SPEAKER_00: We study through books of the Bible here at the Village Chapel, and it's my privilege to lead us through the last book in the Bible, the book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: A book that's sometimes quite misunderstood.
SPEAKER_00: Some people avoid it, other people obsessed with it.
SPEAKER_00: We're studying it, see what it really says, and uh I'm just excited.
SPEAKER_00: It opens up with John the Apostle not worrying about what's going to happen in the future, but on his knees before Christ in wonder and overflowing with worship.
SPEAKER_00: And I really think that sets the stage for the rest of the book, too.
SPEAKER_00: Let me pray for us as we get started with our study this morning.
SPEAKER_00: All right, Lord, thank you.
SPEAKER_00: Indeed, as we've just sung, I pray that uh you, Holy Spirit, would come and speak to us, renew our minds, fill our hearts with the hope of glory.
SPEAKER_00: Uh help us, Lord, to uh believe and trust in your promises, Lord, uh, that your church might be built up and that uh we might indeed overflow as we reflect your glory out into this dark and desperate world in which we live.
SPEAKER_00: We pray in Jesus' name, amen and amen.
SPEAKER_00: So let's talk then just a little bit as we uh lead up to our study today.
SPEAKER_00: Let's talk a little bit about what we have going on.
SPEAKER_00: We've got seven letters with uh uh the first two we've already studied: the letter to Ephesus, the letter to Smyrna.
SPEAKER_00: And up on the screen you can see sort of a summary of each of these in terms of the spiritual training, it appears that Jesus wants to do with each of these churches as he moves among them.
SPEAKER_00: We see the image of him standing among the seven lampstands, which represent the seven churches.
SPEAKER_00: And um, we what we find is that he is moving among them and training them up.
SPEAKER_00: He's it it gives us an example of what Christ thinks of his church.
SPEAKER_00: And the seven churches are historical churches, but I think they also represent all churches in some way.
SPEAKER_00: So I don't want to make the mistake of thinking, oh, village chapel is just like the church at Ephesus, or village chapel is just like the church at Smyrna or whatever it might be.
SPEAKER_00: We have something we can learn really from each and every one of these letters to the angels at the churches.
SPEAKER_00: And the angels, I'll remind you, could be a reference to uh heavenly beings, could be a reference to it really means messengers, so it could be a reference to the leaders in those churches.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, one commentator even suggested that the angels at the churches refers to the spiritual disposition, the way they're receiving the message of God uh and the message of Christ at that particular church, which is it, it could be any of the above.
SPEAKER_00: Um that we want to be careful with this kind of literature in this genre, which is in this case a mixed genre of apocalyptic, prophetic, uh, and and it's a it's also a letter.
SPEAKER_00: So it's it's got three different genres of literature in it.
SPEAKER_00: And you want to be real careful not to overobsess with the details, and at the same time, you don't want to avoid it altogether.
SPEAKER_00: Those are the two mistakes people make, I think, uh, is they just get frustrated, throw their hands up, and walk away from it, or they try to determine, you know, that each and every little detail must equal something in their own sort of uh space-time history, and that could lead us to some mischief as well.
SPEAKER_00: From the church at Ephesus, we learn to keep our first love first, and that is when, as the Apostle John himself even writes in 1 John 4.19, we love God because he first loved us.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're reminded, along with the uh Ephesians, to remember what God has done in Christ, to repent from our sin and to return to that sort of first love where Christ is first in our lives and where we first um were seized by his great affection and humbled by all of that.
SPEAKER_00: So that's a process that goes on through the rest of our lives, something we got to keep aware of as we walk through the rest of uh of this life before the Lord comes back and wraps up human history.
SPEAKER_00: Smyrna, the letter there, was encouragement uh in times of suffering.
SPEAKER_00: And we all need that, certainly in our own day and time right now, when the world just seems surreal, turned upside down, inside out in so many different ways.
SPEAKER_00: Some people suffering a great deal with loss of jobs, loss of loved ones, um, a loss of hope.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so we need uh the kind of encouragement that Christ comes to bring us in these letters.
SPEAKER_00: The third letter is to Pergamum, and um, it is a letter of exhortation to hold fast to the truth and not to allow it to become alloyed or to become sort of an admixture of things.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, you'll see that a little bit more as we go through it.
SPEAKER_00: The fourth letter to Thyatira, discipline to become more holy, Sardis, warning to wake up and strengthen what remains, Philadelphia, an exhortation to stay on mission in Laodicea, preparation for wholehearted or pure uh worship of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Let me put the map up on the screen for you as well, just to remind you, these indeed were historical churches.
SPEAKER_00: They are in an area that we today would call Western Turkey.
SPEAKER_00: Back then they called it Asia Minor.
SPEAKER_00: You can see that John is writing on the Isle of Patmos, which you can, it's tiny little white letters in the lower left corner of the map there, and it's it's in the pink and and red kind of section of the map, but uh it's it's actually offshore.
SPEAKER_00: And uh the Isle of Patmos, this prison place that he's at, because of his faith, not because he was an idiot, not because he did something wrong, but simply because he trusted Christ and wouldn't say Caesar is Lord.
SPEAKER_00: He thought Jesus was Lord, and that was his belief.
SPEAKER_00: And for his belief, he's actually suffering a great deal of persecution, and yet, even in that persecution, that time of difficulty for the Apostle John, God is inspiring him.
SPEAKER_00: God is giving him these seven visions that become for us, the book of Revelation, and encourage us here so many years later.
SPEAKER_00: It's just amazing, isn't it, how God can work uh in times of great suffering.
SPEAKER_00: And so what we have uh there is uh uh the you can see the patmos just off the shore.
SPEAKER_00: You could you could go uh on board ship and sail right to Ephesus, and a few miles north of that you'd find Smyrna, and you'll find 55 miles north of that, you find the letter, or or the city rather that we'll study today, Pergamum.
SPEAKER_00: So there's your map, a little horseshoe, and it was an old Roman postal route.
SPEAKER_00: You can see how that would work, right?
SPEAKER_00: They'd bring the letters, would come on board ship, or the products or the goods would come on board ship, land at Ephesus, and then be distributed to these uh different cities uh as they go around this Roman, ancient Roman road uh and the ancient Roman postal route.
SPEAKER_00: All right, now here are some great photos, if you will.
SPEAKER_00: Ephesus, there's an amphitheater there that was uh it seated some 25,000 people.
SPEAKER_00: You remember maybe from the book of Acts, some of you, that uh a riot had broken out there, and in the middle of that amphitheater, they dragged the Apostle Paul in there because uh some of their businesses had lost uh quite a few sales, because he was talking about a real god who was really there, and that um was in contradiction to their little idols that they sold, these tiny little statues of the goddess Diana or Artemis, the um Roman and Greek version of the same little goddess.
SPEAKER_00: And uh there were businessmen that made quite a bit of money on the sale of those as they tried to promote the idea that Diana and Artemis were actually real goddesses.
SPEAKER_00: And here comes Paul saying, No, there's a real God who's really there, um, who isn't a little, can't be sort of stuffed down into some kind of little statue.
SPEAKER_00: Not only that, but he knows you fully, loves you fully, and came to redeem and rescue sinners such as we are.
SPEAKER_00: Great news.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus came and rose from the dead, and he he he lives forevermore.
SPEAKER_00: And so the book of Revelation just filled with these images of Jesus, the Lamb of God, who was slain and yet lives forevermore and reigns, uh, and one day will come back and set all things right.
SPEAKER_00: So that amphitheater was a place where a huge riot had broken out because people were uh uh quite angry at the Apostle Paul.
SPEAKER_00: Today, in those very same ruins, um, sometimes there are concerts held there, and the likes of Elton John, Sting, uh, Diana Ross, for those of you who remember, uh, these are artists that have actually played concerts in that same amphitheater.
SPEAKER_00: So again, reminding us our uh Bible is written sort of in a context of space-time history with real geographical places.
SPEAKER_00: Here's a picture from Smyrna as well, and some of the tombstones uh that have been uncovered or uh discovered, if you will, through archaeological digs.
SPEAKER_00: And then three pictures here from Pergamum.
SPEAKER_00: And um again, just showing some of the ruins.
SPEAKER_00: And the last shot, uh picture of the amphitheater shot from high atop the hill, it was about a thousand feet.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it sat up quite high.
SPEAKER_00: You could see it from miles and miles away.
SPEAKER_00: And there uh on the top of Pergamum was all would also have been a temple to uh the god Zeus.
SPEAKER_00: And so uh we'll see how that plays out a little bit as we read through the text, which if you'll turn in your Bible or swipe there on your device with me, it's just a few verses, actually, and uh it's it's it's an amazing.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, each and every one of these seven visions that we get here in the book of Revelation, the the first one, which is really chapters one through three, and includes the seven letters to the seven angels at the seven churches, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Each of these overall seven visions are are just eye-popping, heart thumping, and mind-blowing visions.
SPEAKER_00: And again, not to lead us to a place of worry about the future, but to lead us to a place of just dropping to our knees in wonder and worship of the one who holds the future.
SPEAKER_00: And who is this Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: It should it should make us sit up straight and want to ask that question and and and learn something about him.
SPEAKER_00: And and here we see what does Jesus think of his church is a great question.
SPEAKER_00: And these seven letters begin to answer that.
SPEAKER_00: What does Jesus think as he moves among the lampstands, as he as he moves in and out of, and I wonder about that even today, as he moves in and out of the village chapel, the village chapel East Nashville, the village chapel in Hillsborough Village, and moves on around the city of Nashville and to all the other churches.
SPEAKER_00: What does he think of his church?
SPEAKER_00: And we learn some of that, we get an insight into that as we look at these seven letters.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the letter then uh to the angel of the church in Pergamum, verse 12 begins.
SPEAKER_00: Write this, and so John begins to write down the message.
SPEAKER_00: And it goes like this The one who has the sharp two-edged sword says, This I know where you dwell, where Satan's throne is, and you hold fast my name, and did not deny my faith, even in the days of Antipas, my witness, my faithful one, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells.
SPEAKER_00: But I have a few things against you, because you have there some who hold the teaching of Balaam, who kept teaching Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols, and to commit acts of immorality.
SPEAKER_00: This reference to the uh toward the end of the book of Numbers in the Old Testament, something that actually happened when um um this sort of corrupt prophet Balaam ends up trying to sell out his own people, the Israelites, by getting the Moabites to send um some of their daughters, some of their women, and again abusing them, sending them over and toward uh to lure, if you will, to seduce the men of Israel, to uh get them not only to have children with them and to intermarry, but to also begin to worship worship the Moabite gods and goddesses.
SPEAKER_00: And so the Lord had forbidden that because he knew it would lead to idolatry and sexual immorality, and yet here it's taken place again, and it seems like a sort of a timeless problem for humanity, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: So he warns them, he says, I have a few things against you because you have among you, this is not pressure from without the church, this is actually tension within the church.
SPEAKER_00: Thus, you also have some, verse 15 says, who in the same way hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans.
SPEAKER_00: And we don't know much about the Nicolaitans, they've been mentioned before, um, and they they must have had some kind of a very permissive view of uh uh of human sexuality and the very permissive view of morality in general.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's a warning that, again, among you in your church, you're tolerating this kind of thinking.
SPEAKER_00: And that's important.
SPEAKER_00: That's a timeless struggle for churches.
SPEAKER_00: We need to be aware of that and how we can be influenced so easily, um, not only by the watching world as it thinks and acts apart from God, but even by those among our own rank who begin to sort of cave into and compromise with the prevailing cultural view.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: So he's warning them.
SPEAKER_00: And then the the uh sort of exhortation comes in verse 16, Repent, therefore, or else I'm coming to you quickly, and I will make war against them with the sword of my mouth.
SPEAKER_00: So here's the one with the double-edged sword in his mouth from uh Revelation chapter one, and he's gonna use that sword to make war against them.
SPEAKER_00: It's interesting that he says, I'm gonna come to you and make war with them, uh, especially if these letters are addressed to the leadership of the church at Pergamum.
SPEAKER_00: If you won't do your job as leaders, then Jesus himself will come and do what you don't have the courage to do, what you don't seem to have the conviction to do.
SPEAKER_00: And he will make war against them with the sword of my mouth.
SPEAKER_00: And verse 17 closes out the letter, and it's chalked full with images.
SPEAKER_00: Watch this.
SPEAKER_00: He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
SPEAKER_00: And I love this, I'll remind you again and again.
SPEAKER_00: That's that same formula that Jesus used to use when he, in the four gospels, when he walked the planet.
SPEAKER_00: He used to say, if you got ears to hear, let him hear.
SPEAKER_00: If you got eyes to see, let him see.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: And here he is again saying, use your ears for what they were designed for.
SPEAKER_00: Not just to hold your glasses up, not just to hang your uh jewelry on, even though nothing wrong with either of those, but use your ears for what they were designed for, to hear and to listen.
SPEAKER_00: And uh sometimes some of us have problems with that ourselves, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: I always go, huh?
SPEAKER_00: Not listening very well.
SPEAKER_00: Uh he who has an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
SPEAKER_00: To him who overcomes, to him I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, these amazing images.
SPEAKER_00: Mana.
SPEAKER_00: That divine provision for the children of Israel as they wandered through the wilderness after God rescued them out of bondage and slavery in Egypt, right?
SPEAKER_00: And was leading them to the promised land those 40 years, but God providing for them all along the way, even as they're complaining and grumbling and ungrateful in so many ways.
SPEAKER_00: God's still faithful to them, still providing for them.
SPEAKER_00: And that manna here is called hidden manna, which I think is just makes me sit up straight.
SPEAKER_00: I want to know what that means.
SPEAKER_00: Uh hidden from what?
SPEAKER_00: Hidden until when?
SPEAKER_00: And and what is it a reference to?
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: And I will give him a white stone.
SPEAKER_00: That's another amazing image right there.
SPEAKER_00: A new name written on the stone, which no one knows but he who receives it.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the end of the letter to Pergamum.
SPEAKER_00: Man, isn't that just, man, it just raises all kinds of questions.
SPEAKER_00: All right, let me put up on the screen for you the outline of these letters.
SPEAKER_00: There's usually the city name of the church, verse 12, Pergamum, as I say, about 55 miles north and east, a bit inland from Smyrna.
SPEAKER_00: And um famous for its 200,000 volume uh library.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Pergamum is where we get uh our word parchment from.
SPEAKER_00: And uh there's an old legend, I think it's probably a part of history, probably true, that in Pergamum, that library they had there rivaled the one in Alexandria, Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: And uh in Alexandria, Egypt, although the papyrus was made and would be sent around the world for people to write things, scribes to write things down on.
SPEAKER_00: And the two uh cities became competitors over their libraries and boasting over who had the greatest library.
SPEAKER_00: And so eventually what happened was down in Alexandria, Egypt, they stopped sending papyrus out, especially stopped sending it to Pergamum.
SPEAKER_00: And so Pergamum had to come up with another idea on how to write where to write things down, and so they came up with parchment and uh 200,000 volume library, multiple temples to all kinds of uh different gods and goddesses.
SPEAKER_00: High atop the hill of Pergamum was the temple for Zeus.
SPEAKER_00: Uh may have been what was referenced here as the uh you are near the throne of Satan.
SPEAKER_00: That that could be indeed what the throne of Satan means.
SPEAKER_00: Could also mean just the the power center, Pergamum as the provincial capital of uh the Roman Empire there in Western Turkey, Asia Minor, if you will.
SPEAKER_00: And it might it might have been that the the the uh imperial cult, that is uh the worship of the emperor, which was actually demanded uh and which the Christians would not do, they wouldn't, they wouldn't, if they were going to be faithful to the name of Christ, like they were said, like Jesus declares they are here in Pergamum, they wouldn't say Caesar is Lord, because Jesus is Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And so, under threat of death, even they wouldn't say Caesar is Lord.
SPEAKER_00: So was that the sort of dark power presiding over Pergamum and coming out of the sort of temple of Zeus, or was it the imperial cult of emperor worship?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: Could have been any and all of the above, could have been a mixture of all the above.
SPEAKER_00: Point is a great power center for darkness and for the work of Satan at odds with God and against God's people.
SPEAKER_00: And uh that's the that's the city that we have of Pergamum.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, there's a reference here to the Christ of chapter one.
SPEAKER_00: The way Jesus is described in each of the seven letters seems to connect with the challenges that each church was facing.
SPEAKER_00: The words of him who has the sharp double-edged sword, Pergamum, had been faithful to the gospel message, but of was of late uh becoming vulnerable, if you will, because they were lax or permissive, um, distinguish distinguishing between truth and error among their own ranks.
SPEAKER_00: What's this double-edged sword?
SPEAKER_00: Uh Tertullian and Augustine thought the double-edged one edge was the Old Testament, one edge was the New Testament, it was the Word of God.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, is that it?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe.
SPEAKER_00: Um, we're going to be saying maybe a lot.
SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, John the Apostle says he uses a similar kind of language because over a hundred times when he's having these different visions, what he has to resort to is comparison words, the word like or the word as, over a hundred times in the book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: See?
SPEAKER_00: So here is his image of Jesus who's moving among the lampstands, the lampstands representing the churches, the seven stars in Jesus' right hand representing the angels or the messengers to the churches.
SPEAKER_00: And this Son of Man, and John uses the word one who is like a son of man, he's using like an as just over and over and over again because it's just blowing his mind, these visions that he's seeing.
SPEAKER_00: And yet there's something wonderful about these visions.
SPEAKER_00: Something that's leading him not to worry, but to wonder and to worship.
SPEAKER_00: And so the commendation for the church at Pergamum comes as well, I know where you dwell, where you live, where Satan has his throne, yet you remain true to my name.
SPEAKER_00: And yes, Pergamum was in close proximity to the geographic center of the powers of darkness and of Satan in its time.
SPEAKER_00: And yet it remained true.
SPEAKER_00: And so there's this commendation, you've been faithful to um my name, which that's so important.
SPEAKER_00: What are we doing with the name of Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: You know, what are we doing with he says, and to my faith, which is the gospel, certainly, has to be a reference to that sort of cumulative good news that we believe, okay, that um that that Jesus has come with rescue and redemption for lost sinners such as we are, and for those who are even out in the darkest of places, like Pergamum as well.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's really an amazing um letter there and an amazing commendation to them.
SPEAKER_00: And yet Jesus says, But I have this against you.
SPEAKER_00: You have among you those who hold to the teaching of Balaam and others who are holding to the teaching of the Nicolaitans, and so there's this vault.
SPEAKER_00: Vulnerability that they have, and they need to be aware of it.
SPEAKER_00: And so while, yes, there is this always, and I think we should be aware of this, there's always the uh opportunity for the sin of intolerance, uh, there's also an error that we can fall into of too much laxity, too much tolerance or permissiveness, if you will.
SPEAKER_00: And he's warning them of that.
SPEAKER_00: There's the exhortation as well to the church there in verse 16, repent, therefore.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus cautioning them uh to repent means to turn away from, if you will.
SPEAKER_00: And repentance in in Christian terms is really a twofold turn.
SPEAKER_00: It's to turn away from sin, turn away from idolatry, turn toward Christ in hope and in faith, believing, praying for his glory, uh, seeking his glory and being filled with the hope of glory as we study through the book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: We live in a time uh when we also live in close proximity to similar kinds of darkness.
SPEAKER_00: It's just a click away on our devices, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: It's just a turn of the page away.
SPEAKER_00: Um it's just a a few seconds of a lingering gaze away from us.
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's a nanosecond of indulging an unbridled uh passion or imagination.
SPEAKER_00: We're being influenced every single day, and I think we need to wake up to that fact.
SPEAKER_00: Um none of those things that seek to influence us, whether we're talking about uh advertising or whether we're talking about newscasts or whether we're talking about uh movies or television shows or video games, none of them come with the warning.
SPEAKER_00: We're seeking to undermine your spirituality, we're seeking to undermine your trust and hope in the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we're seeking to turn you away from none of them.
SPEAKER_00: Have that warning on them.
SPEAKER_00: Uh doesn't say beware, but here's Jesus moving among his churches saying, be alert, remain awake spiritually, beware.
SPEAKER_00: God's grace does not grant unbridled permissiveness.
SPEAKER_00: What God's grace does grant is unmerited forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: Let me say that again.
SPEAKER_00: God's grace doesn't grant to us unbridled permissiveness to just do whatever we want.
SPEAKER_00: Man, if we really appreciate the grace that God has shown to us, we'll want to, the natural response once you realize God's grace toward you as a sinner, undeserving as it is, you know, to sinners such as we are.
SPEAKER_00: It should humble us like John is humbled right here, before Jesus, filled with wonder and worship.
SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what ought to happen in our own lives when we start to understand more and more about God's grace.
SPEAKER_00: And I love the way that the New Testament talks about it.
SPEAKER_00: It's grace upon grace upon grace, because we're growing in grace.
SPEAKER_00: See?
SPEAKER_00: We're growing in our knowledge of the fact that our sin is darker than we could possibly even imagine.
SPEAKER_00: We live in close proximity to all kinds of it, and it's influencing us, and yet God has set his love on us.
SPEAKER_00: And it's this unmerited favor, this grace, that comes to us and grants us forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: We must not flirt with, though, much less fellowship with the false teachings of our time.
SPEAKER_00: The other thing we see in each of these letters is a summons to hear and to heed.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says that here as well.
SPEAKER_00: He who has an ear that him here, what the Spirit says to the churches.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's kind of like, wake up! Wake up, you know.
SPEAKER_00: I remember sometimes, you know, when I was a kid, it took more than just, you know, the alarm clock going off.
SPEAKER_00: Because I, you know, you can hit the snooze button, you know.
SPEAKER_00: Uh sometimes it takes being shaken a little bit, you know, um, and and and being awakened, you know.
SPEAKER_00: So that's what Jesus is doing to this church.
SPEAKER_00: He's waking them up, he's making sure they're alert.
SPEAKER_00: All seven of these churches, which certainly, if for them, it would be for the village chapel as well.
SPEAKER_00: It would be for me personally, and it would be for you personally as well.
SPEAKER_00: The summons to hear and to he.
SPEAKER_00: The question is, how are you responding?
SPEAKER_00: How do I respond to the summons?
SPEAKER_00: Is he calling you to prayer?
SPEAKER_00: Is he calling you to more time in the word?
SPEAKER_00: Is he calling you to turn away from some confidence you've put in some false God or some false teaching?
SPEAKER_00: Really important for us.
SPEAKER_00: And then the motivating promise, which we see in each of the letters, to the one who overcomes, to him who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna and a white stone with a new name on it.
SPEAKER_00: In ancient times, uh white stone sometimes was used as an admission ticket, if you will.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't print tickets up back then, but somebody might have a white stone or uh as a as a as a sign that they had been invited to the banquet or they had been invited to the event.
SPEAKER_00: Um, it would also sometimes be a white stone that they would use in a in a trial by jury.
SPEAKER_00: And you threw in a white stone if you thought the person was innocent, and you threw in a black stone or a brown stone or a gray stone, some not a white stone, if you thought the person was guilty.
SPEAKER_00: So on the one hand, it's access, you know, to an event.
SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, it's those white stones sometimes would symbolize uh acquittal.
SPEAKER_00: I actually love this imagery.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's it's quite amazing and quite profound.
SPEAKER_00: Kim and I have a a friend, um uh a six-year-old friend named Charlotte.
SPEAKER_00: And not too long ago, uh, she gave us a white stone that she had painted, a little cross on.
SPEAKER_00: That white stone, uh, whether she meant it or not, anyway, as I was studying this week, I kept thinking, you know, that white stone, it's just like the one Charlotte gave us.
SPEAKER_00: And it reminds us that we have access to the grace, mercy, hope, and forgiveness of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And and in Revelation here, it even says that that white stone has a new name on it.
SPEAKER_00: And Charlotte, whether she knew it or not, she painted the cross here to remind us of what Jesus has done.
SPEAKER_00: And that the cross represents the finished work of Jesus, where he has made it possible for us to be reconciled to God, to be acquitted, to be forgiven, just like those white stones in ancient times used to represent access and acquittal.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm forever going to be thankful for this little white stone here given to us by our friend Charlotte.
SPEAKER_00: Would Pergamum be able to maintain its spiritual vigilance, its moral vitality, or would it cave to the teaching of the Balaam and Nicolaitan kind of thinking?
SPEAKER_00: Would it compromise to the cultural flow of its time?
SPEAKER_00: Or would it stand firm, continue to stand firm as Jesus moves among it?
SPEAKER_00: Would he have to come himself because the leaders wouldn't do what he exhorted them to do?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: But the answer uh but the but the question remains for me and for the village chapel, for you as a part of the village chapel, or as one who's being influenced by this um this very worship service and this very Bible study, how will we respond to Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: His summons for us to hear and heed.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: His waking us up to the way we're being influenced by the culture and the darkness around us, whether it's in the in the categories of idolatry where we're literally falling down and worshiping some version of money, sex, or power or food or pleasure, um, and and finding in those things our identity.
SPEAKER_00: Um, or will we turn to him, turn away from those things, turn to him and find in Christ our identity, our new name, because our sins have been paid for in full.
SPEAKER_00: We have access, we've been acquitted because of the finished work of Christ on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I see at least three things in this church.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what I think we can learn from the letter to the angel of the church at Pergamum.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, notice the clarity of their convictions.
SPEAKER_00: You see that.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus even commends them for it.
SPEAKER_00: And um, it reminds me as as uh Jesus identifies himself as the one with the double-edged sword of Hebrews 4.12.
SPEAKER_00: The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit of joints and of marrow, discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
SPEAKER_00: And I pray that for us, as we study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel, the Lord, the Holy Spirit, will continue to use our study of the Word, uh, that it might feed us, that it might be a lamp into our feed, a light into our path, that it might lead us to greater knowledge of Jesus and of God and his will and his ways, and then we might be drawn to see the Lord and all of his beauty and majesty, not just his utility, um, not just what can we get from him, how can we conjole, how can we, you know, somehow or another manipulate him into thinking that we can justify every kind of sin we want to live with?
SPEAKER_00: No, we want to go before him, fall before him in wonder and worship, and submit our wills to his.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, even as we said on Thursday as we came to the table, Thanksgiving Thursdays, that he would reorder our desires and our loves would be renewed, that Christ might be first, like our first love that we learned about in the letter to the church at Ephesus.
SPEAKER_00: What can we learn from the letter to the angel that the church of Pergamon?
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, we can notice their conflict over their convictions.
SPEAKER_00: And here is sort of a contrast, or a conflict rather, between orthodoxy versus syncretism and the pluralism of their own time.
SPEAKER_00: And we have the same kind of thing going on in our own time as well.
SPEAKER_00: Um you can't blend, Jesus can't, Lord means Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Uh does it?
SPEAKER_00: He's not Lord of some, he's Lord of all, or he's not Lord at all.
SPEAKER_00: Um and so we have the same challenges in our own day and time, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: Pressure from outside and some tension from within as as some among our ranks begin to weaken.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and and we see this, I think we see this in the as as people talk about, oh, the you know, today's church is is shrinking.
SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, I think what's shrinking is the the number of people who attend that are nominals in their belief.
SPEAKER_00: Um they're not like Antipas, who's mentioned here.
SPEAKER_00: They wouldn't go to the death for his name, for the name of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Um for them, it's just a social club or it's just a cultural thing.
SPEAKER_00: But for those who take the word of God seriously, for those who take the the grace that's offered to us uh through the finished work of Christ on the cross, for those who take that seriously, we want to give our lives back to the one who gave us our life in the first place, and who has redeemed us and rescued us and given us our life yet a second time.
SPEAKER_00: We're born again.
SPEAKER_00: We have new life in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And so we want to give it back to him for his glory, because that's what we hope this all leads to is his glory, you see.
SPEAKER_00: Um, in their time, uh, would they fall to the antinomianism or the which is a fancy word, which just means lawlessness, not recognizing any kind of law.
SPEAKER_00: So they're permissive-minded, might believe in God, might, but don't believe that God would have any sort of um uh standards uh at all, or any kind of uh laws that establish his standards, uh precepts, if you will.
SPEAKER_00: And yet the word of God that we study is full to overflowing.
SPEAKER_00: God has not left us in the dark as to what he thinks is right or wrong.
SPEAKER_00: He's made it quite clear to us throughout the scripture.
SPEAKER_00: And the law is good.
SPEAKER_00: It's our school teacher.
SPEAKER_00: It shows us we can't live up to it.
SPEAKER_00: We need a savior.
SPEAKER_00: And then the word of God shows us our Savior, points us to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And the book of Revelation is just all about Jesus and how he's come for lost sinners.
SPEAKER_00: He's come to stir us out of our slumbers and wake us up if we're finding ourselves flirting with the lawlessness or the antinomianism of Balaam and the Nicolaitans.
SPEAKER_00: For a lot of us as well, there's sort of the opposite.
SPEAKER_00: There's a legalism that sort of lingers in our past, some of us that grew up in the church, some of us that are rule followers, some of us that think we can somehow or another earn our way into heaven or earn God's love.
SPEAKER_00: And grace is opposed to earning, you see, it's as opposed to earning as it is opposed to to evil, you see.
SPEAKER_00: And so, as Sinclair Ferguson says, antinomianism and legalism are not so much antithetical to each other as they are both antithetical to grace.
SPEAKER_00: This is why Scripture never prescribes one as the antidote for the other.
SPEAKER_00: Rather, grace, God's grace in Christ, in our union with Christ, is the antidote to both.
SPEAKER_00: So whether you're you're religious or irreligious, and that's what you're sort of betting the farm on, you need grace, just like I need grace.
SPEAKER_00: I don't need karma, I don't need to balance out the scales.
SPEAKER_00: The image, the the symbols of the Christian faith are not a set of scales that you and I are supposed to balance out.
SPEAKER_00: The symbol of the Christian faith is the cross.
SPEAKER_00: The cross, you see?
SPEAKER_00: The cross is where we find access to God.
SPEAKER_00: And and the cross is the way which God has reconciled us, acquitted us, that is.
SPEAKER_00: So that's why we need to study through books of the Bible here at the Village Chapel.
SPEAKER_00: We don't need mere religion, and we certainly don't need irreligion.
SPEAKER_00: Both are reckless, both will lead us to ruin.
SPEAKER_00: What we need is grace.
SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, what can TVC learn from the letter of the angel of the church at Pergamum?
SPEAKER_00: The courage of their convictions.
SPEAKER_00: Look at that.
SPEAKER_00: Um, Jesus gives them some credit.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, he commends them for the fact that they've they've held fast to the truth and to his name and that to his faith, you see.
SPEAKER_00: And so they're they're getting that, but they're they're weak and they're vulnerable.
SPEAKER_00: They need to be alert to that.
SPEAKER_00: And so there's this dynamic and and fluid sort of thing going on, and that's the same way it is with us right now, um, and has been and will be until Christ returns.
SPEAKER_00: Um, we need to be aware of all that.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, something is influencing us almost every single minute of almost every single day.
SPEAKER_00: And the question is, what's forming you?
SPEAKER_00: What's forming me?
SPEAKER_00: And I seek to persuade you to be formed, to be influenced, to be shaped by the gospel, by the good news of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: I um I know we live in a time when there are a lot of ideas and we have access to a lot of ideas.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, some people call this the postmodern world where everything's sort of post-Christian and post-truth and all that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00: And I gotta be, I gotta be honest.
SPEAKER_00: I if I were gonna identify myself, I'd say I'm a post-postmodern person.
SPEAKER_00: I I see the vacuity of all of that nonsense.
SPEAKER_00: I see the uh intellectual uh uh uh confusion and the moral bankruptcy that all of that leads to.
SPEAKER_00: And I find myself really free, uh living under the truths of the gospel of grace and the good news that I learn from this Bible.
SPEAKER_00: And so I keep going back to it over and over again and love to study it until then we rise each new day, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, Christian, asking Christ to lead us on the path he has for us, to strengthen us for the journey, to give us both the humility and the courage to discern truth from falsehood each and every day, because we'll need to do that as we are influenced and all these voices are speaking to us.
SPEAKER_00: John Stott says it this way this way conversion must not take the convert out of the world, but rather send him back into it.
SPEAKER_00: The same person in the same world, and yet a new person with new convictions and new standards.
SPEAKER_00: So you gotta have convictions, that's true, and need to understand that your convictions are gonna be in conflict with the world as it thinks and acts apart from God.
SPEAKER_00: You gotta be aware of that.
SPEAKER_00: Like the people at Pergamum needed to be awakened to that fact, right?
SPEAKER_00: But then you need to have the courage of your convictions.
SPEAKER_00: The only way to do that is to place your hope, faith, and confidence, not in yourself, but in the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit at work in our lives, transforming us, changing us, giving us that assurance of his love toward us.
SPEAKER_00: I love the way Paul Tripp says it.
SPEAKER_00: Never alone, never forgotten, never again condemned, never unloved, never rejected, never without help, never without hope, never left to battle alone.
SPEAKER_00: This is the life of every one of God's children.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: And finally, like Pergamum, we must realize the convictions of the kingdom of Jesus will at times run contrary to the kingdom of the world in which we live.
SPEAKER_00: It will sometimes be very inconvenient and very unpopular to think as Jesus thinks, to see things the way God sees things.
SPEAKER_00: To weep over what God weeps over.
SPEAKER_00: Um to rejoice even over what God rejoices over.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes that's not gonna be the popular we're gonna sometimes we're gonna be in proximity to Satan's throne and the darkness of the world as it thinks and acts apart from God around us.
SPEAKER_00: Uh we may suffer even because we hold fast to the truths of the gospel and to the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: What do we do then?
SPEAKER_00: Can we be persuasive without being abrasive?
SPEAKER_00: Can we be persuasive uh in that kind of dark world?
SPEAKER_00: As we look back through the pages of Revelation as we continue to study, I think we'll find that the answer is yes we can because we belong to him.
SPEAKER_00: Because Christ, when Christ is first and foremost in our lives, when we put him first, when we hold his name fast, he actually is already holding us fast, and he's the one who will be faithful and true.
SPEAKER_00: I like to close with this quote from Henry M.
SPEAKER_00: Guadkin, 19th uh at the turn of the 19th and 20th century, an English theologian and church historian.
SPEAKER_00: He says this about the Christians of the early centuries.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, no wonder if the Christians made an impression out of all proportion to their numbers.
SPEAKER_00: See, this is so true because really there's no other explanation for how the gospel swept the mighty Roman Empire without anybody firing a shot, without Christians drawing swords and bows and arrows and all this sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00: How do you explain that?
SPEAKER_00: How could that have possibly happened?
SPEAKER_00: You know, it cries out for an answer.
SPEAKER_00: How did this happen?
SPEAKER_00: No wonder if the Christians made an impression out of all proportion to their numbers, conviction in the midst of waverers, fiery energy in a world of disillusion, purity in an age of easy morals, firm brotherhood in a loose society, heroic courage in a time of persecution, formed a problem that could not be set aside, however, polite society might affect to ignore it, and the religion of the future turned on the answer to it.
SPEAKER_00: Would the world be able to explain it better than the Christians who said it was the living power of the risen Savior?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, and amen.