Revelation 2: Letters to the church

The One who walks among the seven golden lampstands: The Church as formed around Christ.

but we are going to see that He shows it in maybe a strange way. In a way we are not used to.

We are given this image of Christ walking amongst the lampstands. These are the churches. We immediately see that Christ is walking close to the church. He is close to. He knows the churches. He sees them and understands them.

But from that place He can speak honestly about them.

There is an abraisive reality in revelation that we get to contend with. But it is for a purpose. It is actually to lead us to grace.

It is a chance to wake up out of ourselves and move into better forms of grace. We are constantly disoriented so that We can see the true north of Christ.

I mentioned to you that we would be revisiting some strange stories and movies and illustrations to hopefully better understand Revelation. We are going to start with a portion of the short story called Revelation by FOC.

We are introduced to a Mrs. Turpin. She is the main character in the story and we hear what is happening from her perspective.

She and her husband are in the waiting room of the doctor.

She is scanning the room, checking everyone out. Judging their looks and their manner, calling them names and justifying her opinion.

She is a pious woman, able to finish the line of the hymn that is playing over the speaker.

We hear her perspective and thoughts.

She is grateful to Christ for not being like people that were less than her. The people that were around her.

At one point they are talking about farming and pigs. One of the ladies that Mrs Turpin was calling white trash said she wouldn’t want hogs because they are messy and nasty.

Mrs Turpin replies, “our hogs are not dirty and they don’t stink. They’re cleaner than some of the children I’ve seen.

Everything she is is better than anything anyone else has. But she is using Christian language in order to show her faith as she talks. But her language about people betrays her faith. Everyone can see it. But her.

She has a shallow faith. Or really not one at all. Faith is like a delivery system for her judgement.

There is a girl sitting across from her very aware of her hypocrisy. Aware that her words don’t match the faith that she says she has.

She gets angrier and angrier.

And eventually when mrs Turpin is praising Jesus for making her the way she is, but unlike everyone else. The girl throws a book at Mrs Turpin’s head.

She calls her an old warthog.

And jumps across the room to beat her.

begins the shock of apocalyptic literature

This begins to undo Mrs Turpin.

She can’t let go of the distortion of her world. She has woken up, albeit painfully, to the fact that she was not connected to reality.

The question of the story is will she connect to reality?

She angrily prays to God about this situation. How can you send me a message like this? Why me? Look at what I do. How am I a hog? Why didn’t you make me like trash then?

At the end of the story she has a revelation: shown what is real after being thrown off from all that she had trusted that was less than Christ. ‌

“batallions of freaks and lunatics...”

“even their virtues were being burned away...”

Mrs Turpin is forced to wake up past her perception. The book in the face is a gift to O Connor. To look past the self and face reality. O Connor shocks us into having to face our own delusions.

Turpin is hit with an idea that she can no longer shake. Her own fragility and that her own ideas of who she is may not be as real as she had hoped.

She now has to form her reality about who she is around this idea. She is no longer in charge of what is true.

But that is a gift because it allows her to receive truth from elsewhere. It allows for revelaTion.

REvelation is like that. Chapter 2 is a bit like a book to the face.

Not in that it hurts, but really because to wake up is to be invited into grace.

Because we get to see it as an invitation to recieve truth and grace from elsewhere.

It allows us to set our more than heavy ideas down and pick up the grace of Christ.

“I have learned to kiss the waves that throw me up against the Rock of Ages”

― Charles H. Spurgeon

Revelation 2:1–2 ESV

“To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: ‘The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands. “ ‘I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false.

There is a pattern that we see in these churches. Jesus points to something specific.

He calls them to repentance through them losing their way

Then He reminds them that if they endure there will be reward. That even though it is tough now, there will be reward.

Christ is not saying these things as someone detached from the church. As someone from the outside looking in. He is saying them as One deeply connected.

His name is on the building so to speak.

Christ is showing His proximity but also His authority.

Christ is not standing among the lamp stands as comforter. But He is standing on the lamp stands as judge and arbiter of truth.

As an apocalyptic image, we see not perception, but how it really is. What is really true about Christ?

He is the first and last and is all powerful.

He is the One who walks near and walks with power.

- Christ is the One to be listened to and obeyed.

Each church gets a different message, particular to their context. But mostly they revolve around the idea He gives to the Ephesians:

Revelation 2:4–5 ESV

But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.

Christ says you are doing good things. But you have abandoned the love you had for Him.

Repent. Turn in a new direction. And do the things you did with your love for Christ.

To Hear Christ is a response to God’s grace

Revelation 2:11 ESV

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death.’

Christ gives some harsh words to these churches. He does encourage them but He also rebukes them.

But in whatever he says, He tells the church to listen. He is calling the church to wake up to what He is saying and listen. And when we do we will be placed in Him to persevere.

to be able to hear is the first action. But it is never the last.

We begin by listening to Christ.

We listen for His words of both encouragement and correction.

If we have ears to hear we will love both of them. Because the words of Christ, His instruction is a gift of grace.

To hear is to begin to be gathered in from dispersion

Augustine’s use of dispersion. He asks God to gather him in from “stale days” to pursue the One. Dispersion is the notion that in the world we are more scattered than gathered. That we drift and that we become disconnected in our world.

Repentance is a gathering up of dispersion

Repentance is a coming to ourselves. A gathering up from a dispersion. We have allowed ourselves a life of moments without thinking of who we lent ourselves to. To repent is to gather ourselves up.

To repent points to God’s grace

Revelation 2:14–16 ESV

But I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality. So also you have some who hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans. Therefore repent. If not, I will come to you soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth.

Again, there is a pattern in what Jesus is saying to these churches. You are doing good here. But not here. Repent. And you will have grace to hold onto Christ.

To repent means to go in a different direction. To turn around.

It is a strange word, repent. We don’t much like it in our culture.

But To say that we are not open to correction is to say that our personal destiny is the most important and d most authoritative thing about us. To approach any situation believing that we always know what to do and that we aren’t open to correction is to say that we are the most important voice in the room.

You are an important voice in the room. But we have to recognize who is most important. Here is maybe the kindest thing I can say to you. You do not have to bear the weight of your own creative authority. You did not generate creation itself and you do not bear the authority as if you did have to hold up such action.

Christ however does. He sustains us an bears the weight of authority. So when He speaks, because He is responsible both for creation and for the sustaining and flourishing of the church when He speaks, even in correction, it is to offer life. He speaks into the church to correct but to correct in such a way that grace becomes a possibility. If Christ is correcting us. If His word sometimes feels like it stands against our better inclinations. That means He is offering grace. There is grace on the other side of correction. We have believed that any kind of correction comes from hatred. But correction can be a statement of complete love. Correction can be an invitation to grace itself.

But to experience it we have to repent.

So long as we have gotten everything figured out we close off the reservoir of Gods grace

Correction is an antidote to that. It is really the front door of His grace.

Romans 2:4 ESV

Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

We have choices when we are faced with questions on who we are going to listen to.

Will we keep going?

Or will we listen to the One who was and is and is to come?

There is a road barrier at the intersection of Union st and carpenter st, just outside of the center of Attleboro. I pass by it twice a day on the way home. If you are heading south on union, eventually the road ends and you hit a t intersection with carpenter st. Im sure you’ve faced a t intersection before.

As you are stopped at the stop sign on union you are forced to go either left or right. Right in front of you there is normally a metal railing with yellow reflective tape to encourage you to stop.

A couple of months ago, that normal pristine metal railing was all torn up. Ripped up out of it’s foundations and bent up in the middle. As I drove by it I observed that someone had obviously wanted to keep going straight and was immediately stopped by the big metal rail. There was no damage past it, just in the rail itself.

When you are dealing with the rules of the universe like gravity or Newtons third law of motion, every action (force) in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction. (Whenever one object exerts a force on another object, the second object exerts an equal and opposite force on the first.) then the reality is that we can’t break those rules. We actually break against those rules. We don’t get to where we want by trying to extend Union St by driving through a metal barrier. We break against it.

To repent is to turn left or right. It is to change direction. It is to act alongside the universal laws.

God’s order and word are universal laws. It’s not so much that we break them it’s that we break against them. And so when Christ says, don’t keep driving down Carpenter street, you will break your car against a metal barrier. It is better to turn.

All of this feels like a book to the head. It feels like being woken up suddenly. And that is an act of grace.

Because to act in this way is to respond to Christ.

It is honestly to turn around completely to come back to our first love.

He is giving us directions here. He is calling us back to Himself.

Why does this matter?

Because often when we think of the difficult things that we deal with we are caught up thinking

why did this happen

what did I do wrong

What’s wrong with me?

Maybe you are in a situation where you can’t see your way out and it feels like a book to the head.

But one of the things we need to shift in our thinking is that Christ is calling us through them. He can and will use difficult things for His glory.

Sometimes difficult things are the vehicles for God’s glory.

These situations we face can be gifts of grace.

Maybe we need to listen to Christ’s encouragement

Maybe we need to repent as an act of grace.

But whatever it is you are facing is God calling to gather you up toward Himself and that it has possibility of His glory within it.

We know difficult things can bring God glory when we look at the cross

Christ broke for Gods glory. Not in repentance but in obedience.

And Christ went to the cross so that we, even in our own difficulty, don’;t have to face death. We don’t have to face sin the same way. Christ has provided a solution.

We are called not to break against whatever it is we are running headlong into

We are called to trust the One who was willingly broken so we don’t have to be.

What would Jesus say to the church in America?

What would Jesus say to the church in Attleboro?