Revelation 2:12-17

Good morning everyone.

Hopefully you can hear me.

Why don't you hit that like uh button?

If indeed you can hear me if I'm coming through uh loud and clear.

Um the irony behind what I was saying, great that you can hear me.

The irony behind what I was saying as I was welcoming you all to this broadcast is I was uh thanking everybody who was working behind the scenes to uh to make this happen.

Uh poor old Dan BK uh nearly had a uh nearly had kittens trying to make that work, but he fixed it.

Um it wasn't just that I hadn't hit the unmute button.

Uh I'm not that much of an idiot.

Um, there actually does seem to be an international uh problem with Zoom uh across the across the world at the moment.

So um I am going to go ahead and get into it.

Why don't we pray again uh as we as we do that?

Father, we do ask that you would uh maintain internet connections uh uh during these uh these few minutes while we consider this letter uh together.

We pray that uh you would impress its truths uh upon each of our hearts and that we would be uh changed, that we would love Jesus more uh as a result.

We pray in his name, amen.

So uh yes, uh somebody just texted me there saying, He who has ears to hear, let him hear uh what the spirit says to the churches.

So we all have ears, we all have unmuted Zoom feeds, and uh so let's uh get down to it.

Keep please keep the letter to the church and program open in front of you, either in a Bible or uh on an app on your phone.

Uh the letter that we're coming to, which is the uh the third of seven, so the third of our uh our series of seven letters, is to date the richest, the most kind of complex one in terms of its uh imagery in the letters yet.

You'll have noted that perhaps from uh from Young's reading.

It draws on symbols from uh from the Old Testament as well as uh symbols and things known in the city of Pergamum.

And as we go through, in order to make sense of the images, it'll be important to explore those Old Testament and those kind of contemporary or contemporary to the to the writing uh uh things in Pergamum.

Uh but even as we uh resolve uh sorry, I'm just getting uh uh sorry, now I'm having technical difficulties on my iPad.

I do apologize for that.

Um but even as we perhaps get a little bit bamboozled by the imagery, uh, one of the things that is clear is just the general sense of what's going on.

And the general sense of what's going on is that the church in Pergamon is a church that had uh successfully resisted persecution and trial and tribulation.

You see that verse 13 uh of chapter two.

I know where you dwell, where Satan's throne is, yet you hold fast to my name and did not deny my faith.

They held fast, even when it cost somebody uh his life.

Look on time.

Even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness.

That word witness, interestingly, is the word uh martus, uh, where we get the word martyr from.

It just meant witness back in the day that uh Revelation was written.

But they had resisted this onslaught, uh, they had done what the church in Smyrna had been called to do last week.

Persecution was coming, that's what we saw, and Jesus called them to persevere, to endure.

And what we read in Pergamon is they did that, they had resisted the attack from without, the outside attack.

However, the issue of Pergamon was not outside forces bringing suffering and persecution upon the church, it was teaching on the inside, it was what was going on in the church that was having this corrupting effect on the believers there.

This is something to be acutely aware of.

Because not always uh will it be the things that are outside that will destabilize our faith.

In fact, that that's very rare in the West to date.

The church itself often finds itself embattled from within, whether it's overt denials of the gospel or whether it's a plausible sounding teaching, the plausible sounding teacher who says that we need to change what we believe about certain things, what we believe about uh Jesus' work on the cross, what we believe, about biblical ethics, what it uh what is and is not permissible to do with uh with our bodies, for example.

And it all sounds very plausible.

And it's all done in the name of compassion, isn't it?

Some of you have been in churches like that.

Some of some of you have been in churches where something has happened and a particular uh teaching has arisen, or personalities have started to uh to talk about certain things, and that it has gained traction within the church, and it has sound attractive, it has sounded attractive to many.

And in the end, the church has split.

Or if it hasn't split the church, it's embroiled the leadership in such pastoral mess and controversy that it's completely lost sight of its mission, that it's just become this kind of uh this holy hodl putting out fires from within.

Or in that city.

People have looked at that fellowship and said that church is a mess.

Did you hear what they're saying?

Did you hear what he said?

Moreover, each of us faces the temptation, don't we?

Each of us faces faces the temptation to bend and to flex in order to make the Bible more palatable, to soften the rough edges, or to justify things the Bible is against in our own minds because our hearts desire them.

How often is that the case that actually you want something to be true?

You want to be able to live in a certain way, and you know deep down that the Bible stands against it.

What do you do?

You soften that part, you justify it in your own mind in order to live the way your heart desires.

So let us ask some questions of this letter to the church in Pergamon.

First is what is the situation in Pergamum?

What is the situation?

The second we'll look at what is the false teaching in Pergamon, then what is the command that comes from Jesus, and then fourthly and finally, what is the promise that he offers?

What's the situation?

What is the false teaching?

What's the command, and what's the promise?

First of all, the situation.

Situation in Pergamum, uh, just to give you all a little bit more uh context.

First of all, we read uh verse uh 13.

Uh Jesus says, I know where you dwell, where Satan has its throne.

Uh it's worth uh it's worth not reading Jesus uh like some sort of mafia gang member.

I know where you live.

That's not the way it's to be read.

I think rather he is uh being uh sympathetic, saying, I know where you live.

I know that you live where Satan has his throne.

But what does that mean?

What does it mean to live where Satan has his throne?

Well, there are a few options in Smyrna, actually, as you as you look at it.

First might be that uh not in Smyrna, sorry, in Pergamum.

Pergamum again was another center of emperor worship, where you were worshipping the emperor at Rome.

In fact, it was the first city to erect a temple to a living emperor, the emperor Augustus.

So a temple of uh a center of emperor worship.

Maybe that's what Jesus means when he says where Satan has his throne.

It could be because Pergamon uh was one of the few cities that had an Asclepion.

Now, uh I'm sure all of you know what an Asclepion is, uh, but allow me just to explain it uh just for a moment.

Uh an Asclepion was uh was like a was like a hospital coupled with a wellness center, uh like a uh like a spa, uh that sort of that sort of thing.

And Asclepius was the god of healing.

And uh as his staff, he held this rod that had a snake wrapped around it.

And so you could Google the image of a of an Asclepian rod.

In fact, if you look at some pharmacies and things like that, you'll see that they uh still have this symbol of the rod with the snake smart spiral around it.

That may be familiar to some of you, that is an Asclepian rod.

And he was the god of healing.

And the idea was that you went to this hospital come wellness center, you went to this spa retreat uh for your particular issue, and they would give you narcotics, uh, and then you would lie down in a in a room.

And uh sometimes that room had an actual snake in it, and they the idea was that the uh that if the snake touched you, if it crawled over you while you were in this narcotic trance, uh that it uh uh that it was um uh that that was the guarantee that it was healing you, or uh it was the idea that uh Asclepius would uh would visit you in that narcotic uh trance, and then you would be healed.

But obviously in the Bible's mind, uh serpents denote something quite different.

Serpents denote satanic activity.

In fact, later on in the book of Revelation, uh in chapter 12, the uh Satan, that great dragon, is called the serpent, that great serpent.

The third thing that it may be is uh is the temple of or the altar to Zeus.

So in the in the hillside above Pergamum, there was a great altar.

Now, when I say great altar, this altar was huge.

You can actually go and see a replica of it in the museum in Berlin.

In fact, if you google uh altar of Zeus, Pergamum, you will see how huge this thing is.

And it stood as this imposing figure on the hillside, and so where Satan has his throne may be a reference to the altar to the king of the pagan gods that was there in Pergamon.

Whatever is the reference, what we can know from those three things is that Pergamon was a city that was full of idolatry, that it was full of activity that was opposed to the Christian message and who God was, and so it was satanic activity, as we noted before.

To be in in league with Satan is to be opposed to God from its religious life to its political and economic life, never mind, and uh in terms of what you did behind closed doors with your own body, all of it was opposed to the God of the Bible.

How amazing then that the church had resisted till now.

It had resisted so much and how encouraging that Jesus comes to this church and says, I know where you live.

I know how hard the context is that you are in.

I know that the city can be a dark place, a place of temptations and pressures.

I recognize that I see that that is Pergamon.

Similarly, in our day, there are temptations and pressures in the city in which we live, those pressures to to bend, to acquiesce, to not stand up.

And Jesus comes and says, I know where you live.

I see the context in which you find yourself.

What then was the false teaching in Pergamon?

False teaching is is laid out for us there in 14 and 15, though it does need a little bit of unpacking, doesn't it?

Have a look at verse 14.

But I have a few things against you.

You have some there who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel so that they might eat food, sacrifice to idols, and practice sexual immorality.

So also you have some who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans.

Now we saw the Nicolaitans uh in uh the letter to the church in Ephesus.

Uh the church in Ephesus hated the teaching of the Nicolaitans, but now we see here that some in Pergamum uh are holding to that teaching.

It could look at first glance, though, looking at verses 14 and uh and 15, that there are two separate false teachings.

There's those who hold to uh the teaching of Balaam, uh which is from the Old Testament, from the book of Numbers, and then secondly, there are those who uh hold to the teaching of the Nicoletans.

However, I think it's better understood that the teaching of the Nicoletans is false teaching like that of Balaam.

That's what I understand by where it says at the start of verse 15, so also rather than just also you have this.

And let me read it to you in uh another version in the Christian, in the Christian standard Bible.

It says this, Jesus says, But I have a few things against you.

You have some who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught uh Balak to place a stumbling block in front of the Israelites to meet eat meat, sacrificed idols, and to commit sexual immorality.

In the same way, you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans.

So, whatever the teaching of the Nicolaitans is, it's best understood as being akin to the teaching of Balaam in Numbers 22 to 24.

And so, in order to understand the false teaching that's going on in the church, Jesus says you need to think about what Balaam did.

It's like Balaam in Numbers 24.

And so let's think back.

Perhaps the only thing that you uh know about Balaam is his donkey, uh his donkey that uh that spoke because it was opposed by by an angel.

But in the book of Numbers, uh the prophet Balaam was hired by Balak, and Balak was the king of Moab.

And he was hired to curse the Israelites as they wandered through the wilderness.

So they're wandering, uh not yet in the promised land.

They're wandering after being freed from Egypt, and Balak is freaking out.

Balak's freaking out because there's a million people right on his doorstep, and he's worried that they're going to try and come into his country.

And so he hires Balaam and says, Could you go and pronounce a curse on them so that they'll all uh uh die or at very least not succeed?

Balaam uh takes the money and yet when it comes to the curse, he can't do it.

God intervenes so that uh Balaam is only ever able to bless uh the children of Israel.

Balach the king, as a result, isn't too impressed, and so Balaam comes up with another plan.

Instead of overtly trying to attack them with this curse, what Balaam says is get your most beautiful women, get your most handsome men, send them with gifts to the children of Israel.

Encourage intermarriage, encourage sexual activity between them.

Moreover, invite them to your worship feasts, invite them uh to take on positions in your temples, priestly positions, and make sure that they reciprocate and do the same.

Muddy up their worship, muddy up their worship and their ethical life and their economic life, get involved in it.

You can't attack them overtly, you can't go on the offensive, but you can undermine them from within.

Are you beginning to see how this relates to the letter Pergamum?

In the same way, the Nicolaitans were teachers in the church who were saying, Let's not abandon Jesus.

But we do need to compromise.

Don't you remember uh the persecution that there was?

Don't you remember uh Antipass, Antipass, who who died?

Do you want more of that?

No, we need to we need to avoid more bloodshed, we need to, in some ways, become like and participate in the culture around us.

And so it doesn't really matter if you go to that pagan temple.

It doesn't really matter if you if you sleep with a with a cultic prostitute, it doesn't really matter what you do with with your body because remember, after all, God is love.

Balak couldn't attack and overcome Israel.

The church in Pergamum had resisted the offensive.

But just like Balak, they were being undermined from within.

And what were they being tempted with?

They're being tempted they were being tempted with money and sex.

Why do I say that?

Well, I think the two things that will cause you to shift in what you believe are money and sex.

Why do I say money in this context?

Well, because pagan worship in the ancient world was bound up with economics.

The food you bought was offered uh uh at an idol temple, and people wouldn't buy your produce if you hadn't offered it at an idol temple.

You couldn't get a job in the ancient world if you didn't pay homage to the god who is the patron of that particular profession.

And so false worship and money, false worship and economics, your economic stability were closely related.

And isn't that a temptation to compromise?

Isn't that a temptation to soften and bend and flex?

If your livelihood is on the line?

To think to yourself, if I say that, it'll ruin my reputation in the company.

It'll ruin my reputation amongst my colleagues.

And when when the next round of promotions comes up, I'll be overlooked.

Or I might get disciplined, I might get fired if I stand up for this.

Egregious and injust practice.

Maybe it's not any of those things, but maybe it is the subtle creeping in and of an umbiblical view of your money and your possessions.

This is mine.

I earned this.

I deserve this.

I need this in order to feel secure, comfortable.

Some Christians in Pergamum had decided that what they needed to do was play the game.

Go to the feast, eat the food, leave what you believe at your door.

In the same way, there were those who thought, it doesn't really matter what I do in my private life.

It doesn't really matter what I do with my body.

This isn't to say that the Bible thinks that sex is nasty or wrong, but to acknowledge that we can use our bodies and our sexuality in ways that are not honoring to God.

It is so easy to make the need to feel loved, to make the need to feel intimate and accepted, to make that need as something that displaces our faith in Jesus.

That displaces our commitment to Him.

It becomes another Lord.

It becomes a primary driver, doesn't it?

Maybe not so that anyone would see.

But behind closed doors, maybe it is that you stand up for the faith in public, that you've resisted the snide remarks and the misunderstandings from friends and colleagues.

But inside you know you're being undermined.

Telling yourself that something is okay when you know that in your heart that it is not.

When people get close to talking about that hidden issue, when you don't let people know you anymore.

When you try and stay happy and deflect with humor, but when it turns to the serious conversation, you can't handle it.

You feel yourself tensing up because you don't want to be discovered, or you simply just don't want to be called out.

But Jesus comes, and this is the third point.

Jesus comes in verse 16, and this is the command that he gives.

He says, Therefore, repent.

Therefore, repent.

If not, I will come to you soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth.

That's the uh the reference back to chapter one.

Remember how each of these letters draws on an image from chapter one, and then the promise, as we'll see, uh, is fulfilled in chapter 22.

Christ invites the church that has compromised its teaching to repent.

Remember what repent means.

Repent simply means to stop going one way and to start going another.

And this has both corporate and individual implications.

This isn't just something that uh that city church does collectively, though that may be the case, but it is for you individually as you listen to this.

You've been thinking about, or if the Lord has been impressing on your heart ways that you have compromised your faith, perhaps in the area of money, comfort, economics, or in the realm of intimacy.

Jesus encourages you to stop going that way and to start going another, to start following Jesus again.

The church as a whole, for sure, needs to ensure that it is not endorsing, excuse me, implicitly or explicitly, this sort of idolatry.

The replacing of Jesus with something else, with someone else.

But at the same time, each of us has a responsibility, one to another and to ourselves, to be turning from these idols.

These idols that entice us, that promise so much and deliver so little, that promise life and deliver death.

Balaam in the book of Numbers was ultimately killed with a sword because of his wickedness.

And so Jesus, in terrible warning, says that he will war against those who do not with the sword of his mind.

By simply speaking a word, a dreadful word of judgment.

And it will be done.

But what is the promise?

What is the promise for those who overcome?

That's verse 17, and we have this threefold promise, all of which need to be unpacked ever so slightly.

I will give him a white stone and a new name written on that stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.

Hidden manna.

A white stone and a new name.

Hidden manna.

We've been thinking about from verse 14 about the Israelites wandering in the wilderness.

One of the things that we know from their wilderness wanderings is that they were sustained by God by the manna, this divinely provided bread, this divinely provided sustenance.

The Christians in Pergam were tempted to believe that they needed to eat the pagan food in order to survive in the world.

They needed to bend and to flex economically.

They needed to make decisions based solely on economic principles.

What will be the best job for me?

What will be the best college for me to go to before ever considering?

Is there a community of faith there?

How often people in my own pastoral ministry make decisions with regards to their life based primarily, if not solely, on economics rather than thinking about their own spiritual health.

And what that shows is something of a lack of dependence upon God.

What Jesus is saying is saying, trust me, depend on me.

I know where you live.

And so I know your need.

I know what it is that you lack.

And so Jesus' promise is I will give you divine provision, both now and in the world to come.

Trust me.

Not your bank balance.

Not your career.

That's not to say don't work hard at your career.

That's not to say it's bad to make money.

But if they're where your security comes from, it's one of the most shifting of sands that you could build your life upon.

And do you realize that from the last 10 weeks?

He says then that he will also give them a white stone.

This may have a very simple explanation.

Stones were uh white stones were given as a ticket to admission.

Uh, they had admitted you into the into the theater, into the gladiatorial games, or something like that.

You were given a white stone.

And so Jesus might be saying, I will welcome you in.

That might be what he's saying, but it may also be a reference back to Asclepius.

So after the snake had crawled over you, and if indeed you had been healed of your infirmity, one of the things that you would do uh by way of gratitude to Asclepius is that you would commission a sculpture, you would go to a stonemason, and in Pergamum all of the stones were white.

And you would have commission a statue to be made of the part of the body that had been healed.

And indeed, if you go to Corinth, you can uh you can see elbows and hands and arms and legs and ears and noses uh that all had been carved as a gratitude, as a trophy for esclepius.

This white stone.

So perhaps Jesus is saying, endure to the end, and I will heal you.

Endure to the end, and I will make you whole.

And on that stone is written a new name.

New name in the Bible.

Both has connotations of being known and of being transformed, of having your character changed.

Jacob in the Bible, Jacob that swindler, Jacob that uh that twisted one was renamed.

What was he called?

Israel.

Because he was known by God and transformed by him.

Lots of revelation draws primarily on the book of Isaiah, and in the final concluding chapters of the book of Isaiah, Isaiah has a vision of his own, a vision of a world made new as well.

And in Isaiah 62, we read these words.

He says, The nations shall see your righteousness, and all the kings your glory, and you shall be called by a new name, that the mouth of the Lord will give.

You shall be a crown of beauty, a royal crown in the hand of the Lord.

You see that that mouth that that wars with the sword also comes to give a new name.

I think in fact that the sword is double-edged.

Not because it is uh particularly bloody, but because it does two things.

It both wounds and makes whole.

That is why I think it is a two-edged sword.

And so though the Lord Jesus might speak words of judgment over some, he comes to those who endure to the end and speaks words of healing and transformation and hope and life and joy and gladness and goodness over you.

Taken together, these three promises talk of sustaining, healing, transformation.

And note this, City Church, as we finish.

Note this.

These promises aren't for the morally upright.

What has he just said?

He's just said, repent, repent of how you have compromised yourself morally.

Repent of how you have lacked integrity, and I will give you these things.

He comes to those who need him, who know their need of him, and says, These are the things that I will do for you.

And so repentance, therefore, is not simply something, it's not simply rubbing gravel through our hair, and Jesus is not asking us to drag ourselves over nails or broken glass.

He says, No, turn around.

And here's the things that I will give you.

You've looked for security, I will make you known.

You've looked for comfort, I will admit you forever into the paradise of God.

You've fearfully sought your own sustaining, depending upon yourself and your own strength.

Repent of that, and I will provide for you because I know your needs.

Do you need to make a change?

Do you need to make a change in terms of your thinking?

What you value, what you prioritize?

Do you need to make a change in terms of your heart attitude and what you desire?

Do you need to make a change in terms of how you act?

Jesus stands ready to welcome you.

And he gives you his spirit in order that you might be transformed now, and as Paul says, from one degree of glory to the to the to another until we see him face to face.

Let's pray together.

Help out each of us individually to honestly examine ourselves and to know where repentance is necessary.

Thank you that the Lord Jesus is full of compassion.

He comes to this church to warn it and to give it such great promises.

May we run to him afresh this morning.

Give us the courage and the strength and the faith to do just that.

We ask these things in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Before we uh sing our final song and uh we move on to conclude our time together, just a reminder about tea and coffee.

Uh, I will uh post that uh while we're singing, I get that scheduled, and post that into the into the chat window and also uh in our WhatsApp groups to join us uh from about 10 past uh or so as we uh spend some time together and enjoy one another's company.

A reminder uh also about Wednesday night and uh our whole church prayer meeting together in lieu of our community groups.

Uh, do join us then.

Thank you very much.