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“Write to the angel of the church in Pergamum:
“The One who has the sharp, double-edged sword says: I know where you live—where Satan’s throne is! And you are holding on to My name and did not deny your faith in Me, even in the days of Antipas, My faithful witness who was killed among you, where Satan lives. But I have a few things against you. You have some there who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to place a stumbling block in front of the Israelites: to eat meat sacrificed to idols and to commit sexual immorality. In the same way, you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans. Therefore repent! Otherwise, I will come to you quickly and fight against them with the sword of My mouth.
“Anyone who has an ear should listen to what the Spirit says to the churches. I will give the victor some of the hidden manna. I will also give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name is inscribed that no one knows except the one who receives it.
A brief history of Pergamum
A brief history of Pergamum
Understood to be the Religious capitol of the region, there were three separate temples built to facilitate the imperial worship that the Roman emperors so enjoyed. The reference to the seat of Satan references this, as the Christians in this city would have to deal with fanatical pagan’s worshiping Zeus and Athena as well as the two local animal deities. This would of course make being a Christian more than a bit challenging. Yet these believers are commended for staying true to the Christian faith, even when Antipas was martyred for the faith. They knew what was right, they knew what was true, they knew where their faith was to come from, the foundation that it was built on and they stayed strong and true to a point however…
1. Knowing isn’t enough
1. Knowing isn’t enough
A meeting in the dead of night (Nicodemus)
There was a man from the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Him at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher, for no one could perform these signs You do unless God were with him.”
Jesus replied, “I assure you: Unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Many times we know what is true, we know it in our heads, can read and study and watch and listen and understand truth. We can know it, we can acknowledge it, we can even claim to believe it, but that’s not enough. What we have happening in these verses in John should speak volumes to the rest of our reading of Jesus story. The religious leaders knew that Jesus was more than they were letting on, They knew that Jesus was chosen by God, and I suspect many of them having read the old testament prophets knew that Jesus fit the bill for who the Messiah was. They knew it, and if what we read from Nicodemus even acknowledged it, some even believed it, the problem that the religious leaders has wasn’t a knowledge problem the problem was an integration problem. Computers are interesting tools, and people are constantly attempting to push the limits of technology. We can see this ever day on our smart phones, we can witness it in children’s toys that talk and interact, I can turn on my xbox with a voice command sit down in front of it and after a couple of seconds if that it recognizes my face and logs me in. Deep learning computers are fascinating and frightening at the same time, these machines can learn languages, help figure out medical issues, be used to recognize objects in photos the list just keeps growing, perhaps the best example of what deep learning computers comes from this clip…
VIDEO CLIP
Watson is really cool, it’s amazing what can be done with vast stores of knowledge, there is however one flaw, no matter how much knowledge Watson has and that knowledge is vast it is missing several key components to being more than just an artificial intelligence, it’s missing emotion, feelings, and humanity. Just listen to the way it speaks. I say all that and use that clip to say this. Knowledge is not enough when it comes to relationship with God and others. There must be more, we have to take what we know and apply it to our hearts and lives.
Being all things to all people
Being all things to all people
Paul out of context
To the weak I became weak, in order to win the weak. I have become all things to all people, so that I may by every possible means save some.
Perhaps no scripture has been taken more out of context than this one. Christians and churches the world over have used this verse as an excuse for any number of behaviors. The idea of becoming all things to all people is so much more than a license for questionable behavior. Taken in context we find something very important. Something that the church in Pergamum had forgotten. Paul says that when he was with Jews, preaching to them he lived as a Jew, meaning that even though he knew he was not bound by the Levitical law restricting food, drink and other such issues, he realized that as a community they found those things important to their faith, and since they were not detrimental in any way to their faith in Christ, Paul chose to accept the restrictions and live with them, so that people would be able to see and know the Love of Christ, then when preaching with and living in community with Gentile Christians, who didn’t have the same restrictions, didn’t grow up with those laws he would not live with the Levitical restrictions. Paul’s being all things to all people was not a license to sin or oppress, on the contrary when he lived and ministered to people he followed the Law of Christ, we know from Jesus own teaching that he boils down the Law of God into two simple commands; Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. The church in Pergamum had a problem, in that they were allowing a group of people called the Nicolaitans to not just be in the church, but speak, have leadership, be involved in the spiritual development of Christians, the permisivenenss going on had less to do with reaching the lost than it did doing what ever felt good at the time. That’s what we find in the story of Ballam what starts out as what I call a Narnia moment with a talking donkey ends with Ballam goading the Isrealites into worshiping a Baal and ignoring the Laws of God possibly to recoup some of the money he had lost out on when he had to bless the Israelites when he initially went with Ballak. finds him being killed along with five other kings of Moab. This is what the church in Pergamum was allowing, a mixing of some aspects of Christianity and some aspects of the worship of roman Gods and roman leaders as God coupled with a free love agenda.
Grace can’t be an excuse
Grace can’t be an excuse
The problem that the church in Pergamum had and in many respects what churches today have is not so much a lack of knowledge when it comes to what is right and wrong, on the contrary, the Pergamum church did know these things, they were commended for not going back on their faith, what they were called to account for was a permissiveness that didn’t fit the holy side of God. Grace is a wonderful thing but it’s not the whole thing…
For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift— not from works, so that no one can boast. For we are His creation, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time so that we should walk in them.
There are some important things to realize if we are going to be able to reap the benefits of the promise given to the church in Pergamum… Three things…Manna from Heaven and a white stone and a new name. Feasting was important across the board in the religious traditions at this time period. Every religion had feasts including of course Judaism. The people in Pergamum would have been left out of many of the Pagan feasts. No worry, Jesus promises them their own feast the Manna from heaven that is yet another reminder of the sacrifice Jesus made, it is that sacrifice that sustains us, just as Jesus broke bread on the night he was betrayed this Manna is another reminder of their sure salvation and life eternal, Stones were used by jury’s in trials. Black stones would be used to give a guilty verdict, white stones would show innocence. In giving the people who were willing to repent a white stone we find Jesus giving them a verdict of not guilty, and a new name, any time a name is changed in the Bible it denotes God showing up and changing a person’s circumstances and many times their character and calling.
Grace is just the beginning, we must couple grace with belief, an acceptance on our part and a realization that no matter how hard we work in our own power we will not be good enough, in fact good deeds without Christ while wonderful are just good deeds, the end of these verses in Ephesians tells us how it’s supposed to be, our good deeds and works should flow from our relationship with Christ. As we couple the gifts and callings he has placed on the believer with the power available through our relationship with Him and the Holy Spirit. Our families, or community and our world can be changed in a way that will stand the test of time and eternity. This is the promise that we have when we build a relationship with God daily, it’s the promise for our church as we seek to live and move and have our being in Christ, to reach up in worship to reach in to equip and to reach out to serve.
This Weeks Challenge
This Weeks Challenge
Read the story of Nicodemus, the Story of Balam, , and . Then pay find out where little things have slipped into your walk with Christ that don’t really fit and ask God to help you live in His Grace, while working on your walk.