Dennis Tuuri

that we might do just that. Let’s turn to Revelation chapter 2, beginning at verse 12. Revelation 2, beginning at verse 12. Please stand for the reading of God’s law word.

And to the angel of the church in Pergamos, write these things he which hath the sharp sword with two edges. I know thy works, and where thou dwellest, even where Satan’s seat is, and thou holdest fast by name, and hast not denied my faith, even in those days wherein Antipas was my faithful martyr, who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth.

But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication. So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I hate. Repent, or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.

He that hath an ear, let him hear what the spirit saith unto the churches. To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth, saveth he that receiveth it.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you from the depth of our being for the revelation of yourself and of who we are and of what life is all about through the Bible. Help us now to understand this portion of the Bible and more importantly than just intellectual understanding. Help us, Lord God, by your Holy Spirit, write this word upon our hearts. Help us to cleave to this word, not turn aside from it, and help us to learn lessons today by which we might transform our life and the life of our culture. We ask it in Christ’s name and for the sake of his kingdom. Amen.

Maybe a couple of different outlines. One an outline and more of a worksheet for the younger children or even some of the older children or the parents could use it too. But I wanted to give them some activity to help them listen to what’s being said in the context of the sermon. I’m not going to give you kids clues today. Not going to tell you when the answer’s coming up. Hopefully I’ll actually say each of these words you should write in here. Hopefully you’ll know some of them already.

We have today come to this third letter. We began last week the consideration of a very significant reference in the context of this letter, and we’ll talk more about that in just a moment. But what we have here in these first three churches is there’s a progression in them. Remember Ephesus means desirable. And when we talked about the letter to the church at Ephesus, the letter was to the desirable bride.

And you remember what Ephesus was supposed to do? It was doing a lot of things well, but it had left its first love. And a bride may do lots of good things in the context of the home, but if she leaves her love for her husband and of the mission that God has called the husband and wife to do, then you got big problems at home. So we began with the consideration of the desirable bride. And God wants us to see ourselves as a bride.

Men, you too. We’re all part of the bride of the church. And we’re desired by the Lord Jesus Christ. And he doesn’t want us desiring anybody else. Wants us desiring him as he desires us.

And then secondly, we move to the next letter, the letter to the church at Smyrna, which name means myrrh or perfume. I put on a little bit of cologne this morning. I don’t know if I can smell anymore or not, but I thought about last week the sermon getting all perfumed up fragrant for God, the way wives perfume themselves up. Many do, some don’t. It’s okay. I’m not saying you have to. But in the Bible, they have these frequent references to women smelling good for their husbands.

And that’s what the bride of the Lord Jesus Christ, this desirable bride. God takes this desirable bride through tribulations. Remember the myrrh comes from cutting the tree and the teardrops of myrrh come out of this tree and then even if you want to make it even more potent fragrance, you heat them up with some tribulation and fire. So you we go through various trials and tribulations, but understand it’s that we would be a fragrant bride, a desirable bride for the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, the days of preparation that involves getting perfumed up soaking in perfume, working in the context of tribulation when you got no sin going on in your life leads then to this third church where we kind of swing into action because this church is to this church that receives this letter is Pergamus.

And that name means a high place or a fortress or a high tower. That’s what Pergamus means: fortress. And so the church now is seen as a desirable, fragrant bride made so by even the tribulation she goes through and by the love of the Lord Jesus Christ for her. But now see, she’s seen as a strong fortress woman. She dwells where Satan’s seat is. And the word dwell in this epistle, in this letter, means there are firmly established. They’re not moving through. They’re there for the long term.

They’re there. The church at Pergamos reflects the praise of God from one end of the city to the other. This was a wicked city. They had snakes everywhere. Their snake god was one of the big gods. They had a big altar to Zeus. They were one of the initial big emperor worship cities. Lots of idolatry. But the church is there now. And the church is a fortress. And that fortress is dwelling where the seat of Satan is. And it is going to grow and expand and take over that city. That’s what’s going on.

So the bride is beautiful. She’s desirable. She’s fragrant, but she’s strong.

Had a conversation with a person this last couple of days and they wanted to know, you know, what I thought about the doctrine of women in the scriptures. Well, you know, the two errors that people make with women is first of all, not recognizing the functional subordination. It’s a tough word to use these days. It’s a word that the confessions have used—that there’s a relationship. You know, husbands are supposed to rule in the family. Men are supposed to rule in the church and state. Now, women rule too, but they rule via counsel to their husbands and counsel to kings.

Next week, actually, yeah, next week we’ll talk about Jezebel and how that are all messed up in the relationship with Ahab.

But you know, the first mistake our culture makes generally and the church leads it into this mistake is thinking that equality in being and who we are means equality in function. It doesn’t. And so we got women pastors and we’ve got women running households and all that sort of stuff. That’s wrong.

On the other hand, I’ve seen an awful lot of men usually they come into the Calvinistic perspective and oh the men are supposed to run the household and wife just shut up don’t want to hear it I’m the ruler here just be nice and quiet. I remember when I first got married I knew this fellow he was a good Christian man I’m not trying to say he wasn’t his wife was very quiet very externally meek and submissive yeah that’s what a wife needs to be nice and quiet I don’t want to hear a lot of things well that’s terrible.

Our wives are like four-star generals. We’re five-star. We’re the rulers in the household, men and in the church and state. But wives, Proverbs 31 says they’re supposed to be strong warrior women, a virtuous, a mighty woman, a woman of great strength. Who can fight? Because the church is supposed to be like that.

See, and if you got a messed up view of what wives are one way or the other, you’re going to mess up the church either rules over Jesus supposedly or the church doesn’t do anything. It just is fragrant, desirable, and just, you know, that’s it.

Well, here we move to this third letter where the church is seen as a fortress firmly established and it’s going to have things it needs to get done.

Now, I might just real quickly too without spending a lot of time on this. This letter also really focuses something that’s true of all the seven letters. The churches were always high places. The churches kind of, you know, the corporate worship of the church, Old Testament, they had built altars, went up on mountains. So, there’s always this tower that represents the church. And there’s the city also. So the church used to be, you know, in New England, you could always tell where the church was. It was the highest building, had a nice big tower, and then it’s in the midst of the city. So these are churches in cities.

So you have like city churches described for us here. And the church is seen as a high tower in the context of a city. And here this church particularly since its name means high tower, high place or fortress. It’s a real good picture of that.

Now I wanted to before we get into the specific outline point itself. I want to do a little bit of review. First of all, I wanted to make a clarification that I’ve wanted to make for several weeks. We don’t really it’s not convenient anymore to have much of a discussion of the sermon. We’ll keep trying to do it, but several people mentioned that in my sermon on assisted suicide that bears 51. Is it really true that Saul was killed by that young man who came along and you know there was the young man who told David he saw Saul struggling on the sword and Saul said, kill me. So he killed him and then David executed.

And I said that’s an example in the Bible of assisted suicide. Well, it may be and it may not be. The text is unclear because the description is that Saul killed himself and then you have this story of the young man telling David what actually happened in more detail. The question is was he lying or not? And the answer is you really can’t know for sure. And if you look at all the commentators most of them will say that well we really don’t know.

Matthew Henry says well I think he wasn’t lying but then maybe he was lying. So, just so you’ll know, it’s a kind of an unclear. It’s sort of like though I think he the guy was telling the truth. And here’s why. I think there’s an analogy to the Judas situation. Remember Judas who killed himself? And if you look at the accounts of Judas’s death, it looks kind of weird, too. But you can put the accounts of the different things that happened together in a way that makes it true.

So, even though this description for us is that Saul fell on his sword and killed himself, it doesn’t necessarily mean the story of the young man is untrue. And since Saul is kind of like Judas in that I think maybe he was telling the truth.

Well, I probably went on too long, but anyway, just to clear it up. Don’t know for sure. And also, I did not mean to imply that Job and Elijah when he was real tired, I guess saying they were suicidal isn’t really quite accurate. They desired death and they asked God. They weren’t going to, you know, take it into their own hands. They asked God. So, they were not, you know, suicidal. Saying they were suicidal, that is probably an incorrect characterization. But what I was trying to point out is they actually there are men that desire death godly men, they go to the proper source requesting it of God. And God always says, “No, you can’t die.”

Okay.

Now, having that out of the way, let’s review a little bit now. And I here’s another thing I didn’t emphasize real good. A couple weeks ago, I did a little bit, and we’ll talk about this again in just a moment. But remember now the these three letters to the three churches. First letter, Ephesus. What’s the big deal? Love. You left your first love. You got to repent by loving again. And the church at Smyrna, what was their problem?

They had no problem. At the center of the letter though is the basic message of Smyrna, which is what do you remember? It’s the most often repeated command in the New Testament rather. What is the most often repeated command of the New Testament? No, it’s not go to church. No, it’s not don’t kill. It’s don’t fear. Don’t be afraid. Jesus tells us that over and over and over in the Bible. Don’t be afraid.

Our tendency is to be fearful. And when we get fearful in an improper way, we sin. Fear is the faith killer. Okay? Fear drives out faith and we lose faith and we get caught up in our fear and we do stuff wrong. So Smyrna was suffering and all they needed to hear from Jesus was don’t be afraid. I’m in control which we know intellectually but we need that extra exhortation.

Parents, you can apply this week which I did last week with my children. Very important. Men particularly, we do not know the fear we bring to our children’s heart when we when our wrath burns with God’s wrath against their sin. But it brings a lot of fear.

Now, there’s a proper fear that kids have, but you want to exhort them not to be overly fearful of punishments received from your hand. They will not die. The Bible says, you know, we’re not doing anything near bringing blood to children around here or killing them. We’re just disciplining them. But they’re going to be afraid of that. You need to train your children like Jesus was training the church at Smyrna, the perfume church not to fear what man can do, not to fear what’s going to happen. Submit to God in spite of the difficulties. No fear.

I really want to emphasize that really is the basic application out of the second letter. Do not be fearful. It drives you into sin. Jesus died in the flesh. Hebrews says, to release those who through fear of death were held in bondage all their lives. Fear of death brings slavery to sin. And Jesus broke that awful cycle when he died for us. So now, even if you do die, you don’t got to be fearful because if you die, you live eternally. And God says, if you die for the right things, if you die as a faithful witness, as Antipas did here in this letter, the third letter, well, now that’s a good thing.

The blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. Not only is it not bad if you end up having to die for the faith, it’s probably going to be a real useful thing and God’s probably going to use it somehow. These suffering Christians we prayed for last week. It is God’s good pleasure to use dying Christians who are faithful witnesses to their death to bring men to conversion. It’s how he works very often in the history of the church.

Okay. So, no fear. Third thing I want to by way of review And by the way, so that moves through love. Don’t fear. And what he’s going to tell him today is to hold fast. And then he’s going to tell him to do something in addition to that. And so we have this progression of these instructions to the churches that makes it complete. Okay.

Now we said I want to bring in a little bit of review from last week because it’s important to understand this letter. The central reference historically here is Balaam and Balak in the wilderness. And I don’t think I mentioned this either, but The people of God are encamped on a place where they can actually see Jericho. They are close to the promised land when all this stuff with Balaam and Balak and Phinehas happens.

See, and so there’s this real correlation to the seven letters to the seven churches. They’re right in sight of victory. They got to go through some real troubles and real trials and tribulations that leads up to AD 70. But God’s going to have Jerusalem fall the same way he had Jericho fall by his sovereign action by the prayers of God’s people and the proclamation of the word the blowing of the trumpets right trumpet section of this book Jerusalem will surely fall as Jericho surely because Jerusalem had become Jericho in essence they turned from they rejected Christ remember Christ wept over Jerusalem they rejected him so the picture the big context for this is victory it’s a progression on in into the promised land.

And I just want to make real quick references to Balaam’s prophecies. Remember the first prophecy that Balaam gave back in Numbers. He said he said, “How shall I curse whom Jehovah has not cursed?” That’s at the beginning of these Balaam prophecies. And it’s a little click that goes off in your mind if you know the story of Phinehas. And you know that what Balaam’s going to do is he’s going to tell Balak on the side, get God to curse him.

I can’t curse him. But he says, “Now, how I can’t curse him because Jehovah won’t curse him. I don’t behold sin in him. He says in the first prophecy that Israel is a people that dwells alone and shall not be reckoned among the nations. The peculiarity of God’s people, children, I called you last week to understand your need to self-consciously commit to the covenant of the Lord Jesus Christ. And what that means is to self-consciously commit yourselves not to be molded to the other nations.

When Israel did that is when God’s curse came upon them. You need to commit yourselves to being a peculiar people and people are going to look at you as if you’re peculiar for some of the things you do. Those of the younger are the older children of the church who are engaged in different degrees of courting know that’s not a real nice thing as most people see it today. It’s peculiar. Now whether or not you think it’s biblical is what’s important there, not what the culture says ultimately.

But if you think it’s biblical, you need to cleave to practices that make you a peculiar people. You need to have God’s word set you apart from the rest of the nations. And when you self-consciously choose covenant, yes, I’m going to be a covenant keeper to the Lord Jesus Christ who kept covenant for me. You’re consciously choosing to be different from the world round about you. Okay? Peculiarity is stressed in Balaam’s first prophecy.

In Balaam’s second prophecy, he says, he hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perversity in Israel. Click. Second little warning here of what’s going to happen in Numbers 25. When God sees perversity, when God sees wickedness, then the curse is going to come. The chastisements are going to come. The judgments are going to come upon your head. So again, commitment to God’s word as our word.

And if we do that, then the second prophecy goes on to say this wonderful truth. There is no enchantment with Jacob. Neither is there any divination with Israel. No enchantment with Jacob. No divination with Israel. You’ve seen these shows, sticking pins in voodoo dolls doesn’t work. It doesn’t work against Christians. May work against others. I don’t know. But the scriptures are real clear that there is no enchantment against God’s people. There is no divination. There is no supernatural forces that can be summoned to attack Christians. We are in the protection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

What a tremendous truth. Now, it doesn’t seem that great to us today because we don’t believe in supernatural stuff for the most part. Good western rationalist, which is sinful because supernatural forces are real and demonic forces are real. But the great truth is no matter what some voodoo person does, you they can stick the pins in that doll all day long. But you know, very sorry, it doesn’t worry me at all. I’m standing where the light is strong in the Lord Jesus Christ. And when I do that, there’s no divination against me. Praise God.

Okay. In the third prophecy, remember he said that we are a planting of God. We’re like that perfume tree again. Again, pertinent to this these series of letters where the planting of God in the third prophecy. In the fourth prophecy, there shall a star come out of Jacob and a scepter shall rise out of Israel. Tremendous truth spoken through the mouth of an utter heathen. I’m not sure I made that point right either. Understand Balaam was not an Israelite. He was a gentile and he was not a gentile god-fearer. He was not a good guy who kind of went bad. No, the Bible calls him a prophet because God came upon him and overpowered him.

He was like the donkey for God who spoke God’s words, but his life is not one of submission to God either before the incident or after the incident. He’s just some psychic hotline connection person who gets called up for money. See, that’s what he was. So, don’t get confused about Balaam. He’s important because he shows the power of God to work through our enemies to bless us. And he’s important because he then taught our enemies what they have to get us tripped up and that is to get us to sin.

See? Okay. And then finally, we talked about the importance of new children. Again, you’re going to hear this again in a couple weeks when Mr. Wilson turns out in the providence of God, God has told him to tell you this, too. So, you’re going to get a three-fold witness on this that in the context of this, it’s important to see yourselves as the next generation of this church. And you’re not going to be able to coast on what the parents have done here. You need to self-consciously choose if you’re not going to serve God, which pagan god you’re going to serve.

In the words of Joshua, Cornelius Van Til wrote about this Balaam incident and talked about Joshua’s great speech at the end of the book of Joshua recalls Israel to a covenant consciousness. To quote Van Til, Joshua wants his people to come of age, to rise to maturity by taking covenant again, retaking covenant with God. Again, to quote Van Til, that they may see themselves for what they really are as a chosen and redeemed of the Lord in order to become a blessing to the world.

See children, it’s not just it’s not even primarily salvation from hell that the Christian faith is all about. Your mission, your purpose is to be a light to the world. And that’s what Joshua was calling his people to come to maturity on. And that’s what we’re calling you to come to maturity on as well. Cornelius Van Til went on to say that they may maintain themselves for what they are in the face of those who seek to destroy them and keep them from becoming a blessing to the world.

Balaam saw that if these guys go on in righteousness, they’re going to bless the whole world, which we don’t like because we don’t like God’s blessing. We like something else. We love death. You’re going to have enemies and they’re going to try to get you. They’re not going to be able to frontally attack you for the most part. They’re going to come in through the side door getting you to compromise in different ways.

Throw in a nice, beautiful young girl who may be chased as the wind driven snow or a nice moral upstanding guy with square jaw and beautiful skin and everything else and a neat good person but not a Christian and you’re going to be tempted some of you to marry those kind of people wasn’t just you know adultery. Zimri the bad guy that Phinehas killed indications are he may have married that Midianite woman okay now he did it in the context of Baal worship but the point is that children you’re going to be tempted to get taken off your course of being a blessing to the world by having marriages with non-Christians encouraged to you by different parties.

So, steel yourselves in that area and all others. Van Til went on to say that Joshua urged every one of the people to make a self-conscious choice for the service of the Lord. Joshua thinks, especially the coming generations, there is no hope for the future unless the coming generations that have not personally known either Moses or himself will nonetheless choose to obey what Moses had commanded.

It is thus that Joshua faces the future. Still quoting from Van Til. He sees generation after generation of children growing up, each generation brought by its predecessors to a deep sense of the fact that they are in distinction from the nations round about them, the recipients of God’s favor. But instead of thinking they receive the grace of God because they are better than other men, they alone of all men realize that no man is deserving of God’s grace.

Moreover, it is by this very grace alone that they know they are not deserving of grace. God graciously gives you a knowledge that you are not deserving of the grace because you know the people say we’ll do it and he says no you’re not you’re going to sin you’re here by grace you’re not here by works okay so that’s enough review let’s move to the actual outline now in front of you we’ll move through these things fairly quickly today first of all we’ve said that these the general structural literary observations first of all the seven letters restate the creation week, seven days of creation.

Because on the seventh day, God created the Sabbath and blessed the Sabbath. Seven days of creation. And on the third day, what happened? Well, the dry land appeared and then some plants grew. Herbs bearing seed and fruit trees bearing fruit after their own kind. Doesn’t say all the rest of the doesn’t say other things came up. Those particular two groups of plants, it’s communion vegetation. It’s communion meal stuff.

It’s bread. These plants of the earth that bear seed. Bread, the grain crops, herbs, etc. And then it’s the fruit trees symbolized by wine. The grape tree is a fruit tree. So, we’ve got bread and wine is what comes up on that third day. And so, we’ve got these this bread food and the dry land appearing. And at the end of this epistle, God tells Jesus says, “If you guys hold on, you do what’s right, I’m going to give you manna and I’m going to give you a white stone.

I’m going to give you some of that vegetation on the third day. The herb bearing trees fruit after themselves, the true bread from heaven. And I’m going to give you this white stone, this land that came up out of the water. The waters divide, the dry land appears. And even the idea that Pergamos is a fortress kind of reminds us of this because the fortress rises up out of the water as it were. The land, the dry land appears and mounds up and that’s where we go to meet God in the Old Testament are these big mounds.

Okay. So the third day, what comes what God creates in the third day? He brings out the dry land. And then he brings out communion vegetation and Pergamos is the third letter correlating to this third day of creation. Okay. The seven letters also restate past history. We’ve gone over this a lot. Don’t need to do much more about this. But there are some obvious references. Balaam and Balak which we talked about manna which was given to the people of God in the wilderness.

Phinehas’s sword. Jesus comes to the church here and he comes as the one with the sharp two-edged sword. He comes as Phinehas and he saying, “Hey, you got sin in the camp like they had at the camp after Balaam. Hey, I’m going to come to Phinehas. I’m going to run you through here. You guys take care of it if you don’t want me to come and run you through.” The sword reference here is a reference to Phinehas in the wilderness with Balaam and Balak.

Now, it’s interesting. Where did Jesus go to be tempted by the devil? He went to the wilderness, right? Soon as he was baptized, he went into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. What does Jesus say here in this letter? He says, “You dwell where Satan dwells.” Where does Satan dwell. Satan dwells in the wilderness. He’s out there and Jesus went out there to be tempted by him. Okay? And this church is pictured as correlating back to the Old Testament church in the wilderness.

And Satan kind of dwells out there. It’s the time of testing, trial, and tribulation. And a lot of them die off. Some meet the test and go on to conquer. So this letter reminds us of the Mosaic wilderness period of the Old Testament. It’s so neat. You can take these seven letters by the time we’re done and be able to teach your children and they can teach their children the basic overview of church history from creation up to the time of the writing of the book of Revelation.

Okay. One other real quick comment and that is that we’re going to say here in a couple of minutes that Satan dwells in the church. It seems to be implied the church itself can become a place of wilderness. The biggest example of this was when Jesus cleansed the temple. You remember he threw the money changers out, but they didn’t then bring him in. They didn’t receive him. And in the connection to that, Jesus tells this parable about if you cast a demon out of somebody, but you don’t fill yourself up with righteousness, he’s going to go get seven worse demons than himself and come back and take up residence again.

Now, I think he’s saying that about the temple. You’re going to cast out the money changers, but if they don’t bring Jesus in, it’s going to get even worse in the temple. And it did. They brought Rome in very self-consciously at the end where Caesar worship I think was pretty self-consciously going on the last few years of the temple. See, so you know that wilderness is represented in the context of the church as well which we’ll see as we get into the particular details of the letter which we’ll do in just a moment.

Okay, so wilderness period. Third, the first three letters describe assaults on the saints. There’s this kind of connection here. He says you’ve got those that teach the doctrine of Balaam and you also have Nicolaitans there. And remember he said that Ephesus was getting rid of the Nicolaitans. So these enemies are pictured as Nicolaitans in the Ephesians church. The Jews were the opponents to the Smyrna church.

And here the Balaaamites Nicolaitans are the opponents of Pergamos church. Well, they’re all the same thing. Remember we said that Balaam is Hebrew for people eaters or people destroyers and Nicolai is Greek for people conquerors. Nike, you know, the tennis people conquerors leos means people am Balaam means people or nations so it’s the same term it’s the Greek and the Hebrew so the same enemies are described and we have to see that then that these enemies are symbolized for us as the Jews particularly in the context of these first three letters okay and then finally before we get into the oh couple more points number four the first four letters prefigure the major enemies of Christ as described in chapters 2-18 of Revelation.

They’re giving you here a four-part outline for the book. Remember, in Ephesus, you got false apostles, which is good. You’re taking care of those guys. You’re trying them. And these seven letters, he’s dealing with false churches, false preachers or apostles in the context of the churches. In Smyrna, they were dealing with Jews, false Israel. And the seven seals describe God’s judgments against false Israel.

Here at Pergamos, Balaam and Balak are referred as the enemies. That’s a false prophet and a false king. And in the trumpet section of the book, the major section of the book, the judgments are talked about in terms of the false prophet and the false king, the Jews summoning up Rome to fight the Christians. Okay? And then finally, we’ll see this next week, the false bride, Jezebel. And the concluding portion of Revelation is this long section this fairly short section actually.

The seven bowls are poured out. And what’s pictured there preeminently is the judgment of the great whore, the false church, the Jezebel church. Okay, so these really give us an outline of the book which is kind of nice to keep in mind.

Okay, five. The seven letters emphasize church discipline. Pergamos, remember Ephesus was unified but compromised and they need to take care of the compromise in the church by regaining their first love. Smyrna had no church discipline problems. It was fine. And some churches shouldn’t need any discipline going on for a while. But some churches are like Pergamos. It’s mostly good. It’s a good church, but there allowing people to be in the church who should be disciplined out of the church. So in terms of church discipline, some churches are mostly good, but they need to get on the stick and they need to exercise church discipline.

And if they don’t do it, things are going to get worse and Jesus may come and eventually take them out. And we’ll see that at the next couple letters, this progression. Okay.

Now, let’s turn more spend a little more time by looking at the letter itself and this model of how to one another one another. And what we said here is each of these churches follows this model. But we’ll go through this now a little bit slow to make sure you get it. We’re on point 6 in the outline.

First, we always have Christ saying, “This is who I am. This is the measure by which you’re going to be measured by me.” And what is he saying here? He says to the angel of the church in Pergamos, right? These things sayeth he which hath the sharp sword with two edges. Okay? So Jesus, if you want to be like Jesus, you’re supposed to have a sword with two edges. Doesn’t mean use it all the time. You don’t want to, you know, fire on the friendlies as it were, but you do want to be able to wield that sword and squeeze off a round if you need to in the context of the church. And he’s going to tell them, “You’re not doing it. You’re not using the sword.”

So Jesus is the measure, the canon, the ruler, the yard stick. And Jesus has a sharp two-edged sword. Jesus is the greater Phinehas. Right? That’s what that sword reminds us of because of the Balaam connection. Jesus is the greater Phinehas, and church discipline has to be engaged in at times. So Christ is the measure.

Secondly, each letter shows us what Christ sees and usually it’s he sees some things good, he sees some things bad. Now Smyrna—he didn’t see anything bad, but here he does both. So secondly, Jesus sees what’s first good. He says, “I know thy works and where thou dwellest, even where Satan’s seed is.” Okay, now that’s that’s one little phrase.

I think the first thing he sees is he sees their works. I know your works and that these works are performed where you dwell even where Satan’s seat is. Okay? So, he knows that they’re doing good works in the context of bad times and bad places. And then he gives a little more specificity in the next phrase.

What are their good works? That you hold fast my name and you’ve not denied my faith. So, what he sees is that good works is that they’re holding fast to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and they haven’t denied the faith. And you say, “Big deal. Yeah, that isn’t any great work, is it? You’re just holding on to something. Aren’t we supposed to be an aggressive, optimistic, advancing body, the church, militant on earth?”

Well, no. I mean, we are in the big picture, but sometimes what God commends us for is that we’re holding fast. Sometimes times are tough. Satan is real active in this church and in the city and thing times get real tough. Don’t despise the fact that the Holy Spirit has gifted you to hold fast. And if that’s all you’re doing, holding fast. You say, “Well, gee, I wish I’d be being more for the Lord.” You know, don’t despise the fact that your family and you and this church and other church you might be involved with, they’re holding fast that they’re not denying the Lord Jesus Christ. They’re holding fast to his name.

In the context, then he goes the next phrase, even in those days wherein Antipas was my faithful martyr who was slain among you where Satan dwells. See again works and then this time and place a reference. I know your works where you dwell where Satan’s seat is. And then the works are pictured more. You hold fast my name. You cleave. You have not denied the faith. And then a repeat now of the time and place reference. Even in the days when Antipas was my faithful martyr who was slain among you where Satan dwells.

Satan dwells among them. In other words, in the context of the church.

Now we don’t know who this Antipas fellow was. But we know that he was a faithful martyr. Now the word martyr there is the same word as witness. And it’s going to be significant. We’re going to stress this at the end of the sermon that Antipas was had Christ’s title given to him because Christ in chapter 1 declares that he is the faithful witness. So Antipas was some guy who was steadfast in his faith and witnessed to the Lord Jesus Christ and was killed because of it.

Now Antipas means it’s a shortened form of Antipater. Auntie means in the place of per father. So Antipas is the father’s representative or image-bearer of the father. And an easy way to think of it kids is Junior. It’s like junior because you know if you’ve got you know a Richard Mayor and a Richard Mayor Jr. then the junior takes on the characteristics of the father. So junior means in the father’s place in the next generation representing the father.

So Antipas here means like junior or like you know the father’s representative of the father’s thing. So here the good works that Jesus sees and commends them for are holding fast even if necessary to the point of death for the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But Jesus also sees some things bad with this particular church. What does Jesus see of a bad nature? Remember at Smyrna, he saw nothing in Ephesus. He saw the need of to return to their first love. What does he say here? Well, the next verse says, “But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam. who taught Balak to cast a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication. So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I hate.”

So the thing that the church at Pergamos didn’t do right, that he saw negatively, was they let these false teachers or false moral influences exist in the context of their church. They had people coming to church every Lord’s day and they didn’t call themselves Balaaamites. And they didn’t say, “We want you to fornicate.” But what they did was they tried to prevent God’s people to to lure them off from obedience to God’s word and commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Remember we said last week that Balaam would try to get God’s people. He told Balak, “Send in temptations to get them not to follow the law of God.”

Now, we got to say something about the particular phrase here to eat things sacrificed unto idols and to commit fornication. Early on in the church, there was a controversy about circumcision. And there was a church council held. This is in Acts 15. And the church council said, “Here’s what we got to do. We got to go tell these churches, you don’t got to be circumcised, but you do have to not eat meat sacrificed to idols, and you have to avoid fornication.”

What are they talking about? That’s confusing because We then read in Corinthians that hey it’s okay to eat meat sacrificed to idols. Does the Bible contradict itself? Horrors? No. Obviously not. So what’s going on? What’s going on is that in these pagan cultures and actually in Old Testament cultures as well.

They would and here at here at the particular church in Pergamos, they would actually cut up animals and read their livers and hearts and stuff and try to get views of the future and that nice. You boys young boys probably like that. How they were cutting these animals blood. everywhere and they were reading these guts and entrails and stuff trying to tell the future. Well, they eat that stuff and they’d eat it in the context of a feast to that particular god or goddess or power or strength.

Now, they also had temple prostitutes. Each of these groups did. So, the fornication comes in there. The point is that it was not okay to go to a pagan festival or feast and eat the meat there to engage in the religious service where this meat was eaten, this idolatrous act, this meat consecrated to idols was given. It wasn’t okay to go into the temple and do that. When I was in the counterculture days, I was hungry one night and just thought, “Yeah, these Hari Krishna folks, they’ll feed you any old time.”

So, I went to their place and had a Hari Krishna food meal. Well, it was in the context of worship. See, and that’s what you cannot do as a Christian. That’s what he’s saying. You can’t do that. Jerusalem Council said, “Christians, from now on, understand that you cannot go into these pagan festivals or feasts, even you think they’re nothing. You can’t go in there and participate in that worship by eating this food.”

Now, what they would do afterwards was after the service was over for that week, they’d take that meat and they’d go sell it in the in the marketplace. They’d send it down to the 7-Eleven and you could buy it, you know, and it was actually meat originally that was sacrificed to idols, but now it’s just put on the open market. Well, that food is okay for Christians to eat. Now, some didn’t think it was okay, they had they had a weak they were weaker brothers who their conscience would be defiled and it wasn’t okay to force them to do something against their will or their conscience rather.

You know, you don’t want to if somebody has a problem with drinking or smoking or u Coca-Cola for that matter, if to them to drink that substance would be sin, it’d make them doubt. Then you don’t want to encourage them to do it. You want to show deference to them and you want to strengthen them up to see that there’s nothing wrong with that stuff in moderation. But In the meantime, you don’t want to defile their conscience.

So, what’s going on is it was prohibited to go into these pagan feasts and engage in the idolatrous meals, okay? The communion meal without God. But it was okay, perfectly okay to eat the meat once it got sent out to the local supermarkets, even though it was meat originally sacrificed to idols. That means it’s okay for Christians not to boycott things. I mean, you know, they could have boycotted that meat.

Got we’ll get rid of this practice by just not eating that meat. Well, you know, boycotts don’t work. This whole thing with Iraq, what have we done? It’s what boycotts almost always ends up doing. It we strengthen the hand of whoever’s in charge. We’re not hurting Satan. We’re hurting the people, the small people over there, by not letting him trade oil and sell his oil on the marketplace by boycotting his oil, forcing him to do so.

Hurts the little people. They get up mad at us and they get a stronger identification with the ruler in times of trouble. So boycotts don’t typically work. But anyway, that’s what’s going on here is that in Pergamos, they had people that were saying to Christians, “Hey, let’s go on down and check out that temple stuff, you know, that temple action. Get some good food down there.” And they’d go off down there and do that.

Now, in a broader sense, couple other things. Acts 15 rather said the law of God, remember we said last week, Leviticus 17 summarizes the holiness code, Leviticus 17, by these two prohibitions, not trying to get life from sexual activity, not trying to get life from food. So really, we can say that if you have antinomian Christians in the context of the church who try to get God’s people not to obey his law, not to obey the Jerusalem council, not to obey Leviticus 17, not to obey the Ten Commandments, they’re Balaaamites.

Now, they may not know it, but what they’re doing is they’re they’re moving the congregation, if they’re allowed to exist in the context of the church. They’re moving him away from keeping the gracious law of the king. And so God’s judgments are going to come upon him. Another application, very important one for this these epistles. Who was the big problem to the church as we go up to AD 70? It was not Rome at first.

Rome was always sicked on the Christians by the Jews. What feast were the Jews trying to get the Christians to go to? The sacrificial feast of the Old Testament. They trying to get the Christians at Pergamos to go back to the Old Testament. That’s the Old Testament feast which were done away with completed in Christ. See, so uh the letter to the writer the letter the epistle to the Hebrews, the big thing is don’t forsake the church and go back to Old Testament worship.

And in Hebrews, it says that they actually thought at that time that partaking of kosher food gave you spiritual strength. If you just ate the kosher the kosh kosher food laws. And the writer to the Hebrews says, “We have an altar that they cannot eat at. Don’t be siphoned off to their altar.” You see, so the Balaaamites were a complex group. Throw into this equation, too, that some people see here, Gnostics.

I get into a big deal. Hobby gave me some real interesting reading material that confirms other things I’ve heard. Gnosticism was originally a Jewish philosophy. They it was they would try to synergize or bring to other various elements of truth systems. We think of the Pharisees as moral upstanding people. But Jesus knew that if there was a prostitute that one of them was accusing, he could tell the Pharisees, “Let whoever has ever without sin among you in this regard cast the first stone.” And they’d all melt into the evening.

They were not and are not morally upstanding people. If you read the Talmudic literature, Orthodox Judaism has been marked by serious sexual sin. I don’t want to get into all of that, but the point is that the Pharisees are not like good, moral, upstanding people, and their only problem is they’re into works righteousness. Uh-uh. Because as we move away from the law of God, we’re going to move to some other kind of law.

And there’s a sense in which antinomianism against God’s law and legalism are two sides of the same coin. The antinomian who will tell you