7 Churches - Pergamum

7 Churches of the Bible

Week 3

Pergamum

PROMO SLIDE

Good morning on this Communion Sunday and the day of our first Connect Event!  I can’t wait to visit with you all later, but right now, we want to jump right into our next Church of Revelation.

As you may know, we have been looking at what these churches from 2000 years ago have to do with us today.  These letters that Jesus told the Apostle John to write in his Apocalypse… his Revelation, are wonderful sources to see what was going on in Asia Minor in the 1st Century and the warnings and encouragements that Jesus gave to those churches.

We know these were both prophetic and timely to those churches, and they are relevant to us because, quite frankly, we are going through the same things those churches went through back then.

SERIES SLIDE

First, we looked at Ephesus and how they were doing all the right things, but they had lost their first love.  They had stopped doing the things that they did at first…. Doesn’t that sound like you and me today?  That, sometimes, we just go through the motions of church, forgetting why we do what we do? 

We have to refocus… we have to reconnect… we have to come back to our first love…  That is what Communion is all about!  We return to this altar and rededicate our lives to our Savior… But that isn’t something we do once a month… No, as we are going on to perfection in Christ, we need to wake up daily and recommit to our Savior.

Then, last week, we looked at Smyrna… this city of the great fragrance of Myrrh.  This church, where the followers of Jesus were under persecution from those who called themselves Jews and from the Romans… They stood outside the culture and interjected the Gospel, the good news of Jesus, into the world around them…

We have to do the same.  We are living in a society where story after story crosses our news channels of attacks on churches.  A Synagogue was attacked in England on Thursday as people gathered for Yom Kippur.  Last Sunday, a man drove his truck into a church, shot a bunch of people, then lit the church on fire.  Several of our Safety Team members went to a training on “Protecting Your House of Worship.”  We shouldn’t have to have a law enforcement officer out in front of our building and trained safety personnel inside… But, since the first major church shooting in Daingerfield, TX in 1980, churches have had to consider the safety of those who gather within the walls… and the rate of this violence continues to climb.

I don’t care how many politicians point fingers back and forth across the aisle, it's not a Democrat or a Republican issue.  It is an issue of sin in our midst, and the only answer is to take Jesus to the streets…

But as we saw with the Church at Smyrna, we will pay the price when we stand for Christ, but I can’t imagine offering anything but the hope of the light of Christ to a world of darkness.

Sermon Slide – Pergamum

And that brings us to today’s church, the Church at Pergamum… where the seat of Satan was.

Pergamum served as the Roman Capital in the province.  It was known for the pagan healing practices that took place there.  People would come from all over the world to be healed of their ailments.  The Greek god Asclepius, symbolized by the staff wrapped by a snake, was worshipped here along with Caesar, Zeus, Athena, and a host of other Greek and Roman gods and goddesses.

This healing people sought involved snakes, incense, and all kinds of other stuff.  One description of the practice of healing went something like this:

The sick or infirm would come to a part of the city and the pagan priests would receive them and guide them into a tunnel where incense was burning.  We are pretty sure the smoke that they breathed had an intoxicating and hallucinogenic effect on the people.  The people would then begin to hallucinate and see snakes… if a snake touched you in your dream, then you knew you were healed… but as the people wandered through the cave-like tunnel, the priests would be up above whispering and speaking through windows, down into where the people were.  They would eventually come out the other side after receiving these visions and hearing these healing sayings spoken over them to have the priests interpret their dreams.

What is interesting is that I know someone who has partaken in Psychedelic Mushroom Therapy.  Essentially, you meet with a psychedelic professional who helps you take your psychedelic journey by ingesting a mushroom mix.  You then take your trip, and they talk you through your psychedelic experience to cure you of any number of physical, emotional, and psychological maladies.  When you come down from your trip, you discuss your dreams and visions with them, and they help you interpret all that it means… does it sound familiar?

Does it sound like maybe the same pagan, anti-Christian practices that took place in Pergamum some 2000 years ago?

Maybe Satan doesn’t have any new tactics and just keeps recycling and repackaging the same old lies… why? Maybe because they worked to keep people away from Christ then, and they still work today?

Here’s the interesting thing that happened in Pergamum.  As the Christian church grew, and people became followers of Jesus, fewer and fewer were coming to the healing tunnel.  More and more began to find their healing in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ rather than these cultic practices.  That is quite likely what happened to the martyr of Pergamum listed in today’s text…

We read in verse 13:

“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.”

Even in the midst of persecution… even in the midst of seeing their leader killed… they continued to proclaim the good news of Jesus.

But… even in their faithfulness, there is room for improvement.  Jesus goes into the story of Balak, Balaam, and his Donkey.  I told my Wednesday night people I’d keep it clean!

Balak was a Moabite King who summoned Balaam to come and curse the people of Israel in Numbers 22-24.  This is the story where Balaam is riding his donkey… and the donkey sees an angel with a fiery sword in hand ready to strike Balaam dead, so the donkey turns and goes a different direction… but Balaam tries to force him back… 3 times this happens and Balaam beats his donkey, then the donkey started talking to him… and then he sees the angel… Now, personally, I would be looking for what drugs or mushrooms someone had given me… but I guess a talking donkey wasn’t too big a deal for Balaam.

Anyway, Balaam visits with Balak and tells him that the Lord will not allow him to curse the Israelites.  But Balak learns that he can tempt the men with beautifully scantily clad women, which then leads the men into idol worship and sexual sin.  Here, we get a glimpse of more of the story than we see in Numbers.  Here we learn that it was Balaam, who didn’t curse the people of God, but he did let Balak in on the secret of their weakness, and if he could get them to sin, they would lose their strength and protection from God.

So, Jesus says, they have Nicolaitans in their midst who were basically doing the same thing that Balaam did… introducing them to sin that pulls them away from God.  And, I think we still have the same thing happening today.

All this AI stuff is getting kinda scary.  I saw this done on another video a while back, so I tried it myself.  I asked an AI program “If you were the devel, what would you do to lead people away from God?”

And here are some of the replies I got…

Don’t attack faith head-on; introduce plausible questions, highlight ambiguities.

Emphasize pleasure, status, convenience.

Encourage the idea that you don’t need God –that you’re smart enough, strong enough, or morally superior enough to rely on yourself.

Blur moral lines… truth is personal… all paths lead to the same place… reduce doctrine to mere opinion so people stop caring about objective claims.

Fill life with noise, consumption, work, and entertainment so people have no time or attention left for reflection, prayer, or community.

Use familiar words like grace, freedom, and love… but strip them of their biblical meaning or use them to justify harmful choices

Does any of that sound familiar?

Here is the one thing that isn’t listed… what the devil would never do… is try to convince you that he is real.  That there is a real seat of Satan in the world…

In the church a Pergamum… where there was literally a huge throne-like seat that measured more than 117 ft wide and 109 ft deep,  there were people there, the Nicolaitans, who had begun telling those in the church that they didn’t have to keep all those rules… They could still be part of the Pagan culture, worshipping Athena and Zeus… partaking of the sexual rituals… using the healing tunnels… all the things that they were seeing in the city.  They were blurring the moral lines… they were emphasizing pleasure… they were filling the people's lives with entertainment and all the noise of the culture.

But Jesus warned the people not to let them in… not to accept their teaching… not to follow them down the slippery slope!

Friends, we are living in the same world today.  It may have been 2000 years ago in Pergamum, but we are seeing a repeat here in our society today.

Satan doesn’t have any new tricks… he keeps using the same playbook over and over and over again, because in every generation, we have to be reminded… we have to see the mistakes of the world around us and compare them to the things we read in Scripture. Because it’s all here for us!

But, there is good news for those of us who choose to hear and see it!

Verse 17 tells us that those who are victorious will be given manna from heaven.  What was manna? It was the bread-like substance that the Hebrew people received from God when they were in the desert.  They didn’t earn it… they didn’t make it… it was provided for them… it kept them alive.  In other words, God provided…

It was God’s grace… God’s undeserved favor given to the people.

And, without going into the details of it, the white stones we read about in that final verse represented both our acquittal… that though we have sinned, we are not guilty because of the acts of our Savior – God’s grace…

And the stones represented our ticket into heaven… our ticket to eternity with the Lord at His heavenly banquet.

Not that we deserve it, but because God gave it… freely.

And now, you are invited to this table… to God’s table… a sneak peek at the love feast of heaven… the heavenly banquet where all honor and Glory of God is forever and ever.

And so, may we prepare our hearts for this meal of God’s grace.