7 Churches - Pergamum

Welcome/Intro

Hey everyone! Welcome to Week 3 of our 7 Churches series. We’ve been walking through the first few chapters of the book of Revelation, looking at 7 letters that Jesus spoke to 7 of the earliest church communities. This week… the church of Pergamum.

Grab your Bibles… open up to Revelation chapter 2…

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Revelation 2:12-17

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And so, if you’ve missed the last couple of weeks, you can always go back and catch up—either online or on our mobile app. And I’d encourage you to do so; I think we’ve done a really good job of making what can kind of be a “scary” or intimidating book a lot more accessible.

Revelation as Prophecy: Forth-Telling

But one of the things we said about the book of Revelation is that, among other things, it’s a prophecy:

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Revelation is a prophecy.

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And when we use that word prophecy to describe writing that is in the Bible, we mean two things at the same time:

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Revelation is a prophecy.

Biblical prophecy is both foretelling and forth-telling.

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Sometimes biblical prophecy is foretelling or predictive; it’s talking about future events that haven’t happened yet, but will.

But other times biblical prophecy is forth-telling. And that’s what a lot of material in these 7 letters are; prophetic forth-telling.

Let me give you a simple definition:

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Forth-telling prophecy reveals a spiritual reality by naming a spiritual pattern.

It sounds like: “I’ve seen this before.”

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I don’t know if you’ve ever had the chance to sit across the table from a mentor, or a spiritual director… even a Christian counselor. But if you have, and they were somehow able to see something in you that you couldn’t see—

But not only that—

Name it—

So that you could see it and have the chance to respond to it differently…

That’s kinda like forth-telling prophecy. It reveals a spiritual reality. It can help you navigate your present differently. It can warn you about the future effectively.

Now, here’s the wrinkle:

Even when we solicit this kind of insight—when we set the appointment and ask the question—it can still be hard to hear.

And so if that’s the case, how much more so when you didn’t ask for it—when someone sees something in you and says something to you that, frankly, they can keep to themselves?

We’re going to read Jesus’ letter to Pergamum here in just a second. But I want to warn you before we do:

He says some things that were very hard for them to hear, much less accept. And… they didn’t ask for it.

Undoubtedly, there were those in the church who not only felt but made themselves very loud in their disagreement.

Because nobody likes being told, unsolicited, that some of their most deeply held convictions and desires are…

Wrong.

And you might not, either.

The Problem in Pergamum

So let’s read Jesus’ letter to his church in Pergamum together. Verse 12:

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Revelation 2:12–13 “To the angel of the church in Pergamum write: These are the words of him who has the sharp, double-edged sword. 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.”

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Ok. Let’s throw our map up here on the screen like we’ve done the last couple of weeks:

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Show 7 Churches Map

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(Point out Pergamum.)

Here’s what you need to know about this city:

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Pergamum

First city in the region to build a temple to a living emperor (Caesar Augustus; Trajan)

Home to multiple temples to Greco-Roman gods (Zeus, etc.)

A place where political loyalty, religious devotion, and upward mobility were fused

To choose to be unpatriotic wasn’t private dissent—it was public treason

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Now, “temples built for emperors” feels like something from the ancient world that has no real modern parallel. And that’s somewhat true.

But think museum or monument—someplace you can go that is built in the honor of someone, makes you feel deeply patriotic and proud, and kinda elevates your leaders to being “divinely selected” or “divine instruments.” Something like that is probably the closest that we could get to today.

People who lived in Pergamum were deeply, deeply patriotic. Proud to be Roman citizens. Proud to be the place that elevated their emperors as the instruments of the gods in the affairs of men. If they went to war, it was because the gods directed it. If they won, it proved that the gods were on their side.

And therefore:

It was their civic and even religious duty to publicly demonstrate their loyalty to | and pride in | their country, its leader, and its causes in the world.

Which meant that if you, like Antipas, ever even whispered that you felt that the emperor or the empire seemed to be doing things that were ungodly (or in his case, inconsistent with the lordship of Jesus), well…

You weren’t just going to lose your job. You could lose your life.

Which, for us, reveals the first forth-telling prophecy (that you didn’t ask for; that might be hard for you to hear)—but here it is:

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Sometimes faithfulness to Jesus and loyalty to a nation or a people pull in opposite directions.

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Well… what do you mean by that, exactly?

I’m not saying that politics or patriotism is evil—or that loyalty to a nation is wrong.

What I am saying is that no country, no matter how great, should get our unquestioned loyalty. There are going to be times for us as followers of Jesus where we’ll have to choose.

But before we talk about what that might look like today, let’s look at what it looked like for the church at Pergamum. Verse 14:

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Revelation 2:14 “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.”

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Ok. So, remember: Revelation is a prophecy and an epistle—but it’s also apocalyptic. Lots of symbols and metaphors—like in this verse.

Thankfully, this one is pretty clear. Balaam and Balak’s story can be found in the Old Testament. Numbers 22-25 and 31. I’ll summarize it for time:

Moses is leading God’s people, Israel, out of slavery in Egypt and into the promised land

They are warring with other nations as they travel—but are winning

One of those nations was Moab, who’s king was named Balak

Balak decides that he needs divine intervention to stop Israel’s advance—so he finds a prophet-for-hire name Balaam to bring divine curses down on Israel

But God ends up actually speaking to Balaam and causes him to bless Israel instead of cursing them

And so for 3 whole chapters, Numbers 22-24, this is what happens. Balak wants Balaam to curse, but God causes him to bless.

Until we get to chapter 25.

And in chapter 25, what we find is that the Moabite women invited the Israelite men to their church.

And it was a pretty attractive invite, since worshiping at their church didn’t just involve making sacrifices to their gods… it involved sexual immorality as well.

And in Numbers 31, we get an explanation as to what happened. Balaam gave Balak this advice:

“Hey—God isn’t going to let me curse them. You can’t curse them from the outside.”

“But you can corrupt them from the inside.”

It ended up being a very effective strategy. Rather than being cursed by God, they walked away from him on their own.

Sanctioned Compromises

In his letter to his church in Pergamum, Jesus sees the same kind of strategy being deployed on them.

Let’s give this strategy a name. Let’s call it:

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Sanctioned Compromises

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Sanctioned compromises. Get God’s people to live in such a way that is opposite of what God directed… but convince them that God is ok with it. You’re compromising… but that’s ok.

Jesus sees these same patterns continuing in his church at Pergamum in two areas specifically:

First, you’ve got this “throne of Satan” where temples to the emperors demanded ultimate loyalty, and…

Second, you’ve got this “holding to the teaching of Balaam” where people started to selectively obey in the area of their sexual lives.

Let’s unpack both of them, starting with the first:

Sanctioned Compromise: My Loyalty

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Sanctioned Compromises

They removed the loyalty tension:

They stopped submitting their political convictions to Jesus’ commands—so allegiance to country and Christ no longer ever conflicted.

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We know a lot about these Caesars. And they did some pretty horrible things in the name of Rome, in the name of being God’s chosen, in the name of a divine vision for their empire. Horrible things.

And we know from historians like Josephus that God’s people who lived as part of the empire at that time—Jews and Jewish Christians—began to see that it was way better to be on Rome’s side than not.

And the best way to be friends with Rome was to convince them that the goals of your faith and their empire aligned.

But here’s the thing:

When your faith says that the most important act of loving devotion to your God is to love your neighbor as yourself;

When your faith says that you should love your enemies,

Bless those who curse you,

That you should forgive 70 x 7,

That you should do unto others as you would have them do unto you,

I guarantee you that something in your party’s platform or messaging will come into conflict with those.

And when your politics says that it’s ok not to do those things, or that they don’t really conflict,

But Jesus says, “I don’t care if you’re red or blue, this is what we’re about. This is what it looks like to have me on the throne of your heart. Anything else is like Satan himself sitting there.”

What will you do?

Well, if you were a church-going person in Pergamum, you had hopped out of that conflict completely.

You sanctioned the compromises you were making.

Over time, your public allegiance began to shape your private faith, rather than the other way around. You began to fit your faith into your politics, rather than your politics into your faith—which allowed you to avoid the cost of choosing—until this Jesus apparently said otherwise.

Don’t forget:

Sometimes faithfulness to Jesus and loyalty to a nation pull in opposite directions.

Sanctioned Compromise: My Purity

Here’s the second sanctioned compromise they were making:

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Sanctioned Compromises

They removed the purity tension:

They stopped submitting their sexual convictions to Jesus’ commands—so desire and discipleship no longer conflicted.

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You’ve probably heard the phrase, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” And that’s true for this one as well.

This was 2,000 years ago. First century.

And the story of Balak and Balaam? That’s 1500 years prior to that.

But the story was the same across centuries—millennia, even:

Humans want to follow God and live however they want—sanctioned compromise—including in their sexual lives.

The Moabites and Romans alike—again, spanning 1500 years and thousands of miles—had constructed religions that not only sanctioned but required sex as a part of worship at their temples.

And I know that’s so… weird to us. And thank God it is. That’s one of the gifts that Christianity has given the world, I think—making sex more intimate and sacred.

But even though you’d be hard-pressed to find a worship service like that today… the desires and even convictions behind them haven’t changed.

We want our desires to be sanctioned. We don’t want them to be in conflict in any way with our faith. We want to live however we want in that area of our lives and for God to be ok with it.

And that’s what the church in Pergamum was doing: like their ancestors with Moab, Christians in Pergamum were living out their sexual lives in ways that were not in any way distinct from the culture around them.

But in Genesis, God says: a man shall leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

And in Matthew, Jesus affirms the same thing by quoting the same passage.

And all throughout Scripture, there is this term that is repeatedly and consistently used: “sexual immorality.” Just like here in the letter to Pergamum.

And that means something. It means any sexual activity outside the covenant of a marriage between a man and a woman.

And Scripture doesn’t leave “sexual immorality” vague or subjective. At different points, it defines it as…

adultery

fornication

prostitution

same-sex sexual activity

exploitive sexual relationships

lust

Paul summarizes it very clearly in 1 Corinthians 7:2:

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1 Corinthians 7:2 “But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband.”

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I mean, there it is.

But there was a strong impulse in Pergamum—just like there was in Moab, and just like there is today—to make all of our sexual desires compatible with our faith, regardless of whether or not they match up with what God has said to us in Scripture.

That’s why it’s paired with idolatry in this letter to Pergamum—because whether it’s our sexual lives or the object of our worship, both are about lordship:

Who has authority over how you live?

Over your body?

Your desires?

Your affections?

Your heart?

Your worship?

Christians at Pergamum were treating God’s design for sex as optional when culture made obedience costly. They removed the tension.

Until Jesus spoke. Because, again:

Sometimes faithfulness to Jesus and loyalty to a nation… or culture… or your friend… or your family member…

Sometimes they pull in opposite directions.

Our Response: Repent

You didn’t ask for any of this. You didn’t walk into the room today just hoping that the pastor would start to poke and prod about your politics or your sex life.

And when we don’t ask for that line of questioning but we get it anyways, it can feel… I don’t know. Annoying. Judgy. Insensitive.

I remember going in for a surgical consult after an MRI revealed some significant constriction on my spinal cord. And the surgeon, after showing me the pictures, said:

“If I don’t cut into you and fix this, you eventually won’t walk again. So, we’re going to do surgery.”

No sugar-coating it. No tip-toeing around it. Just… boom. Here it is.

We don’t do a lot of that kind of messaging around here. Not a lot of “boom. Here it is.”

But this a part of being a “No Matter church,” believe it or not:

Being a “No Matter” church means that we’re going to speak the truth in love—no matter what.

And not only that. Not only speaking the truth—but inviting you to believe it and live according to it.

Take a look at what Jesus tells his church in Pergamum to do:

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Revelation 2:16 “Repent therefore! Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.”

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To repent literally means to change your mind and then change the direction you’re living. That’s what Jesus calls his church to do in these two areas.

So here’s what I want to invite you to do this week. I’m going to give you a few questions to reflect on. Write them down if you would—and then sometime this week in your times with God, just consider them:

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Where have I stopped asking whether something is faithful and started asking whether it is acceptable?

Where has following Jesus stopped creating tension in my life—when it probably should?

Who or what has been quietly giving me permission to ignore Jesus’ commands?

Where do my desires or fears carry more authority than Jesus’ words?

Where has Jesus been allowed to speak, but not allowed to rule?

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And if God reveals something to you… repent.

Listen: we want to be people, like Antipas, who faithfully witness to Jesus no matter the cost. No matter what our party says or what society says.