How to Be a Solid Church
Series: Will the Real Church Please Stand Up?
Sept. 24, 2006 Rev. 2:12-17
If you’ve been with us the past couple of weeks, you know that we’re studying 7 churches in the book of Revelation. As Jesus inspects the church in Rev.2,3 (walking among the lampstands that represent it). He sees the incredibly positive characteristics of the bride He loves. But His love isn’t blind, because He also sees her flaws. In the church of Ephesus, He points out that His church is so busy serving Him, that they forgot to love Him! In fact He says, “You’ve lost your 1st love”. If you’ve ever had someone say to you, “You don’t love me anymore!”… you know the impact of those words. So He encourages us to fall in love with Him again! To serve Him not out of duty, but out of delight!
As Jesus moves on to inspect the church at Smyrna, He doesn’t point out any flaws. Instead He encourages them to stay the course, even though He’s knows it’ll mean a great deal of suffering and persecution. Smyrna is the “Persecuted Church”. We need to realize that if we’re really serious about following Christ, we’re going to suffer some persecution at some point along the way. There are churches around the world who are experiencing it right now! You might be experiencing it right now! I know I have! And so, we talked about how to have a victorious faith in the face of opposition.
This week Jesus continues His inspection of the churches He died for, and comes to the “Church of Pergamum”. READ Rev. 2:12-17. The city where this church was located, “Pergamos” was a tough city, located about 60 miles N. of Smyrna. It was the center of the worship of Zeus, who was the greatest of all the Greek deities. In fact, they built a huge altar to Zeus in the shape of a throne.
Some commentators believe that the ‘throne of Satan’ mentioned in verse 13 is a reference to this altar. Pergamos also had its own god…”As-clepius”. An ancient coin depicts the Emperor rendering honor to Asclepius, raising his right arm in an exact gesture of the Nazi salute. He was considered to be “the god of healing” and has always been associated with snakes. You know that twisted serpent symbol the medical profession uses? Well, it comes from the god ‘Asclepius’. (All you snake lovers will appreciate this…) In the temple dedicated to this god, there was a school of medicine, where nonpoisonous snakes crawled all over the floor. The sick person would lay on the floor so the snakes could crawl on them. Wherever the snakes touched them, is where they would supposedly be healed. Those of you who have ‘Kaiser’ health coverage, might actually prefer that compared to your regular visits!
Many have described this church at Pergamum, as “The Compromised Church”. All through the history of the church, there’s been a temptation to want to water down the message as a way of being accepted by the culture we live in. The same is true today. Last week we looked at Satan’s frontal attack on the church, but today we’re going to see how Satan can be just as effective, with a more subtle, back door approach. The Church at Pergamum was a prime example of that. Satan was able to infiltrate the church and pollute it’s teaching and witness, to the point that it didn’t have anything to offer a hurting world.
The same thing can happen to this church and to you as an individual, so I want to talk to you this morning about, “How to (successfully) Be a Christian in a Non-Christian World”. How you can have an impact for Christ, without caving into the culture. Now, as I was preparing for this message, I thought, “What’s the best way to communicate the point Jesus was trying to make in this passage?”. As I thought about it, the subject of food kept coming across in my mind. (the subject of food is never to far from my mind, and maybe I was hungry… I don’t know)… So, this morning, I want to use a number of food items to illustrate Jesus’ message to the church.
First of all, we have to understand that He never meant for His church to be separate from the world. In the past, certain sects of Christianity have tried that…monasteries have attempted to create a heaven here on earth, apart from the world. Certain groups like the Mennonites have tried to totally separate themselves from the influence of the world by eliminating all modern appliances and machinery from their lives. Today if you’re a Christian parent, you’re tempted to totally insulate your kids from the bad aspects of our society.
Some of you have chosen to put your kids in a Christian School. And that’s fine (we did the same, as a way of protecting them in their formative years)… but we also knew that we couldn’t protect them forever. At some point (if they were ever going to make a difference for God) we’d have to re-insert them back into the world system. It’s a tough situation! I mean, how do you keep your kids from picking up the bad language, the loose morals, the drug culture in our schools today…without creating cloistered little monks and ‘monkettes’?
In a moment I’ll answer that question, but…Jesus you need to understand that Jesus never meant for His church to be protected & insulated from the world… He wanted it to change the world! In _____________, he told his disciples that they were to be “in the world, but not OF it”. What does that mean? Is it possible to exist in the world, and to make a difference in the world, without actually becoming like the world? Apparently Jesus thinks so! And that’s where this 1st ‘food prop’ comes in.
A few hours ago, I put this great looking steak in this zip-lock back, filled with teriyaki marinade to illustrate the problem. See, the church is like a steak immersed in teriyaki sauce! The sauce represents the world, and the church is surrounded by it! Now if you’re getting ready for a BBQ, the reason you put the steak in the marinade is to get the marinade into the steak, right? And that’s a pretty easy thing to do, because the steak is porous.
It readily absorbs the flavor of the seasonings, the herbs and the flavoring of the teriyaki. But the church Jesus founded isn’t a BBQ, and the assignment he gives us isn’t going to be easy! In fact, it’s very difficult! Because what Jesus is asking us to do is to be IN the world, but not to let the world get into us! In fact, our job (even though we’re marinating in world sauce) is to change the world around us to be more like Him!
Now, when you marinade something in teriyaki sauce, you expect the meat to get teriyaki, don’t you? I mean you don’t want the teriyaki to get meaty! NO! When you garden in white gloves, you expect the gloves to get dirty, not the soil to get ‘glovey’. Right? Sure! Who ever heard of ‘glovey soil’? Yet Jesus is commanding us to do the direct opposite of that, to go against the natural order of things… and to affect the world with our influence without being affected by IT’S influence.
How do we do that? Well, now you understand the problem the Christians at Pergamum were having! The world was getting IN them, and they were getting spiritually marinated! Even though the passage of scripture we read says they were, “standing up to persecution and remaining true to His name”… slowly but surely, they began to be infiltrated and changed by the very world they were supposed to be changing. Is that a problem today? You better believe it is! Slowly, but surely, the church today is beginning to look more and more like the world we’re supposed to be changing!
For example… I was reading some eye-opening statistics lately…
· Divorce rates in the church are almost identical to non-churched divorce rates.
· Only ½ of the adults who claim to be Christians today, say that they’re ‘absolutely committed’ to the Christian faith.
· 44% of Americans (who say they’re Christians) believe that Jesus sinned at some point during His time on earth.
· According to a Barna Survey, “Large numbers of Christians believe that abortion, gay sex, cohabitation, drunkenness, and viewing pornography… are morally acceptable”.
Can you say BBQ? Today in our society, the differences between what the world believes, and what Christians believe are becoming less and less obvious. Bottom line, if I’m an unbeliever… and what the church stands for is no different from what the world stands for…why change? What good are we? Jesus said, “If the salt loses it’s savor… it’s good for nothing!” And that’s exactly the problem the church is having today…people don’t sense the need to change from what they are… to what we are…because they don’t see any difference! Personally, I think the Church in America and the Church at Pergamum have a lot in common!
The church in Pergamum was falling into two traps that threatened to totally destroy it’s impact in the world, and they’re the same 2 traps that the church is falling into today if we’re not careful…
It’s the tendency to…
1. RATIONALIZE and DESENSITIZE
Jesus points this out in vs.14,15 (READ) Of course after reading that, you’re next question is… “Who’s Balaam and what did He teach that was so wrong?” To find that out, you need to go back to the O.T. and read Numbers 22-25. We don’t have time to do that this morning, (I’d encourage you to read it on your own time), but for now, let me tell you what was going on. Basically, Balaam was a non-Jewish prophet who’d been hired by Balak, the King of Moab, to curse Israel, so he could defeat them. But everytime Balak asked him to curse them, Balaam ended up blessing them instead! So, in order to earn his fee, Balaam advised King Balak to hire beautiful women from Moab to parade before the young men of Israel, tempting them into sexual immorality.
Now since these women were worshipers of idols, he was effectively introducing idol worship into the tribes of Israel. So one thing led to another, until they were in ‘full sin mode’! The Jewish men fell right into the trap and became “good neighbors.”
They ate meat from idolatrous altars and committed fornication as part of heathen religious rites. If it wasn’t stopped, over time these seemingly insignificant sins would lead to the downfall of Judiasm and the nation of Israel. King Balak is a ‘type’ of Satan… he figured if He couldn’t defeat Israel from ‘without’, then he’d defeat them from ‘within’. Corruption from the inside is just as potent a killer as Combat on the outside!
The same kind of thing was happening in the church at Pergamos— since Satan couldn’t destroy them with persecution from the outside, he attempted to destroy them with ‘poison’ on the inside. The people were step by step compromising with the world. A group in that church called the “Nicolaitans”, (like Balaam) were saying, “There’s nothing wrong with being friendly to Rome!” “Besides”, they rationalized, “What could putting a little pinch of incense on the altar and affirming your loyalty to Caesar hurt? I mean, after all, you don’t really mean it do you? So it’s okay!” Even though they’d seen Antipas refuse to compromise and die a martyrs death; the Nicolaitans were beginning to convince the church members to take the “easy way out” and cooperate with Rome.
The danger is… if we’re not careful, like the Israelites and the Pergamites… it’s easy to rationalize our lifestyles and become so de-sensitized that eventually we’re totally marinated by the worlds attitudes and actions. Destroyed from the inside out! The Nicolaitans weren’t prepared to be different, and if their teaching was (and is) successful, the world will change Christianity, but Christianity won’t change the world!
Let me explain with these “brownies”. I need a few volunteers, who will taste my brownies… O.K. guys, while you’re eating them… I want to tell you a story…Two teenagers asked their Dad if they could go the theater to watch a movie that all their friends had seen. After reading some reviews about the movie on the internet, he told them they couldn’t go. "Aw dad, why not?" they complained. "It’s rated PG-13, and we’re both older than thirteen!"
Their Dad said, : "Because the movie contains nudity and portrays immorality as being normal and acceptable behavior." "But dad, our friends told us, that those are just very small parts of the movie! They’re just a few minutes out of a couple hours. Besides, it’s based on a true story… good triumphs over evil, and there are a lot of other good themes like courage and self-sacrifice. But their dad wouldn’t budge. "My answer is ’no,’ and that’s final!” You’re welcome to stay home tonight, invite some of your friends over, and watch one of the good DVD’s we have in our home collection. But you can’t go and watch that one. End of discussion."
The two teenagers walked dejectedly into the family room and slumped down on the couch. As they sulked, they were surprised to hear the sounds of their father preparing something in the kitchen. They soon recognized the wonderful aroma of brownies baking in the oven, and one of the teenagers said to the other, "Dad must be feeling guilty, and now he’s going to try to make it up to us, with some fresh brownies. Maybe he’ll let us go to that movie after all." After awhile their dad came out with a plate of warm brownies he offered them. They each took one and quickly began to eat. (kind of like these young people here) Then their father said, "While you’re eating, I want to tell you something: I love you guys very much and so I’ve made these brownies with the very best ingredients from scratch. Most of the ingredients are even organic. The best organic flour. The freshest eggs. The best organic sugar. Premium vanilla and chocolate. But to be perfectly honest, there’s one ingredient I added that’s not usually found in brownies. I got that ingredient from our own back yard. But don’t worry, because I only added the tiniest bit of it to your brownies. In fact, it’s practically insignificant.”
They stopped eating. "Dad, would you mind telling us what that mystery ingredient is before we eat anymore?" "Why? The portion I added was so small. Just a teaspoonful. Compared to the other good ingredients it’s nothing. You won’t even taste it." "Come on, dad; just tell us what that ingredient is." "Don’t worry! It is organic, just like the other ingredients."
"Dad!" "Well, OK, if you insist. That secret “totally natural” ingredient is...dog poop." (you guys okay over there?”) Because when these teens heard that, they instantly dropped their brownies back on the plate and began looking at their fingers with horror. "DAD! Why did you do that?
You’ve tortured us by making us smell those brownies cooking for the last half hour, and now you tell us that you added dog poop! We can’t eat these brownies!" "Why not? The amount of dog poop is very small compared to the rest of the ingredients. It not going to hurt you. You won’t even taste it. It has the same consistency as the brownies. Go ahead and eat!" "No, Dad...NEVER!" Okay, I guess now you understand why I won’t allow you to go watch that movie.”
The point of the story is… if we won’t tolerate a little dog poop in our brownies, why do we tolerate a little immorality in our movies? Why do we tolerate a little rebellion in our attitudes. Or a little sin in our lives for that matter? I don’t know about you, but I don’t have all this worked out in my life yet. And it’s not my job to work it out in your life! I watch movies and programs that I need to re-evaluate. Ask yourself… are there things (maybe habits, or activities) I’m involved in today, that I’ve given myself a pretty good rationalization for doing…but if I were honest, aren’t really pleasing to God? Things that aren’t necessarily wrong by others standards, but they’re not right either. And instead of bringing me closer to God, they’re actually moving me further away from God! True, it’s not big things… but it’s affecting my whole life!
Again, I want to make it perfectly clear…it’s not my job to play Holy Spirit in your life! (I’m not very good at it anyway, nobody is!) As your pastor, it’s not my duty (or anybody elses for that matter) to be the “moral policeman” for your life… But it IS my job to point out that that the H.S. might be speaking to you… but you’re just too stubborn or proud, or insensitive to listen! I have to allow that possibility in my life, otherwise I can never change! How about you? Is it possible that God IS speaking to you, but that you’re just not listening?
Most of the time, we don’t realize how sinful sin really is, because we have this amazing ability to re-define, and rationalize our actions in our own minds…
· We call “adultery”… “a meaningful relationship”
· “homosexuality”… is an “alternate lifestyle”...
· The murder of unborn infants is referred to as,“ a woman’s choice”
· “prostitutes” see themselves as “sex workers”…
How often do we justify, (maybe even ignore) what God calls sin, by calling it another name? Or by skirting the issue? God calls sin… sin! There’s no such thing as a good sinner vs. a bad sinner… we’re all sinners! We all fall short of the glory of God and need a Savior. Somebody once said that “The world is made up of sinners who think they’re saints… and saints who know they’re sinners.” That’s true! A Christian is nothing more than a converted sinner! Because we have a tendency to always find somebody worse off than us. It takes the Holy Spirit to convince us that we’re as bad off as God says we are! Only the Holy Spirit of God can bring that conviction, because most people are convinced, “What I do isn’t that bad!” We have a Nicolaitan attitude towards sin…”What’s a little pinch gonna hurt?”
Susanna Wesley, (the mother of John Wesley), helped me with her wisdom to distinguish sin in my life when she said, “Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or removes your passion for spiritual things… that is sin to you.” Do you have an area of you life that falls under that definition? Are you ready for a change? How about your lifestyle this morning... If you were accused of being a Christian and dragged into a court of law... would there be any evidence in your life to convict you? We all have a tendency to begin to obscure the line between what we want, and what God wants. Between what’s of God and what’s of the world. But in the end, HE’s the standard we have to judge ourselves by.
Just like this steak, we all have the tendency to take on whatever culture we’re immersed in. And our churches reflect that same culture. Just like the Pergumum Christians were in danger of being absorbed by their culture, today, you and I are in danger of being absorbed by our culture. Instead of being marinated, I think we need to take on the characteristics of a salt water fish.
A fish is actually a great example of what a Christian should be. For thousands of years it’s been used as a symbol of Christianity. Some of you have little silver fish symbols on your vehicles. (You have a Momma fish, a Daddy Fish, and little baby fish!)
Here’s this salt water fish… all it’s life, it’s surrounded by salt water, immersed in it, breathing it…totally surrounded by it…but yet if doctor puts you on a low sodium diet, do know what he recommends? Ocean fish…why? Because it’s so low in ‘salt’! Here this fish was surrounded by salt water, all it’s life, but somehow…it never allowed the salt to permeate it’s skin. Jesus told us, “Be in the world, but not of it”. And that’s exactly what he did!
Think about it, the perfect Son of God, living in a perfect neighborhood. It was heaven!
Here he was surrounded by good, clean folk…with impeccable character… for all eternity. I imagine angels make pretty good neighbors. But instead of staying there, where it was safe… He left all of that, and His Heavenly Father sent Him to hang out with us! Dirty, filthy, cussing, foul… worldlings! He was in the world, but never became part of it. Instead of becoming more like the world, he influenced people to become more like Him. That’s our mission.
Is it possible this morning, to become so much like the world, that you lose your ability to influence that world for Christ? Ask the church of Pergamum. YES! It’s also possible to become so insulated from the world that you lose your ability to influence the world for Christ. So what’s the balance? Whether it’s you or your kids… I’d encourage you to take the following 4 steps in order to ‘world-proof’ yourself… (not so you can live in some kind of Christian bubble)… but so that you can have a powerful influence on the world around you.
How To Live In the World, but Not Be Of It…
1. Know your SOURCE
Read I Thess. 2:13 with me. (Read) Notice the bible claims to be the very Words of God Himself.
If you’re going to world-proof your heart, then God and what He said has to be the ultimate source of authority in your life… not man’s word. If you want to know whether God Word or mans words, rule your life…ask yourself… When I’ve got a problem, or I’m in trouble… who do I go to? If you seek out man’s wisdom… then the world is your ultimate authority. If you seek out God and His wisdom, then HE is your ultimate authority in life.
For example…
· When your kids are acting up and you’ve lost control of them… where do you go for instruction? Do you listen to what Dr. Spock says…”Don’t cross them… let them vent their anger… negotiate with them”… or do you let the God’s Word be your guide…”sacrificial love firm discipline, consistency and boundaries are the tools of successful parenting”.
· When you’re in financial trouble… do you listen to the world? Refinance, refinance, refinance, live on credit… or do you listen to the Word… “be a good steward of God’s money, budget, limit your buying to cash not credit, save.”
· How do you build a great marriage? Is it “each man for himself, it’s all about me”…or are you willing to sacrificially love one another, allowing the man to lovingly lead the home using Christ as an example?
· When you have emotional or psychological issues, do you immediately seek out a drug treatment, or do you seek out godly counsel from a qualified Christian therapist?
Who is the ultimate authority in your life? It’s a key question that’s revealed by your actions. You say, “Well pastor, I don’t think I agree with what the Bible says! In fact, I think that’s a pretty naïve approach to life!” And you know what God says to you? He says to you what He said to Job when He questioned His wisdom… “Where were you?”
· Where were you when I put the stars in the sky?
· Where were you when I split the sky and sea?
· Where were you when I taught the lion to roar?
· Where were you when I made electricity fall from the sky?
In otherwords…”Who are you to tell me anything? Who are you to question my wisdom? Sometimes we think we know so much… when we know nothing! See, one of the reasons there’s is so much confusion in the world today is that people listen to and accept too many different authorities. To the pt. that many are asking… “Who’s right?” “Who can we trust?” The problem with trusting “man-made” sources as your basis for authority is that they’re constantly changing, and most of us are unaware of the follow-up studies! These changes should be a sign to us that we don’t know what the heck we’re talking about! Our understanding of the human race is limited and full of holes. Prov. 16:25 rings soooo true…. (Read)
There is only one reliable authority for life… the Bible. The bible has been in the business of giving people instructions and guidelines for living for more than 4,000 yrs. And it still works!!!
Read II Tim.3:16-17 (NIV)
· The scripture is helpful for teaching… telling us what’s right
· for rebuking… in otherwords pting out to us what isn’t right
· …for correction… how to get right
· and … for instruction… teaching us how to stay right.
In otherwords, the Bible claims authority in 4 areas of life…
What’s right, what isn’t right, how to get right, and how to stay right! If you don’t do anything else today, accept the bible’s claim to have the answers for your life’s problems… trust it as the final ‘say’ for the challenges of life. As a result you and your family will be able to resist the constant pressure of conforming to the worlds values. You’ll be “In the world, but not of it!”
The 2nd way to be in the world, but not OF the world is found in…
1. Monitoring Your MIND
Paul cautions us in Romans 12:2 (READ) What I’m saying is… be choosy with what you allow to come into your mind! Athletes preparing for an event, don’t just put anything in their body. They stay away from junk foods.
How many of you know that there are ‘junk foods’ for the mind? Don’t just let anything float in and out of your thought life. Because certain thoughts will have a corrosive effect. They’ll cause you to take on the mind-set and attitudes of the world. Whether you realize it or not, everybody is vying for your attention today, especially advertisers. II Cor. 10:5 says…. (READ) That vs. is telling us to take EVERY thought… and bring it in line with the example set by Christ. If that’s ever going to happen, we need to ask God to help us to be disciplined in the way we think…because the greatest threat to our society today isn’t air pollution, or water pollution… it’s mind pollution!
There are 3 Kinds of materials that you can fill your mind with…
1. The first is what I call Mind Poison:
Pornography, the occult, trashy novels, soap operas…violent and sexually explicit movies…Paul Harvey once said, “I’m opposed to putting garbage on T.V. for the same reason I would oppose open sewers in our streets. It can be argued that what’s in those sewers is ‘natural’ and ‘normal’ and ‘everybody ‘does it’, and that ‘it’s not dirty’. But everywhere in the world where the sewage flows unconfined, it breeds disease.” READ Rom.16:19 According to that vs., we don’t have to know evil by experience.
2. Mind CANDY
Read Ps.101:3 We ought to all put that vs. on front of our T.V. & computer screens. In a lot of homes, the parents no longer teach values and morals to their children…they let the television do that job. Mom & Dad, if you want your kids to develop godly values, instead of worldly values…if you want them to be Christians, not Nicolaitans… start by monitoring what they watch! If you don’t, you’re breeding disease in your kids minds.
Here’s a scary quote… Norman Lear, popular producer of the famous, “All in the Family” once said “People accept information more readily when they’re being entertained”.
Dr. Thomas Lickona, a developmental psychol. at State University in N.Y. lists some of the values that we and our children learn from T.V.
1. “If you’re having trouble getting what you want, try violence and crime”. By age 12, the avg. American child has viewed about 100,000 violent episodes and seen 13,000 persons violently killed.
2. “Put-downs are funny”.
I read an actor who said about a comedy he’s involved in, “We try to get people to laugh, because they tend to accept the things they laugh about.”
3. “It’s a rotten world.” (T.V. focuses on crime and bad news) T.V. executives say, “Well, we’re just depicting life as it is…” I think their depicting life as it’s going to be if they have their way!
4. “Life is entertainment”
5. “Drinking is where it’s at.” The highest rate of TV alcohol consumption happens during prime time shows.
6. ‘Things’ make you happy. We see 20,000 commercials a year, all of them trying to convince us to be dissatisfied with what we have.
Are those the kind of messages and values you want your family to live by? Because if it is… then you’re raising up a worldly person, not a godly person. The ‘media’ is the modern day Balaam of our day. Walking a parade of immoral images in front of us every day. If doubt that, just watch MTV for a few minutes! The avg. American watches about 1000 hrs. of T.V. a year. That means if you live to be 65, you’ll have spent 9 ½ solid years in front of a TV screen! Did you know that if you went to Church and bible study every week for your entire life, up to age 65… it would only equal 4 ½ months! What’s having the bigger influence in your life? Now, this isn’t ‘Bash T.V.’ Day at Summit… but I’m just saying that it has a tremendous influence on our, and our children’s minds. And the more we watch it, the more these attitudes will take over our lives.
Paul says in I Cor.10:23 …(Read) He’s saying, some things are not necessarily wrong… they’re just not necessary!
Then there’s a 3rd thing you can fill your mind with…that’s what I call…
3. Mind VITAMINS.
Things that inspire you, that teach you, that help you grow. Maybe learning a skill or insight. Things that make you a better, more rounded and educated person. Paul gives us a filter for our minds in Phil.4:7-8
READ Joshua 1:8 Want to have success in every area of your life? READ THIS BOOK! Meditate on it! You have to realize that whatever you fill your mind with is going to reveal itself in your actions. Bible says that whatever a man sows… he will reap. Prov.23:7 states, ‘As a man thinks, so IS he’. In otherwords, whether you like it or not… you are what you think! The mind is the control center of our being. And what goes on inside this ‘gray matter’ between our ears, determines what we are… and what we’ll become. I look at some people and just by they’re appearance you can tell what they’ve been feeding their minds on. They’re depressed, cynical, hopeless, and angry.
3. Aim at your GOAL.
The goal is heaven! The goal is presenting ourselves as a pure, undefiled bride, who hasn’t forsaken our 1st love, for the world.
READ Rev.2:17 Jesus promises that 2 things will happen to the person and the church who resist the influence of the world. 1st of all you’ll get some “manna that’s been hidden away in heaven”. Manna was the bread from heaven that God used to feed the Israelites for 40 years in the desert. Later in John 6:51, Jesus revealed that manna was really a symbol of Himself! HE is the true bread that comes down from heaven. “I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.”
So people who remain true to Him, untainted by the world will receive eternal life.
The 2nd promise Jesus gives is that the faithful church, and the faithful Christian will receive a white stone with a new name on it. Now there are at least 9 different interpretations about what the white stone represents, but the one that makes the best sense to me was a custom that the Romans had where when 2 friends were about to part, they’d divide a white stone in half. Each friend would inscribe his name on one of the halves and give it to the other. It became a symbol of their friendship. I think Jesus is promising intimate friendship to those who overcome. See, we have a choice. We can either be a friend of Christ and an enemy to the world… of we can be a friend to the world and an enemy of Christ. You have to choose which one you’re going to be… because you can’t be both!
I guarantee that the steak I have in this zip-lock bag will never be contaminated by the teriyaki marinade sauce. You know why? Because it’s not a steak. It’s a stone! It looks like a steak, but it’s not! It’s not a white stone, but I think it’s a great illus. of who we are in Christ! Marinated but not assimilated! Now, I realize I can come off sounding legalistic and prudish this morning, and if that’s what you heard, I’m sorry. Those who know me know that’s not the case. But when I talk about resisting the culture, and remaining a pure church...I take a risk of being misunderstood. My prayer is that as a church and as individuals, we can find that find that balance between the necessity of being in the world (so we can reach it)… but not going over the line and becoming LIKE the world!
