Compromise Is Not Always A Good Thing

The Danger of Compromise

There are times in our relationships where there is a need for all parties to find equal ground for which a compromise can be attained…however there are times when compromise is a bad thing!

Take for instance this Russian parable...

Illustrations for Biblical Preaching (Compromise)

The following is a Russian parable. A hunter raised his rifle and took careful aim at a large bear. When about to pull the trigger, the bear spoke in a soft, soothing voice, “Isn’t it better to talk than to shoot? What do you want? Let us negotiate the matter.”

Lowering his rifle, the hunter replied, “I want a fur coat.”

“Good,” said the bear, “that is a negotiable question. I only want a full stomach, so let us negotiate a compromise.”

They sat down to negotiate, and after a time the bear walked away alone. The negotiations had been successful. The bear had a full stomach, and the hunter had his fur coat.

Compromises rarely satisfy both sides in equal measure.

With that in mind please turn to Revelation 2:12-17 in your Bibles...

Seven Letters to Seven Churches

All these churches received the entire book of Revelation, not just the letters addressed to them…so they not only read their own letters, they read the letters to the other churches...

Jesus has something very specific to say to these churches and every church was to read the entire message.

Remember we understand that the number seven is symbolic of completeness.

Seven letters = complete message

Seven churches = the complete church

So everything that Jesus says to these seven churches is the message Jesus says to every church, in every generation, in every locality.

Since churches are made up of individuals, the message is both individual and corporate in nature.

What that means to us corporately and individually is that you and I have the potential to be a member of this church that Jesus speaks to directly…what we see in these seven churches can and often does exist in every church, even this one...we must evaluate…we must do a spiritual check up…we must listen to the Great Physician as He speaks to the spiritual health of these churches…as he speaks to them corporately, He speaks to them individually, and to us...

Here is what we have learned so far...

Ephesus — The Careless Church — We must take care to cultivate our relationship with Christ to ensure our motivation for serving Him is out of a genuine love for Him.

We must evaluate our motivations for serving Christ in this ministry.

If your reasons for doing anything in this ministry falls short of being done out of your love for Christ, then you are doing it for the wrong reasons and Jesus calls you to remembrance, repentance and return to loving Him.

We must also evaluate our motivations for NOT serving Christ in this ministry.

What excuses are you going to make or continue to make for NOT faithfully serving in this ministry?

If you allow certain individuals to negatively impact your service for Christ in giving your time, talents and treasures to minister to others, then you have forsaken your love for Christ...

If you continue to make excuses for your lack of service then Jesus would say to you listen to what the Spirit says...“you have stopped loving me the way you used to”

Don’t become careless with your relationship with Christ…if you genuinely love Him, you will seek out and become involved in ways you can serve Him.

Smyrna — The Crowned Church — Don’t be afraid of what this world can and will do to you because you stand up for Christ. You are rich with all the blessings found in Christ and your eternal home is secure.

Stay faithful regardless of how the world will label you…the worst they can do to you is kill you, but that is okay because you don’t have to fear being separated from God for eternity…the second death.

To those unwilling to compromise with the world to gain the world’s approval, to those willing to suffer persecution for the name of Christ…Jesus is speaking to you through his message to this church…He commends you…Keep fighting the fight of faith...

Let’s look at our next church...

Pergamum — The Compromised Church

Read Rev 2:12-17

The Destination — 12

Pergamum = Pergamos = modern day Bergama

we get the word parchment from this word which was a writing material developed from animal skin that was apparently first developed in that area.

They would build a significant library here that would house some 200,000 parchment scrolls.

It became a learning center where knowledge was accumulated...

It also served as the capital of the Roman province of Asia Minor for over 250 years and was an important religious center for pagan worship.

Temples dedicated to Athena, Asclepius (the snake god of healing) along with a university for medical study, Dionysius (the god of drunkenness), Zeus.

It was the first city in Asia to build a temple to Caesar and became the capital of the cult of Caesar worship…

The plethora of temples to the many gods and the vastness of emperor worship in this city made this city a religious mecca!

Asclepius was the god of healing and attracted the attention of countless people in hopes of being healed! (say more about him in a minute)

The symbol for this god of healing was a snake wrapped around a pole.

The medical symbol used today is two snakes wrapped around a pole!

Zeus was called Zeus Soter — Zeus the Savior, Asclepius was also called Asclepius Soter — Asclepius the Savior.

For the believers in this city…these gods were viewed as saviors which Christians could not acknowledge, they could also never utter the phrase “Caesar is Lord” in emperor worship, amongst the various temples, the Christians had none because their bodies were the place the Spirit dwelt, Asclepius was the great healer, yet Jesus was their Great Physician...

Remember that life for people during this time centered around the guilds associated with these false gods…if you as a believer refused to attend and participate in the feasts dedicated to one of these pagan deities, you were not only shunned, you would lose your job and even your business…you were considered an outcast not fit to live on this earth…your daily struggle was against the pressures of an extremely pagan society.

If you were a believer in this city your daily struggle would be to wrestle with the reality that “If I don’t participate I don’t have a job... If I don’t participate I don’t have a business...If I don’t participate I will be bullied and ostracized…If I don’s participate I could be killed...

The Description — v. 12

The one who has the sharp two-edged sword

Literally this reads…the one who has the sword, the double-edged one, the sharp one”

As the capital the Roman consul was located here and the consul had the power of the sword, Pergamum was a place of capital punishment.

Jesus is saying the reality is that He is the one who decides who lives and dies…Jesus is the one who will indeed fight with this sword against his enemies…the very words that come out of Jesus mouth to pronounce judgment, will be carried out...

This description signifies judgment…as we will discover here in a few moments, this church was a divided church because of deceptive doctrines and practices and Jesus tells them He is going to come and judge those within the church with His sword that truly cuts both ways...

Hebrews 4:12 NASB95

For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Jesus uses His Word to separate the true believers from the false believers…it is a sword that brings life in salvation and a sword that brings death in condemnation...

The Delight - v 13

He is delighted in their stand for Him in a difficult place.

The place where Satan has his throne, where Satan lives — Satan’s HQ…Because Pergamum had so many pagan temples, this was the place Satan set up his camp for attacking the church and influencing the world…Pergamum was the center of false religion…idolatry was king here and to self-identify as a Christian brought persecution.

Asclepius, the god of healing was viewed as a savior and was symbolized by the serpent...one of his “prescriptions” called for the worshipper to sleep on the temple floor, allowing snakes to crawl over his body and infuse him with their healing power.

Satan is still on this earth and has since moved his HQ from Pergamum…I’ll give you three guesses where I think his HQ exists today…all are equally viable but I lean towards that place in a state out west where all the ism’s and schism’s and depravity flow so freely…I don’t think I am reaching to say that Satan has set up his HQ in the place where he believes he can reach the most people with his worship of anything and everything that is not God!

Everywhere we choose to live will have some element of difficulty to live for Christ because Satan’s team is highly organized and is at work setting up kingdoms that are against God in every way fathomable…that is the world in which we all live...

He is delighted in their faithfulness in the midst of extreme persecution.

Despite the hardships the Christians in Pergamum endured, they remained faithful…they did not renounce Christ...

Satan would use the Roman authorities to institute and enforce emperor worship and oppress those who didn’t…he would use them to exploit the weaknesses in the church of those members who were tempted to renounce their faith in Jesus Christ…the believers stood their ground and continued to be loyal to Christ.

Persecution that resulted in death was a reality...In fact, Jesus mentions Antipas as one who died because of his unwillingness to compromise…tradition says that Antipas was burned inside a brass bull

Jesus clearly identifies this place as the HQ of Satan and that believers are living in the very place Satanic work is at it’s hottest…there is no doubt that would evoke fear in the heart of God’s people knowing they were living in the same place Satan was living…constant struggle with death being a present reality…in our Western culture, we have a hard time conceiving this as reality…for them they lived it every day.

The Diagnosis — You Have Compromised

They compromised with the world by failing to resist false teaching and by endorsing conduct not fitting for believers.

You have there some…indicates they were part of that church, accepted as bona fide members, it can also indicate those who were being influenced from outside the church…the point here is that their loyalty to Jesus was not sufficient enough for them to avoid being rebuked…they compromised in what was acceptable teaching and compromised in what was acceptable conduct of its members...

they tolerated teachers who spread false doctrine by not expelling them from the church…the church of Ephesus did expel them and were commended for it…

they also tolerated immorality from its members by not taking action to correct conduct that was not fitting for children of God…

by tolerating both the false teaching and the immoral practices they were in reality endorsing it.

It is not enough to just claim Christianity…there must be a commitment to enduring sound doctrine without compromising to fit in with what the world wants you to believe…there must be a commitment to holy living as those separated from the world…no justifying sin, no toleration of idolatry and sinful practices in the church.

The Displeasure — vs. 14-15

Some hold the teaching of Balaam

the story of Balaam can be found in Numbers 22-25…

Balaam taught Balak, the Moabite king, to lure the Israelite men into committing adultery with Midianite women, eating food sacrificed to idols, and the worship of pagan gods....this was more a failure in practice than a failure in doctrine.

The Israelites were invited to participate in the pagan fertility rites of the Moabite people, whose women enticed the Israelite men to engage in sexually immoral acts…this stumbling block brought about the death of some 24,000 Israelites…Numbers 25:9; I Cor. 10:8

What appears to be happening here in Pergamum is that people who followed this practice, created stumbling blocks for Christians by participating in the practices of emperor worship and idolatry…there was a teaching that since the Mosaic Law was done away with in Jesus, the believer was free to do whatever they wanted…especially in the name of religion.

The believers knew that eating meat sacrificed to idols was not the problem because according to what Paul says in 1 Cor. 10:25 where the meat came from was irrelevant since the false gods were fake.

The problem was eating the meat while participating in the feasts dedicated to the idol worship…1 Cor 10:19-22.

Another practice of idol worship was sexual immorality…feasts were often held to these gods where freedom of sexual expression was practiced and encouraged by sexual union with temple prostitutes.

It would have been very easy for them to come up with all kinds of ways to justify idolatry and immorality in the world.

you need to provide for your family, which means you need to belong to one of these guilds...yes, that implies worship of a false god, but there is no harm going along with it if you know that’s not your heart.

When that guild festival leads into all kinds of immorality, you would dishonor the host by walking out and shame yourself, lose face in the process, lose your influence that you can have for Christ…so I’ll participate so as not to lose my social status

And if you’re not careful, you’ll be brought before the Roman governor and killed. What kind of witness can you have then if you’re dead? So it became very easy for the church compromise to blend in with the world.

They saw no harm in compromise of their morals…perhaps they simply said God will understand why we have to do it, so it’s okay.

Some held the teaching of the Nicolaitans

This plagued the church of Ephesus too, but they did not tolerate it like the church of Pergamum did.

Not much information is given to us regarding this group, but it appears to be very similar to the immorality of group that followed Balaam’s teaching.

What we do know is that this church knew who they were and that what they were doing was an abomination to Jesus.

There was a teaching prevalent in the New Testament times that made a distinct separation of the spirit from the body, in that you could do whatever you wanted to do with your body physically and it would not impact you spiritually…it was a form of what we would label today as “It’s your life, your body, do whatever you want.”

So if you wanted to engage in sexual immorality it was okay because your spiritual side won’t be impacted because activities pertaining to sex and food are not sinful since you are no longer under the law.

It is your life, your saved and don’t have to fear being separated from God, so go for all the gusto! Seize the moment, live life to the fullest doing whatever it is you want to do!

Teaching of Balaam = deceptive lifestyle

It’s okay to violate God’s word and live how you want to as long as you get what you want or it makes you feel good doing it.

Teaching of Nicolaitans = deceptive teaching/practices

God’s Word doesn’t directly forbid it…so it’s okay...

God will understand why I have to compromise here…so go ahead and do it

2 Corinthians 5:14–15 NASB95

For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.

The Directions — v. 16

Repent — occurs 12x in Revelation — it is a turning away from something to something else...

8 are addressed to Ephesus, Pergamum, Sardis, Laodicea as commands

the other four are in the past tense referring to unbelievers who refused to do so.

Jesus calls the individuals in this church to repent for their tolerance of false doctrines and conduct unbecoming of believers…they were also to repent for their failure to expel the people who were committing such acts...they needed to see the error as Jesus did...for if Jesus states he hates their deeds (not the people), that should mean they hated them also.

He wants them to turn from their laxity to watchfulness, to enforce spiritual discipline and to expel these false teachers out of their midst along with those who followed them.

This church had compromised morality and doctrine to the point that they were no longer different from those around them…participation in the immorality and idolatry of the worship of pagan gods made them look exactly like the world they were to reach…there has to be a difference in what we teach, there has to be a difference in how that teaching impacts our conduct…

When the church looks like the world because they have compromised in their doctrine and they fail to hold each other accountable to living out that doctrine, it is time for that church to repent and come back to living lives worthy of the gospel.

The Declaration

A failure to repent will result in Jesus coming in judgment!

I am coming to you quickly…present tense and does not refer to the rapture…it is referring to the imminent judgment that is swift and certain…these false teachers will not have to wait for the rapture to be judged.

Jesus goes to war for his church and promises He will fight those who are set against destroying the church…those who are serving Satan in their destruction of the church will face the warrior Jesus with His sword, his sharp, two-edged sword that will never miss!

Those who repent in salvation, and repent after salvation will find grace and mercy…but those who forsake him will also be forsaken by him

Believers are guaranteed spiritual sustenance and divine acceptance!

What is hidden manna?

For 40 years Israel was fed with manna in the wilderness until they crossed the Jordan and entered Canaan.

God instructed Moses to place a jar of manna in the ark of the covenant and it was hidden from sight.

At the destruction of Solomon’s temple, Jeremiah hid the tabernacle with the ark and altar of incense in a cove of Mount Nebo and sealed its entrance — 2 Maccabees 2:4-7

The Jews looked for the coming of the messianic age when they would eat the hidden manna.

Jesus ushered in the messianic age and ever since believers have eaten the hidden manna and enjoyed his blessings…Jesus calls himself the bread of life and contrasted it with the manna the Israelites consumed in the dessert.

Jesus is our spiritual food as the life-giving bread…it is hidden from the unbeliever but is available to all who trust in Him.

John 6:51 NASB95

“I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.”

What is the significance of the white stone?

There is much speculation by commentators and scholars on the exact meaning…let me give you the three I think could fit here.

White and black stones were used in court as means of rendering judgment…white for not guilty, black for guilty…believers would be given white stones declaring the truth of justification in Christ...

White stones would be given to certain individuals granting them certain privileges and access to special feasts and events…through Christ the believer is granted all spiritual blessings and access to the divine presence of God and a place at His banquet table.

Reference to the breastplate of the high priest that had twelve stones, each of which had a name of one of the twelve tribes of Israel written on it…the name of the believer is forever written in the presence of God.

The most important aspect of this promise is not trying to identify the meaning of the manna or the white stone…it is seeing what is written on the stone...there is a new name written on that stone…everything about the believer is made new in Christ…you now bear Christ’s name…whatever message is written on each individual stone is a personal message from Christ to the ones he loves…those he loves are given an admission pass into eternal glory…this message is so personal that only the person who receives it will know what it is!

What message do you want your Savior to give to you?

Well done good and faithful servant...

You can enter, but you compromised...

The Directive

He who has an ear…as individuals we need to hear the message Jesus gives to the church...

The message to the church of Pergamum is to serve as a warning to all believers against compromise in how you live and what you accept as sound teaching.

It is easy today for the believer to blend in and never be seen as being any different than the world around you…

it is a sad state of reality that many believers have lifestyles that are indistinguishable from that of unbelievers and the results are tragic...

It is easy for believers today to hear garbage that is slathered with a bunch of “spiritual hooey” and accept it as truth without ever measuring it up to the Scripture…and that too has disastrous consequences...

Compromise to materialism — want to have all the worldly pleasures to the extent that the first thing to go is a commitment to giving to the Lord’s work…many churches fail to meet the budget plan every year because God’s people tend to compromise to materialism...ministry takes money…some of God’s people have compromised with materialism and desire to keep up with everyone else in the attainment of things that there is no investment in eternal matters by giving to the work of their local church to help further the gospel.

Compromise for social acceptance — believers who compromise holy living in so many ways because they fear what others will say or do to them, there is no difference in their conversations because they don’t want to be ridiculed for being different, there is no difference in their participation in certain activities or places they frequent because they don’t want to be seen as the “holy Joe who sits in judgment of those who do participate” so they go to places they ought not go, they do things they ought not do...they are afraid of being “unfriended”…their speech is not different, their thinking is not different, their conduct is not different, the only time they act like a Christian is on Sunday morning inside the church building, but once they get outside the building or in the car, back to compromise they go!

Compromise for comfort — we willingly sit in our comfy church seats while we see people suffering spiritually and physically, not wanting to make a difference in any way out of fear that we might be asked to do something we don’t want to do, or out of fear of being hurt or defrauded in the process.

In What Ways Are You Living A Life of Compromise?

Greater things are in store for us in glory that make compromise with the world unnecessary…

Have you compromised morally by being indifferent to that which God hates…have you compromised materialistically where the pursuit of earthly treasures is more valuable to you than the spiritual treasures found in Christ alone...have you compromised your testimony for a higher social status where your conversations and conduct are more inline with worldly thinking than they are biblical thinking so you will be accepted by those who have no desire to please God…have you compromised serving the Lord where you find comfort in doing nothing but simply coming and sitting in God’s house for an hour or so just so you can say “I’ve done my spiritual duty for the week”?

Does your personal life, your home, reflect a compromise with the world or a conformity to Christ-likeness? …What evidence exists in your life to communicate a greater desire to walk with God than to have fellowship with the world?

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches...