Lesson 7 - Revelation 2 Concl.

[Music] [Music] we are going to continue today in Revelation chapter 2 as we resume our discussion about the believing Assembly at Pergamum now let's begin by rereading that particular section of Chris of Scripture so open your Bibles if you have a complete Jewish Bible to page 115 34 15 34 and we're gonna read verses 12 onward gonna read the whole rest of the chapter from there page 15 34 the second chapter of Revelation starting at verse 12 - the angel of the Messianic community in Pergamum right here is the message from the one who has the sharp double-edged sword I know where you are living there where the adversaries throne is yet you are holding on to my name you did not deny trusting me even at the time when my faithful witness Antipas was put to death in your town there where the adversary lives nevertheless I have a few things against you you have some people who are holding to the teaching of Balaam who told the lock to set a trap for the people of Israel so they would eat food that had been sacrificed to idols and to commit sexual sin likewise you to have people who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans therefore turn from these sins otherwise I will come to you very soon and I will make war against them with the sword of my mouth those who have ears let them hear what the Spirit is saying to the Messianic communities to him winning the victory I will give some of the hidden manna I will also give him a white stone on which is written a new name that nobody knows except the one receiving it now to the angel of the Messianic community in Thyatira right here is the message from the son of God whose eyes are like a fiery flame whose either like burnished brass I know what you're doing your love your trust service perseverance that I know that you are doing more now than before but I have this against you you continue to talk tolerate that Isabel Jezebel woman the one who claims to be a prophet but she's teaching and deceiving my servants to commit sexual sin to eat food that's been sacrificed to idols I gave her time to turn from her sin but she doesn't want to repent of her immorality so I am throwing her into a sickbed and those who commit adultery with her I'm throwing into great trouble unless they turn from the sins connected with what she does and I will strike her children dead then all the Messianic communities will know I am the one who searches minds and hearts and that I will give to each of you what your deeds deserve but to the rest of you in Thyatira to those who do not hold to this teaching who have not learned what some people call the deep things of the adversary I see this I am NOT loading you up with another burden only hold fast to what you have until I come to him who wins the victory and does what I want until the goal is reached I will give him authority over the nation's he will rule them with a staff of iron and dash them to pieces like pottery just as I have received authority from My Father I will also give him the morning star those who have ears let them hear what the Spirit is saying to the Messianic communities to sum up what we covered last time about Pergamum I'll start with the sharp two-edged sword emitting from the mouth of God and yes to this point in Revelation I am calling this divine being of the vision the one who stands amidst the menorahs God and not Christ I do this not because it is not most probably Christ but because to this point neither God nor John has given us any more than a series of descriptions and characteristics of the divine being but no name and since these descriptions and characteristics are a mix of standard ones used in the Bible for God the Father along with the ones used by use for his son thank you Yeshua it would be presumptuous of us it would make us poor students to jump to conclusions and to assign him a name when none is given and John doesn't seem certain just who this being was beyond the fact that he was the God of Israel the sharp two-edged sword is a much debated symbol although it is most usually accepted as meaning God's Word now in modern Christianity that word is taken mostly to mean the New Testament John could not have been thinking of the New Testament it didn't yet exist in a wouldn't for over a hundred years after his day two of the earliest Church Fathers victorious and Jerome took the double-edged sword to mean the law of Moses as the one edge and the gospel as the other and I think that's probably correct then God tells the believe is a Pergamum that he knows that they are living were the adversaries Satan's throne is now this is another controversial statement because it is mostly halation about what exactly it is that God's indicating some think Satan's throne is the formal name of a pagan altar in the city of Pergamum others think it's just a nasty epithet that God is hurling at a horribly heathen City what we can know for certain is that God considers Pergamum a detestably wicked place and yet even in the midst of Sodom when all odds against all odds rather at least a few held on to God's name so it was at Pergamum and when the persecutions against the believers at Pergamum became so great that it actually led to the death of one of them a fella named Antipas they didn't cower and renounce their allegiance to God as Peter had once done for this God commends them well that's the good news now for the bad despite those good words that God has for them he says he has a few things against them and you know what if when you're praying you hear that shake a little bit and the first thing on his list is that some of the believers at Pergamum hold to the teaching of Balaam Balaam who helped block to set a trap for Israel so that they would sin by eating food sacrifice to idols and by committing sexual immorality so the prohibition against eating food sacrificed to idols clearly goes back at least to the time of the exodus soon after the law of Moses was enacted therefore the concept in Christianity that at the drew some conference during Paul's day when Gentile believers were instructed not to eat food sacrifice to idols that this was some new commandment and unique to the New Testament rather to New Testament Christians Gentiles in particular that's just completely undone by this so the story of Balaam and Barak appears in the Book of Numbers it's actually a few chapters long so we're not gonna read it however I think you can be summed up by the words of Numbers chapter 25 starting in verse 1 it says Israel stayed at XI team and there the people began whoring with the women of Moab these women invited the people to sacrifice to their gods where the people ate and they bowed down to their gods and with Israel's us joined to bale pure the anger about and I blazed up against Israel so what is this connection between the passage and numbers and what some believers at Pergamum are doing that God is condemning they are teaching that a believer can eat anything and that the laws of six sexual immorality just don't apply to them and while it is true that the actual words read eat food that has been sacrificed to idols adding this to the accusation of holding to the teaching of Balaam indeed means simply eating like the pagans eat that's what it means I explained last week that it's necessary that we understand this from the Jewish mindset in which it's written or we're gonna miss the point for a Gentile for a Gentile Christian food typically means any edible thing for a Jew throughout the Bible food means something quite different it means only those things that God has declared are suitable as food for his worshipers but even those things that God has declared in the Torah as permissible for food can become ritually unclean through several different means and therefore it's rendered inedible one of those means to ruin otherwise perfectly permissible food is to sacrifice it titles am i saying that all believers Jew and Gentile are required to follow the food laws is found in the laws of Moses are we to eat kosher yes that's what I'm saying yes unequivocally yes any questions the one caveat I would place on that is that we are to eat biblically kosher as compared to rabbinic kosher the food laws of the Bible are contained in just a few paragraphs are hardly difficult they're not very restrictive about the worst of it for modern Christians is that were not to eat pork or shellfish but precious little else we even want to eat is prohibited in the law of Moses on the other hand the Jewish laws of kashrut created by the rabbi's are contained in their own separate volume in the Talmud and are very complex and highly restrictive we know that at least some of these traditional Jewish laws about food were already well established by Christ's day because he got into more than one debate with the Pharisees over them the bottom line is this teaching of Balaam Balaam by some within the Pergamum congregation as a concerns food sorry it's exactly what the church has been teaching for centuries eat anything you want that's the teaching that's what Balaam was teaching now in modern times we witnessed the rise and popularity is something else the popularity and acceptance of homosexuality transgender as great SWA's of the church and begun to teach that those biblical sexual prohibitions are primitive and outdated just like the eating ones are so they don't apply to us modern believers gay churches are common gay ministers are deigned gay marriages are performed all restrictions against sex sin are being eroded tolerance for those identifying as part of the LGBT movement is taught from the pulpit in many denominations today the teaching of Balaam is alive and well within Christianity today just as it was in Pergamum in john zero and a verse 15 god also tells Pergamum that there are those within their assembly who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans and since this issue of the Nicolaitans influence was mentioned in the letter to ephesus clearly it was widespread at least it was in Asia and I'm not going to repeat everything I had to say about the Nicolaitans concerning Ephesus however I will have you recall that there is more than one view about who these people might have been now a relatively new view that just might make the most sense of any of these views is that the word pay attention to this the word Nick Leighton's comes from the Hebrew term na'kal and it simply means we will eat we will eat in order to translate Nichole the Greeks invented the sound-alike word NIC hole nikolay Tona all right the Nicolaitans which then centuries later went to the invention of an english sound-alike word nickel leighton nickel aten if so then it probably indicates another group of believers who held to a teaching of having no food restrictions whatsoever the difference between them and the teachers of Balaam Balaam seems to be that the Nicolaitans didn't go so far as to also overthrow the law the laws of sexual immorality now I'm inclined to accept this because and III don't think it's a coincidence that the issue in verse 14 is eating food sacrificed to idols then in verse 15 it's that the Nicolaitans who refused to accept any eating restrictions are condemned God condemns them both he calls these behaviors sin and he says that if those who practice these things continue God's gonna make war against them man that's a bad deal the means God says he's going to use to wage war on these heretics is the sword of his mouth that's a little bit hard to understand the sense of this until we remember the Balaam and the block story that was just referenced in verse 14 as he was on his way to help curse God's people Balaam was confronted by a fearsome angel what was the angel holding a sword the angel had a sword in his hand when he was told not to curse God's people some years later Balaam was killed by a sword for his wickedness and since I believe that victorious and and Jerome were correct to say that John's double-edged sword vision symbolized the law and the gospel it fits that this sword is what God would use to judge and condemn to eternal damnation the teachers of Balaam in Pergamum and the equally evil we will eat folks the Nicolaitans all I can say from all this is that for those who believe that obedience to God's commandments is optional and that Christians are free to eat anything we want to without consequence notice what's being said in this letter what God's attitude and threat is not to pagans to the believers at Pergamum believers now I've known a number of people who grudgingly began to eat biblically kosher because they kind of run out of reasons not to they weren't entirely convinced or happy about it but pretty soon after starting to eat kosher they came to realize that the issue wasn't ever really about what whether God has ordained what believers are to eat not eaten that he's serious about it the issue was a personal stubbornness that simply could not accept the notion of anyone restricting them from foods they had always eaten and loved the issue was and remains for most of us anyway an issue of trust and obedience that's the issue now the closing of this letter is the same as each one of them it contains an exhortation to hear and to heed what the Lord is telling them and for those who turn from these sins that they've been accused of there's going to be two rewards the first reward is they'll eat from the hidden manna now we're familiar with the manna which literally means what is it that rained from the the sky for the entire time that the Israelites were traveling on their exodus from Egypt now man is often characterized in the Bible have been by the way by Hebrew sages and rabbis as the bread of life in Christ - is said to be the spiritual bread of life thus the visible manna was that which miraculously fed the Israelites for 40 years and the hidden manna is the Messiah Yeshua the second reward is that the overcomer will receive a white stone with a new name written on it now in John's era a white stone was the typical means of admission it was literally an admission ticket to an event or to a public festival and in John's era they would put a name on it and in a public trial a white stone meant a vote of acquittal a black stone was a vote of guilt by each jury member or judge thus for a victorious believer to receive a white stone with a new name written on it that is overcoming his sins by repentance and then changing his behavior this meant that the believer is so thoroughly vindicate by his obedience by his trust in God that his old identity will become a thing of the past and he or she will receive a new and purer identity I mean what a hope we have in this what a future awaits us but there is a downside this hope and future is only for the believer who corrects these sins not for everybody only for those who correct those sins those who do not will not eat of the hidden manna and they will not receive the white stone with a new name on it this doesn't mean that such a believer only gets now just partial benefits of salvation it means they don't get any it means their salvation has been repudiated a letter number for this is to the messianic community of Thyatira Al Fayed Tyra southeast of Pergamum lays on the same main thoroughfare as do the other six congregations and we hear of Thyatira an acts 16 as a stop on Paul's missionary tour there it was there that he met and evangelized a woman who would become the first recorded person to accept Christ during that tour Lydia she was a seller of purple and purple that dye purple was what the IRA was famous for at that time it was a very small village actually totally different than the Magnificent cities and centers of learning that were Ephesus Smyrna and Pergamum and yet there too existed a Jewish population and it had a synagogue and now an established population of believers and the letter opens with God once again giving no name only sticking with descriptions and and and characterizations and so here in verse 18 we're gonna see the only mention of the term son of God in the entire book of Revelation here and nowhere else now we've talked about this before but it's it's too important to bypass it is standard Christian thinking in theology to say that the term the son of god refers not only to Christ but also to his deity son of God is as it is said is what tells us the issue is the divine human however in reality that same term is used in several instances in the Old Testament and was applied to several Israelite kings over time it became understood that the son of god was primarily aimed at indicating a royal descendent of king david a descendant who would become the new king of israel messiah so that is exactly how we should take it to mean here the message to open this letter is then from a king a Davidic King and what we must grasp is that this term refer refers to the human nature of Messiah it has nothing to do with divinity it refers to his power to his authority to his kingship but as has become typical in the revelation letters the description of the of the divine being doesn't in right there the next words are whose eyes are like a fiery flame whose feet are like burnished brass well those are word-for-word descriptions of the ancient one the father that we find in Daniel and Ezekiel so once again we have a description in the son of man that sure seemed to nail it down that this divine being is Christ then the curveball is thrown and we have a further description but that one's always been reserved for the father so the mystery continues now this letter contains the most profound commendations and the most damning condemnation to exist among the seven and it centers on the damage to this congregation that one particular person has perpetrated and apparently that person has not been seriously challenged for some reason or another the Lord says that this congregation's love and trust and service and perseverance are not only good but they are doing even more good now than before and I want to point out that the only context we can take their service in is outbound ministry thus unlike Ephesus that lost that love they had at first Thyatira has maintained it and even grown it you know a term that private businesses in the military uses is called mission creep you ever heard of it it means that whatever the omission original mission was over time it has morphed it's changed into something else and and and it's happened generally imperceptibly because it was occurring mission creep and I think among believers that situation most often manifests itself in a congregation becoming inward looking instead of outward into the local community and yet there is danger and being too anxious to be outward looking because suddenly the ministry can begin to import people who Harbor a very different attitude that bring in spiritual conditions that are harmful and it goes against the goal of the congregation in the leadership and if allowed to these newcomers can cause a great deal of tribulation and disruption and worse they can lead people away from the truth by offering trendy new thoughts that don't really reflect godly wisdom now the person in Thyatira that is leading some in this congregation astray is called simply that Jezebel woman and what is she teaching the people to do she's teaching them to commit sexual sins and to eat food that's been sacrificed to idols anyone catching a repetitive theme in these letters sex in and food issues seem to be rampant and also at the top of the list of things that God hates yikes by comparing this unnamed woman to Jezebel who was the wife of the wicked King Ahab the charge then is that she is a supporter of idolatry and paganism and everything that's anti God Jezebel's goal was to rid Israel of God worship you know what she was well on her way to doing it so we must assume that this Jezebel woman's goal who I don't think it's name was also Jezebel was similar port maybe she herself was just deceived well the watchword of the 21st century is tolerance tolerance is today hailed as the greatest virtue a society or an individual can old tolerance anyone or any nation labeled as intolerant is seen as an enemy of humanity and of progress into an enlightened age and not surprisingly tolerance has crept into Christian institutions as an important virtue as well very recently I visited at Christian College for a statement of welcome tolerance and acceptance for people of all sexual orientations was prominently placed at their entry doors tolerance of itself is not an evil thing it's what we tolerate that matters and I'm sad to say that in contemporary times essentially the counter-argument to all biblical morality his tolerance to speak against homosexuality that's intolerance to be against abortion on demand that's intolerance in fact to accuse anyone of evil is intolerance the otherwise good people of Thyatira were tolerating a malicious cancer in their midst apparently because they thought they should and it has caused now God to react by issuing a stern warning and a threat against not just the perpetrator but the entire assembly so how did this jessabelle woman windup getting such influence in this congregation it was primarily because she claimed she was a prophetess a person claiming prophetic knowledge has always been magnetic for God's people by New Testament times you know the term prophet had actually evolved a little for a worshiper of God who held fast to the Bible it more meant now a teacher of God's Word because in general it was believed among Jews that the ear of the prophets was over then any communication from God was contained in the scriptures that were already written enclosed however there were those and there will always be those who honestly think that they are prophets along the lines of Daniel and Ezekiel people who believe that God regularly shows them the future or gives them special knowledge special secret knowledge it's been a very long time since I've spoken on this so I'm gonna detour her here for just a moment the biblical test for a self-proclaimed prophet is very simple they can never be wrong if they claim that God told them this and so and it doesn't happen they are a false prophet there's no second chances that must always be our test as well nothing they say from a prophetic nature should never be taken seriously if they're ever wrong or they try to sell us on something that's not tangible and provable I can't tell you how many folks send me emails and letters that occasionally tell me something in person that the Lord told them to tell me and the common preamble to their prophecy is always I have a word for the Lord from the Lord for you so I'm gonna say now what I've said to this congregation years ago think twice about approaching me because I'm not likely to believe you if the Lord has something he wants to reveal to me he'll reveal it to me he won't be using a self-professed prophet as an intermediary now this of course is not the same thing as wise and godly counsel which we should all be open to leading up to my intolerant declaration I had so many prophets telling me what was gonna happen about any number of things you know I'm not sure I can recall any of it ever happening but that didn't seem to ever deter these folks because they sincerely thought they were doing good they kept on making prophecies and kept on being wrong and many of them had followers who would go around telling others about what so-and-so prophesied because it sounded so lofty or exciting the Bible says that so serious is the charge for claiming to be a prophet a prophet of God but it's not true is that these false prophets are to be too stoned to death true prophets are anointed by God and they are rare and they are accepted by the religious leadership and the people as prophets and they prove to be correct even more prophets seldom even wanted to be prophets in a short time those who didn't fight against the appointment too hard at first tried later to do anything to get out of it it was a tough job most profits eventually became hated and they lost their families and their friends they were run out of towns and villages they lived much of their lives alone in poverty not because their profits but prophecies didn't come to pass it's because they did and these prophecies were rarely a bucket full of good news so this Jezebel woman a false prophet had duped plenty of people in this congregation including the leadership and the gist of her teaching was to deny the Word of God and to deceive people into believing that God personally gave her new laws and commands that apparently in many ways countermanded the old laws and commands and the two most serious in God's eyes were her advocating eating food sacrificed to idols and committing sexual sin now let's understand something at least partly due to Paul's teaching most believers at that time didn't believe that these idols were any more than inanimate pieces of wooden stone they had no power there was no God behind them Paul teaches in 1st Corinthians 8 so as for eating food sacrificed to idols we know that as you say an idol has no real existence in the world and there is only one God so Paul's teaching was that food laid on an altar of an idol then change one bit the food doesn't change its form nothing supernatural happens to it that would either give you power or maybe alternately make you sick but it is also the same for food permissible food in general that's not offered to an idol there's nothing magical about food that's kosher versus food that's not nothing people have for generations come up with all kinds of reasons for eating kosher that include claims of longer lifespans or that certain non kosher meats are essentially slow-acting poison to our systems or that eating kosher is God's Health Plan none of this proves out none of it so then why do we eat biblically kosher comes down to only one thing trust and obedience that's it we follow the biblical eating plan because as believers we trust God and we obey Him it's not to gain a physical benefit and to a degree eating as God has ordained sets us apart from others who eat anything that pleases them we eat as God says - because it pleases him verse 21 says that this Jezebel woman well she was given time to repent to stop this sinning but she consciously willfully decided she did not want to apparently somebody in the congregation had the guts to confront her and tell her what she was doing was evil thus she wasn't naive about her behavior but the leadership didn't seem to have the similar guts in order to save the other believers those believer she was infecting with her lies why wouldn't the leadership act probably the age-old reason the woman was popular she had a following the leadership didn't want to rock the boat they also likely confused love with tolerance verse 22 is what God is gonna do this is a congregation leadership did nothing first for the woman herself God's gonna make her very ill presumably with a fatal disease second of all for those in the congregation who are her followers they're gonna receive great troubles it's not defined it's just great troubles and third God will try it strike her children dead and those of the congregation who follow her are called adulterers because a believer cannot be in union with God and with evil at the same time got a pic adultery adultery is essentially breaking faith in what was vowed to be a monogamous relationship however there is a level of hope for this group of believers because while they follow her they are not so far gone that they can't be brought to their senses as Yeshua's brother James counsels my brothers if one of you wanders from the truth and then someone causes him to return you should know that whoever turns a sinner from his wandering path will save him from death and cover many sins the reference to the woman's children is not referring to her actual biological offspring hollow it could include some of them but rather it is those of the congregation who have been trained by her and they are fully committed with the way she's taught them now they have no hope their fate eternal death is already sealed let me say one more time this is God dealing with believers not with pagans now I know this seems to be terribly harsh but God is good to tell us exactly why he's being so severe with this woman and with her followers because at the end of verse 23 God says then all the Messianic communities will know I'm the one who searches hearts and minds and that I will give to each of you what your deed what your deeds deserve this is an attribute of God that we hear about all throughout the Old Testament he will dispose of many evil people for the protect for the sake of protecting the remainder of his people who have not yet fallen and the hope is also that people far and wide will fear God when they hear about what he did and that this fear will keep them from doing the same even if they have an inclination to do so back to some good news God says he recognizes not every believer in Thyatira has accepted the teachings of this Jezebel woman and have not adhered to something called the deeper teachings of the adversary so for them God says he'll play no further burden and if they can just hang on to what they know the truth is they're gonna be just fine it's not agreed among Bible commentators what the deeper teachings of the adversary are Satan I think however the considering that it was the Gnostic philosophers that had great influence at this time and we know from other documents that the Gnostics were a constant thorn in the side of believing congregations that likely these deeper things were indeed based on Gnostic philosophies Gnosticism invariably touts the human intellect as supreme and so intelligent people are said to gain greater spiritual understanding than ordinary people so what is this about placing no further burden on the believers who have held fast to the truth have not been seduced by that Jezebel woman in her false teachings apparently these believers were suffering significantly and they were under constant strain because of their faith and the determination to continue in the truth thus whatever misgivings the Lord might have had with Thyatira the huge upheaval they were about to endure when they eject this woman and her followers that was going to be enough listen when you do that Church there's a price to be paid for that it is not going to be nice and easy this congregation was about to be torn apart matters like this do not resolve themselves quickly or easily but this upheaval is a necessity for the spiritual survival of the still faithful now the ending of this letter is a little different than the others God has much more to say he says that for those of Thyatira who remains steadfast they will rule with him during the next age verse 27 is actually taken from Psalm to turn your Bibles to Psalms to turn your Bibles to Psalms to show you this this is important when we're reading revelation very important that we see where this is coming from Psalm 2 if you have a complete Jewish Bible as page 791 Psalm chapter 2 why are the nations in an uproar the people's crumbling in vain the Earth's Kings are taking positions leaders conspiring together against a denying his anointed they cry let's break their fetters let's throw off their chains he who sits in heaven laughs ad and I looks at them with derision then in his anger he rebukes them terrifies them in his fury I myself have installed my King on Zion my holy mountain I will proclaim the decree ad and I said to me you are my son today I became your father ask of me I will make the nation's your inheritance the whole wide world will be your possession you will break them with an iron rod shatter them like a clay pot therefore Kings be wise be warned you judges of the earth serve out and I with fear rejoice put with trembling kiss the son lest he be angry and you perish along the way when suddenly his anger blazes how blessed are all those who take refuge in him now this is recognized by Jews and Christians as a messianic Psalm in Christianity the belief is this is speaking about a time that we call the thousand year reign of Christ and by the way I agree with that this Psalm could not be more appropriate in the context of Revelation chapter 2 because it talks about anti leaders anti leaders who conspire against God's chosen leaders talks about people wanting to break the fetters throw off the chains of those who demand that all people live in accordance with God's law God's laws and commandments is this not what the Jezebel woman was trying to do throw off the chains and in Revelation chapter 2 then finishes up with the divine being saying that just as he has received authority from his father he will also give his father the Morningstar now from a purely worldly standpoint the Morningstar visible in the sky is the planet Venus but here the meaning is less clear in revelation 22 verse 16 Yahshua identifies himself as the morning star but says it in the context of being the Messiah reigning over God's kingdom on earth so without other evidence or a strong alternative other than allegory I think it's best to accept that meaning here to end Revelation chapter 2 so we'll begin chapter 3 and the messianic congregation at Sardis next time [Music] you

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Keywords: Father, Son, Holy Spirit, New Testament, Revelation, New Jerusalem, Seven Churches, Armageddon, Streets of Gold, John, Second Death, Coming quickly, Jerusalem, Millennium Reign, Torah Class, Tom Bradford, Bible Study

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Length: 54min 1sec (3241 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 19 2018