The Letter to the Church at Pergamum
Rev. 2: 12-17
Introduction:
We started to look at the letters written to the Seven Churches in Asia as a series. Let us just refresh our memory on the seven churches.
BACKGROUND
1) Ephesus Rev. 2:1-7
It was an orthodox church, with good works, patience, sound doctrine, church discipline and hatred of evil. But it suffered from backsliding and loss of its first love.
Catchword: First Love
2) Symrna Rev. 2:8-11
This was the poor, rich church, that we looked at last time. It had spiritual endurance and heavenly treasure and is one of the two churches (the other being that of Philadelphia) to have no reproof.
Catchword: Endurance
3) Pergamum Rev. 2:12-17
It was a church with a bad environment. Its virtues were perseverence in an evil environment but it is reproved for its tolerance of wrong doctrine and heretics.
Catchword: Heresy
4) Thyatira (pronounced Thy’at’ira) Rev. 2:18-29
Thyatira, the church of the evil prophetess, was commended for its love, spiritual service, faith and patience but reproved for its lax discipline and tolerance of a corrupt prophetess.
Catchword: Discipline
5) Sardis Rev. 3:1-6
It was the dying church. For most of its members there was nothing to commend it for, though some were commended for purity. It was reproved for extreme formalism, imminent spiritual death and inactivity.
Catchword: Death
6) Philadelphia Rev.3:7-13
It was a weak but loyal church and was commended for its witness and faithfulness to God’s Word. It received no reproof.
Catchword: Faithfulness
7) Laodicea Rev. 3:14-22
It had nothing to recommend it. On the contrary it was condemned for its lukewarmness, spiritual conceit, no conscious need, spiritual poverty and spiritual blindness.
Historically it represents the Last Days and today it represents popular self satisfied worldly churches.
Catchword: Lukewarmness
Background
A small town Bergama stands on the site of Pergamum today. This was a city in the west of Asiatic Turkey. It occupied a commanding position near the seaward end of the valley of Caicus. It became important only after 282 BC when Phil’et’aerus revolted against Ly’sim’achus of thrace and made it his capital of what was to become the At’tal’id kingdom which was bequeathed by Attalus III in 133 BC to the Romans who formed the province of Asia from it.
The first Temple of the Imperial cult, where the Roman Emperor was worshipped as a god was built in about 29 BC in honour of Augustus and Rome. The city boasted a religous supremacy in the province, though Ephesus was the commercial capital of the region.
Where in the letter the Lord speaks about satan’s throne, He refers to the complex of pagan cults, of Zeus, Athena, Dionysus and As’clep’ius.
It was here where worship of the divine emperor was made the touchstone of civic loyalty under Domitian. It marked a crisis for the church in Asia. Probably Antipas was the first brought to judgement and executed.
The Nicolaitans were probably an early church group who took their name from Nicolas of Antioch and who thought that they could work out a compromise with paganism to enable Christians to take part in some of the religious and social activities of the close-knit society. Here, in this letter, the Nicolatains are emphatically equated with Balaam. If this is the case, then the Nicolaitans could be derived from a Greek version of the Hebrew "Balaam" and therefore the name is allegorical of the policy of the sect being likened to that of the O.T.corrupter of Israel (Nu.22). In that case the Nicolaitans can be identified as one of the groups attacked by Peter in 2 Pet 2:15 for their advocacy within the church of pagan sexual laxity.
Rev. 2: 12-17
The letter can be split up into 4 parts:
a) The Lord introduces Himself (v.12)
b) He commends some of them (v.13)
c) He reproves them (v.16) and
d) He encourages them to persevere (v.17)
a) The Lord introduces Himself (v.12)
In His introduction, the Lord tells us something about Himself. He is the Source of Power - symbolised by the two-edged sword and he knows our difficulties.
i) Jesus is the Source of Power.
Jesus introduces himself as the One who has the sharp double edged sword.
In battle, a man relied on his sword, it was both a defensive as well as an offensive weapon.
In Ephesians 4.v.17 Paul says:
Take... the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.
As Christians, we are to rely not on our own strength, but on Jesus, who is described in John 1 as the Word of God. Our reliance is to be in Him.
A double edged sword was in those days a powerful weapon. It could cut on either side, making it far more effective than a single edged sword in skilled hands. It was probably the most powerful weapon for an individual to have, a weapon of high quality and effective in skilled hands.
Which brings me to an important point. In skilled hands. The Word of God is only useful to a Christian in skilled hands. And like any soldier, the Christian has to TRAINED for the Spiritual warfare. If we read Ephesians 6:17 you will see that the Word of God is closely connected to Praying in the Spirit.
Do you recognise somewhere else where this terminology a double edged sword is used in the Bible?
Hebrews 4:12
For the Word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double edged sword, it penetrates to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.
We cannot hide things from the Lord. God knows our heart. Sin puts a barrier between us and God. Yet He is always ready to forgive where there is genuine repentance. I say genuine because as Paul says in Rom 6:1:
Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?
Sometimes we can kid ourselves even, but we cannot kid God. He knows our sins. In 1 John 1:9 it says:
If we claim we are without sin, we deceive ourselves and the Truth is not in us. (And you will recall that Jesus said in John 14 : I am the Truth. In other words christ is not in us). If we confess our sins, he is faithful to forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make Him out to be a liar and His Word has no place in our lives.
God wants us to be honest with Him. David was a man after God’s own heart (Acts 13:22/ 1 Kings 11:4) because of his honesty with God and despite his failings, he wanted God’s will. When Nathan the prophet came to David and condemned his adultery with Bathsheba, David in 2 Sam. 12:13 said just after Nathan had given him a full dressing down.
Then David said to Nathan " I have sinned against the Lord."
Nathan replied: "The Lord has taken away your sin" but the Lord did not take away the consequence of the sin which is also an important lesson to learn.
To sum up - Christ is the Power Source for us to overcome sin in our lives. Just as an electric light needs to be plugged in to the mains, so the christian needs to be plugged into the Power Source of God - that his light can shine.
b) He commends some of them (v.13)
Christ knows what they are going through. Living in Pergamum as a committed Christian wasn’t easy, that is why the Nicolaitan doctrine could creep in. A Christian could not take part in the Emperor Worship i.e. worship the roman emperor as a god as the romans required as an oath of allegiance and serve God. And we read here that persecution had already started. v.13 tells us
You did not renounce your faith in me even when Antipas my faithful servant was put to death in your city where Satan lives.
The Lord is very clear about our relationship to Him. He has no compromise.
Whoever disowns me before men, I will disown before My Father in Heaven. (Matth. 10.33).
One of the reasons that we are here today is because of the faithful witness of others to the Grace of God, starting with the apostles and the early Church in the book of Acts. A recent title to a book I read was Acts 29!! A title that summs up our situation. The early Christians died for their faith.
The Christian Faith has been kept pure by no compromise. What happened here in Basle recently in this Ecumenical Council has nothing to do with the purity of the witness that the Lord requires of us.
Why is the Church today not so powerful as in the Early Church. Purity in the gospel is certainly a factor. The Church generally in the 20th Century has gone about denying the Lord by compromise and the Lord denies them power.
Communism has really purified the Church behind the Iron Curtain. The dross has been removed. The orthodox superstitions have on the whole gone having being exposed as fakes. It costs to be a Christian and only the true believers will stand for the Lord. And they will not compromise.
I remember in one of Richard Wurmbrand’s books he told the story of a young communist boy in prison in Romania for trying to defect to Yugoslavia. He had been so indoctrinated against the Gospel that any time a Christian tried to share Christ with him, he threatened to call the guards and have them punished. After a bit, an orthodox abbot who was in prison for his faith, befriended him and started sharing about Jesus. And this boy Josif listened. And then he asked the abbot, what is Jesus like. And the abbot said "Jesus is like me." To which the boy replied," Then I want to know Him."
There is no way that we could describe Basle as a Christian City. In fact, as I learnt from Christians in Austria when I was last there, who used to be involved in pendulums and wizardry before they were saved, there is a lot of occult practices going on in Basle.
True, we will probably not be called on to give up our lives for our faith, but I know people who have sacrificed their carriers in a company because when their boss has challenged them to deny their faith and they haven’t.
And the Holy Spirit was given at Pentecost to give us POWER to be His Witnesses (Acts 1:8)
Here in Pergamum was a church that had faithful members who had stood firm for Christ.
c) He reproves them (v.14)
Although some of them had been faithful, there was rot setting in in the form of the Nicolatain heresy. It is so easy to tolerate wrong teaching and it can creep in quite insiduously.
At first blush it looks innocuous. But if it is not stamped on it will take seed.
It is funny isn’t it. If you put a bad apple in a basket of Good Apples, the bad apple never gets good, rather the Good Apples get BAD. For some strange reason, the Good apples cannot impart goodness to the bad apple. It is the same with the quality of our faith.
The Lord Jesus will not share His Glory with evil. Pergamum was a city full of idolatry, and this always brought both in the ancient world and today, with it sexual immorality. It is important that we clearly see the difference. God Loves the SINNER but hates the SIN. He doesn’t love the SINNER because of his sin but DESPITE it.
So he tells them bluntly. Repent. We are not programmed computers but people with the power to decide whether we will follow the Lord or not. We must decide if we will listen to God or not.
If the Lord is putting His finger on some aspect of your life, you must respond.
Proverbs 3:12
My son do not despise the Lord’s discipline and do not resent his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those who he loves as a father the son he delights in.
If the Lord is speaking to you on anything in your life, he is doing it not to put you down, but to improve us. And so often we do not understand it. It is like my son Jonathan. I may forbid him to climb on the Garage Roof. It is not that I don’t want him to have fun, but because he might hurt himself by not being careful. Later he will see and understand that my concern was not to stop him having fun but for his own safety.
The lord’s correction is to enable us to live fulfilled lives - where He is the centre of our families and our friendships.
d) He encourages them to persevere (v.17)
The Lord promises to provide for them, the food for their existance. Special food from heaven. Supernatural provision.
Manna was the food that God gave to the Israelites in the Wilderness.
Ex.16:1-5
Ex.16:13- 27
We see three important things about the Manna
1. That it comes directly from God
2. That it comes to fulfill a need and
3. It comes with a manual for use.
The Israelites need food in the desert and the Lord provided supernaturally for them. As Christians, as we witness for the Lord, we need supernatural strength because we are in the front line of a spiritual battle. And the Lord sustains us.
In this spiritual battle, and this includes as we allow the Fruit of the Spirit to grow in our lives (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control - Gal.5 22), we need the ENABLING POWER from God. In other words the Lord is saying if you want to follow me, I will provide for you.
The manual for use is also important. The Lord gave the Israelites specific instructions. They were not to hoard, but to take just for their own need. Only on the Friday could they gather a double portion. The same values are true in the spiritual life. We must listen to the Word of God.
So often Christians "claim this and that in Jesus’ Name" when it is not in the Will of God. They say if it worked for him it must work for me. If he has the Gift of Healing so must I. Not so. Yet at specific times the Lord may give you that Gift He wants you to use.
This spiritual manna requires a receptivenes to God. To listen to the manufacturer.
About 20 years ago, my younger cousin Herbert borrowed his older brother’s car - a super Alfa Romeo. But he didn’t take care to check which cap was for the oil and which was for the water. So he filled them up as he thought they should be, and the car soon needed a new engine.
We as Christians need daily to come to the Lord for guidance for His Leading in everything we do. To tune into the Will of God in our Lives. Then we will experience the abundant life that He promises in John 10:10
I am come that you might have life and have it in ABUNDANCE.
Manna as we read in Exodus 16:4 is bread. The Lord rains bread from heaven. In the Lord’s Prayer in Matth. 6:11 it says
Give us this day our daily bread.
In other words - Lord we depend on you. We see too that God will stand by us. His own who stand firm to him.
And in Rev 2:17
I will give him a white stone with a new Name.
White signifies purity. And a new name signifies that we will be with God forever.
Rev.3:12
Him who overcomes I will make a pillar in the Temple of My God Never again will he leave it. I will write on him the Name of My God and the Name of the City of My God, the new Jerusalem, which is coming down out of Heaven from My God and I will also write on him my new Name.
We live in a society where there is much lonliness and unfaithfulness. God promises to stand by us.
Matth.7:21 tells us that it is not everyone who calls Jesus "Lord, Lord" who will enter the Kingdom of God but only he who does the Will of My Father who is in Heaven.
Let us resolve to seek God’s Will - to seek first the Kingdom of God (Matth.6:33) to remain faithful witnesses to Him in our daily lives.
