To Pergamos: Don’t Compromise

Today we're beginning our third sermon in the churches of Revelation 2 and 3. As I said before, as we go through these, we're going to talk about what the messages meant to those people and then draw something from it for us. Because in each one of the messages to these people, all the churches are told to read everybody else's message. There's something there for all of us to learn. We went through the message to the Ephesians. We looked at that where we have so much information about the Ephesian church. We went back to the book of Acts and when it got founded and how Paul spent three years there and later gathered all the elders together and told them that there was going to be a major division in their church, false teachers, and some of them were going to become false teachers. You go through the book of Ephesians and I had a handout where I had on the back of the handout sort of an outline in the book of Ephesians which Mr. Kellers has been going through and doing a great job with. I really enjoyed listening to the last couple of those Bible studies he's been doing. We see what this church was and what he writes the book or letter to the Ephesians, Paul does, they haven't had their split yet. They haven't had their problems yet. He's dealing with all issues between Gentiles and Jews. He's dealing with how a church should function, what unity the church should be. He's dealing with how to teach them how this church should function. We know when he writes to Timothy they had false teachers there. And of course by the time we get to the message that John writes to them 35 years later, he's saying, you stood up to those who said that they were apostles and they weren't. They had stood up to the false teaching. And the Ephesian church is never accused of any false teaching. They rejected it. They're not accused of heresy.

They're not accused of licentiousness, just lawless lifestyles that some of the churches are. In fact, they're told they still have good works. The problem with the church in Ephesus is they had lost their love. And as we went through that would include their love towards God. That doesn't mean they had faith towards God, but there's a difference between having faith and having love. They didn't love the truth the way they should. They kept the truth, they did the truth, and they didn't love each other the way they should.

And if you remember what we learned from the book of Ephesians, because there's so much information given to us, one of the reasons why is they were third and fourth generation Christians. They'd been around so long.

They knew it. They did it. But something was missing in who they were as the people of God. And he tells them that this is something that Christ wants them to fix. We went through the church as Smyrna. We don't know anything about Smyrna from the scripture. We did talk a little bit about what we know about the city from the time, but we do know they were persecuted people and they lived in poverty.

And yet they are commended. Of this list, there's only one other church commended as much as they were. That these people held on to the truth and all this persecution and all this poverty. It would be easy for if somebody had come there and visited them from Ephesus or from Philadelphia or from any of the other churches to come there and say, well, these people must not be really good people.

They must not be good Christians because they're sure not being blessed by God. These people live in poverty and they are persecuted. What's your problem? And yet Christ looked at them and said, no, these people got it right. So we went through a situation where we had a lot of people who were persecuted and showed how persecution is part of the Christian lifestyle and we have to understand that.

None of us here have suffered severe persecution. We may have had little bits and pieces, but none of us have suffered threats of our lives, loss of our jobs to the point where we live in poverty and can't get a job.

I mean, there are just certain things we haven't faced at the level those people did. So they serve as an example to us of how we need to understand that sometimes Christianity leads to poverty and persecution. That's the cost of following God. Now we come to the third of these churches as we follow the mail route through Asia Minor and that's Pergamos or Pergamum. Now, Pergamos is not or was not at that time a thriving city, a wealthy city, the way the other two were, then Ephesus and Smyrna.

They weren't on the coast, for one thing, so they weren't a trading center. But what they were known for is two things. One, they were very religious. Every one of these cities we go through, they're very religious. One of their main temples was to the Greek goddess of healing, or God of healing, and there was a temple there to him.

They also had a great temple they know to Zeus. And of course, emperor worship, which we talked about in terms of persecution, emperor worship was very important there because it was the seat of the Roman government in Asia Minor. This was the headquarters of the Roman government in Asia Minor.

And that's why there's some comments made by Jesus Christ because John writes Revelation 2 and 3, but it's literally the words of Jesus Christ. It's the message he gives. He makes some statements there that make sense when you realize this was the center of the Roman government for the whole area. There would have been a Roman legion there. There would have been huge Roman buildings, administration buildings, and they would have direct contact with Rome.

They also had a library. Now you think, well, big deal, they had a library. No, you have to understand, in the ancient world, a library was a rarity. If a city had a library, people came from all over the world to come and study. They're just very rare. And so what we have here is the library that they're very proud of because there are many cities that, as far as we know, archaeologists can't find any place where they had a library. So this is the city. We don't know much about it. It wasn't as large as some of the other cities, but it was very important as the seat of the Roman government.

So let's go to Revelation 2 because the story of what we're going to go through here in Pergamus, since this is the only place in the New Testament it's mentioned, but there's some information here we have to explore to find out what the real issues were. To find out what the real issues were in Pergamus, we're going to have to take a very interesting journey this afternoon. A biblical journey that's going to take us actually back into the Old Testament.

Here's what he says in verse 12, And to the angel of the church of Pergamus write, These things say he who has the sharp two-edged sword, I know your works, and where you dwell where Satan's throne is. And you hold fast to my name, and did not deny my faith, even in the days in which Antipas was my faithful martyr who was killed among you where Satan dwells. Now, once again, we don't know who Antipas was, but we understand that in 95 AD around there when this is given to those people, they understood who this man was.

It was a member of their congregation, a leader who was killed because of his faith, because of his belief in God, because he stood up and he believed in Jesus Christ as his Savior. Interesting. He says, you held on to that much. You held on to that.

But you notice that they live where Satan dwells. Why was Pergamus…you know, it wasn't any more evil than any of the other cities in Asia Minor. No, but this was the place where the Roman government was. This was the seat of the Roman government. So you begin to understand that the persecution here would be more intense and probably longer and more organized than any other place. But you find through the Bible where there might…it seems to be in the Roman Empire, people would work up and get into riots all the time. The Romans couldn't figure it out.

They couldn't figure out why Jews and pagans and Christians will all go out and riot against each other. They just couldn't figure that out. Why are you just…just stop it. Stop it. Just everybody live in peace and worship the emperor. It's okay. Just keep your own religion. Just leave each other alone. And remember we went through in Smyrna where the mayor of the one city tells the people, stop this. Stop this rioting against these Christians because if you keep this up, they're going to send troops here. Those troops would probably come from Pergamus if it was an Asia Minor. If it was in Greece, they would come from another center.

So this is where the seat of the Roman government is. And that means persecution is going to be much more efficient, if you will. It's not going to just be emotions run up and people, you know, do a riot. This is going to be much more efficient, much more organized. So this is what we know about them, as they held on to the faith even though they were being persecuted.

And then he says, but I have a few things against you. Okay, now he says, but there's something wrong in your church. And he makes some very serious statements here. Because you have those, there are those who hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Baloch to put a stumbling block before the children of Israel to eat things, sacrifice the idols, and to commit sexual immorality.

He says, you've got a problem here in the church. Now, I want you to remember this is the church he's talking to. We're not going through scriptures today about the world. We're going through scriptures about the church. And what we better understand how each of these congregations were developing differently. And then when we look through them in the future, we'll be able to see them as actually different periods of time in terms of the prophecies concerning the church. What is interesting though, he says he's coming back to these churches, all of them. So the message is to every Christian, because every one of these churches has a message to us. They say, okay, what's Pergamos' message to us? They have eating things, sacrifice the idols, and we have that they are sexually immoral, and they have the doctrine of Balaam. When it says things sacrifice the idols, this doesn't mean, by the way, that the church of Pergamos went out to the temple of Zeus and was worshiping Zeus. If they were, there would have been a different statement made there. You are worshiping Zeus. What they were doing was compromising with paganism, if you will, Christianizing paganism. How many times have you heard someone say, oh, I know, because I've had people tell me this, oh, I know Christmas comes from a pagan, you know, even the Catholic Encyclopedia says that, it comes from paganism. But you know, we Christianize it, and in doing so, we bring people to Jesus.

That would have made sense in Pergamos. And sexual immorality, they lived in a very sexually free world. Even some of the Roman emperors, Augustus, saw the Roman world as so sexually free that he actually tried to enforce laws against adultery. He tried to enforce it in the empire because you're tearing down the families. This isn't good for the empire to tear down families like this. So this is how sexually free—and believe me, Augustus was not a boy scout, okay?

Of course, I can't say that today.

I won't go there. But we have a problem of this sort of compromising with paganism and sexual freedom and the doctrine of Balaam. What in the world is the doctrine of Balaam? I mean, Balaam is a person in the Old Testament, which most people, who's Balaam? I don't know. Isn't that the guy talked to his donkey? That's sort of a crazy man, right? He had a conversation with a donkey. So, I mean, that's all we really know about him. And yet, in the New Testament, there's a number of places where the church is told to avoid the doctrine of Balaam.

And when you put them all together, it doesn't say exactly what it was, but I think we can come to a conclusion of what it was. And so, to understand the problem in Pergamos and the church there, we have to begin to understand Balaam. So, let's go back to Numbers. Numbers, chapter 22. Now, this is a long story, so I'm not going to go through every bit of it, but I am going to read a few places here and there. And we're going to go through this story and look at what we know about Balaam. What we know about Balaam is that he was some kind of prophet. He was a prophet and some kind of sorcerer, and he knew the true God. Don't you understand? He knew the true God. And Israel had come out of Egypt and came up to the land of Moab. Now, God did not want them to attack Moab. He did not want a battle there. The Midianites were there, too. So, you can see Moab and Midian sort of mixed together. So, you've got these peoples there.

But the Moabites looked at this huge mass of Israelites coming across their land and said, we've got to stop these people. I mean, look at them. And if we put our armies together, the Midianites and us, we have no chance. There are so many of them. What are we going to do?

Ah, what we'll do is we'll get some kind of sorcerer to put a curse on them.

Somebody who has contact with the gods or the god or whatever god he has that gives him power, and he can come and put a curse on these people and stop this huge migration across our land.

I mean, there's probably millions of Israelites with who knows how many cows and sheep and, you know, when they come across, believe me, when they leave the other side, there's not much left as they move through the land. There's been nothing like this. Nomadic tribes of this time were rather small. I mean, you talk about Moab, you say, whether they're nomadic tribes or the Midianites. That's true, but they tend to break up. They come together for various reasons, and they break up. You can't have large numbers of people, you know, nomadically moving around a place. They destroy the environment. Well, here's millions. You know, they're just going across destroying the environment. How do we stop this? So let's go to verse 1. Then the children of Israel moved and camped in the plains of Moab on the side of the Jordan across from Jericho. Now, Baloch, the son of Zippor, saw that Israel had done to the Amorites, and Moab was exceedingly afraid of the people because they were many, and Moab was sick with dread because of the children of Israel. And Moab said to the elders of Midian, now this company will lick up everything around us as an ox licks up the grass of the field.

There's going to be nothing left. So what are we going to do? Well, they're too big for the fight.

We've got to get somebody who knows magic, somebody who has some kind of interaction with the spirit world, some god. And so they send to get Balaam. They send a group of elders from the government. These kings get together, and these chieftains of these tribes, and they send the group of elders, and they go to Balaam and they say, you've got to help us. Okay?

And because you've got to do some kind of spiritual action here.

Now, Balaam had some contact with God. Look at verse 12. And God said to Balaam, you shall not go with them, you shall not curse the people, for they are blessed. Now, it doesn't say here, and Balaam just jumped up and said, some god I didn't know came and told me this. No, he goes to the elders and he says, no, God, the God, told me I can't. They're his people. They're blessed. You'll just have to go home. And he said, well, but we're offering you a huge amount of money here. We're offering you, you know, the greatest reward. Understand, you're going to be famous. You're going to be the greatest prophet in the world. You're going to have all kinds of money and blessings every place you go. Well, there's Balaam. People will bow down to you. No, he says, I can't do that. God says, no. God says, I can't do that. In fact, he says in verse 18, Balaam answered and said to the servants of Baloch, though Baloch were to give me his house full of silver and gold, I could not go beyond the word of the Lord my God to do less or more.

Now therefore, please, you also stay here tonight that I may know more what the Lord will say to me. So this is the second time this has happened. You know, I went home, they came back. No, Baloch said, you can have whatever you want. And what's interesting, the second time, what God says to him.

Verse 20, and God said to Balaam at night, or came to him at night and said, if the men come to you to call you, rise up and go with them, but only the words which I speak to you that you shall do. So they, in the morning, they come out and they say, okay, what did God say? And he said, oh, he said, go with you. Oh, great. So they go. And he gets separated a little bit from the elders. And that's when he's riding his donkey between these two cliffs. And the donkey won't go any farther. He beats it, beats it. If all he falls down on top of him, and he's going to kill him, he's beating it, he's beating it. And the donkey says, why are you beating me? Now, here's what I find interesting. Is Bailin didn't get up screaming and run away.

Bailin said, you're a bad donkey. Okay. There's something weird about this guy. He has no problem talking with a donkey. Okay. Of course, God talked to him. I've wondered if maybe demons hadn't talked to him at different points in his life. I mean, he was used to some kind of interaction with this other world. Okay. But he has this conversation with a donkey.

And the donkey says, I can't go farther. There's an angel there. And suddenly he sees the angel of the Lord. And then the angel of the Lord tells him, okay, you were told to go with them, but your purposes are perverse. In other words, you're not going to do what God wants you to do. You have an ulterior motive here. And so I was going to kill you, but I'll give you another chance.

So, okay. You can only go do what God tells you to do. So he knew God knew the heart of Balaam, which was, I'm going to follow God. In fact, a couple points in here, he tells people, he's the Lord, my God. This is my God. But I'm going to have my cake and eat it too. I'm going to find a way to please God and get the best of the evil world. And I'm, you know, what he considered the best. I'm going to get both of them. That's his viewpoint. I'm going to get both. And I can do that. I can find out how to do both. And so he goes on and they take him, you know, he meets Baloch. He tells him there's all these things he has to do for a ceremony. And he does all the things. They do the right ceremony. He stands on top of a hill and he's looking over this mass of Israelites. And Baloch says, curse them. And if you go to chapter 23, verse seven, basically what Baloch says in his, his from ounce is, he's going to pronounce this curse, is that Baloch has brought him there. But then in verse eight, he says, how shall I curse whom God is not cursed? And how shall I denounce whom the Lord has not denounced? And he says, well, these are a blessed people. So you go down to verse 11, and Baloch says the Balaam, what have you done to me? I took you to curse my enemies and look you have blessed them.

What are you doing? You have this power to curse and bless. And he says, not really.

God does this. I'm just telling you what God said. This happens four times. He keeps hanging around. He doesn't go home and say, look, Baloch, let him go. Let him pass through because God is taking them someplace. Because if you don't, you will be cursed. He doesn't. He keeps hanging around, trying to figure out how to get the payday. How I can do what's quote unquote, right, and get the reward of doing bad. How can I do both? Get the good stuff in life, you see.

The fame, the adoration, the money. I can get it all here. I can just figure out how. And if you read through chapter 23 and chapter 24, he just keeps blessing them.

Finally, Baloch says to Balam, stop it. Just don't bless them anymore. Do you even have to curse them? Just don't bless them, okay? Just stop it. And he goes on and on and on. And finally, he just sends him home. And Balam sort of leaves the story. He goes home. He doesn't get his big reward, but he has done what God told him to do. And every time he gets up to speak, he gives the words of God. Now this is important. He gives the words of God. He says exactly what God tells him to say. God said, I'm going to tell you what to say and you say it. And he did.

He said, wow, that's quite a prophet, right? Then why is the doctrine of Balam a bad thing?

I mean, he did what God told him to do. Something with his intentions, though, that we have to understand if we're going to understand what the message to the Church in Pergamos and what we have to be aware of. Because that message is for us today, too.

So now you have the Moabites. They don't know what to do.

They can't fight them. There's too many of them.

They can't get Balam to curse them. So magic doesn't work. In fact, the God of Israel keeps blessing them. So they came up with this ingenious idea. Chapter 25. Verse 1, Now Israel remained in a case of wood, and the people began to commit harl Israel was joined to Baal of Peor, and the anger of the Lord was aroused against Israel. So here's what happens. The Israelites are all out there one day, probably just working around the camps, taking care of their animals, getting ready to know when they're going to move on.

Remember, the tabernacle is there with the pillar of fire at night. The cloud, the pillar of cloud during the day. It's all there. God's still there. And they look, and they must probably, you heard the shofars blow that there was going to be war. There's massive people coming towards them.

And you think, oh no, there's going to be a war. You go out, you know, you have your sword, your shield, or whatever. And coming towards you is all these people laughing. The women are, oh, don't have much clothes on. Everybody's got a jug of wine, and they had a big party. If we can't beat them any other way, we'll just have a party.

It's probably the biggest party in history.

These huge mass of mobile bites show up, and they get instruments, and they party. We don't know how long this party went on. We only know that it broke down into an orgy, if you read all the chapter 25. It broke down into an orgy, and they were drunk, and people started worship bale. Now that doesn't mean they gave up Yahweh. I mean, he's right there. They could see him.

But this God seems to be good. This God lets us do stuff. Our God doesn't. Okay, so we're going to have the best of both worlds here. We're going to worship our God who's taking us to the Promised Land, right? Because they're almost up to the Promised Land. We're going to worship our God who's taking us to the Promised Land, but boy, are we going to have a good time this week.

And then we'll move on, because this bale of Pior, this local God, he's a real party animal.

Now God became angry with them because of this, and God punished Israel, and thousands died.

Until they realized what they were doing was wrong. And then he said, we were going to leave them all by its alone, but you now have to go punish them for what they've done.

You have to punish them because of what they've done. What did they bring into Israel?

This sort of, we're pagans, but not pagans, right? Oh, we worship Yahweh. I mean, they could get away from him. He's there. They can see him every night and every day. They're the presence of the Lord, the Shekadah glory. They could see that. These sort of pagans, but not. And we're having a good time.

We're going to party and have a good time. And there was drinking and sexual freedom and all the music you wanted. It was great.

It was Woodstock with millions. Some of you say, I forget. I remember Wood... Not that I was that Woodstock, but I remember Woodstock. I was too little to be at Woodstock as a kid, but, you know, that was just one giant party with drugs and booze and sex and music.

Well, that's sort of what happened here.

Now, God then tells them, you go punish. Now, we're still left with Balaam. Okay. I mean, Balaam didn't curse them. I mean, technically, Balaam did what God told him to do, right? Well, let's go to chapter 31. Let's go on here a little farther.

And they are now going to go fight. It says the Midianites, but this would have been the Moabites and the Midianites. They're going to punish them for what they did. Verse 7 of chapter 31.

And then, Yahweh, he said, he is my God. The man who was the prophet of God, they killed him.

Why? Why don't you go down to verse 15?

Because the men are coming back and they're bringing all the women.

Well, we killed all the men, but hey, we're bringing all the women home. And Moses said to them, have you kept all the women alive? Look, these women caused the children of Israel through the counsel of Balaam to trespass against the Lord in the incident of Peor. And there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. He says, no, no, no, you can't keep these women alive. Don't you remember? Well, that may be one of the reasons they were keeping them alive. They were the best party girls they'd ever met. Don't you remember what they did? Don't you remember who told them to do it? In other words, the Moabites didn't come up with this on their own. Balaam said, well, I can't curse them, but you know, and you can't fight them. Well, just party with them.

And that's what they did. Now we understand something about Balaam.

His compromise with paganism and his compromise, total lack of any morality.

And yet he was a follower of God. It would seem like to anybody else.

What's interesting is in Revelation, it says they had the doctrine of Balaam. So we're going to have to figure out what the doctrine of Balaam is. What is the teaching of Balaam? Now, Balaam is mentioned in a couple other places in the New Testament. What is in Jude? Let's go to Jude. I want to give a whole sermon on the book of Jude sometime. There's just so much in this. Once again, Jude's an interesting book written around 65. So it's written about 30 years before the book of Revelation. And Jude's writing to the church. He's not writing to a specific church.

Corinth, Thessalonica, Philippi, Rome, in the book of Romans. He's not writing to a specific church. Jude is a letter that goes out to all the churches. The other place where Balaam is mentioned is Peter. And in 2 Peter, that letter is written to all the churches. So this is an issue that they were already beginning to see in the 60s in the church. And this is a scathing letter, because basically in Jude, he's telling Christians, you may lose your salvation.

It's interesting. This was another one of the books that Martin Luther wanted to take out of the Bible. James was one of them, because, wow, we should be telling people how to get saved, not that there's going to be punishment. Well, you're going to be saved from what?

What are we being saved from? God's punishment.

So Jude is very important, but when you read through this, you think, wow, he's really, what, upset with the Roman world, upset with the Jewish world? No, he's upset with the church itself. Look what he says in verse 5.

But I want to remind you that once you knew this, he tells the church, you know, I have to remind you of something you've forgotten, something very important that you've forgotten, that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe, and the angels who do not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, he has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day. As Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them, in a similar manner to these, have been giving themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, which was a term used for homosexuality, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. Wow! He's telling the church, not the world. I want to remind you of something you've forgotten, because this is a lesson for you. I want you to remember Israel coming out of Egypt, and that entire generation not allowed to go in. I want you to think of what God did with Satan and the demons, and I want you to remember Sodom and Gomorrah, because you need to remember those punishments. Can you imagine in 65 AD getting this letter from Jude, a note apostle, and it says, you need to remember these kinds of punishments because you're in danger of these kinds of punishments? And then he tells them three specific reasons in verse 11, because he's talking about leaders who had come into the church, and were teaching certain things, and he says, woe to them, for they have gone in the way of Cain. Now you think about Cain. What was Cain's problem? He worshipped God. There was no other God to worship. They had no concept of another God. There was God. But he worshipped God the way he wanted to, able worship God the way God wanted to.

He brought the right sacrifice in the right attitude. Cain brought the wrong sacrifice in the wrong attitude. The result was Cain was rejected. He said, this is the problem in the church he's telling them. He tells them the problem is people want to obey God in the way they want to do it. They want to worship God in the way they want to do it, not the way God says. Secondly, they have run greedily in the error of Balaam for profit. In other words, he got one foot in the church saying and doing certain things and another foot out here trying to get what you think is all the good things of the life and evil world. You're trying to do both. You've got one foot and one foot and the other. And he tells the church, you have this problem. So when we find it in Pergamus 30 years later, we shouldn't be surprised. They were trying to deal with this problem 30 years before in the church at large. And then he says, and perished in the rebellion of Korah. Of course, that's very interesting too because that's where Korah and some of the leaders of Israel just basically went to Moses and said, you know what? You and Aaron take too much on yourselves. And we need to start getting more power and more part of this decision-making process because we have God's Spirit too. And so you need to step aside.

So these are the three issues that he attacks them for.

But Balaam is one of them. This idea that Balaam performed his Christianity with a desire for profit is, as I said, Peter does the same thing. I'll tell you what, I wasn't going to go there, but 2 Peter 2. I'm going to still end here a little early, but 2 Peter 2.

Verse 15.

Talking about false teachers in the church. Okay, this is once again, he's talking about false teachers. They have forsaken the right way and gone astray, following the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness. But he was rebuked for his iniquity, a dumb donkey speaking with a man's voice, restrained the madness of the prophet.

I wondered, you know, when Balaam told Balaam, oh yeah, the God of Israel, the Lord, the only God, he talked to me. I doubt if he said, and so does my donkey. I really doubt if he said that. You know, I think you're at a loss of low credibility saying, oh, my donkey and I have really good conversations.

So what can we now conclude? Can we know what Balaam is? It's a man who's trying to, who's pretending to live this way, but trying to reap all the what he says is the goodness from the world out here and be one foot here and one foot there. The result is a compromise with paganism and sexual immorality. Okay, let's go back to Revelation 2 then. Revelation 2. And verse 15. Thus, because of this, remember, they have the problem of the doctrine of Balaam, and it leads to compromising with paganism and just wholesale sexual immorality. And thus, you also have those who hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I hate, or who are those people? We know that in Ephesus it said they rejected them, the Nicolaitans. They'd been totally rejected. But here they didn't. They accepted them. It's interesting. The Bible doesn't tell us exactly what their doctrines were, but we do know in the second century they're mentioned in writings quite a bit.

And they're all mentioned as a group of people who saw, somehow, Christianity as a license to be lawless. They saw Christianity as a license to be lawless. In fact, Nicolaitans became sort of a we're not even sure, you know, 75 years from this point, even though they're being mentioned, if they still exist the original group, they're just anyone who has that idea sort of gets labeled as that group, okay? Then they just disappear. What we have is a group of people who see Christianity as God's forgiveness. It's so great that what we do doesn't really matter. In fact, by the end of the second century, they're considered a Gnostic group. As long as you have the secret knowledge, what you do doesn't matter.

As long as you have the secret knowledge, what you do doesn't matter. Now, what you think about what this means, we have a group of people who inside the church, in fact, they're mentioned by name in Ephesus and Pergamos. Two of these congregations have people there who teach this, or people who have come into the congregation to remote that this little sect of Christianity is formed. You know, we think, oh, well, wouldn't it be nice when they're all one church? Well, they already had a different sect form. And this sect was teaching, basically, that grace is a license to sin, leading to compromise with paganism and great sexual immorality. How many times have you heard that?

People know about paganism. People know about false doctrines, but it's okay.

Jesus loves me, it's okay. I've been told, look, I know God loves me. I've been saved by his grace. So the fact that I'm living with my boyfriend doesn't really matter to him. Doesn't matter. Is that sexual immorality?

Doesn't matter. You think, isn't that strange? It wouldn't have been strange to them, just like it's not strange to most people in our world today. It wouldn't have been strange in the pagan world. But in the church, it had become part of what was happening. And in Pergamos, it had been accepted by a number of the people there.

It's all, that's why this doctrine of Balaam all connects together. The doctrine of Balaam leads to, I've got one foot in God's way and one foot in the world. And because of that, I'm having a good party life. I'm getting ahead of the world. I'm getting what I want, but I'm still right with God.

This is the great lesson that we learn from Pergamos.

Let's go back now to verse 16.

These are the last words that Jesus Christ says to the church of Pergamos. Every one of these churches, God says, I'm coming to you. You better be prepared. I'm coming to you.

Of course, the literal church of Pergamos that existed at this time ceased to exist hundreds and hundreds of years ago. But the message is still there for us.

For those people who live in both worlds, he says, repent because I'm coming.

Repent. He says, he who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. That's why I said from the beginning. We have emphasized the last two churches on this list for many, many years in the church of God. And the reason why is we understand there's a prophetic message to this. It has to do with church errors. But in doing so, we've ignored that statement at times.

Every message to every church is to be studied by every church because there's elements of that in every church.

And we have to be careful we don't go there. He says, to him who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna to eat. That manna is, of course, Jesus Christ. He said that about himself in the book that's written in the book of John. And I will give him a white stone and on the stone a new name written, which no one knows except him who receives it. He says, I'm going to do something special to these people and these people who repent and come out of Pergamos.

Just like Ephesians, or the church in Ephesus, and the church in Smyrna, we don't know when those churches that received this message ceased to exist, but they did.

Over time, those churches died out.

Over the centuries, there's been churches all over the world. Sometimes they would last a few years. Sometimes they would last for generations, and then they all died out.

And you know, every one of those churches needed to study these messages.

They needed to study these messages. So far, we've looked at Ephesus, the church that stood up to those who brought in false doctrine, who continued to do great works, and they were commended for those things, and their patience. They have no false doctrine that's mentioned, but they had lost their love. To lose your love for God and for the truth and for each other, once you lose one, you'll lose the other ones. Once you lose that, they say, so what? You got the right words, but there's something inside that has to happen. The church in Smyrna, where we studied that church, the church that had no false doctrine, had no issues of just the type of sin that we find here. None whatsoever. But we have a church that was persecuted and lived in poverty, a persecuted church that lived in poverty.

And the message to them was, hang on, I will come for you. And the church in Pergamos, they endured severe persecution. They endured it. And then afterwards, the systematic sort of teaching that this one group had, this one sect has, began to infiltrate into the church. And they ended up with the, like Balaam, the doctrine of Balaam. They ended up with, I'm right with God, and man am I bringing in into my life, reaping all the good things of the world by compromising, compromising with paganism and sexuality. Specific things. Now we're going to find other churches compromised with other specific things, but that's what these two things that they compromised with.

So each of these messages just cry out across the centuries, and each of these messages means something to us. And so next time, next time, we will go through a church that not a lot, doesn't have a lot of good things said about it. The church at Thyatira.