Revelation 2:12-17 October 26 2003
The Church in Pergamum
Do you remember the movie Liar, Liar? It is this story about a habitual liar played by Jim Carey. On his son’s birthday, the son’s birthday wish is that his dad would have to tell the truth. The wish comes true so that every time Carey opens his mouth to tell another lie, the truth comes out.
Balaam must have felt this way in Numbers 22. The Israelites had come into the land of Moab on their way to the promise land. The king of Moab was terrified of them because of their great numbers, so he hired the prophet Balaam to come and curse them.
You may know the story of how as they are on their way from Balaam’s house back to Moab, an angel stands on the road – the donkey that Balaam is riding sees the angel, but Balaam doesn’t – three times the donkey veers off the road to avoid the angel, making Balaam so angry that he beats him. Finally God opens the donkey’s mouth to ask Balaam why is he beating him, and he open’s Balaam’s eyes to see the angel. Balaam realizes that the donkey wasn’t trying to make a fool out of him, but was trying to save his life. Thus the phrase “if God can use Balaam’s Ass to speak, he could use you too.” The angel doesn’t kill Balaam but reminds him to speak only what God says and nothing else.
Balaam gets to Moab, and king Balak takes him up on a high mountain to curse Isreal, after they make sacrifice, Balaam goes and meets with God, comes back, opens his mouth and instead of cursing Israel he blesses them! This impresses King Balak to no end! They do this three more times – King Balak hopes that Balaam can curse them from different locations, but each time Balaam open’s his mouth and blesses Israel. Balaak offers him more money to curse them, he threatens not to pay him, but each time that he opens his mouth to curse them, he blesses them instead. Finally they part ways, but we find out later in Numbers 31 that although Balaam could not prophetically curse them, he advised King Balak to send Moabite women into the Israelite camp to seduce the men and get them to worship other gods. In Numbers 25 that is exactly what they do and them men are seduced into worshiping the Moabite god, God’s wrath burns against them and before they repent 24,000 of them are killed by a plague.
Read Revelations 2:12-17
The City
They say that if Ephesus was the New York of Asia, Pergamum was the Washington. It was the centre of Roman rule for the area, and it was the first centre for worship of the Emperor. It’s library was second in the world only to Alexandria in Egypt, and it was at Pergamum that Parchment was invented so they wouldn’t have to rely on papyrus from Egypt. There was also a centre for healing at the temple of Aesculapuis, and there was a huge temple to Zeus.
Jesus says that it is in this city that Satan has his throne – whether he is using poetic language to speak of the Roman empire and the centre for worship of the Emperor, or this was the place that Satan truly had his throne – there is often a correlation between what happens in the seen world, and what is going on in the unseen world. Regardless it would have been extremely difficult to be a Christian in this city.
The Image of Jesus
These are the words of him who has the sharp, double-edged sword.
In John 1, Jesus is called the Word of God, and in Hebrews 4:12 It’s written… “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. 13Nothing 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.”
The Good News
13I know where you live-where Satan has his throne. Yet you remain true to my name. You did not renounce your faith in me, even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, who was put to death in your city-where Satan lives.
This was a church that endured great persecution, and Jesus praises them for their faithfulness, and mentions Antipas who he calls his faithful witness – a great compliment when you know that he will call himself the faithful witness in the message to Laodica.
If you want to talk about power going to your head – Caesar had decided that he was no mere human, but that he was a god worthy of worship along with all the other gods in the Roman pantheon. Satan was, of course, thrilled with this, because although God would have us Worship no-one by God alone, Satan would have us worship anyone or anything but God.
You could imagine the trouble that Christians would encounter in the centre for Emperor worship where people would greet you by saying “Caesar is lord” and you were supposed to respond in the same way. The Christians would respond by saying “Jesus is Lord.” But the church in Pergamum had continued to say Jesus is Lord even in the midst of this persecution.
The Bad News
14Nevertheless, I have a few things against you: You have people there who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin by eating food sacrificed to idols and by committing sexual immorality. 15Likewise you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans.
Like The Story of Balaam, when Satan could not defeat the church through a full on assault, he attacked through the back door. It appears that although the church had endured through persecution, there were some in their midst that taught that participation in certain aspects of roman life in Pergamum was okay. Most trades had guilds in those days, and to be part of the guild you would take part in feasts dedicated to their patron gods, and these feasts often involved sexual immorality – temple prostitution. There would have been people in the church who taught that it was okay to go to these feasts, eat the food and possibly participate in the immoral behavior as long as you didn’t actually believe in the gods that were being honored. You could stay in the guild, continue in your livelihood and serve Jesus. The problem is that it was wrong – God says that you must worship no one but him, and he ordained sexual relations solely to the marriage covenant.
The Nicolatians – we know very little about this group from history and what is known is only surmised by what John writes in Revelation. Nicolaitans – a group that sought to minimize the difference between Roman society and the Christian faith - ate food sacrificed to idols, sexually promiscuous, business practices... "to be a good Roman is to be a good Christian" - world would have changed the Gospel rather than the Gospel change the world. They may have taught that you could say both Caesar is lord and Jesus is Lord since they meant different things in your mind. – the problem was that they didn’t mean different things in the mind of the listener.
Once again, you can see the devil’s strategy here – he failed at a full on assault of the church through persecution, so he has come through the backdoor, attempting to seduce them into sin. Sin keeps us from the presence of God, and that is Satan’s goal, to keep us away from our Father in Heaven
What does this look like today?
Public faith, private sin
A desire to play both sides of the fence – to enjoy the pleasures of the Spirit and the pleasures of sin.
The Mission GTA people recently had a retreat with an apostle from Germany. Without much knowledge of the city he brought a prophetic word that Toronto had grieved the Holy Spirit. He paused at this point and many people in the meeting thought of how Toronto itself never really received the Toronto Blessing, but he continued with his word that we want the Spirit as helper, friend and counselor, but not God. We want to be blessed, but we do not want to be obedient. We want to have all the good, warm fuzzy stuff, but not the brass tacks of the changes in our life that he wants.
Nadine challenged us when she came back from Nigeria by saying that when the Holy Spirit comes he comes in all his attributes, not just in the attributes of love comfort and council, but also in the attributes of holiness, purity and zeal.
Often times when we are going through rough times we want God to take control of our situation, but we really don’t want him to take control of us!
God says over and over again that we cannot have it both ways – we cannot enjoy his presence on Sunday morning and then consistently and willfully go against his will in the rest of our lives. We must decide who we will serve – do we enjoy the pleasure of God’s presence, or do we enjoy the fleeting pleasure of sin?
When I was a teenager, we used to do this skit of this guy sitting on a fence – first Jesus comes along and tries to convince the guy to come over to his side, offering forgiveness, friendship with God etc. and then the devil tries to convince him to come on his side, offering all sorts of things like power, material possessions, and worldly pleasures. The guy says that he’d rather just sit on the fence and get the best of both worlds – Jesus responds by telling him that the fence belongs to the devil.
Being seduced away from the truth – The media and the world are forever encouraging us to be seduced away from the truth – either through sexuality, where certain behaviors are deemed okay by the culture but have always been called sin by God. The devil works in the same way as ever – if you can’t kill God’s people, tempt them.
We can also be seduced through materialism where we think that life would be better if we had more stuff when in reality life will be better if we have more of the creator of all that stuff. We could quite possibly get more of him by giving up more stuff!
The things that God has created can draw us from him if we use them in inappropriate ways. A pastor friend of mine told me about a young man in his church who had all the information about Jesus and the gospel, but had not yet made a commitment. My friend asked him what was keeping him from Jesus and the young guy was very blunt in saying that it was sex – if he became a Christian he knew he would have to stop sleeping with his girlfriend. He was right, but he was allowing his sin to keep him from a relationship with the eternal God!
Doing an end run around obedience
Balaam follows the letter of the law, while he is functioning in the prophetic mode he only speaks the word of God. But when Balak refuses to pay him, he gives him this very human advice of sending in women to seduce the men.
There are times when we follow the letter of the law, but do a sideline deal to get what we want. So If God came to Balaam and said I told you to only speak my words, Balaam would say “I did!” God say what about this whole seduction thing? And Balaam say, “Oh, that, that was nothing, that was just a little something on the side.” But 24,000 people of Israel died because of Balaam little thing on the side.
I think that we can get into trouble with this most when it copmes to our business rtelationships – like it did for Balaam – the world of business may have some ways of doing things that push the boundaries of ethics, but they are way over the boundaries of God’s ways – we must learn and do God’s will.
When we say “Thy will be done,” we need to apply it to every area of our lives
The Call
16Repent therefore! Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. 17He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
We need to stop playing both sides of the fence – we need to say that God’s way is the best way, even when the world’s way looks really attractive. We must stop being seduced by the world, and run after God’s way.
James 1:27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
Romans 12
Living Sacrifices
1Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is your spiritual[1] act of worship. 2Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Philips version:” Do not let the world around you squeeze you into its mold”
The Promise
To him who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give him a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it.
Manna: When the nation of Israel left Egypt, the wandered in the desert for 40 years, and all through that time God provided manna for them to eat – it was miracle food, so when Jesus promises us the hidden manna he is offering us provision – God will look after our needs, we do not have to follow the way of the world.
White Stone – there as many interpretations of this as there are commentators! – white stones were sometimes used as tickets to get into events, they were also kept as good lick charms with the name of a god written on them. Jesus could be talking about a ticket into heaven, or speaking to the blessin (not luck) that God wanted to pour out on those who overcame.
My mine immediately went to a song we used to sing at Parkdale Neighbourhood Church, “I will Change Your Name.”
I will change your name
You will no longer be called
Wounded, outcast, lonely or afraid
I will change your name
Your new name will be
Confidence, Joyfulness, Overcoming one
Faithfulness, Friend of God, One who seeks My face
God wants to change our name, but we must step out in obedience to receive that new name.
