Pastor Thanael Certa-Werner
Scripture | Revelation 2:12-17 (NIV)
12 “To the angel of the church in Pergamum write: These are the words of Him Who has the sharp, double-edged sword. 13 I know where you live—where Satan has his throne. Yet you remain true to My Name. You did not renounce your faith in Me, not even in the days of Antipas, My faithful witness, who was put to death in your city—where Satan lives. 14 Nevertheless, I have a few things against you: There are some among you who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin so that they ate food sacrificed to idols and committed sexual immorality. 15 Likewise, you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans. 16 Repent therefore! Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. 17 Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it.”
This is the Word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.
We’re continuing on in our sermon series looking at the second and third chapters of Revelation. Now, Revelation is a book which was written by John on the Island of Patmos. During his time there, John receives visions and revelations from Jesus Christ and writes them down. In these two chapters, Christ commands seven letters be written to seven churches in the ancient world. Each week, we’re taking a close look at one of them and exploring what these ancient words of Christ have to teach us today.
In the first week, we read the letter to the Ephesians and discussed loving Christ as when we first knew His love for us. Last week, we read the letter to the Church in Smyrna and discussed the importance of perseverance, not just through the hard times we experience in the world, but through our own setbacks, doubts, and fears. This week, we again turn to the Roman province of Asia Minor as we read the letter to the Christians in Pergamum.
Pergamum was established as a center of importance in the ancient world about 300 years before the birth of Christ. It was first taken by the Greeks and made into a Greek city. After Alexander the Great’s death, and the division of his kingdom, Pergamum was the capital of its own Kingdom of Pergamum. Even after Pergamum’s defeat by and incorporation into the Roman Empire, it remained an important center of political, economic, and religious power.
The city was very Greek and very Roman. Just like its sister cities of Ephesus and Smyrna, it was home to many temples to various Greek and Roman gods. It had three primary temples which were of highest importance: the temple to Roma, the goddess of Rome; the temple of Artemis, the goddess of fertility and of nature; and finally the temple to Zeus, the king of the Greek gods. During its time as a Greek capital, the king commissioned a great altar be built into the hilltop of the city. The altar is so large and ornamentally built that when many people see it, they think that it is a temple itself. This altar was giant.
All through the day, no matter where you were in the city, you could see the altar outside the temples of Artemis and Zeus and watch the smoke rise as sacrifices were made to both gods. It was from this altar that most people in the city got their meat and it was from these temples that most people sought salvation. The temple to Roma and the Roman emperors was home to the savior of the world, Caesar. The temple to Zeus, was for the savior of the gods. The temple to Artemis, was used as a hospital of sorts, where people were saved from their illness.
In a city of saviors, it was pretty bold to proclaim that there was only one Savior for the world and that these others which were worshiped throughout the city were false ones. So, Christians in Pergamum faced their challenges. But more than the challenge of proclaiming one Savior in the midst of many, there was also the challenge of not being led astray. In a city full of saviors, it can be difficult to not be swayed to another belief or changing your own faith to match the culture you’re surrounded with. This is what Jesus addresses in His letter to the Church in Pergamum.
He says,
“To the angel of the church in Pergamum write: These are the words of Him Who has the sharp, double-edged sword. 13 I know where you live—where Satan has his throne. Yet you remain true to My Name. You did not renounce your faith in Me, not even in the days of Antipas, My faithful witness, who was put to death in your city—where Satan lives. 14 Nevertheless, I have a few things against you: There are some among you who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin so that they ate food sacrificed to idols and committed sexual immorality. 15 Likewise, you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans. 16 Repent therefore! Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. 17 Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it.”
Pergamum is the capital of Asia Minor. It is the very embodiment of Roman culture, Roman religious beliefs, and most importantly Roman authority. This authority is often symbolized through the sword as a reminder of the power which the Roman Empire wielded through its armies. So Jesus addresses this from the beginning. He describes Himself as the One Who has the sharp double-edged sword. Not only is His sword – or in other words, His authority – sharp, but it is double that of the Romans. In fact, all authority on Earth comes from God alone. And to the Christians living in the center of Roman authority in the region, this is a reminder that even the Roman’s sword only comes from the authority which God has.
Then Jesus goes on. He knows what is going on in that city. He knows about all of the false gods and false saviors which are proclaimed from the largest altars in the known world. Yet these altars are nothing more than the throne of Satan – the throne of the one who opposes. Pergamum is a city of Satan, a city which is in opposition to God and God’s work on Earth. Yet the Christians in that city have remained faithful.
I don’t know if you’ve caught on to this theme yet, but in every city we’ve examined thus far, Christians should not have been able to start a church nor have any success in bringing others into the faith. Yet in every city, the story is that Christians thrive in places where they shouldn’t. It’s incredible and its what’s happening in Pergamum. The Christians here have shown incredible loyalty to Christ, even in the midst of all of these other pressures and the culture of their city. But there are signs of problems ahead.
There are some members of the church who are starting to move away from the teachings of Christ and embrace others teachings. Actually, what’s really happening is that people are starting to mix the values of their culture with the beliefs of their faith. But, its not to make the cultural values become more like their faith, but their faith more like their culture. During this time, a major problem was that people didn’t know how the Christian faith should interact with the Jewish and Gentile worlds. One line of thought which had emerged was that of the Nicolaitans. They taught permissible grace which is the idea that the grace of God is so great that there is nothing you can do to ever escape it or reject it. In fact, there is nothing you can do to remove yourself from it. Now this is what we teach in the church today. But where these misguided teachers go astray is that they teach that this grace then means you can do whatever you want because God’s grace covers you anyways. You can live the kind of life you want, do whatever you want to do, be whoever you want to be because God’s grace is covering you and making everything alright. But this isn’t the kind of grace that Jesus, nor the Church, teaches.
Paul, in his letter to the Romans, touches on this. He says,
“Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to Him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace. Slaves to Righteousness What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.”
What Jesus has given us is not permissible grace but transformative grace. It’s not a grace which allows all things, it’s a grace which changes all things. It’s not an excuse to be able to do whatever you want with whoever you want whenever you want. It is a call to loyalty to righteousness and loyalty to Christ. At the heart of this letter is learning to be loyal to Christ and loyal to the faith. Our world doesn’t know a whole lot about loyalty any more. Relationships are broken without much thought. Divorce is at an all-time high. Employers fire employees who have worked for them for years. Contracts are breached without thought. I was even reading yesterday how people are no longer willing to be loyal in relationships so they now are in groups of three or four – in polyamorous or open relationships.
There are also a lot of different things calling for our loyalty today. Our country demands our loyalty. Our colleges and alma mater demand our loyalty. Our science demands loyalty. Our sports teams demand loyalty. Our jobs demand loyalty. Our culture demands loyalty. There are so many things which demand our loyalty. Just as the ancient people who walked through the temple-laden streets of Pergamum would feel the pull of all these different saviors and gods, so too can we feel the pull from all of these things we think are important and deserve our loyalty.
The reality is that none of those things I listed sound like they shouldn’t receive our loyalty. Yet none of those things can give us anything that lasts for it. In fact, all they can do is take away from our lives when we give our loyalty to them. If we are loyal to our country above all things, we can become extremists and nationalist. It’s this kind of loyalty which lead to the Holocaust. If we are loyal to our education or science above all else, we give ourselves over to the thoughts of our time, which as we can see from history, are often only right for a very short amount of time. If we are loyal to our jobs above all else, our life is spent making money and never doing anything important. If we are loyal to our culture above all else, then we are subject to the whims of corruptible logic and the easy changes which comes to the culture we live in. We live as a plastic bag tossed wherever the wind takes it.
But when we place our complete loyalty in Christ, we find that we get something in return. We find that Christ asks only that we remain loyal to Him and that He gives us everything in this life – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control – and eternal life even after death. Being loyal can be hard – especially when there are so many things vying for our loyalty. We may be tempted to try and mix our faith with our culture and satisfy both. But the problem is that we never can do it well. And Christ has called us not to follow Him partially, not to be on the fence, but to be fully loyal.
This means that we will have to change the way we think and act. We will have to reprioritize our lives. For the Christians in Pergamum, this meant not eating meat offered to false gods so that they did not compromise their loyalty. For you it might mean not watching a show which drags on your faith constantly. Maybe it means letting a friendship go which is harming your loyalty to Christ. If you come before Christ and listen, you will know what it is that needs to be done. But through this hard work we have a promise. Not only will we be fed by the Manna of heaven, but we will be given new names and new life from the source of life itself. So let us choose this day our loyalty. Let us leave behind our misgiven loyalties and be who Christ is calling us to be: loyal followers of the One Who is love and life. Amen.