Pergamos: Settled in the World

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Transcript:

Revelation chapter 2, starting in verse 12. Who can tell me which church we talked about last week? Smyrna.

And what was going on with Smyrna? Anybody? Oh, I didn’t tell you there would be a test. Smyrna was the church that was persecuted.

And we talked last week about suffering for His sake. And the instructions that Jesus gave to that church is one that suffered for His sake. to keep going because there was something better on the other side, that our persecution wouldn’t last forever, our suffering wouldn’t last forever, it wouldn’t be in vain, and we wouldn’t go through it alone, were his words of encouragement and instruction to the church at Smyrna.

What about the week before that? Who did we talk about? Ephesus, okay.

And what is Ephesus known for? What? They were good, okay, except for what?

Very good. They’d lost their first love. And so Jesus told them, you know, you’ve done all these things well.

He lists all the things that they’ve done well. He says, you’ve done these things, but I have something against you. You’ve lost your first love.

And he tells them, repent, or I’m sorry, remember where you’ve fallen from. Excuse me. Remember where you’ve fallen from.

Repent and do the first works. Go back to where, remember where you were and turn back and go back and do the things again that you did. And the advice to us there is that over time as Christians, it seems like our love for God grows cold.

The joy and the passion we have when we first get saved grows cold. and we kind of accept that as normal. I shared the story and several of y’all have shared similar stories where somebody gets saved and they’re excited and they’re on fire and a more mature Christian says, you’ll settle down eventually. You’ll get over it.

We shouldn’t want to get over it. And we shouldn’t accept getting over it. And to these churches that Smyrna was persecuted, Ephesus did well in a lot of things but had grown cold in their love and Jesus offers advice, instruction, in some cases warning to these churches.

And what we’re doing, if you’ve not been with us the previous two weeks, we’re going through a series on the seven churches mentioned in the book of Revelation. And I’ve called it, If Jesus Came to Church. The question is often asked, if Jesus came into our church, and not specifically of Eastside, but it’s asked of churches.

If Jesus came to our church, what would He say? What would He observe? What would He find?

And we have examples of when Jesus critiques seven churches here. And He says that He walked among the seven candlesticks, which Revelation 1 tells us the seven candlesticks are these seven churches. So even if he wasn’t there in physical form, Jesus was present with those churches, just as he’s present with us today spiritually, and observes and sees everything that’s going on.

Well, he critiqued these seven churches and gave them advice, gave them warning, gave them instruction. And in these seven churches, we probably will not find one that’s exactly like Eastside. But I think as we study through these seven churches, and some of them he had only good things to say about, some of them he had only negative.

Most of them, it was a mixture of the two. But I believe as we go through these seven churches, we might see characteristics of each of these seven churches in our own. And from that, we can glean, well, what does God say about how we’re supposed to deal with this situation?

What does God say about how we’re to deal with this particular attitude? And maybe, just maybe, we can learn something from these churches to apply to our own and make this church a candlestick that Jesus Christ can be proud of. Revelation chapter 2, starting in verse 12, says, and to the angel of the church in Pergamos, write, these things saith he which hath the sharp sword with two edges.

Now if you’ll remember back the previous two weeks, that word angel, the Greek word angelos means messenger. So he’s not writing to some guardian angel. He’s writing to the person who’s going to take his message, or he’s speaking to the person who’s going to take his message back to the church at Pergamos.

And he tells John, write these things down. And there’s a formula that all of these letters follow. They’ll have an introduction of who’s speaking.

Now we know in all of these letters it’s Jesus Christ doing the speaking and John doing the recording. But he identifies himself. He identifies some characteristic of who he is.

He points out something about who he is that that church needs to know. And he begins that way. Then if there’s anything good to say about them, he’ll say it.

Jesus doesn’t come in and just like a machine gun mow his church down. He comes and tells them what they’re doing right. Now the church at Laodicea, which will be week 7, He has nothing good to say about them, as far as I can remember.

But if a church has something going for it, He’ll tell them. We get the idea from some people today who develop new theologies and think they’re smarter than us, that Jesus is just disgusted with all of His churches. Folks, that’s not true.

If we’re doing something right, He rejoices in that, just like with these churches. Then if there’s something wrong, He addresses that as well. He critiques what’s going on, what’s wrong with that church.

But He doesn’t just say, you’re doing this wrong, you’re doing this wrong, you’re doing this wrong. He then gives them instructions on how to fix it. And in some cases, that’s accompanied by a warning of what will happen if they don’t fix it.

And then he gives the church, this is the best part, he gives them some kind of promise about what’s to come. And all of these letters follow pretty much that same formula. He starts out here by telling John, write to the messenger of the church at Pergamos, These things saith he which has the sharp sword with two edges.

Jesus Christ identifies himself as the one who holds the sharp sword with two edges. I’ve told some of you that one of the reasons I’ve never preached on Revelation before is there’s so much in here that’s not immediately clear there’s so much in here that’s misunderstood even among people who’ve spent their entire lives studying the Bible and there are things that I’ve looked at for years and just thought, what in the world does that mean? One of the things that has helped me as I’ve been reading through this to realize that the book of Revelation was not written in a vacuum You know, it was written separately from the other books, but it wasn’t written just to stand on its own.

We take the things that are written in the book of Revelation, and we can sometimes look at the other books of the Bible and see, where is that phrase used? Where is that concept before? And sometimes use that to understand what’s written here.

One of the places where that’s helpful is when Jesus identifies himself as the one who holds the two-edged sword in his hand. Can anybody think offhand of where else the Bible talks about a two-edged sword? It calls the Word of God a two-edged sword.

The Word of God is quick. That word quick means alive. The Word of God is living and powerful like a two-edged sword, able to divide the bones and the marrow.

That’s pretty sharp to be able to divide bone from marrow. So in the Bible, you could say, well, that sounds like a violent Jesus. And at the end of Revelation, when Jesus faces down the armies of Satan, There’s the talk of the sword of his mouth, and people look at the book of Revelation and say, oh, it’s so bloody.

That can’t be the same Jesus from the rest of the New Testament. There he’s wielding a sword and he’s mowing people down. Folks, the sword that Revelation talks about here, of Jesus bearing, is the word of God.

When it talks about the armies of Satan, I wish I could have found the clip of it. There are some things that Google can’t find, apparently. I wish I could have found the clip of it to make a short CD and play it for you.

one of the best explanations of this I’ve ever heard was done by Adrian Rogers. When he talked about what was going to come at the end when Jesus faces down the armies of Satan right before the end of the end. And he explains it in such detail what the Bible is saying.

I found myself, we were in the car listening to this on the way traveling somewhere, and I was just getting excited hearing him talk about it. Christian said, I thought you were just going to come up out of that seat. He said at the end that Jesus stood forward and opened his mouth and with the word of his mouth said to Satan, Drop dead.

And the armies of Satan fell before him. Jesus didn’t need to mow people down with a sword and by the very word of God, the victory was won. And when the Bible says that Jesus is the one who bears the sharp sword with two edges, he’s not talking about a violent Jesus.

He’s not talking about a bloodthirsty Jesus. It’s talking about the very Jesus that holds the Word of God in His hand because He is God. And the words of God are His words.

And the Word of God is powerful, like a sword. And at the end of the end, you know, Jesus could take out the armies of Satan and the armies of Antichrist with a sword if He needed to, but He doesn’t need a sword. By the very words of His mouth, the very words of God, He will have the victory.

And He identifies Himself as the one who holds that two-edged sword, that sharp, powerful two-edged sword. And it’s a reminder to the church of Pergamos how powerful he is, how holy he is, because the word of God is his. This church at Pergamos needed to know that they served a God, that they served a Savior who was holy and powerful, because of some of the things going on in the church of Pergamos, as we’re going to see here.

He says, I know thy works. He says this to every church so far. I know thy works, and where thou dwellest. He said, I know what you do, I know where you live.

And this is actually, he’s giving them a compliment. He knows that the church has done some good things. And he knows where they live, he says, even where Satan’s seed is.

And when he says they live where Satan’s seed is, he’s not saying that the church as a whole has any part with Satan. He’s not saying anything like that. This term Satan’s seed, I was kind of troubled by before I did some study on it.

In a spiritual sense, it’s believed that he’s saying that Pergamos, where they lived, was the very seat of Satan’s power. That at that point, he was just powerful in the city of Pergamos. And there’s nothing in the Bible to dispel the idea that Satan can be powerful in a place.

The Bible calls him the God of this world in 2 Corinthians. There are places, there are corners of this world where Satan is very much in control, only because God allows him for a time period to be in control. And when Jesus Christ, with the words of his mouth, steps up and says, you’re done, he’s done.

But at this point, Satan had a strong hold. Not necessarily a strong hold, but he had a strong hold on the city of Pergamos. I’ve told you before how Ephesus and how Corinth were such wicked cities.

I never see them described as where Satan’s seat is, where Satan’s throne is. Folks, Pergamos was a wicked city. that the inhabitants of the city were under the control and direction of Satan.

And this church lived in the midst of this kind of culture. And we might think, well, why is this church, why is he not saying this of Smyrna? Because surely a church among this kind of environment, this kind of spiritual climate would be persecuted like the church at Smyrna, but not so with Pergamos, because they had begun to make concessions to the world.

They had begun to make compromises with the world that made them a little more acceptable. So even at the height of Satan’s spiritual power, he wasn’t all that concerned about the church of Pergamos because they weren’t a threat to him. He says, I know thy works and where thou dwellest, even where Satan’s seat is.

And by the way, this refers also not just to Satan’s spiritual power in Pergamos, but it refers to something literal. There was an altar built to the Greek god Zeus that was located there in the city of Pergamos. And to me, if he’s talking about Satan’s seat and he’s talking about this enthroned statue of Zeus, That tells me that these Greek gods, all these other deities that people worship are not just false ideas, but they’re propagated by Satan. That the worship of anything other than God is satanic.

We know that this throne of Zeus, this seat of Satan, existed because it still exists today. They dug it up in Pergamos. They dug it up in Pergamos a little less than a hundred years ago.

And brick by brick, piece by piece, they moved it to a museum in Berlin. Kaiser Wilhelm thought that was a good idea. Let’s take this Satan’s throne back to Berlin and put it in the museum.

And just within a short time after that, World War I broke out. Now, is there a connection? I have no idea.

I just thought that was interesting. He brings Satan’s throne to Europe and all of a sudden millions die. But this thing, you can still go and see it in the museum in Berlin where it sits.

They reassembled it brick by brick. He said, I know thy works and where thou dwellest, even where Satan’s seed is, and thou holdest fast my name. This is how I know that what he’s saying to them is not a criticism of them at this point, because he says, and thou hold fast my name.

I know what you’ve done and where you’ve lived, and in all of that you’ve held on to my name, and has not denied my faith, I’m sorry, thou holdest fast my name, and has not denied my faith, even in those days wherein Antipas was my faithful martyr, who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth. Again, he points to the fact that Satan was alive and well and in control in Pergamos. And the church at Pergamos for a while had been persecuted.

He talks about Antipas here who, like Polycarp that I mentioned last week, is believed to have been the bishop or the pastor, the leader of the church there at Pergamos for a while. And under a persecution earlier, he had been killed. Now, there are stories that I don’t believe are historically accurate about how he was killed.

But we know from the Bible he was martyred nonetheless for his faith. Antipas was killed, not because he was unpopular, but because he professed the name of Christ. The church at Pergamos had at one time been persecuted because it held fast to his name and it had not denied his faith. And the church as a whole, the majority of the church, the bulk of the church, had not denied his name, had not denied his faith.

And yet, for some reason, they weren’t being persecuted like they were. We find out why because in verse 14 he said, But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold to the doctrine of Balaam. He says, I have something against you, because even though the bulk of the church has held fast to my name and has not denied my faith, there are still those within the church who hold to the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast the stumbling block before the children of Israel to eat things sacrificed unto idols and to commit fornication.

Now you’d have to go back to the book of Numbers, and it’s spread over several chapters, so we’re not going to read the whole thing today. I’d encourage you to go back and do the study for yourself. But just in the short time we have left, we don’t have time to explore the whole story.

But what happened in the book of Numbers with Balaam is the king of Moab named Balak got kind of frightened about Moses and the Israelites wandering around down in the wilderness getting a little too close to his country knowing that they were going to go in and try to conquer Canaan, the land that God had given them. And so Balak calls on a prophet named Balaam. And Balaam says, You know, I won’t go.

He wants Balaam to go and curse the people of Israel, to go and curse God’s people. And Balaam says, I won’t go. I’m not going to go.

And God had told him, don’t go. Well, Balak sins for him again, to make a long story short. Sins for him again, and Balaam says, well, maybe I’ll just go and hear him out.

And it’s a little confusing to just read the story at face value. God then tells him, according to the text, tells him go. And what God means by that is, oh, I’ll let you go.

but God’s, remember we studied the different aspects of God’s will some time back. God’s perfect will for Balaam was that he not go. God’s permissive will was you can go, but it’s not what I want for you.

And so if you recall the story, the angel of the Lord stands there with a flaming sword ready to take Balaam’s head off as he comes through this narrowed area. And the donkey sees and stops him. So Balaam gets down and beats the donkey.

And the donkey, God actually allows the donkey to speak. One of the most incredible stories of the Bible. I don’t know how it happened, but I believe that it did.

And the donkey speaks and says, why are you beating me? Can’t you see I’ve saved your life here by not going through here? That angel would have taken your head clean off your shoulders.

That’s my translation of it. You won’t find the phrase head clean off your shoulders in the Bible. And finally, God opens Balaam’s eyes and he sees the angel.

And Balaam is repentant and said, you know, I shouldn’t have gone. Balaam’s heart trouble began when he said, well, maybe I’ll go hear him out. I know I’m not supposed to do what he says, but I’ll at least go hear him out.

Well, at that point, Balaam says, God, I’ll do whatever you want me to do. And this time God says, go. But Balaam ends up blessing God’s people, ends up telling Balak to his face, I can’t curse, these are God’s people.

But somewhere along the way, it seems like Balaam got kind of corrupted by his friendship with the king and encouraged the king to send his Moabite people to go and try to intermarry with the Israelites. And we know from history that God had told them, do not intermarry with the foreign pagan people around them because it would corrupt them, it would corrupt their religion. It would introduce pagan worship, and so it did.

And it seems from this passage that Balaam’s, that the fact that the Israelites and Moabites intermarried in the book of Numbers was Balaam’s idea to King Balak. And so what it says here when it says, because thou hast them there that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication. The doctrine of Balaam was that in spite of God’s warning, Balaam taught that it was okay.

Even if he said it to Balak, the Moabite, and not to the Israelites, he still encouraged this idea that, yeah, you can go and intermarry. That’s what God calls fornication here, because yes, the Israelite men married the Moabite women, but they were not marriages sanctioned by God, and so God calls them fornication. at least spiritual fornication, if not literal. Yeah, it’s okay to disobey what God says here.

To eat things sacrificed to idols, because at that point they were participating in the idol worship as well. And these things to cast a stumbling block before Israel, to keep Israel from serving God as they were called to. The doctrine of Balaam appears to be the teaching that it doesn’t matter what God says, just go and live your life and do what you want to do.

And that appears to be what some in the church at Pergamos thought was correct. And so the church at Pergamos, while it is a hold, had held fast to his name, had not denied the faith. There were some in the church who taught this licentious lifestyle where you could just do whatever you want and do whatever you pleased.

Sin was okay. Sin was acceptable. And you know what?

When the culture around them got wind of this sort of non-confrontational, non-judgmental Christianity, they kind of liked it. And I can guarantee you that’s why the persecution came to an end. Because the church was no longer a threat.

No longer a spiritual threat to Satan. It was no longer a threat to the culture and the pagan religion around them. Because the church, even though the majority still held to the true faith, there was this compromising influence in the church that kind of moderated and kind of kept things under control from the world’s perspective.

So hast thou them that hold to the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I hate. And I told you before when we were talking about Ephesus, there are all kinds of ideas about who the Nicolaitans were. And people argue, theologians and historians argue, well, I think they taught this.

Well, I think they were this group. No, they believe this. All of the different things, the things that seem so different that people say about the Nicolaitans, they all boil down to one basic principle, do whatever you want, and God’s okay with that.

Whichever group we think the Nicolaitans were, they all taught different things, all stemming from that one idea. Live however you want, and God’s okay with it. And he tells them, you have also within your church some that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which things I hate.

Jesus says not only here, but in other places in Revelation, that the doctrine of the Nicolaitans is not just wrong, he hates that teaching. Just live your life, live how you want, do what you want, and God’s okay with it. So he tells the church in verse 16, repent, or else I will come unto thee quickly, and I will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.

At first glance, that looks like God is saying, repent of what’s being taught, what’s going on in your midst, or else I’m going to come I’m going to punish you. But he doesn’t say, repent or else I will come to thee quickly and fight against thee. He says, them.

That one letter changes everything. I’d like to think of this as Jesus saying, don’t make me come down there. Church at Pergamos, repent, deal with the sin that’s going on in the church or else I’m going to have to.

Either you deal with it or I will. It’s essentially an ultimatum being given to the church at Pergamos. It’s not that God is going to come in and punish those who have held to the faith, but he’s telling them, you deal with this corrupting influence within your church, or I will.

I think maybe after the years of persecution, there were those within the church probably that said, yeah, we hold to the true faith and we don’t like what they’re teaching, but isn’t it nice to just have peace again? Isn’t it nice to just get along? And folks, I like to get along too.

I may sound, if you don’t know me real well, I may sound like the mean old preacher stomping, I don’t stomp and yell, but for me, stomping and yelling about what’s wrong, but I’m not a confrontational person. And I like for there just to be peace. I like for everybody to just get along.

But I also like for us to have peace and get along because we’re all doing the right thing. And that was the problem. After the persecution, after the opposition, do we really have to fight about this?

We can hold to the true faith. What does it matter that they’re teaching these things? We’re teaching the truth, and you know, it’ll all come out right in the end.

And Jesus says, deal with it, or I will. He that hath an ear, oh, I’m sorry. and I will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.

Verse 17, he that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. To him that overcometh, this is where the promise comes in, to him that overcometh, I will give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth, saving he that receiveth it. And this verse has troubled me for a long time, because I’ve not understood why in the world is God promising them white rocks?

I know that meant something to them, But to me, in the 21st century, I’m just thinking white rocks and manna. Nice promise, God. That sounds exciting.

But come to find out. Well, we know what manna is. It was God’s provision to the Israelites while they lived in the wilderness.

They think it was kind of like grits. And they would have to go out. I didn’t know the Israelites were Southerners, did you?

When they wandered around in the wilderness, God made provision every day for them to have food. They’d go out and gather enough for that day, and it was this manna. Now how you gather grits off the ground, I don’t know.

But they went out and gathered this manna and they made their food to eat. And God provided for them. And he says he has hidden manna for them.

He has provision. He has supply that the world doesn’t know of. Sometimes it might be hard to say we’re going to deal with this sin because what’s going to happen then?

And God says it doesn’t matter. You’re going through the wilderness. I’ve got the provisions you need and I’m going to take care of you.

There’s provision for God’s people that we don’t even know about, that the world certainly doesn’t know about, that God can take care of us in ways we don’t understand even when it seems like we’re going through the wilderness. Even when it seems like we’re going through the wilderness of persecution. Even when it seems like we’re going through the wilderness of opposition within the church.

God will take care of His people. And He also says here this white rock. Well, come to find out after some study.

This, like so many other things, there are multiple explanations that scholars give for what this white rock means. The one that after some study makes the most sense, especially in context of what we’re talking about here, was the practice that they said athletic events. I heard one man say the early Olympic Games.

When somebody would win, when somebody would win, they would be given a white stone with their name painted on it, indicating that they were the ones who won the victory in that particular race, in that particular event. And that stone that they were given also allowed them entry into the banquet, the celebration. I don’t know that they gave away literal awards, but for us, what would be the awards ceremony for the victors?

And so the image here is of God to those who overcome, of those who overcome the world. And again, we know that we don’t overcome the world by our good works. John tells us in 1 John that we overcome the world by faith.

When we believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, when we trust Jesus Christ, we overcome the world. To those who overcome, to those who overcome, this stone is given signifying that the victory has been won. The race has been won.

We’re admitted to the banquet. I believe that’s a picture of heaven. And as for this name being written on it, which no man knows, I can only speculate, but in my mind, I like to think it’s the name of Jesus Christ because he’s the one that won the victory in the first place.

Now, is that doctrine? No, that’s just my opinion on it. But I believe this white stone he gives us is a picture that they would have understood of those who overcome, those who trust Christ, those who overcome by faith, would be victorious in the end and would be admitted to the awards ceremony in heaven, would be received into the celebration for those who had overcome.

And so there’s this promise given to the church at Pergamos, just like to the church at Ephesus and just like to the church at Smyrna, that there was something better coming. In spite of the persecution, in spite of the opposition, in spite of the difficulties that they would have, eventually there was something better on the other side for them to look forward to during and in spite of the difficulties that they faced here on earth. The problem with the church at Smyrna that Jesus tells them to address, though, is that the church had become settled in the world.

The church had become settled in the world. It had become too much like the world. It had become too accustomed to the world.

My wife asked me the other day what I was preaching on this morning. I told her the church at Pergamos and how they became cozy with the world. And she said, what does that mean?

I guess she said she’d never heard the phrase comfy cozy before. They had become comfortable with the world. And thinking, okay, well, I guess I should think through that a little better how to explain that.

They had just grown to where the world was a comfortable place to be. It was comfortable just to blend in, just to get along. It was comfortable to go with the flow of the world and say, wherever the world’s going, we’re going to go with them.

And yet there were those within the church. The majority of the church had not bought into these sinful ideas. The doctrine of Balaam, the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, and yet just the fact that a few in the church had bought into that idea was enough to corrupt the church.

And Jesus said, deal with it. We see this same kind of thing going on in churches and so-called churches all over our country. When I was reading this, I remember it a few years ago going to see a play.

And in the play, there’s a character that he’s having coffee with some lady, and he offers her a shot of whiskey in her coffee. And the lady talks about being a Baptist and said her church wouldn’t approve of it. And to hear her talk a little more, her church wouldn’t approve of much of anything.

It was kind of a parody making fun of us, I think. But he says, you ought to do a little sin and have a little fun. That’s what church is for, a place to go and feel better after you’ve done some sinning.

and I’ll admit to you I laughed because it was just absurd. It was nothing I’d ever heard before caught me off guard and I laughed at it and then I thought that would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic because there are a lot of people who believe that. I’ve got a friend who said, oh, I’ve done some sinning this week.

I need to go to church. Yeah, you do, but not for the reason you think. And there are a lot of people, and there are even a lot of churches that think that church, the church exists so you can go after you’ve done some sinning, after you’ve cut loose, and you can feel better about the life you’re leading.

Ladies and gentlemen, the church does not exist to make us feel better or feel comfortable about our sins. This church exists to make us feel worse about our sins and then make us feel better by showing us how to deal with those sins. When the church becomes a place where we think, well, w