Sermon Tone Analysis

The letter to the church at Pergamos is the most critical of the letters we’ve studied so far.

In fact, Christ introduced himself in verse 12 as a judge wielding a sharp two-edged sword.

According to verse 16, he is ready to use his sword to fight against the impenitent.

But what was the problem here?

This is made clear in verse 14 and 15.

The church at Pergamos had welcomed into its midst some who held to serious error, viz., those who held the doctrine of Balaam and the Nicolaitans.

Although the church as a whole may not have embraced their aberrant theology, it nonetheless tolerated it.

And toleration of this kind of error is compromise.

Considering the circumstances in which this church found itself, it’s not hard to understand why it would have embraced such a broad ecumenicity.

But this, of course, is not an excuse.

Whereas Ephesus boasted its worship of Diana and Smyrna its allegiance to Rome, Pergamos was the center of worship for four of the most important cults of the day: Zeus, Dionysus, Athene and Asklepios.

Of greater importance yet, Pergamos was the provincial capital of Asia Minor as well as the designated center for the worship of Rome, making a conflict between the state and the church almost inescapable.

In fact, Pergamos was the first city to erect the temple Caesar Augustus.

This is doubtless what the Lord meant when he described Pergamos in verse 13 as the place /where Satan’s seat is/.

To protect the imperial cult the Roman government had also granted the proconsul of Pergamos the sovereign use of the sword, which he could exercise at will.

In this context, Christ reminded the church that he is the sovereign sword-bearer.

He alone has power over life and death, not just in this world but also in the world to come.

Even the proconsul of Pergamos, as great as he may be in the eyes of Rome, will even­tually stand before the awful judgment seat of Christ.

Christ alone must be feared, for he judges the thoughts and intents of all hearts.

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The Church’s Faithfulness

In spite of the church’s compromises, the Lord Jesus com­mended it in verse 13 for its works and its faithfulness during a previous persecu­tion.

Apparently, this persecution had been especially severe, for a man named Antipas had given his life as a testimony to Christ.

This makes Pergamos the only one of the seven churches of Asia Minor known to have had a martyr before John wrote the book of Revelation.

However, there is no indication in the message to the church at Pergamos that it was currently suffering persecution or that it would do so in the immediate future more than any church of its day.

In the letter to the church at Smyrna, Christ warned his people that their suffering would be especially intense, though short-lived.

Nothing of the kind is said here.

Instead, the Lord commended the church to encourage it to remain faithful under a different kind of trial.

But this only makes the church’s compromise that much more difficult to understand.

Why would the church have remained faithful during times when its members were suffering and dying for the faith, and then compromise later when things were quieter?

The fact is that this is not as difficult to understand as it may seem.

The threat of violence and death reminds us of the importance of what we believe and the urgency of communicating it to others.

But when threats cease, we sometimes lose this sense of the importance and urgency of the gospel, and for the sake of peace we give more and more latitude for error.

In this sense, it can be harder to remain faithful to Christ in a predominately unbelieving but not openly hostile society than when facing the executioner’s sword.

A good illustration of this point comes from the early fourth century.

Constantine, after supposedly seeing the sign of victory in the sky, issued the Edict of Milan (AD 313), which adopted what we might call a friendly neutrality toward the church and prepared the way for the church’s full recognition.

Since Constantine considered himself a Christian, his edict made it immediately fashionable for Roman citizens to join the church with or without any real commitment to the gospel.

On one occasion it is reported that twelve thousand people were baptized in the city of Rome.

The unfortunate result of this was that the church started to look more and more like the world.

The church had not affected the society, as much as the society had affected the church.

Thereafter, the church became more and more pagan.

The church at Pergamos was especially sensitive to these kinds of problems.

It was situated in the religious and social capital of the region.

Twice the Lord says that it was a world occupied by Satan himself.

In verse 13 he wrote that Pergamos was /where Satan’s seat is/.

Here the word translated /seat/ is literally “throne” (ὁ θρόνος).

The end of the same verse adds that this was also the place /where Satan dwelleth/.

There is a sense in which we can say that all opposition to the gospel comes from Satan.

It either comes from him directly, which may have been the case here, or indirectly.

But the good news is that the prince of darkness has been bound and cast into the bottomless pit for a thousand years (Rev.

20:1–2; cf.

Matt.

12:22–32).

He has been defeated, and specifically he has been defeated for you.

That’s why Paul wrote to the Romans that /the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly/ (Rom.

16:20).

James says, /Resist the devil, and he will flee from you/ (Jas.

4:7; cf.

I Pet.

5:8–9).

He has no choice but to run from those who are covered by the blood of Christ.

In spite of the fact that some within the church were willing to tolerate serious error, overall the church remained faithful to Christ and his gospel.

Thus, Christ commanded the church: /I know thy works, and where thou dwellest, even where Satan’s seat is: and thou holdest fast my 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/ (v.

13).

What a tes­timony to us, who suffer much less but succumb to our trials more easily!

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Compromises with Pagan Practices

As we have seen, though, all was not well with the church at Pergamos.

In verses 14 and 15 Christ wrote, But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumblingblock 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 (Re 2:14-15).

The doctrine of Balaam was not a system of theology like Calvinism or Lutheranism.

Rather, it was a methodology that Balaam encouraged Balak to use to make the Lord’s people bring God’s curse upon themselves.

And it was a fairly simple methodology.

Balak sent Moabite prostitutes to seduce the men of Israel.

Then, once they stole the hearts of the Israelites, they invited them to participate in the sacrifices and worship of their false gods.

Unfortunately, this program worked and 24,000 Israelites died as a result.

The only thing that saved the nation was the fact that Phinehas the priest interceded for it by carrying out the Lord’s sentence of judgment against the offenders.

What we see here is that direct attacks sometimes do not accomplish much.

If the devil came to you and said, “I am the devil; worship me,” you would probably dismiss him right away.

But when he comes in a disguise and cloaks his purpose, it’s harder to see what he’s up to and, therefore, also harder to resist him.

In this instance, Balaam knew that criticizing the strictness of God’s law would get him nowhere.

So, he advised Balak to conceal his real designs under the perfumed sheets of an army of seductresses.

This account is recorded in the twenty-fifth chapter of Numbers.

However, not one word in this chapter indicates that Balak’s insidious plot had been suggested by Balaam.

Perhaps this was either because it was common knowledge at the time, in which case there was no need to mention it, or because it wasn’t discovered until later.

In any case, there can be no doubt that Balaam was the main culprit.

Numbers 31:16 says, /Behold, these [i.e., the Moabite women] caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the LORD/.

Not very long ago, there was a cult named the Children of God that practiced the doctrine of Balaam.

In an effort to attract men, they evangelized them by having their women seduce them.

There was nothing morally wrong with this, they said, because they were doing nothing more than showing God’s love to men who did not know what real love was.

They called this method of evangelism “flirty fish­ing” and stopped using it only because of the AIDS epidemic of the mid-1980s.

This cult still exists today, though now it goes by the name The Family International.

Interestingly, its current statement of beliefs contains an article on sexuality that still does not restrict intimacy to married adults.

It says that “heterosexual relations … between consenting adults of legal age … [is] permissible according to Scripture.”

While we don’t really have enough information in our text to determine how the doctrine of Balaam affected the church at Pergamos, the fact that the Lord specifically mentioned pagan sacrifice and fornication in verse 14 suggests that these two sins were certainly involved.

The second group that carried its pagan influence into the church at Pergamos was the Nicolaitans, who are mentioned in verse 15.

They were also mentioned a few verses earlier in the letter to the Ephesians (v. 6).

The first thing we note is that the Lord said very little about the nature of the Nicolaitans’ error.

Since he spent so much time describing the doctrine of Balaam, this seems rather odd.

The answer is that the Lord actually said more than we think.

The word translated /so/ (οὕτως) at the beginning of verse 15 is a comparative adverb that literally means “with reference to what preceded.”

The point of comparison may be simply that the church was tolerating two groups espousing error, but it is far more likely that the two errors were themselves similar.

In fact, it’s even possible that the two groups mentioned in verses 14 and 15 were one and the same.

There are two reasons why I say this.

First, the words translated /which thing I hate/ (ὅ μισῶ) should probably read /in a similar way/ (ὁμοίως), which has much better textual support.

This, then, would give us a double emphasis on the similarity of the two groups.