satan's control, under the dragon's control. So it is not as if Satan is abandoning Rome as a lost cause. He will have plenty of demonic officers and demonic armies that are at work in the capital. But based on my reading of Ezekiel and Isaiah and Daniel and other passages, it's my belief that the growing presence of dangerous elect angels is making Satan realize that he needs to leave Rome as strategic and he goes to Pergamos. He's going to a stronger stronghold. Now why would Pergamos be the second best place to go? I've already given what might be one reason. It's a very young church. If Acts ends in 60 A.D., some date it 61 A.D., and this is 66 A.D., it's not a very old church, but it was an incredibly aggressive church. It was growing like crazy in Pergamos. But in any case, he may well have left because there were not as many Christians there, not as many elect angels to contend with. So it may have been a safer place for Satan to put his headquarters, but I think there's a lot more to it than that. When you consider the leverage points of society, Pergamos is perfect. It's the perfect destination for Satan to go. It had enormous influence throughout the empire. For example, no other city had the kind of leverage that Pergamos had in conforming medicine to a certain pattern. the influential physician Galen, who is very famous even to this day. He tied medicine and occultism together by means of the shrine of Asclepius. Asclepius is in your bulletin, in your outline there. It's the physician holding the pole with a snake wrapped around that pole. He was originally a physician who was very famous, noted for miraculous cures which were attributed to the gods. AKA demons. And they claim that he became a God and his name means Serpent Holder. Now, in any case, anyone who wanted to be certified by Galen and the other practitioners in that city had to go through a process. And when you've got that kind of control, bad things can happen and bad things did indeed happen. Don't be surprised that the various medical associations in America are pro-GLBT, pro-abortion, pro-statist, and by statist I mean that they are using the government to enforce certification and they're using the government to impose certain practices universally across the states. I find it incredibly offensive that one of our Christian candidates for president has the audacity to say recently that he would impose vaccinations upon everybody with no religious exemptions, no exemptions whatsoever. And you wonder, here's a person who's a Christian who loves the Lord. How could he make a declaration like that that is so status? It's certainly not constitutional for the federal government to do that. Well, I think He doesn't know better. I think he's got a veil over his mind because his whole life he has spent in a stronghold of medicine that makes people where they cannot think outside the box. There's only one way of doing things. It is a leverage point of control that Satan uses. Now you may not have been aware of it, but the current symbol for the medical practice, a pole with a serpent around it, That came from this city. It's an occult symbol. It's an occult symbol. So don't think of medicine as neutral. It is not. Neither homeopathic nor allopathic medicine is neutral. We always need to approach everything in the world with caution, with eyes wide open and say, Lord guide me and protect me. as I go into this. Now let's just go through a few other things. There were other things that made Pergamos a perfect place to be the communication hub for Satan's kingdom. For example, Pergamos was very influential in education and preparing the next generation of educators. People came there from all over the empire to be trained. One of the things that they were famous for was a, get this, 200,000 volume library. It was just enormous library. So it was a hub for education. Well, if Satan can capture education, he can have influence all over the empire. Pergamos was also one of the most statist of these cities, and statism is a perfect tool for Satan. If he can use the civil government to solidify the control already gained in the other leverage points, wow, he's going to do so. There's a reason why government seemed to irresistibly move toward control of education and medicine and arts and media and everything else. Well, in any case, Pergamos was noted for its zealous devotion to the emperor with the king of Pergamos pushing and finally convincing the entire province of Asia to engage in emperor worship. And because of the work that he had engaged in, They were given the honor of building the first temple for emperor worship. And so it became a hub for political influence and activity. I'll just give you one more. It was an occult hub. Books point out that it was the nerve center, the nerve center for the four biggest pagan cults, the cults of Zeus, Athena, Dionysius, and Asclepius. And even though there were bigger centers for the worship of Apollo, Venus and Bacchus, Pergamos was well connected with those cults as well. And the history books say it was a thriving hub of the occult. So on just about any level that you might want to consider, Pergamos was an influential city, and I think it would have been perfect for Satan for two reasons. First of all, it's a little safer place for him to be than Rome right now. And then secondly, he could use it as a strategic point of communication with demons who are managing the leverage points of the Roman Empire. And when we deal with spiritual warfare, I hope to show the significance of this. Christians must once again go after the leverage points of society. The evangelical church is completely backed away from this. You look at missions today, it's utterly different than missions in the 1800s. They went after the leverage points. They don't do that today. Instead, they just say, we need to just preach a gospel. And it's a very truncated gospel that they are preaching. And so we actually are the ones, the church is the ones who has made it so easy for Satan to take over America. It's really our fault. It's because we've abandoned the strategies of the scripture. At least Pergamos was not doing that. They were invading the lion's den, just like the Church of Rome had done. Now let me quickly show, and I won't spend much time, more time on this, but let me quickly show how Satan used the same strategy in Babylon many, many years before. Isaiah 13 through 14 speaks of Satan inhabiting the king of Babylon. So that was his headquarters. If he's inhabiting the king of Babylon, That means he lives, he dwells in Babylon and that makes perfect sense. That's the capital city of the empire and it would make it much more convenient for controlling the empire. But by the time we get to 585 BC, Ezekiel 28 says that Satan is now inhabiting the king of Tyre, Ithobal II. And people might wonder, what's with that? Why is Satan moving from the capital to Tyre? That's just a rinky-dink little city. Well, it's actually not rinky-dink. It was a massive center there. And I think the answer is exactly the same as for Pergamos. When the exile happened, Jeremiah, you may remember, spoke of good figs and bad figs. There were dirty, rotten figs. He said that represents the people who were staying in Israel. The good figs are the people who are being cast into exile in Israel. And so the good figs would be people like Daniel and Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego. And any time You have new believers entering an area. You've got angels invading that area. Why? Because we have angels that accompany us all the time, right? Anytime you move. Aldriches have just moved. You got angels invading that territory, and it's upsetting the status quo in the spiritual world. There's going to be new conflicts that are going to be set in place. Okay, so reading between the lines, it appears to me that this massive, massive influx of God's angels into Babylon has made it dangerous for Satan to stay there. It appears that Satan left the capital, established his throne entire, And from Daniel, we learned that Satan left the prince to manage Babylon and Persia, but Ezekiel indicates he went to Tyre. Why Tyre? Same reason as Pergamos. Incredibly influential city, especially in trade and commerce, but in other areas as well. Well, enough on that rabbit trail. Back to the main point that's in your outline. The church of Pergamos faced the dangers of entering the den of the lion, and they faced them very, very well. There is a reason why Jesus praises them. You entered the den of the lion though and you might get eaten by that lion. But Satan is certainly not going to willingly retreat a second time. He is a dangerous, a formidable foe, but the church faced the outside dangers quite well. What they failed to recognize was Satan's strategies within the church and thus the rebuke in verses 14 through 15. Nevertheless I have a few things against you because you have there those who hold fast the doctrine of Balaam who taught Balak to throw a stumbling block before the sons of Israel to eat things offered to idols and to fornicate. Thus you also have those who hold fast to the doctrine of the Nicolaitans as well. Now we started with that didn't we so I don't need to develop it at length. We asked the question how on earth could a church put up with a minority who ate things offered to idols, who committed fornication, who taught the doctrines of antinomianism. And actually, exactly the same Greek word is used, krateo, that was used of the good guys holding fast. It's used of these bad guys holding fast to their doctrines. They're defending their doctrines. We're the ones who are in the right. We're the ones who are really defending the Bible. Satan knows how to use the Bible. And I want to illustrate it with the same thing that we started with on abortion. Back in the 60s and 70s, I saw many evangelical leaders and even Reformed leaders who did exactly the same thing and who defended, for example, Meredith Klein, defending from Exodus why abortion is not murder. It may be bad. Maybe evil, but it's not as evil as other things. It's not definitely not murder. I saw others who vigorously opposed pastors from saying anything about it. They insisted you must only preach the gospel. You may not preach against abortion. And so you can see Satan's fingers getting involved, trying every trick in the book to keep the church from exterminating the termites. There was a friend of mine, I was absolutely flabbergasted when I saw this, he was a leader in a very prominent organization up in Canada and he wrote an article, let's see this would have been back in the late 70's, he wrote an article saying that it is biblically unethical for Christians to argue against abortion or to picket in front of abortion clinics, like our church was picketing there and praying actually. We spent an hour in imprecatory prayer, praise God, and let's continue this. But he said no, that was totally unethical. Now he said personally he's opposed to abortion, but we need to be focused on the gospel which is, again, a truncated view of the gospel, and not be opposing these kinds of things. I was absolutely floored when I saw that. There were others who were far worse. I know a number of evangelical teachers from the 60s and 70s who vigorously defended abortion, and they held steadfastly to false doctrine. Here's the conclusion of the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society in 1990. while making the statement that abortion for convenience devalues life, the whole article devalued life by allowing for abortion in difficult circumstances. And I want you to pay attention as I'm reading this, just think of the demonic deception in this article as they pretend to be standing for life, standing for the Bible, standing for God, standing for the image of God in man. It's just remarkable language. And I'm just taking a little section out of it So this is the Evangelical Theological Society, 1990. It says, almost all ethicists agree that abortion is allowed if the mother's health is in jeopardy. That is, if the birth of the fetus would be fatal to her life. And this is actually a red herring and a false dichotomy. But anyway, he goes on to argue for other exceptions. If a woman conceives against her consent through rape or incest, and she wants an abortion, her request should be respected. In this case, she is more than just a body. She is a person created in God's image, and to deny her this is to deny her personhood. As Norman Geisler has expressed it, a potentially human person is not granted a birthright by violation of a full human person unless her consent is subsequently given. I'll keep on reading, but those of you who admire Norman Geisler as an evangelical leader of the foremost quality, keep this in mind. The guy, well, I'll get mad. I won't get into that. It goes on, it says, regarding incest, Geisler states, allowing an end to blossom in the name of a potential good, the embryo, seems to be a poor way of handling evil, especially when the potential good, the embryo, may itself turn out to be another form of evil. It is better to prevent the evil from coming to fruition than to perpetuate it. The third instance of a permissible abortion is when a child will be born with grave physical or mental defects. And it goes on to justify the aborting of a Down syndrome child. Now it's horrifying to see what respected leaders of the evangelical church could justify in the name of biblical ethics. They were blind. They were blind. And they later, many of these people, later changed their views. They're now pro-life. Okay? Many of these people. But rather than pointing the finger at them, I think we should do as David did, And pray, search me, oh God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxieties and see if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. You see, the compromises that you and I may embrace may not seem like such a big deal because there's maybe no social, you know, societal shame. There's maybe no church shame. that is involved in it. It's definitely the case for many of the compromises that we can see so clearly elsewhere. But we need to pray, Lord, show us our own compromises that could be here. Maybe 20 years from now, Christian parents who are sending their children to government schools will recognize with horror what they have done, that this is really tantamount to child endangerment. and to child abandonment and child abuse. But now they defend it as the moral thing, the imperative to send missionaries into the public schools. I have Christian relatives that believe that and little do they realize is what they're doing is they're asking the pagans to disciple their children to become pagans. It's horrifying and failure to recognize it is the Pergamos syndrome. I've talked to Christian friends who justify heavy petting and other forms of fornication with their girlfriend. They think I am a legalist. I think they are a Nicolaitan. The Nicolaitans in the Christian college that Kathy and I went to actually persecuted Kathy and me for not kissing prior to marriage. And we were not even imposing this on them. We're not telling you how to do. We just know we're going to be in sin if we do this. But they would get angry at us because we were not being Nicolaitans. If we had time we could go through many areas where the modern church is guilty of the Nicolaitan error. Entire denominations push for socialism as a moral imperative when the Bible describes socialism as public theft. It is horrific, it is destroying our nation and yet the churches are doing nothing, nothing to oppose such false doctrine. Why are senators, congressmen, judges and presidents not being brought up under church discipline for the ungodly stands that they take? It's because of the Pergamos syndrome within the evangelical church. We stand aghast at the kind of arrogant Nicolaitanism that this chapter describes. Why? Because we're looking at it from a distance. But we cannot see our own forms and we need to pray, Lord, open my heart. If there's any areas in which my heart has become nicolaitan, which I'm justifying from the scripture, things that you hate, things that you are fighting against, please show me. I don't want to fight against what you are fighting against. I don't want to be for what you are fighting against. Verse 16 says, repent. or else I will come at you swiftly and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth." So he's threatening to come at the church, so the church is culpable, and fight against them or the heretical antinomianists. Now, it's obvious what the Nicolaitans needed to repent of, but what is it that the church needs to repent of? What's their sin? Well, their sin is being so nice that they ignore flagrant sin and flagrant antinomian heresy. We cannot be content to simply fight against evil in society. We've got to fight against, we've got to confront it from the pulpit. We need even to discipline it. And by the way, discipline is one of the most loving things you could do for a Nicolaitan, because if he is truly an elect, that discipline will bring him to repentance. Now I'm not going to take the time to delve into it, but the famous passage of 2nd Corinthians. Chapter 10 on spiritual warfare makes church discipline as one of the powerful. It looks weak in the eyes of the world, but one of the powerful tools for tearing down Satan's kingdom. It's usually taken out of context, but it says, for though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God, for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. And we think, hallelujah, glorious words. But then we take it out of context. The very next clause In the sentence, without any period, says, and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled. He's calling the church to engage in church discipline as one of those spiritual weapons that will make the kingdom of Satan fall. Yet the modern church almost never engages in church discipline. Is it any wonder that we are losing the battle? Not to me. When Achan is in Israel, we cannot win against AI. Church discipline must be used against demonic strongholds, demonic arguments, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of Christ. And when the church leadership is willing to be obedient to exercise all of the spiritual tools, Jesus will back them up with his sword. As Calvin pointed out, Jesus binds in heaven what we are willing to bind on earth. But Jesus calls us to fight wherever He is fighting, and He is fighting against antinomianism within the church, not just antinomianism out there. Now, verse 17 ends by encouraging us to have three things in place when we re-engage in the thrills of spiritual warfare. If you have these three things, you're much less likely to be taken in by the devil. First thing we need to have is spiritual sensitivity to the leading of the Holy Spirit through His Word. Jesus says, He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches. Now every word in verses 12 through 17, actually every word in this whole book is a word of Jesus, and yet when calling the church to pay attention to what is being written on his behalf, he says, he who is an ear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches. And the implication is clear. To listen to the Spirit means to listen to Christ's inerrant word. You will never have the Spirit leading you to do something contrary to the Bible. But the Bible always requires dependence upon the Holy Spirit so that we do not become dull of hearing. When we approach the Bible trying to make it fit what we want to do, we're not coming with listening ears. We're coming with a mouth that's telling God, Lord, no, no, no, I want you to do this for me. We're not coming with listening ears. But when we approach the words of the Bible with hearts desiring to obey and sensitivities attuned to anything the Holy Spirit might be teaching us, He will equip us for the battle. But don't separate the Word and Spirit. Listen to the Spirit by listening to Christ's words. And reading the Bible without the illumination of the Holy Spirit can lead to some of the same rationalizations that the Nicolaitans engaged in. Now second, we must reject halfway measures. He addresses only those committed to winning. When you fool around with sin, you try to get as close as you can without actually sinning, you're not an overcomer. When you make negotiations with sin, you don't lop off the head of that sin. then Jesus is not going to respect that kind of fighting. He's not going to take you seriously. Jesus addresses his promise to the one who overcomes. So he's calling for an attitude of winning, not just an attitude of fighting. And the way the evangelicals are fighting in the culture wars of today, you can tell they're not expecting to win. In fact, their incrementalism that leads to compromises is guaranteed to lose. You cannot win a battle that Jesus is not willing to fight. Let me repeat that. You cannot win a battle that Jesus is not willing to fight. If He's not fighting with us or we're not fighting with Him, we're going to lose. So make sure that you are seeking the kingdom of God and His righteousness and that you're not just fighting your own battles. God calls us to be soldiers of the cross who are committed to winning and who are in this for the long haul. And then finally, recoup your strength on a weekly basis through intimacy with Christ. The rest of verse 17 gives three images of the Lord's Supper that speak of closeness and intimacy and fellowship that we can have with him. Let's just take a quick look at the first image of manna. To the one who overcomes, I will grant to eat from the hidden manna. What's the hidden manna? Well, the only place in the Bible you can find hidden manna was the sample of manna that was placed into a pot and put into the Ark of the Covenant. No one in the Old Testament would dare even look at that, let alone to eat it. Even the high priest couldn't do that. If he opened up that lid, he would have been struck dead just like that. And yet many people are amazed at the degree of closeness that the high priest had. Once a year, he was able to actually go before the throne of grace, which is the mercy seat. And he was actually able to minister before this fiery pillar of the theophany of God. Can you imagine standing face to face with that fiery pillar? You'd go out of that place ready to take on the world. I'd be pumped if I saw that. But Jesus says we have something infinitely better. We're being invited not just into the Holy of Holies, not just before His throne, but into His throne, eating of the hidden manna. It's a mind-blowing image of how close our walk with God can be. That's what he pledges to us in the Lord's Table. Now, this is only pledged to overcomers who have spiritual ears to hear what the Spirit is saying in the Scriptures. This is not a sacrament that can be partaken of without faith. Unfortunately, adult communionists take this way too far, and they say little children cannot be overcomers. Oh, no, they can. 1 John 4, 4 says, you are of God, little children. And he addresses fathers, young men and little children. So he's talking about literal, literal little children. You are of God, little children, and have overcome them because he who is in you is greater than he was in the world. So it does not prove adult communion. It just proves communion by faith. First John says this is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith. That's first John five, verse four. It doesn't matter how great the child is. It matters whether that child has faith in the greatness of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is the kind of fellowship we can be refreshed in when we come to the Lord's table. The second image is just as neat. It says, and I will give him a white pebble and on the pebble a new name written. Now Beal's commentary and Chilton and others have pointed out that that could possibly be a reference to the manna, because the manna was likened to a bdellium stone, but then Beal says it could also be a reference to the tokens that were given to admit to the feast, and since he's already talked about the feast, he's not duplicating himself here, he's talking about an admission to the feast, and because the name of each person is written on the stone, I think it's just a clear reference to the token admitting to the feast. And the application I would make is that admission to the Lord's Supper is personal and specific. The Lord's table is served to overcomers who have spiritual ears willing to listen to the Spirit speaking in the scriptures and the invitation is specific and one by one rather than generic and to all. But having said that, this image is encouraging overcomers that they're not just statistics in an army. They're not fodder, cannon fodder. You know, yeah, we can waste these people. And who was it that got shot? I don't know his name. No. Each one of us that is in the army is cared for personally by the Lord. Jesus is willing to have fellowship with each one. He invites us personally. By the way, one of the interesting things that I found was that the Scottish church used to require people to present tokens before they could participate in the Lord's table. So people from other churches would have to meet with the elders ahead of time. They'd be examined by the elders. They'd be given a token. I had to do this. When I was in the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, I wasn't a member there yet. And I didn't know any of this. And they said, no, you'll have to meet with the elders ahead of time. And so, boy, they gave me a grilling. They were tough. They gave me a grilling and then they gave me a token and they said what you do is you go up to the front and you give it to the elder and then he will serve you your elements. Now I think they're literalizing what is spiritual here, but at least they did recognize that there are restrictions among His people as to who is invited to His feast. It's not all who are regenerate, those would be the people with spiritual ears, but it's regenerate people who listen by faith at his admonition to Laodicea is they hear his voice, they open the door, they receive Christ. And so it's a very active faith. Now the third image also relates to closeness and intimacy. It says, and on the pebble a new name written which no one knows except the receiver. Now husbands and wives sometimes have pet names for each other. God uses that idea of intimacy in saying this is a new name nobody else knows. Now this makes no sense whatsoever if you over objectify the covenant like James Jordan and Doug Wilson and others have done. There is something very subjective going on here. It's his secret between you and him individually and you can know him and he knows you and he calls you by name. In John 10 verse 13 Jesus said about the good shepherd, the sheep hear his voice and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. That could be our expectation. Now there is a corporate dimension to the Lord's Table that involves all of us, but there is an individual side as well that I think is so cool. And so when we come to the Lord's Table week by week, we come either for judgment or we come for blessing. In other words, there is spiritual warfare involved in this table. But what a blessing it is to be promised a greater closeness to God than even the high priest in the Old Testament ever had. It makes our sufferings worthwhile. It gives us refreshment for battle. It reassures us when we go out into the battle again this coming week, we're not going alone. Pagans can persecute us. Fellow Christians can misunderstand us or abuse us, gang up on us. But if we're following the captain of our salvation who wields the double-edged sword, We can go with confidence that if he is for us, who could be against us? So what I would encourage you to do is first of all, seek the purity of the church. But let's be an army that goes into the very den of the lion and tries to evict that lion from our city, just as Pergamos sought to do. And may God receive the glory and the honor. Amen. Father, lots of words and words that demons can take and keep us from listening to even as the birds in that parable took away the seed that was sown. But I pray that this seed would sink deeply into our hearts, that we would examine what is corn, what is corn cob, that we would listen and value your word. We would be strengthened by it and that we would have a resolve to do what Pergamos did well and to avoid what they did poorly. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.