Revelation 2&3 Part II

Revelation 2 & 3

Listen Up Church Part II

Intro: Our English word church ultimately comes from the Greek word kuriakos, which means “belonging to the Lord” or “the Lord’s”. The Germanic word Kirche or the Scottish-gaelic word Kirk still retains more of the Greek sounding portion of the word.

The usual Greek word that gets used is ekklesia where we get ecclesiatical . It may mean called out or the called out ones, But the idea of kuriakos, or belonging to the Lord gives us a stronger sense of who we belong to. This is God’s arena, we are God’s people. And we as his children belong to Him

Read Verses:

Main Idea: Jesus leaves clear instructions on how The Church can be successful by His standards

I. Jesus Instructs us to Teach Faithfully (Pergamum and Thyatira)

Chapter 2 starting at verse 12, Jesus sends the message to the church at Pergamum. And first, Jesus with his sharp words, at first gives good news: You live where Satan’s throne is,so you live somewhere where there is a lot of turmoil and evil around you , but you hold fast to my name, and you did not deny my faith.

But they allowed some of the people to get in and teach other pagan ideals or religions. The teaching of Balaam which is an episode from Numbers 22-25 and a part of chapter 31.

Basically Balak,the king of Moab wanted the prophet Balaam to curse The Israelites as they went through Moab. This is the Talking donkey episode.God spoke through the donkey and Balaam ultimately knew that he could not curse the people that belonged to the lord.

In chapter 31, when Moses recalls the incident between Balaam and Balak. Before Balaam departed, he had given to Balak counsel, which perhaps can be reconstructed as follows: “I cannot curse what God has blessed; but you have paid me handsomely, and I do know people very well. These folks have been in the wilderness a long time, and you have many beautiful women in Moab. I suggest you send your women among them, and my guess is that with their behavior they will bring down God’s curse upon themselves.” Balak followed this advice; Israel did exactly what Balaam had anticipated, and the children of Israel brought the plague and curse on themselves with their own actions.”

Ballam knew that the way to corrupt the people is from the inside. The teachings of the Nicolaitans seemed to be something similar.

The church at Thyatira was also infiltrated somewhat by someone on the inside. A woman that Jesus compares to or calls Jezebel. Remember she corrupted her husband Ahab to allow and eventually have it take over the worship of other gods. People blended religions taking the good or pleasant portions from each one and getting rid of the unpleasant aspects, like things that are forbidden because they are considered sin: idolatry, adultery, fornication, unnatural relationships, and the list goes on. And today many of those get excused as love is love.

The bottom line is The church needs to be on guard for who is brought in and what they teach and what they allow. If it violates the Biblical standards, the person or people need to be disciplined.

At the end of both letters or sections, Jesus says that he will use the sword to war against those who do wrong and also that he will give the church authority over everyone else.

Application:

1) Be alert for subtle changes.

If someone comes in and says am taking over and here is my Gospel, we would be able to say “No’. But if someone comes in and over the years they want to blend Mormonism with Christianity, it may go unnoticed because they sound similar enough, at least the words do that people may not notice right away. But when you press people like Mormons on their terms, Like Son of God, you would find there are two different definitions for that phrase.

2) Be faithful to the Word

This is both God’s Word, the Bible and also The Logos, Jesus Christ.

This seems easy enough but it is a good reminder. The Bible helps you and helps us recognize the false teachers. And it also has guideposts for recognizing Christians. Now we all falter and we are not going to get everything 100%, but we can be Christ like when we know what that means. It is part of our spiritual formation and our growth.

One of the main marks of the Protestant churches, and Theologian Louis Berkhof, that it is the most important mark of the church is the true preaching of the Word. He says that true preaching of the word is the great means for maintaining the Church and for enabling her to be the mother of the faithful.

That is why we go through Books or larger chunks for most of the year. It prohibits us from cherry picking the good stuff and avoiding the things we don’t like.

3) Be Patient

Jesus will arrest and judge the false teachers, nonbelievers and the pretenders who perverts God’s word for their own gain. He will use the Sword and He will put them under our rule. This is the equivalent of the bullied kid, becoming his high school bully’s boss. So the question for the one who was bullied is, how are you going to lead? How are you going to show grace and God’s Love? Are you going to bully them back, and act like the world and by the world’s standards?

And so this brings us the last two churches and How we live for Jesus.

II. Jesus Instructs us to Live for Him (Sardis and Laodicea)

The last two churches are the first and last churches in chapter 3.

Sardis, as Jesus tells Them is the church has the reputation for being alive, but it is dead. “In Sardis the question is the relationship between reputation and reality. The reputation of the church at Sardis was life, but the reality was that they were dead. Here there is probably a reference to the fabled history of the city with the citadel, which though “impregnable,” had fallen at least twice (and maybe three times).”

The church as well as the city seemed to be living in a dream world and they thought they were doing much better than they really were.

Jesus calls the church members to wake up. Stop living in a dream and get down to the real work.

Jesus calls the Church at Laodicea into question as well. He compares the church to being lukewarm, which isn’t really good for anything. It does not kill germs on dishes, or soothe your tired Body in a bath or refresh your thirst on a hot day. It just is there. And the church is just there.

There are many churches that have a good reputation, but are dying or rotting on the inside and there are lots of churches that are essentially dead and just playing church because they don’t know what to do.

But Jesus calls the church to Live for him. We are His representatives or. His ambassadors on earth.

Application

1) Make Disciples

In the great commission in Matthew 28 and Mark 16, we are called to go out. In to the world and make disciples. That means we have to be active to bring them in and then tag them when they are here. Dying churches only looking inward and fake churches only care about increasing their numbers. Like Oak Trees, slow growth is sturdy and steady growth. This is all about keeping up appearances.

2) Do Not be concerned with the World

In Romans 14:8 Paul says For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.

The church belongs to the Lord as do we. So what happens is his will. We are to Work heartily for the Lord as Colossians 3:22-23 says. Because that is our part.

If we try to serve two masters, we will always disappoint one of them. So which master do you want to serve? God is the one that you belong to and He is consistent in His love and expectations for lack of a better term. He is the same from before time began. Go does not mature or need to get better. God is perfect.

Or do you want to try to serve the ever changing world. What is Hip, acceptable, or popular changes from minute to minute. Ad you will be bouncing around like a pinball in the Kiss pinball machine.

Conclusion

Jesus gives his churches his assessments and Imagine, we would receive similar report cards at different times in our church life. But we use the rubric found in these two chapters to help keep us living for Jesus and representing Him here on earth.

Listen, hear and remember that the church belongs to the Lord.

Next week we start the End Times Prophecy itself and we start in the throne room of heaven.