Text: Revelation 2:12-17

My purpose for this message: To remind us that the world is a contaminant even though it is our mission field.

Delivered: May 30, 2010

 

Dear Pergamum EFC, LISTEN! 

                                                                         Love, Jesus

Pray.

FIND Revelation 2:12-17.  Gulf of Mexico is channeling 12,000-25,000 barrels of crude oil a day for nearly 6 weeks.  An ecodisaster—no doubt about it.  Every problem has a silver lining and with this one you can probably get a week’s package deal to a Gulf Coast resort for about $17.00 and change!  No one wants to go in the water, only to come out covered with petroleum.

The world is wonderful in some ways; and it’s our mission field.  But it’s also a dangerous contaminant.  What’s that say to Christians when we look the same, go the same places, own the same things, do the same activities, talk the same way, watch the same movies, vote for the same politicians as unbelievers?  That we’ve penetrated the culture?  Or that it’s penetrated us?  We smile smugly at Christians who once fled the world to live alone in the desert, or formed convents and monasteries to devote themselves to the worship of, service to, and thinking about, God, or formed movements like the Amish.  But are we so sophisticated we can’t admit that the threat they fled, is a real threat?  As James said, You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God?  Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.  (4:4)  

Pergamum was a good church, but it had a few people who had been seduced by the world.  READ.

 

Background

As with each of Jesus’ 7 letters to churches, this one is broken down into 4 basic parts: this is what’s good about your church, this is what’s bad, this is what you need to do, and this is how I will reward those who do.

Pergamum was the capital city of the Roman province of Asia with a world class library and many pagan temples to Greek gods.  A massive altar from the temple to Zeus is on display in Berlin’s Pergamon Museum.  It looks a bit like a throne but it’s doubtful that’s what Jesus meant when he referred to “Satan’s throne”.  More likely He had in mind the Roman Emperor who had 3 temples in Pergamum for his worship.  Rome expected all her citizens to burn incense to whomever the emperor happened to be at the moment, as though he was a god. 

 

1.     What’s Good

Some believers endured the persecution rather than worship a false god.  A few were killed like the local hero Antipas.  But if you were a Christian in this city at the end of the first century, being forced to sacrifice to the emperor was not the only danger.  There was a bad mix of sex and religion—and not the Christian religion. 

 

2.     What’s Bad

Sexual liberty.  So maybe they weren’t sacrificing to the emperor but Satan was peddling his best stuff at the back door of this church—as well as the one in Thyatira we’ll look at next week.  Sound contemporary?  Catholic priests, Baptist pastors, tv evangelists—and that’s just in the pulpits.  The power of sex is never exhausted.  Men watching TV no longer get up for a snack at commercials.  Because the latest model is hawking razor blades, Volvos or hamburgers in very suggestive clothing and very suggestive poses. 

Now, women might get up during commercials. The hotties irritate them, and even the buff guys stripped to their waists don’t do ignite them.  For God did not flood their bloodstreams with the sex hormone testosterone.  Men have 10-12 times as much—which may explain why women have always been able to turn men into blithering idiots just by a look, a smile, a touch, a hint of something.  That strategy has always  worked.

Jesus said that some Pergamum church members followed the ways of Nicholas, some the ways of Balaam.  As we said before we don’t know who the Nicolaitans were, but the OT tells us a lot about Balaam.  He was a pagan seer who could tell the future and converse with the gods.  He was known far and wide and made a good living at it. 

When Israel was on the move toward the Promised Land, a potential enemy stood in the way.  Alarmed by the reports he’d heard about their success, its king knew he needed something more than a bigger army.  READ Numbers 22:1-12. 

The story of Balaam covers 3 chapters—including the famous talking donkey incident when God rebuked Balaam by having his donkey actually talk to him.  (Wouldn’t that make you quit the booze!)

Although its likely Balaam dabbled in a variety of religions, Yahweh actually spoke to him and Balaam pronounced 5 good messages about Israel instead of cursing them as Balak wanted.  Yet when this magician, this oracle left, Balak was not disappointed.  Apparently the two had a clandestine meeting of which he kept no minutes.  Balaam whispered advice any marketer might give their client today: use sex to get what you want.  READ Numbers 31:16, 25:1-2.

Maybe it went like this: Balak sent the most attractive Moabite women into the Israeli camp, to flirt a bit, bat their eyes, say, “Why don’t you come to a little celebration we’re having?”  Like dogs in heat, thousands of Israeli men did—no doubt many who were married.  The “little celebration” turned out to be a religious feast involving sacrifices and sex.  The guy can’t take his eye off of her beauty long enough to realize she’s seduced him into betraying both his God and his wife.  Acting on Balaam’s advice, Balak’s agents neutralized the men their feared would kill them, by seduction.  If these Israelite men  betray their God He will not give them victory; if they betray their wives, they cannot go home!  (Sex and pagan religion have an ancient and fruitful relationship.  In the OT, sexual immorality and spiritual idolatry almost always went hand in hand.  Like Solomon, if you worship the woman, you’ll end up worshiping her god.  Worshiping what the Creator created, instead of the Creator [Romans 1:25]). 

No different today; taking sexual liberty almost always leads to spiritual treason.  How else can it be if your God rebukes you for what you refuse to give up?  Again, hear James’ warning: You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God?  Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 

 

3.     What’s needed

So, we’ve got this ignored problem of sex and pagan dinners.  What’s needed?  REPENT!  Change you mind about your love affair with sin.  It may seem hard to believe that people would get it on Saturday night at Zeus’ temple with a priestess and then show up at the First Pergamum Evangelical Free Church Sunday to take communion, but this is apparently the sort of thing that happened.

We don’t have pagan temples but is it so different from a guy planning to sleep with his girlfriend Saturday night, and planning to show up Sunday—supposedly to worship the God he flipped off the night before?  How different were things in Pergamum from today’s cheating spouses who hides long term affairs even as they serve as Sunday school teachers, deacons and elders?  Really, how different was that from Christians returning again and again to the porn sites, redefining their wickedness as a harmless diversion?

Friends, sexual pleasure is a glorious gift from the Father who made us in His image, but it is a gift too rich to be enjoyed anywhere except inside the warmth and intimacy of marriage.  Yet some professing Christians convince themselves that who you have sex with, or what x-rated stuff you look at on line, doesn’t matter any more selecting a blue or brown shirt to wear today.

But it does.  Jesus confronts us with REPENT!  Ephesians 5:3: …among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality…  1 Thessalonians 4:4-5: each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen who do not know God…  If the Pergamum church was in trouble with Jesus for its sexual sin, how much more might He be angry with a freewheeling, libertarian American church where hookups are justified by “it’s unrealistic to expect young people not to have sex”, where affairs are excused by a mate’s behavior, where homosexuality is blessed, and pornography viewing is dismissed as a private matter?

Jesus warned the angel of the Pergamum church that if this continues He would show up—not with grace, but a sword.  Not to fight Rome—He doesn’t expect the unredeemed to act like the redeemed—but professing believers in the church who are slandering His gospel, contaminating His cross by their lives.

 

4.     What’s promised the faithful

2 rewards for faithfulness when the final days roll around: hidden manna and a white stone with a new name on it.  Because manna was the bread substitute that God fed Israel with the years the 40 years they didn’t have food as they ambled across the desert, this is probably a picture of God providing for His people in the final days.

And the white stone with a new name may refer to a white stone juries gave defendants they acquitted.  Or the one that served as a ticket to get into the awards banquet.  Bottom line, the professing believers who repent, who renounce and turn from their wickedness, will be welcomed into eternal life.

Conversely, the implication is that those who don’t, will not get the manna of eternal life, will get no white stone but be declared “guilty” when they stand before God.  Not because Christ’s blood was inadequate to save them, but because they failed God’s test of authenticity by their consistent, unrepentant disobedience.  Titus 1:16: They claim to know God, but by their actions, they deny Him.  They are detestable, disobedient, and unfit for doing anything good.

 

Concl:

In recent years young church leaders have been rightly urging believers to get out of our insulated environment, and go minister to where lost people are.  I recently started frequenting a local bar.  I take another guy, before we go we ask the Holy Spirit to guide us, open doors to talk with people.  We sit up at the bar, order dinner, talk with each other, try to strike up conversations, maybe shoot some pool.  (No, I don’t order a beer.)

Last time Josh Bare and I were shooting pool and Josh had just lost his second game when a girl approached him, made a few comments and suggested they play a game of pool.  Fortunately, we were planning to leave anyway and out the door we went.  Outside, I said, “And that’s why none of us should come here alone.”  Yes, the world is our mission field.  But if we ever forget it’s a threat, we may just end up covered in oil.  My prayer is not that you would take them out of the world, but that you protect them from the evil one.  They are not of the world…  John 17:15-16.

 

Pray for those ensnared in sexual or other worldly sin.  REPENT!