This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

[Music] Welcome back to our study of the book of Revelation. We're in chapter 2,
day 4. This is verses 12 to 17, and we're going to focus today on what Jesus
says to a confused church.

Let me read for you verses 12 to 17. Jesus says, "To the angel of the church of
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, even in the days of Antipas, my faithful
witness, who was put to death there in your city, where Satan lives.
Nevertheless, I have a few things against you. You have people there who hold to
the teachings of Balaam, who taught Balaam to entice the Israelites to sin by
eating food sacrificed to idols and by committing sexual immorality.

Likewise, you also have those who hold to the teachings of the Nicolaitans.
Repent therefore. Otherwise, I will soon come to you, and I will fight against
them with the sword of my mouth.

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who
overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give him a white
stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it.

" This is Jesus' message to the church at Pergamum. It's what Jesus says to a
confused church. And what does Jesus say?

He talks to them about doubt, and he reminds them that our doubts grow out of
our relationships. Jesus' concern for the church at Ephesus was that they had
left their first love. His concern for the church at Pergamum was that they had
left the truth.

We're going to see that that danger that had come into their lives came not from
books that they were reading or thoughts that they were having. It came from the
relationships that they were involved in. How do you clear up the confusion?

When you're facing doubt, when you know someone that's facing doubt, and that
doubt is taking you down a road that's making your life more and more confused.
You can't see where you're going. It feels like where is God in the midst of all
of this?

How do you clear up the confusion? Jesus says here's three things that you do.
Number one, you respect the authority of God's word.

Jesus says I'm coming to you who is the one who has the sharp double-edged
sword. What a picture. This sharp double-edged sword is the word of God.

Two references in fact in these verses. Later he says I'm going to come to you
with the sword of my mouth. Ephesians 6, 17 says take the sword of the Spirit,
which is the word of God.

This is the picture of the power of God's word in our lives. Hebrews 4, 12 says
for the word of God is living and active. It is sharper than any double-edged
sword.

It penetrates even to the dividing of the spirit, joints, and marrow. It judges
the thoughts and the attitudes of the heart. In Hebrews we're told that the
power of God's word is the power to speak to our hearts.

The power to make a difference in our lives. God's word, you hold to it as a
standard. Without any standard, without any authority of God's word in our
lives, of course you're going to be confused.

We're going to be confused. It's just then based on your feelings. It's like
you're playing a football game but there's no goal line.

And everybody says well whenever you feel like you cross the goal line, we'll
say you crossed the goal line. All you'd have is arguments. All you'd have is
confusion.

How do you know the truth? How do you live the truth? You trust God's truth.

He loves us enough that he's given it to us. That's why he gave it to us in his
word. You recognize the power of God's truth in his word.

That's what Jesus says to do in these verses to clear up the confusion. The
second thing he tells us to do is to recognize the danger of a lie. Sometimes we
know the power of God's truth, but we also let lies lay around in our lives.

They lay around in our churches. We don't really deal with them because we feel
like I don't want to be judgmental. I don't want to be pushy.

Whatever reason we say, we let the lie stay. And because of that, we haven't
recognized the danger of the lie. Past actions of faith cannot protect you from
the power of a lie.

They, in this church, had been faithful to his name. They'd been faithful even
to the point of persecution. But he says, "I have a few things against you.

" They'd stood the test of suffering, but they were about to quietly be deceived
by a lie. Warren Wiersby says about this, "Satan had not been able to destroy
them by coming as the roaring lion, but he was making inroads as the deceiving
serpent. " And in these verses, Jesus talks about specific kinds of lies that
come into our lives.

He talks about Satan's throne. He talks about the Balaamites. He talks about the
Nicolaitans.

They're a picture of very powerful lies. Satan's throne warns us of what I would
call the popular lie. Satan's throne.

Many people think that this is a reference to the great altar of Zeus that was
on the hillside overlooking this city. It was a great chair or throne 40 feet
high, an idolatrous place of worship, Satan's throne. It may have been that
picture, but whatever the picture, it was all about what was popular.

Everybody went to these temples, and if you wanted to fit in, you went. The
popular lie is often the all-inclusive lie, the everybody is right lie. Rome,
when they said you had to worship Caesar, they said, "You can say Jesus is Lord,
too, as long as you worship Caesar as Lord also.

" Let's just include everybody and make everybody right, but by making everybody
right, you make the truth wrong. That's the problem with the all-inclusive lie.
By making everything right, you make the truth wrong.

In this day, they would have had to take a pinch of incense and go into the
temple and just drop it and whisper, "Caesar is Lord. " What's wrong with that?
You didn't really mean it.

It's the popular lie, and you've got to recognize the danger of a lie and how it
impacts your heart, influences your life. Satan's throne warns us of the popular
lie. The Balaamites warn us of what I would call the pleasure lie.

You can read the story of Balaam in Numbers 25, but Jesus here tells us
everything that we need to know. He says he taught this King Baelic how to
deceive, how to deceive God's people in the living, the world's ways. Go ahead
and indulge yourself.

God will still love you. He'll still forgive you. These bodies that we have,
they're not going to last anyway.

This idea that I can separate my life into compartments, I've got my body here
and I might do some evil with it, but I'm going to be spiritually pure in
heaven. The only person you're fooling is yourself when you go down those roads.
It's the pleasure lie.

I owe it to myself. And we can all buy into that lie because none of us like to
suffer. We all like pleasure.

And if I get around the wrong people, the danger of that lie is going to come
into my life. I'm easily deceived into the pleasure lie. Recognize Satan's
throne, the popular lie, the Balaamites, the pleasure lie.

Then he talks about the Nicolaitans, which warn us of the personality lie. They
taught much of the same thing about indulging yourself, pleasing yourself, but
they were called the Nicolaitans because they had a leader, Nicholas. Watch out
for the leader.

Watch out for the leader that you follow. All three of these, the popular lie,
the pleasure lie, the personality lie, they remind us that doubts, that
confusion, that sin makes its way into our lives through relationships. If you
struggle with alcoholism, you don't hang around in bars with people who drink.

It's not going to help you to overcome that sin in your life. You go to
celebrate recovery to a group of people who are seeing Christ change their
lives. Lies sneak their way into our lives, and they sneak their way through
relationships, even through relationships in church and family.

Now, like all good lies, these lies had a twist of a truth in them, but just a
twist. You deserve better. God wants you to be happy.

God wants you to be rich. God wants you to be healed right now. There's a twist
of the truth, just enough to make you doubt God.

Now, all throughout this chapter, Jesus talks to the church about watching out
for the danger of the lie, rejecting certain people. There's something in us
that wants to say, "Isn't that being judgmental? Who am I to call somebody else
wrong or evil?

There's enough wrong and evil in my own life. " It's not a matter of calling
them wrong or evil. It's a matter of recognizing your own weakness and
recognizing the danger of a lie in your life, recognizing that ideas are
contagious.

The flu is contagious. And if I don't want to get the flu, I don't hang around
people who have the flu. That's not being judgmental.

I'm just taking precautions so I don't get the flu. The flu is contagious. Ideas
are even more contagious.

And if you think that they're not, you're lying to yourself. I'm lying to myself
because Jesus tells me that they are. So the reason to be careful is because I
recognize my own weakness.

It's not being judgmental of them. It's wanting to live the life that Christ has
given me to live. And so you recognize the danger of a lie.

You don't just put up with a lie. If I want to live for the truth, I've got to
live by the truth of God's Word. I've got to recognize the danger of a lie.

And then just briefly, there's a third thing I have to do. I've got to rejoice
in my relationship with Christ. When I realize that lies make their way into my
life through relationships, I have to also realize that truth makes its way into
my life through relationship.

Relationship with Christ. Here in Pergamum, a church that was tempted to satisfy
its immediate desires by giving in to sexual and social pressures, this church
was offered a promise from Jesus that reminded them that he alone is the one
that offers us real satisfaction. Jesus doesn't come to us and say, "Hey, don't
do those bad things.

I don't have anything else to offer you. I just don't want you to do bad things.
I just want to make your life miserable by keeping away from you things that
might bring you some pleasure.

" No, Jesus says, "Those things, those are false pleasures that in the end are
going to destroy you. I've got the real joy to offer you. " He gives two
pictures of this real joy here that make us scratch our heads, many of us, when
we first read them.

He says, "I want to offer you the hidden manna and the white stone. " Remember,
I said as we began the study of the book of Revelation that you need to read the
whole Bible first because you need to understand what's in the rest of the Bible
to understand what's said in the book of Revelation. This hidden manna is the
manna that was back in the book of Exodus, the manna that God sent each day to
meet the people's needs in the wilderness, the hidden manna.

God comes into your heart. You don't see it. It doesn't fall on the ground like
it did back then.

Jesus comes into your heart through his Spirit, and he meets your needs. The
hidden manna is a picture of Jesus and how he meets your needs daily. He doesn't
meet the needs that you have next week or next month or next year.

The manna was only sent one day at a time to meet that day's needs, and that's
how Jesus works in your life. So let him meet the needs of today. And then he
says there's this white stone.

Now, this isn't an Old Testament reference. This is a reference from that day,
and so there are a lot of ideas of what this might represent. No one is sure.

White stones were used for so many different things. A judge used it to vote for
an acquittal. It was sometimes a bracelet on an arm, which it would have a name
written on it, sometimes the name of a false idol.

It was a stone in a high priest's garment. One of my favorites is it was a
ticket with your name on it that was used to gain admission to a feast. Whatever
the meaning, it was a name that was known only to him who receives it, and it
was a name that had something to do with entrance into our relationship with
Christ.

This is a promise of heaven. This is a picture of intimacy, of individuality.
There is community in heaven, but we do not lose our individuality in heaven.

Heaven is a place of public praise, but it is also a place where we do not lose
our personal, intimate, close relationship with Christ. We all relate to him,
but also each one of us relates to him. In the manna, we see a greater
fulfillment in Christ.

In the name on the stone, you see a deeper relationship with Christ. In heaven,
we shall feast on that manna who is Christ, and we will understand that name who
is Christ. Right now, we see him in a mere dimly, but then we shall see him face
to face.

Jesus, thank you. Thank you for the promise of eternity, and thank you for the
promise of enjoying our relationship with you forever. Lord, I'm tempted, we're
all tempted sometimes, to fall for the lie, or if we don't fall for it, to let
it stay too long in our lives so it begins to invade parts of our hearts in ways
that we don't understand.

Lord, help us to recognize our own weakness. Help us to recognize what you say
about us here, and also to see the power of the truth and the eternity that
you're pointing us to. Help us to rejoice in our relationship with you.

In your name we ask this, Jesus. Amen. Tomorrow we're going to look together at
what Jesus has to say to a tolerant church.