Sardis

Today we continue on our journey through the 7 churches in Revelation.

As you will recall, the message was given to John while imprisoned on the island of Patmos and the order of the letters follows a clear travel route, one that Jesus told us he had walked to see the situation at each Church. Let’s begin with a video introduction to the Church at number 5 on the journey, Sardis.

The main things to note from this video is that Sardis was a very wealthy city, a financial centre but the people were complacent about their security and this was the same in the Church. So understanding that important detail, let’s read what Jesus had to say to the Church.

Revelation 3:1-6

“And to the angel of the church in Sardis write, ‘These things says He who has the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars: “I know your works, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead. Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die, for I have not found your works perfect before God. Remember therefore how you have received and heard; hold fast and repent. Therefore if you will not watch, I will come upon you as a thief, and you will not know what hour I will come upon you. 

You have a few names even in Sardis who have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy. He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life; but I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels. “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” ’

As you will have noticed, each letter is addressed to the angels of the churches. This does not mean the letter is directed at the angel because they are the one in trouble. I’m sure you may have heard the phrase « don’t shoot the messenger ». Each church has a guardian angel, and these angels were responsible for delivering the letters to their Church. Remember, John was imprisoned on Patmos, he couldn’t do it, so it was these angels that ensured the letters were delivered, a miracle in itself and a witness of the reality of angels who help us. 

Hebrews 13:2

Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some have unwittingly entertained angels.

To their shock, the Christians at Sardis who think their Church is doing well with attendance up, are told by Jesus that they are dead. Whatever life there is, is dying like a plant with dead branches and just a few green leaves. This Church needs a severe pruning and a weeding of the soil or it will die. The message from Jesus was just like going to the doctor’s and discovering you’re really sick when you’re feeling fine. 

The prescription Jesus gives for recovery is fourfold found in verses 2 and 3;

1. Be watchful, 

2. Strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die, for I have not found your works perfect before God. 

3. Remember therefore how you have received and heard; 

4. Hold fast and repent. 

Be watchful

The first thing Jesus warns the Christians at Sardis is to be watchful. They have become too comfortable, too lazy and were just like the city of Sardis that had been invaded twice before because complacency. They were not on guard.

 

One of the movies I remember from my youth was “Thief in the Night”. It told the story of a young woman who awakens from sleep to discover that the rapture has occurred and she has been left behind. Jesus will come as a thief in the night to those who are not watching and are not ready. But to those of us who keep watch, we will not be caught off guard. When you see the state of the world today and compare it to what the Bible says about the end times, I hope you have noticed how closely it matches and have realised that Jesus is coming very soon. Jesus told us to watch and pray, those are the 2 ways we can be on guard. 

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus told his disciples to watch and pray because something terrible was about to happen but they weren’t ready and were fast asleep ! We need to be on guard and we need to be praying because we are in a spiritual battle as dangerous for us as Gethsemane was for Jesus. If we do not prepare this way, we are too weak to succeed against the devil. We will fall to temptation.

Revelation 16:15

“Behold, I am coming as a thief. Blessed is he who watches, and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame.”

Jesus speaks of keeping our garments, by this he indicates to keep them clean and to look after them. I have a pair of timberland boots and I sometimes use them for golf. This week I was out playing and they got muddy. Now if I didn’t clean and polish them afterwards, it wouldn’t be too long before they start to deteriorate. Regular clean and polish is required in this World, it’s a dirty place. The Holy Spirit is going to tell us when we’re going off track and we have to be careful that our garments, our character, is kept clean. Facebook and YouTube are a trouble for me because it is very easy to start going through the shorts and watching them which can offend the Holy Spirit. So I need to be on guard and keep a watch on myself that I don’t go down that track and to pray about it if it’s a problem for me because it will effect my garments, my character. This is what Jesus means by watch and pray. 

Strengthen 

The second thing was to strengthen the things that remain. The great danger for the Christians in Sardis was they were mixing with the World and all its wealth and they didn’t realise how dirty they had become in God’s sight and how weak they’d become spiritually. Their boots were about to fall apart !

Jesus spoke of the deceitfulness of riches making us unfruitful in the parable of the sower;

Mark 4:18-19

Now these are the ones sown among thorns; they are the ones who hear the word, and the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.

Riches tend to make us feel secure but actually they are a weak defence from harm. The money we pay for insurance is a false security. Just ask the people who have lost their homes to flooding in Esk Valley or the fires in Europe or the people who paid big money to go on the Titan.

Sardis was famous for being the first city to mint coins and it was a city of wealth and luxury. The Christians there had been caught up in it, they were like the seeds sown amongst thorns. The Church appeared to be thriving but Jesus said it was dead. A church can spend a lot of money on programmes, on equipment and resources and look impressive but if we rely on these things, we won’t have success. The World may be impressed by our entertainment but it won’t be saved. We have to look to the Holy Spirit instead and preach the Gospel in its fullness. That is the difficult narrow way and it meets with hostility from the World. The World is hostile to the true Jesus.

John 15:18-19

“If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

So a Church needs to have a close look at what it is doing and ask honestly, is there a spiritual harvest?  The truth may be, that there is not despite the great events and programmes.

This year at PCC we have had to take a close look at what we’re doing after Bob and Tina left. We have stabilised the situation but we need to strengthen as well. We identified that we are a family church so we’re doing simple things to strengthen that. But there is more work to do in reaching unchurched families and in the areas of youth and children’s ministry. Here we have to strengthen.

Remember 

We are commanded many times to remember in the Bible, one count I saw was 352. 

Deuteronomy 32:7

“Remember the days of old, Consider the years of many generations. Ask your father, and he will show you; Your elders, and they will tell you:

Ask an old person if they remember the good old days and they’ll tell you. Remember what it was like when you were first a Christian or when you first came to PCC? What did we do then and are we doing it now? When a Church has a bad diagnosis from Jesus, it doesn’t need to do new things, the prescription is to go back to what it did at first. 

If you are older like me, I’m sure you will remember that life was a lot less complicated when you were young and I bet it was when you first became a Christian too. What did you do back then? Maybe you started going to a home group, or read your Bible and took notes or went to Church twice on a Sunday. Maybe you were involved in a youth group mission or witnessing.

My Dad recalled to me this week of when our family first started going to Papatoetoe Baptist in 1974 and a new minister came in 1975, Gerard Marks and his wife Heather from Balclutha. Papatoetoe Baptist was a church of 500 back then, so the previous minister Foster Sherburd had done an excellent job but it was a big job for Gerard and there was no one else. By the way, Foster Sherburd had introduced the idea of all age Sunday Schools throughout New Zealand which was for adults and kids outside of the regular Church service. It was kind of back to basics but it bore fruit which was evidenced at Papatoetoe. When Gerard came in, he slowly built a team of pastors and the Church was strengthened and we can see that strength continue to our day with Manukau City Baptist. I’m not saying PCC should do that but we should always remember what we did at the beginning of PCC because I remember walking into our Church and thinking it was breath of fresh air.

Hold Fast and Repent

Hold fast means to hold tightly and firmly. It means to stay strong, do what is right, see it through, no surrender, stay true, continue to believe, this too shall pass, grit it out. 

When you’ve ended up in hospital because you’re sick, the road to recovery can be long. Maybe you can only eat a little at first, maybe you can only walk to the letterbox without getting puffed out. But holding fast means persevering as you turn things around. It will be small steps at first, it will take time but you have to keep doing the right things to get well again.

Same with repentance. It’s a decision to walk the opposite way to the direction you were going. It doesn’t mean you are perfect from day one. It doesn’t mean you won’t stumble but it does mean you’re going away from the old ways towards Jesus. He is the Way the Truth and the Life and he is worth the struggle.

And Jesus does promise the power to overcome. The message of the early church was to repent and be baptised for your sins.

I know that some of you want to get baptised and we are having a baptismal service the last week in August on the 27th.

Romans 6:1-4

What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

Jesus makes a promise to the overcomers. 

Revelation 3:5

He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life; but I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.

There is the promise for the overcomer that their name will remain in the book of life and not be erased. This warning of having your name blotted out appears in Exodus, in Deuteronomy, in Psalms and in Revelation so it is to be taken seriously. The overcomer will wear white garments that symbolise their pure character because their sins have been washed away. 

Yes, after the pruning in winter and the repentance from sin, we see a newness of life, we see new green shoots coming through in Spring.

Doctors orders. Let’s pray.

Pergamos

Today we continue on our journey back in time with Jesus around the 7 churches of Revelation. 

Sean has already taken us through the letters to the 1st two churches on the journey which were Ephesus and Smyrna. Today we look at number 3, Pergamos, the most northern of all the cities. As you will recall, the message was given to John while imprisoned on the island of Patmos. Let’s begin with a video introduction to Pergamos.

Let’s read from  Revelation 2:12-17 what Jesus wrote to the Christians at Pergamos but remember the letter is also for us.

“And to the angel of the church in Pergamos write, ‘These things says He who has the sharp two-edged sword: “I know your works, and where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is. And you hold fast to My name, and did not deny My faith even in the days in which Antipas was My faithful martyr, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells. But I have a few things against you, because you have there those who hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols, and to commit sexual immorality. 

Thus you also have those who hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I hate. Repent, or else I will come to you quickly and will fight against them with the sword of My mouth. “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give some of the hidden manna to eat. And I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written which no one knows except him who receives it. ” ’

I’ve underlined 4 things in the letter which we’ll look further at today;

1. Where Satan dwells

2. The doctrine of Balaam

3. The doctrine of the Nicolaitans

4. The two-edged sword

 

1. Where Satan Dwells

One of the interesting things we learn from Revelation is that Pergamos was the place where Satan dwelt, where his throne was. Satan is limited, he is not omnipresent like God. We know from Job 1:7 that Satan travels about the Earth;

And the Lord said to Satan, “From where do you come?” So Satan answered the Lord and said, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking back and forth on it.”

But even though Satan travels to and fro across the Earth, he has a residence. Satan offered Jesus all the Kingdoms of the World from a high place, it does not specify where but perhaps it was where the very throne of Satan was;

Matthew 4:8-9

Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to Him, “All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.”

Jesus would not bow down and worship Satan. This is the temptation that the Christians were facing in Pergamos and they were holding fast against it and suffering persecution because of it.

Pergamos was a place of wealth and luxury with strong influence over Asia Minor. There were 2 parts of the city. The lower part where most of the people lived and the upper part where the temple was and this is where it is thought Satan’s throne was. Pergamos wasn’t the capital of Asia Minor (that was Ephesus) but there was evil power in control. Satan does not need to be in a capital city to have control over the World. Where is Satan dwelling today? Like a coward, he remains in hiding but the time is coming when he will emerge in plain sight on the world stage in the person of the Antichrist. One day he will be caught by someone stronger and thrown in the Lake of Fire. Hollywood would be a suspect, I’m sure there are other places you could think of with the characteristics of Pergamos.

Idolatry and sexual immorality were rampant in Pergamos. In fact it was legal and normal in Greek society for men to have wives, mistresses and prostitutes. True Christianity preaches marriage between one man and one woman. The atmosphere in Pergamos was therefore intolerant and threatening to Christians. Antipas had been murdered, the Church was being persecuted for standing up to the truth of the Gospel and not bowing to Caesar as Lord.

Even though Jesus commended the Pergamos Church for standing up to Satan and not denying Him, Jesus told the Church that he had a couple of things against them because they had some members who followed bad doctrine - the doctrine of Balaam and the doctrine of the Nicolaitans and these doctrines Jesus hates. If it’s one thing Jesus hates, it’s false doctrine. How can the one who is the Truth bear lies from the very mouth of Satan himself? The fact is that doctrine effects behaviour. That is why we will hold fast to the Creeds and historic teachings of the Church at PCC.

2. The doctrine of Balaam

We need to understand what Jesus meant when he said that some of the Christians in Pergamos were following the doctrine of Balaam.

Balaam was a prophet from Pethor which is thought to be quite a way North of Israel in Syria about as far as Auckland is from Wellington.

Balaam lived at the time of Moses when Israel was on the threshold of the Promised Land camped on the plains of Moab on the east side of the Jordan river just across from Jericho of which everyone knows the famous story of the Walls that came Tumbling Down.

Being afraid of the Israelites who had wiped out the Ammonites, the Moabite King Balak sent his messengers to ask Balaam to come down and curse Israel for a fee. Balaam initially refused but God knew his heart. Eventually Balaam set out on that famous talking donkey to go and curse Israel. 

But each time Balaam prepared the ritual sacrifice and went to curse Israel, a blessing came out his mouth.

Proverbs 26:2

Like a flitting sparrow, like a flying swallow, So a curse without cause shall not alight.

We don’t need to be afraid if our enemies curse us. The Gates of Hell cannot prevail against the Church. The Church grows stronger when it is attacked from the outside. There are many examples of this even in modern times. The Church had massive growth in China when it was persecuted by the Communist government.

Moses wrote in Numbers 31 that Balaam came up with a different plan for cursing Israel. He told King Balak to tempt Israel with prostitutes and idolatry. And Israel fell for it ! The Israelite men ended up with Midianite women, worshipping Baal which included sex as part of the worship. In doing so, they brought a curse on themselves. The way a Church can be destroyed is by weakening it from within through divisions and sin.

Very similar to the doctrine of Balaam, the doctrine of the Nicolaitans was a problem for the Pergamos Church. 

3. The doctrine of the Nicolaitans

Who were the Nicolaitans? In this version of the Bible, the thing Jesus hated about them was their “doctrine.” The word comes from the Greek word erga, which means works or “deeds” which is the word found in other versions of the Bible. However, the meaning is so all-encompassing that it pictures all the deeds and behavior of the Nicolaitans — including their actions, beliefs, conduct, and everything else connected to them. The name “Nicolaitans” is derived from the Greek word nikolaos, a compound of the words nikos and laos. The word nikos is the Greek word that means to conquer or to subdue. The word laos is the Greek word for the people. It is also where we get the word laity. When these two words are compounded into one, they form the name Nicolas, which literally means one who conquers and subdues the people. It seems to suggest that the Nicolaitans were somehow conquering and subduing the people.

Gnostics teach that the physical world is not important, it’s only the spiritual that matters and that we all carry the divine spark, we are all in fact little gods. So what you do with the body doesn’t matter. It is important that we don’t excuse sin through preaching only Grace.

This is what some of the Christians at Pergamos were doing by going up to the temple where Satan’s throne was, eating meat offered to idols and going with temple prostitutes believing that because of God’s grace they were covered. They were no different to the pagans in their behaviour except they went to Church on Sundays to worship the Lord. These few in the Church are who Jesus was pinpointing but the rebuke was to the whole Church for tolerating it. 

Notice how Idolatry and sexual immorality go together. They are very serious sins, they bind us to the World and they are not covered if there is no repentance. 

All idolatry of self has at its core the three lusts found in 1 John 2:16: 

“For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.” 

If we are to escape modern idolatry, we have to admit that it is rampant and reject it in all its forms. It is not of God, but of Satan, and in it we will never find fulfillment. This is the great lie and the same one Satan has been telling since he first lied to Adam and Eve. Sadly, we are still falling for it. Even more sadly, many churches are propagating it in the preaching of the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel built on the idol of self-esteem. But we will never find happiness focusing on ourselves. Our hearts and minds must be centered on God and on others. 

The progressive modern church is friends with the world, is accepting of abortion (child sacrifice) and sexual immorality. Unrepentant sinners are being welcomed into the Church and Jesus hates these practices.

It ought to greatly disturb us when we see that the Church today is also embracing idolatry (prosperity doctrine) and sexual immorality (adultery and divorce, Christians living together, the pornography stats, gay priests etc etc). This is bringing about Balaam’s curse. 

4. The two-edged sword

Just as with Pergamos, Jesus threatens to make war against those Christian’s involved in such sins with the sword of his mouth, what He calls the two-edged sword if those involved do not repent. Apparently the Romans had 2 types of sword, an ordinary singular sword and a heavy two-edged sword. The two-edged sword was very sharp and shaped a little like a spade. It was held in two hands and swung around in a circle and able to kill an entire band of soldiers at the same time. Jesus warned the Church to put it right before he would come to deal with such sinners in the Church in a similar very heavy way. This is what every Church at the time was afraid of as they had all heard the story of Ananias and Sapphira.

Hebrews 4:12-13

For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.

When we love the Lord and others with everything that is in us, there will be no room in our hearts for idolatry or sexual immorality. This is why when asked what is the greatest commandment, Jesus replied, 

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” 

Matthew 22:37

Conclusion

The letter to Pergamos is a message to a compromising Church but as usual, Jesus provides the way out and a promise;

 “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give some of the hidden manna to eat. And I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written which no one knows except him who receives it. ” ’

Revelation 2:17

If the sinners in the Church Pergamos repented and stood against these practices, Jesus promised them they would receive the hidden manna and a white stone with a new name on it that Jesus promised to the overcomers. There is a lot of speculation as to what the hidden manna and white stone are. David Pawson who we are learning from in this series said that what was in keeping with the message to Pergamos would be;

1. The hidden manna is a promise from Jesus that he will provide for us in the desert, when the World persecutes us and takes away our jobs. We do not have to go along with the culture to survive as Jesus will provide just as he did for Israel when he gave them manna every day in the desert.

2. In Paris there used to be a bridge that lovers put a lock on that eventually got so heavy that the locks had to be removed. The white stone with a name on it was something a man would give the love of his life that would be just between the two that would act as a reminder of their love. To those who remain faithful to Jesus and keep themselves pure from the World, he also wants to give something unique like a white stone with a new name on it to show that person they are very precious to him.

As always, Jesus concludes by saying that anyone who can hear, hear what the Spirit is saying to the Churches, not just Pergamos, but especially compromising Churches everywhere.

Amen.