Sermon Tone Analysis

Every week after I preach I think, “Man, I should have mentioned that,” or “I wish I would have hit that point harder and made it more clear.”

There’s never time enough to say everything I want to say, but I really should have said more about one phrase in verse 5 of Revelation 1.

Revelation 1:5 (NIV)

5 To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood,

To Him who LOVES us.

Jesus loves us.

He loves us, this I know for the Bible tells me so.

He loves us, me and you.

We need to hear that, to believe that, to remember that.

Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, John begins this letter with that as one of the main points.

As he’s introducing Jesus to us, one of the first ideas John jots down is this: to Him who loves us...

Jesus LOVES His Church, despite all the bad and ugly behavior of His people.

Jesus loves us.

He loves you.

He loves those who belong to Him and who have gathered in His name.

A proper view of Jesus includes the unbelievable and glorious truth that Jesus loves us.

>Last week, our main point was this: Because the time is near, we need to see Jesus as He has revealed Himself in the Bible.

And my prayer for us as a church and as individuals is: Jesus, be big!

We want our hearts and minds and souls and strength to be consumed with the love and grace and majesty and splendor of Jesus.

The church needs a big view of Jesus.

What happens when the Church has a low view of Jesus?

Well, Revelation 2-3 happens.

When a church has a low view of Jesus, it affects everything else.

When you read through the letters to the seven churches in Asia Minor, you quickly figure out these are churches in crisis.

Some of these churches are weighed down with sin.

The church at Ephesus has lost its first love.

False teaching has infiltrated the church at Pergamum.

Some members of the Pergamum and Thyatira churches have fallen into idol worship and and sexual immorality.

Sardis is full of hypocrites.

Laodicea is full of lukewarm folk, complacent and self-sufficient.

As Matt Proctor puts it:

“These are some seriously messed-up churches.

As a young man, John had seen the Church at its start.

In Acts, those first believers were a tight-knit community deeply in love with Jesus.

They were marked by deep faith, radical obedience, contagious generosity, and bold witness.

But now, as an old man, John sees churches that have lost their way.

What happened?

They had lost sight of Jesus.

They had become too familiar with Him to see Him for who He really is.”

There’s the crisis of being too familiar with Jesus, taming Him, making Him your pet and companion, your co-pilot.

My good friend, Jared Wilson says, “Jesus is not your co-pilot.

He’s in the driver’s seat and you’re in back laying on a stretcher.”

To be too familiar is not a good thing.

There is sin present in all of these churches (as there is today).

Some of these churches in Revelation 2-3 are blending-in to their cultural surroundings, complacent, and compromised.

But a few of the churches were obedient to Christ (not perfect, but obedient) and the powers-that-be were against them.

They were faithful, but fearful, too.

It was tough to be a Christian then and there.

Not tough like “people are gonna make fun of you” or “they aren’t going to understand why you do what you do” or “they can’t believe you won’t join in with them in all their reindeer games.”

No, to be a Christian in that day was tough like: you’re gonna be tortured and killed for your faith.

Tough like: the emperor is going to impale you on a stick, light you on fire, and use you for a street lamp simply because you happily say: “Jesus is Lord,” when everyone knows you’re supposed to say: “Caesar is Lord.”

Tough to be a Christian.

Fear is not the opposite of faith, despite what sweatshirts and bumper stickers say.

Fear is not the opposite of faith; foolishness is the opposite of faith.

Jesus reminds the Church that He is with them, that He is before all things.

He is the A and the Z.

He holds the keys to death, meaning the worst thing to befall us isn’t the end for us if we belong to Him.

Revelation 2-3 presents the Church as it really is—the good, the bad, and the ugly.

If you have a red letter Bible, you’ll notice that every word of these two chapters are in red print, meaning this is Jesus addressing these churches.

Jesus is speaking to His Church using seven representative churches to communicate to all individual congregations.

Some people—scholars, commentators, professors, friends—believe Jesus is speaking to these seven churches alone, the congregations in Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.

This is not an issue I’m willing to fight over (as I alluded to last week, in a room of 100 people there are probably 90 different opinions and 10 people who don’t care).

I believe that these “seven” congregations probably symbolize all the churches in the Roman province of Asia (seven being the apocalyptic number for “completeness”).

Each of these seven churches reflect the kinds of challenges faced by Christians throughout Asia Minor in the late first century.

Each of these seven churches were located in communities of prominence, all located along the main roads.

Three of these cities (Ephesus, Smyrna, and Pergamum) contained temples dedicated to emperor worship.

All seven cities held a Roman law court.

This is where believers could be put on trial for the capital crime of being a Christian.

These would be good representative churches to address because they would be at the center of the crisis facing Christians at the time.

Jesus is speaking to all the churches in Asia Minor.

Jesus is speaking to the Church today, right here and right now.

The messages to the churches are arranged similarly.

Jesus addresses the angel or the messenger present with each church, introduces Himself and then starts in on what He has to say to them.

Jesus begins with

The Good:

Each of the churches represented here have different things they’re commended for—the good stuff, what they’re doing well.

To the church in Ephesus, Jesus says:

There’s a lot the Ephesians do well—they are hard-working, they are persevering, they don’t have any tolerance for the wicked, they know enough to test the false teachers who claim to be apostles.

To the church in Smyrna, Jesus tells them they’re spiritually rich in spite of their afflictions and poverty (2:9):

Revelation 2:9 (NIV)

9 I know your afflictions and your poverty—yet you are rich!

The church in Pergamum:

In the midst of extremely difficult circumstances, specifically in a place where the worship of the emperor was required, the Pergamumians…Pergamumites…Pergamums—the believers living in Pergamum have kept their faith; they have remained true to Jesus.

We will, I’m quite certain, find ourselves at this point before we now it—having to decide if we are going to remain true to Jesus, if we are going to hold fast to Jesus, or if we are going fold and bow the knee to Caesar.

Will we hold fast to Jesus’ word?

Or will we let the winds of culture and tolerance drive us?

We will be swayed by political movements or remain true to Jesus?

Faithfulness, refusal to renounce Jesus pleases Him; it’s a good thing.

A necessary thing.

As for the Christians living and worshipping in Thyatira, Jesus says they’ve done good:

What an encouraging summary.

This is the idea—that our love and faith and service would not only continue, but that we’d do more and more.

We don’t retire or age-out; the idea is to do more than we did at first.

All that could be said positively to the church in Sardis is this:

There were only a few people in Sardis who were alert and unstained, only a few who had been consistently obedient and courageously faithful.

These few walk with Jesus, that is they live and commune with Him.

They are dressed in white—pure and victorious because of their union with Jesus.

In Philadelphia—not the one with the cheesesteaks and cream cheese—in the 1st Century city of Philadelphia, Jesus commends them:

There’s something special about the Philadelphia church: Jesus has only good things to say about them.

Again, they’re not perfect, but they have kept God’s Word and haven’t—for all the pressure surrounding them—denied Jesus.