Revelation 2:12-28 // Compromise in the Church

halation Chapter three once you get there I'll try to kind of stall a little bit so the parents can get back but as snooze you lose Oh actually no we're still in Chapter two I didn't get to chapter three so okay let's pray for this study and we'll get into it in Jesus we we again just come before you tonight we pray that your hand had be on us Lourdes we're going through through your word we pray that you would be speaking to our hearts now Lord we just thank you for passages like this where we actually get your opinion on some of the things that are important to us as far as church goes and as far as how things are run and that kind of thing Lord we want to have hearts we want to have lives that are molded to your point of view and so Lord as we're going through your word tonight we pray that you would just speak to us and Lord that you would help us to see the world as you see it and we ask that you do this all in Jesus name Amen and I'm popping a cough drop so you're gonna hear it clicking sorry last week or actually not last week whenever we last got together we were going through Revelation chapter 2 actually verses 18 down to the end of the chapter I'm talking to the church at Thyatira and if you haven't been here the the second and third chapters of the book of Revelation are all about seven letters to seven churches and they are actually in the area of what we would call southern turkey over in the Middle East and each one of these churches is actually it's in a circular pattern in an area down to the southwest of the country of what we would call Turkey the seven letters to the seven churches seven is a number of completeness right absolutely it's not perfection because Satan has seven heads later on the book of Revelation and he's not perfect you know there's nothing perfect about Satan right there's something complete about him he's completely evil but you have seven the letter and so that lets you know that it's kind of a complete picture of the church and one of the things that's really interesting about the these chapters is that they're the way that they're lined out they match Western church history and so it starts off with the early church the what would be called the apostolic church and you see that in the letter to Ephesus the church at Ephesus and then the next step would be the persecuted church and that's the letter to Smyrna Smyrna actually comes from the word myrrh which was used as an embalming element and that's you could see the implications there as far as a church that's under persecution then Pergamus is one of the last churches that we dealt with and Pergamus means mixed marriage and after the period of persecution of the church the Roman Emperor Constantine made the church the state religion and when that happened there was a lot of compromise of began coming in to at least the the the church organization the church body in the sense of how things were run specifically from Rome and those kinds of things and so you see a lot of compromise coming in and then the last church that we got into oh actually that was the last church we did get into is pergamus the whole church with mixed marriage and so that's where we're gonna pick it up but as you go through and you look at these seven letters the first three letters don't really talk about the coming of Christ it's the last four that there are warnings about the tribulation and the coming of Jesus and so that's kind of interesting in that if these letters have anything to do with church history at all it's really interesting that there's going to be some representation of the last four churches on the planet at the time that Christ comes back and so that's kind of an interesting thing so we we started with pergamus last time so let's do it again let's start in verse 12 I'm not going to do the whole thing but just as an overview it says unto the angel of the church in Pergamos write and these things says 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 my name and did not deny my faith even in the days of in which an abyss was my faithful martyr who was killed among you where Satan dwells and in the context of that we talked about how peganum paganism basically has capitals over over periods of time and so paganism actually started in Babylon there was a period and and it looks like what happens is Satan kind of moves his capital as kingdoms become more influential and so Babylon was influential for a period of time and then it was Persia and we could see that in the Book of Daniel there's a what's called the Prince of Persia it's not just a video game there was a Prince of Persia that's spoken about in Daniel and he's an he's a fallen angel and the Bible says that Gabriel was resisted or actually wasn't Gabler Gabriel we don't know that it was him but there was an angel that was resisted by the Prince of Persia and was delayed in coming to Daniel most likely we're talking about a fallen angel that's powerful and so you know you have kind of Satan's capital moved to Persia and then after that point it begins moving west and you can you can see where Satan would be exerting his influence in different capitols the world of the world so for a long time it would have been in Rome and then after Rome there's there's Constantinople after Constantinople there would be places in Europe and you know so you can be talking about Spain you could be talking about France you could be talking about England for periods of time and it looks to me like as we go through history that that Satan just plants his flag wherever he can be more the most influential and we've talked about this before it's one of the reasons that we're supposed to be praying for the leaders that we have because probably the most influential place on the planet now is Washington DC once that place is a cesspool and part of the reason it's a cesspool is because Satan is so completely involved there so we need to be praying for our government representatives in case it goes on he says but I have a few things against you where's 14 because you have there those who hold the doctrine of Balaam who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the children of Israel to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit sexual immorality and so these guys are allowing idolatry in the church and so there again is that mixture that comes in at that period of time and so that period of time is known for all kinds of weird stuff this is where Mary worship started coming in this period of time where they started doing relics I talked last time about people who would be martyred they take their bones and they would send them out to different churches so you can go to churches in Europe today where underneath the basic will they call it the altar but underneath the stage up front there's the bones of people who have died and the reason that their bones are there is because they think that they have you know some kind of spiritual power and so all kinds of weirdness starts entering and into the church at that period of time and a lot of it has to do with the stuff that came out of idolatry verse 15 he says thus you also have those who hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans which thing I hate and what's interesting about that right there is that in the message to Ephesus the letter to Ephesus in verse 6 it says this you have that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans which I also hate so the church at Ephesus hated the deeds of the Nicolaitans the church at Pergamos has the doctrine of the Nicolaitans and so there's a there's a regression as you go down through history things that the early church would reject wholeheartedly later on the church begins accepting and allowing it in the other thing that you need to remember is that this isn't just something that's historical that's something that's kind of placed on it and I'm doing that on purpose as we're going through here because it it does line up with church history but actually those two things were happening at the very same time in the very same area so one church Ephesus was around at the same time that the Church of pergamus was around Ephesus refused to have anything with the to do with the Nicolaitans and at the same time pergamus was allowing the doctrine of the Nicolaitans and so again compromise in the church always gets you in a bad position he says repent or else I will come to you quickly and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth he has an ear hear what the Spirit has to say to the church to him him who overcomes I will give some of the hidden manna to eat and it will give him a white stone and on the stone a new name written which no one knows except him who receives it and that's where we ended up last time with this white stone and so a white stone was something that could represent guiltlessness many times if you were in court it was a ballot and so it was an indication that if you had been acquitted they would give you a white stone and that was your indication that you were free of guilt if you were not acquitted they would give you a black one and you would go to prison or whatever they were going to do to you and so that's a possibility for that it was it was also a white stone was given to victors at games it's kind of like a gold medal and then the final one that we talked about last time was the Tessera hospitalists and that was a stone that guys again would they would carve their name on it and it was usually white and they would break it they would take and break the stone and so say it's me and my friend so me and Mitch and so I love Mitch Mitch is a good guy and I want to give him this stone and it has to do with hospitality so I take a stone I break it we we put it on a necklace something along those those lines and I would give him half of it it's kind of like the locket thing that that a lot of times guys and girls do so give him half of it I would have the other half and every time we got together we would touch our stones to get no I wouldn't do that but every time every time that if he needed help from anybody in my family all he would have to show is the bro in half of his stone and it was an indication that we were tight and so not only could he use that but he could pass it on to his children and again it was an indication that there was a responsibility to hospitality a responsibility for for me to take care of him or or anybody that he sent that's a good thing to get from Jesus an indication that there's there there's a responsibility for hospitality that you're welcome in my home that I want you here not only do I want you here I want all of yours here with me and so that those are the options on that and then it talks about a new name a new name written which no one knows except him who receives it did you know you're getting a new name when you get to heaven I don't know what the new name is you know it's like it's like it's one of those things where why do I need a new name but actually in the Bible that's something that God did all the time and when when you look at the issue of names in scripture one of the one of the cool things about names is that on the high priests breastplate there was well he had a golden breastplate and there were twelve stones on the breastplate and on each one of these stones there were names engraved and they were the names of each one of the tribes of Israel so twelve stones each one has one of the names and they're all on the high priests chest close to his heart that high priest represents Jesus and it's the idea that Israel was close to his heart he knew them by name you got that kind of thing going on here's another thing as you go through the Bible God changes people's names all the time and so Abram Abraham starts out as Abram and Abram means exalted father that's a that's an interesting name given to somebody who didn't have any kids until he was over 75 years old actually he didn't have any kids until he was probably about in his 90s and so all your life you're going around with the with the name exalted father what's your name exalted father oh really do you have any kids no but God promised me a kid then you tell the story such a kind of cockeyed and goes yeah really you're kind of old to have children but God finally comes through and then God changes his name to Abraham actually even before he has a kid he changes his name to Abraham which means father of a nation Israel's original name was Jacob and so Jacob means he'll catcher you guys know this and then later on after God busted him up he changed his name and actually God specifically has this whole interchange with Jacob where Jacob's trying to fight against him and trying to get his way with the Lord and the Lord just reaches out touches him on the hip and down the guy goes and the Bible says that he was weeping holding on to his feet saying I'm not gonna let you go unless you bless me and so the Lord says to him what's your name and then Jacob has to admit who he is cuz he'll catch her means thief he'll catch her means somebody who manipulates somebody out of their stuff I'm a manipulator I'm a thief that's what his name would mean and what God does is he says to him well I'm gonna change your name now and now it's Israel and that means a prince who has power with God so one of the cool things about each one of us is we start off as one thing and we end up as another we start out start off as you know on the same level as Jacob we can be people who are manipulative and people who want to take other people's things people who only care about our own selves and nobody else and then God comes along and he changes us busts us up and he changes us and he makes us something new and then he gives you a new name and so that's most likely what's happening with that Simon was he was Simon before his name was Peter and Simon means hearing and Peter means rock josie's means Yahweh has added and his name was changed to Barnabas which means son of consolation Saul means asked of God he got his name changed to Paul which means little there's a good chance that Paul was the one who changed his own name because you know originally he had the name of the first king of Israel which even though that guy was kind of messed up it's an exalted name in in Judaism Shou is how you would say it and what what happens when he becomes a believer is he changes his name from the name of a king to a name that just means little and so that was probably him getting some humility and so we get a new name too so when we get to heaven God's got a new name for you and it's no it's probably gonna be pretty interesting what it is you know kind of cool in any case it was also during this period of time that there was a guy named Athanasius and I just wanted to tell you about that after the church started getting involved with the Roman Empire after it became the head the state religion of the Roman Empire there was an attack on the church and it came from a group of guys called Aryans they didn't believe that Jesus was the same God as God the Father they they believed that Jesus was a lesser God than the Father and so they thought that there were at least two gods the one you know they would kind of go well yeah they came out of paganism and so in paganism you have Zeus who's the head of the gods and then you have his sons and his daughters one of them might be Apollo for example and he would be a son of Zeus and he's a God - but he's a lesser god than Zeus and what these guys did was they brought that over into Christianity and they made the father the head God and they made Jesus a lesser God and so there was a guy named Athanasius who almost single-handedly upheld the deity of Christ and a really interesting period of time there was a quote about him one time where it says that the whole world is against you a colleague once exclaimed - a venetie's when it looked like the entire Roman Empire was lapsing into Arianism and unperturbed athenais shis replied then it's athenais shugendo guy was a guy whose heart stood for truth and didn't matter it didn't matter to him what was in the world in this passage you have this example of Antipas Jesus's faithful martyr who remained faithful and was killed among you where Satan dwells dwells Antipas Antipas means against all and so there's kind of a correlation in there too so that's that's that's cool stuff but in any case one of the things that we that we want to learn from the church at Pergamos is that we don't compromise we don't allow stuff from the outside to get involved in the things in the church and buy the stuff from the outside you know what I'm talking about there is not not necessarily cultural things you know when when I look at the the things that we do as Christians a lot of them I don't really care about because the Bible doesn't really talk about so I don't care a whole lot about clothing I don't care about what people wear necessarily here's another thing I don't care about I don't care about food I don't want to talk to people about food I want to talk to people about Jesus one of the weird things that happens to Christians is they get involved with the Lord and they start reading their Bible and they don't know enough about the scripture to know what's going on with food laws in the Old Testament in the New Testament and they'll read through passages and all of a sudden they glom onto some food law thing and then they'll get on the internet and they'll find a whole group of people who are in the veganism vegetarianism you know those kind of those kinds of things seventh-day Adventists for example are an example of that the glom on to that whole thing they go off into left field basically on all that stuff and when they first got saved all they could talk about was Jesus and then after that happens to them all they can talk about is food we don't want to be people like that I don't care what you eat Romans 14 makes it clear that if you want to eat only vegetables that's fine and if you want to eat meat that's fine and what we shouldn't be doing is judging each other on those things and you're going to get more and more of that as time goes on they're talking about climate change and that kind of stuff and worrying about cows flatulence right cows Tooting because it adds methane to the atmosphere guess who else adds methane to the atmosphere it's not just cows right and so every living thing on this planet every mammal on this planet adds methane to the atmosphere come on you know and and that kind of stuff and even when you're talking about carbon dioxide you know when you're talking about carbon dioxide being a greenhouse gas you have to remember that you are polluting the atmosphere right now if you want to make carbon dioxide a pollutant so stop breathing okay because you're pumping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and you you guys I've talked to you a little I don't get on you know get on that stuff a whole lot because I'm I just I I think a lot of it is just fluff I'm into science and I'm into things that are provable if I thought that the that we were having a problem with climate change and global warming and all that kind of stuff I would be all over it because I could use it in the last days Bible studies I would be all over that so I don't have a dog in this race and actually if I did have a dog in a race it would be I would be inclined towards climate change but you guys when this when this stuff first came out there was a graph called man's hockey stick and I want to go way off into the toolies with you but you need to know some of this stuff because you get influenced by the things that you watch on TV and the things that are pumped out to you all the time it was called man's hockey stick and basically it was a graph talking about warming since the you know since before the Middle Ages all the way up until the present time so basically the graph went like this it went on a gradual uplift and then all of a sudden it took a poke up and that's why it was called a hockey stick and when I first saw that graph I went this is a hoax this whole thing is a hoax because they used man's hockey stick to promote this in the UN with with all the climate change specialists who when you hear about the IPCC if you're into this stuff at all when you hear about that those guys are not scientists those guys are politicians and so most of the people on the IPCC are not cyan test and so this guy used this to promote global warming and it left out what's called the middle the the middle-aged warming period and the Little Ice Age so there was a period of time during right around the 1000 AD mark where the the whole northern hemisphere was radically warmer than what it is now have you guys heard about glaciers retreating so glaciers are retreating and they are they have been since the 1700s but the glaciers that are retreating in Greenland are exposing colonies of the Vikings the Vikings used to use they colonized Greenland and so it's just now that the glaciers are going back far enough that you can see the ruins of the colonies of the Vikings that were planting these colonies back in that in the 1000s do you get that you know what the implications are there that the glaciers weren't there so back in around 1000 AD there what there was no glacier in that place because it got covered over after the fact and so you see all this stuff all over the place and then during probably around the 1500s all the way up to the early 1800s there was what was called the maunder mini at minimum had to do with the Sun there's a little ice age and so there was a period of time where it got radically cold so we've had these fluctuations in the climate and and the the climate of the earth was radically warmer during the time of Christ and it was also radically warmer during the middle of the during the beginning of the Middle Ages and so a lot of what's being pumped out there as far as scientific consensus and that kind of stuff is just nonsense it's just nonsense at this point whenever they make a model I've been following this really closely they made a model that talked about the the fact that the ice cap on the North Pole would be gone two years ago well guess what it's not gone and actually the ice cap the extent of the of the ice cap this is one of those that I watch the extent that the north polar ice cap is actually further than it was back in the 1920s in the 1930s so it's bigger than it was in the 20s and 30s so what was even warmer back in the 20s and 30s than it is now here's another thing that happens with this just so you know whenever they're talking about the the warmest date on record so like for example they just said that 2018 was the warmest year on record and you know what the measurement there is it's a tenth of a degree you know what the there's a when you do measurements there is basically a part to that measurement where it's within the margin of error the margin of error is about a quarter of a degree so 0.25 degrees is the margin of error on any of these measurements and they have a warming trend of a tenth of a degree for the last year it's within the margin of error what that means is you can't say anything about last year because you can't tell if it was warmer or not because everything can be off by a quarter of a degree I don't know if you're getting that but you know it's just stuff that I follow and so again if I was into that stuff you know if I was if I thought that that was that stuff was real I would be all over it because I'd use it in my prophecy update there's a reason I haven't done that and it's because I'm not seeing the science what I'm seeing is propaganda and one of the things that the Bible talks about is the fact that during the last days that they're gonna be two things that are under attack one of them is meat-eating of all things eating meat and the other one is marriage meat-eating in marriage and it's really interesting that all of a sudden we have potential presidential candidates who are telling us that we need to go vegan and get rid of all the cows you know and again it's right it's right out of the Bible so there is going to be global warming the Bible says that the Sun is gonna burn people there's there's gonna be global warning what you seein is not the global warming that the Bible talks about and so just kind of interesting in any case you you have again this this whole thing with the church during that time beginning to compromise and allowing things in to the church that weren't necessarily of God and so again it's one of those things that I watch out for so like you know just what like with this whole thing with global warming if it was going along with what scripture had to say if it was something that was a confirmation of the Bible and if I knew that it was true I would use it but if it's not and I don't know that it's true and there's indication that indications that it's not I'm not going to use it and so you have to be careful about what you take from the world and try to use as something that you're you're going to promote the Word of God with because there are all these fashions and science there's all these fashions in psychology there's all these fashions in psychiatry all these fashions that people get into that within five years they're just out the door and they're saying exactly the opposite so you don't want to tie these things in with the Word of God what you want is just the Word of God you want what God has to say and if what is happening in the world goes along with it then that's great and so do you watch out for anything that's going to come in and start getting your eyes off the things that we're doing so when we come to church let me just give you the basics on what's supposed to happen here when we come to church we're not coming to church to have a church we're coming to church to spend some time with the Lord and so when we do worship we're singing songs that's our time where we can offer up a sacrifice of praise to God and that's what we're supposed to be doing anything else becomes fluff to me and so the Bible talks about people who lead worship need to play skillfully for example so you have to practice and that's a great thing but I'm not into bands I'm not in I'm not into you know people up here rocking it out and you know smoke and lights and and all that kind of stuff because I'm not here to see a you know 1970s Elton John concert or something and that's usually how Christian do it it's usually pretty hokey and so that's not what we're here for we're here to offer a sacrifice of praise to God and so I can do that with all kinds of styles of music but that's what I'm here for at that point in time then when we open the Word of God I'm not here to give you a speech I don't give speeches and so I'm not looking for applause lines I'm not doing anything like that I'm just teaching the Word of God so we can go through it and we can see what it has to say and see how it applies to her life so that I can change so that can be purified so that I can become more and more like Jesus and then there's fellowship involved too and so before the service and after sir after the service just want to encourage you to stick around and talk to people and if you have problems that you're going through in your life the Bible talks about the fact that we're supposed to be upholding one another and so you have something going on with you you need to you need to grab somebody and say hey will you pray for me you know and and don't just sit in a seat by yourself and just run out the door because the Bible talks about the fact that we need to be have a tightness with each other there needs to be a Koinonia people talk about community all the time that's the word Koinonia in Greek it means sharing something in common and we've all got at least one thing in common that's Jesus and that's what this is about that's that's what we do and when it becomes you know like a political thing where you know where you know the church gets together and it's like a corporation and then everybody has to vote and they have to have part in it they have to do this and they have to do that it just becomes this this big deal I don't think of what we're doing is a big deal in that kind of sense I just teach Bible studies it's all I do I teach Bible studies that's what I want to do I want to teach Bible studies I want to lead people to Jesus that's what I want to do and we get together you want to listen to the Bible studies praise the Lord I don't know what's wrong with you you know that it's like that's what we do that's what we get together for and everything else is just stuff it's all stuff I like the school I'm not called it I'm not called to run a school I like the school I think it's a great ministry it's a good thing but if it was a choice between doing this and doing this school we'd be doing this if there was a choice between the two if I can do both then praise the Lord I'm gonna do both that's that's a cool thing because you can bless people with that and you know there's all kinds of activities that we can get involved with that can get your eyes off the prize basically get your eyes off the basics and so I can I can be all involved in family ministry it can be all involved in the abortion issue I can be all involved in politics that can be it all involved in all these different things and that's not what I'm called to what I'm called to do is teach Bible studies lead people to the Lord and help them to grow that's what we're that's what that's what church is about and so when you come here with that in mind I'm coming to receive from the Lord and you keep your focus on that then all the other nonsense that goes around goes on around you in churches it starts becoming not a big fat deal ya know so so-and-so blew it over there yeah that's kind of par for the course we're all a bunch of jerks aren't we and it doesn't be become this big issue at that point because I'm just there to worship the Lord right and that's what we want to that's what we want to do message the theier Tyrel verse 18 it says into the angel of the church in Thyatira write these things says the Son of God who has eyes like a flame of fire and his feet like fine brass I know your works your loved service faith and your patience and as for your works the last or more than the first nevertheless I have a few things against you because you allow that woman Jezebel who calls herself a prophetess to teach and seduce my servants to commit sexual immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols and I gave her time to repent of her sexual immorality and she did not repent indeed I will cast her into a sickbed and great tribute and those who commit adultery with her excuse me into Great Tribulation there you have a mention of the Great Tribulation unless they repent of their deeds I will kill her children with death and all the churches shall know that I am he who searches the minds and hearts and I will give to each one of you according to your works now to you I say and to the rest in Thyatira as many as do not have this doctrine who have not known the depths of Satan as they say I will put on you know other burden but hold fast what you have till I come and he who overcomes and keeps my works until the end to him I will get power over the nation's he shall rule them with a rod of iron they shall be dashed to pieces like like The Potter's vessels I as I also have received from My Father and I will give him the morning star he who has an ear let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches and so you know as you as we go through here Pergamus is a church that's in compromise and Thyatira is in a is in a situation where there's a woman who calls herself a prophetess who are leading peeping people into sexual immorality and so it's gone from you know just kind of compromising with the world to being full-blown into the world and when when you look at the sections that you have here there's there's a title there's a commendation there's a condemnation there's an exhortation there's a promise to the overcomer and there there's a call to hear when as we've done with the other letters when you look at the title that Jesus gives to himself you can kind of tell where the letters gonna go and so again up to verse 18 to the Angel of the church in Thyatira and he's talking to the pastor there these things says the son of God so he's the one who's the son of God who has the eyes like a flame of fire so that whole thing with Jesus's eyes flaming what's that represent that represents judgment it represents Jesus is ticked off that's what when you see somebody with flaming eyes it's not good you need to duck you know that it's that kind of thing and so Jesus has flaming eyes towards these guys and it's feet like fine brass feet like fine brass again is that brass is a symbol of judgment it's something that will last through the fire and so we know that Jesus isn't to judgment when he's when he's looking at this this stuff he's angry about what's going on the they have a commendation he commends the things that they're doing I know your works your love your service your faith and your patience and as for your works to last or more than the first and so this is a church that's working now as far as history goes if Pergamus is the church under the under the roman emperors when the church became you know kind of the kind of a state Church in the Roman Empire then Thyatira would correspond to the church during the Middle Ages which is the Roman Catholic Church and a lot of times what what Protestants do is they look at the Roman Catholic Church and they go there's nothing good about him there's nothing good about them they're all a bunch of false prophets are all a bunch of you know doctrinal idiots you know everything that they do is wrong and rotten and that kind of stuff and if this corresponds to the Roman Catholic Church Jesus doesn't do that with them what Jesus does with them he talked as he talks about their works and one of the things that you have with the Roman Catholic Church and I'm just letting you know right off the bat I got some problems with their doctrine and actually Jesus does too if this corresponds to it I got some problems with their doctrine but as far as what they do there's there's some good things that have gone on in the Roman Catholic Church you have to remember that every Protestant on the planet came out of that came out of the Roman Catholic Church at least their churches did at the very beginning Martin beginning Martin Luther was a Roman Catholic and he started the Protestant movement which the term came from we were protesting the doctrines of the Roman Church and what they wanted to do was reform the church the church didn't want to be reformed and so then they split off and that's how the Protestant Reformation took place they all started off as Roman Catholics though and so the Jesus says to this church I know your works I know your love I know your service I know your faith and your patience and as for your works the last or more than the first and you go through and you look at things that have happened on the earth because of Roman Catholicism and again I know I know the record of some of the rotten things that have happened but you look at what happened during the Middle Ages with the Roman Catholic Church do you realize that civilization was saved by the Roman Catholic Church it's like literally these these guys when the Roman Empire was falling apart you had monks and you had scribes in the Roman Catholic Church that went out and collected every document that they could find from the civilized areas of the world and they preserve those thing and they transmitted them on to future generations the reason that we know anything about ancient times is because of Roman Catholic monks who are sitting in a scriptorium copying these things down and it includes Plato and it includes Socrates it includes all the philosophers of Greece all that stuff all the all that ancient stuff and then a lot of the things that we know about the early church as far as the 2nd and the 3rd century these guys copied these things down and so the the seat of learning during the Middle Ages was the Roman Catholic Church if you wanted your kid to be literate you had to send him to a Catholic school so they could learn about the Lord so that they could learn about the Bible so they could learn about civilization so that they could learn those things they had works they had hospitals and so there's lots of hospitals around the planet that were started by the Roman Catholic Church and when you think of mother Teresa for example she's really famous over in India works there's works left and right that these people are doing and they're doing them selflessly it's a really great thing and so Jesus doesn't look at any church and just say you know and just write them off because they don't have everything all squared away if there's something to commend in a person's life in a church's life Jesus is going to commend those things that's what he does with this now again that's what the premise that were what we're talking about is historical here it looks like it fits but that's again the premise and so he talks about their works and again that's a commendation but then there's the condemnation where Jesus starts getting on me says nevertheless I have a few things against you verse 20 because you allow that woman Jezebel who calls herself a prophetess to teach and seduce my servants to commit sexual immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols ok in verse 18 it says to the angel of the church in Thyatira you remember what angel means ya means messenger so it's the messenger of the church it could be talking about an angel but Jesus doesn't go around rebuking angels unless their fallen okay and so it's probably not talking about a Gooding and in that case you would translate it messenger and the messenger of the church messenger of Calvary Chapel tri-cities would be me so he's talking to the pastor of the church and he when he's talking to the pastor of church this is a letter that's written to him it's not written to the church it's written to the messenger of the church church gets to know about it but it's written to the messenger and he says I have a few things against you messenger of the church because you allowed that woman Jezebel who calls herself a prophetess to teach and seduce my servants to commit sexual immorality you know the word woman in Greek is interchangeable with the word for wife do you know that so Guney in Greek is a word that means woman and depending on the context it also means wife and so there's a good chance that the met that the that the woman that's being spoken about is the wife of the pastor and she's causing all these problems I've had I've been involved in ministries and I've seen ministries over the years where you have a guy who's pretty squared away in his love for the Lord and his doctrinal positions and that kind that kind of thing and his wife is just a piece of work and she can wreck the church obviously you have guys who can wreck the church themselves but it's a sad thing when you have a guy who's pretty squared away but his wife wants to go and wreck the church and that's what's happening in this situation she is causing people to stumble because of her lifestyle and apparently you got a pastor who's not willing to stop it make it stop and he should have been and Jesus is rebuking this guy so whether she's his wife or she's just some woman in the fellowship either way the messenger of the church should be the one who's taking care of that you know pastors are called to be pastors the word pastor it literally comes from the Greek word for Shepherd and Shepherds are supposed to watch sheep and they're supposed to get rid of wolves is what suppose that's supposed to be happening I'm going to show Britt doesn't do that it causes all kinds of all kinds of problems Jezebel is really interesting you got you guys know about Jezebel she's out of the Old Testament she's like the Wicked Queen you know of Israel so every wicked woman that you see in Disney movies and and fairy tales and all that stuff they're all probably styled after Jezebel this lady was a piece of work she was from Lebanon and the king of Israel had a political marriage with her and when the his name was Ahab when she came into the kingdom she brought all kinds of junk with her she was a she was a bail worshiper so when she came into the Kingdom of Israel she promoted bail worship and she had the prophets of the Lord killed and it's during the time of Elijah that this stuff was going on at at one point Elijah's depressing he's hanging out in the cave and he tells God God comes to him and speaks to him and says Elijah why are you here and he says you know Jezebel has killed off all the all the prophets of God and I'm the only one left and God says I still have eight thousand men that haven't bowed their knee to bail get up get out let's go and and tells him to move on but she was notorious for just being a butcher she was notorious for just being wicked and she had an end in fact there's one story where King Ahab once a guy named Namath's vineyard so he sees a vineyard he wants it he goes to Namath and he says hey I want to buy your vineyard from you and Namath says you know God forbid that I would give you my vineyard I would never get it back because what they did was a least amount for 50 years that was the that was the law in the Old Testament you never you never sold anything outright as far as your land you leased it out for 50 years and then it came back to the family and Namath knew that a hat wouldn't keep that biblical law and so as soon as he allowed him to have the vineyard it would be gone and it would never be in his inheritance to his children ever again and so I said I don't want to sell the vineyard and so the Bible says that Ahab went into his palace and he got in his bed and he turned his face towards the wall and he pouted and Jezebel came in and said are you King the king of Israel or not get up she tells him to get up and she goes out and she accuses maybethe of being a being a an idol worshiper and she incites the people in her city to stone him to death and then she comes and gives me both or gives a hab Navis vineyard and because of that prophet of God came up to a happened Jezebel and told a hab that the dogs are gonna lick up your blood and and then he turns to Jezebel and says that dogs are gonna eat you and that's exactly what happened to the lady she was a wicked lady the way she died takes place in in 2nd Kings in chapter 9 it says now it happened when joram saw Jehu that he said is it peace Jehu so he answered what peace as long as the harlotries of your mother Jezebel and her witchcraft are so many and what ends up happening is Jay who goes into the city and when he takes over the city he kills joram which is the the son of Jezebel and when he goes into the city he calls out to the men who were in the palace and says whose for me and two guys in Jezebel's room said we are and he says throw her out the window and so they picked her up and threw her out the window he marched into the palace and decided to have lunch and so they brought in a meal and they sat down and ate and ate and at the end of the meal he turns to some of the servants and he says you know what she's a king's daughter go get her body and bury her and when they went out they couldn't find anything except for her hands I think in her feet - and everything else had been eaten by the docs just like the Bible says and it was eaten in the place where she'd had namath put to death so God didn't appreciate the lady and he gave her time to repent but she didn't and so what ends up happening is she gets judged and it looks like what what Jesus is doing in this passage is comparing the pastor's wife to that lady because her name probably wasn't Jezebel you know and so he's comparing the pastor's wife to that lady if it is the pastor's wife like I was saying before so Jezebel led the people of Israel into sexual immorality whenever you got into paganism sexual immorality was part of paganism and so that went on and you still have paganism during this time and this lady is doing the same kinds of things again look at verse 20 she says he or Jesus says she calls herself a prophetess she teaches and seduces my servants to commit sexual immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols I gave her time to repent of her sexual immorality and she did not repent indeed I will cast her into a sickbed and those who commit adultery with her into Great Tribulation unless they repent of their deeds and one of the things that that you have and this is where when we're talking about a historical issue one of the things that you that you have with the Roman Catholic Church is Mary worship and there's a whole issue of idolatry in Catholicism right I had a friend of mine who was Jewish and he wasn't a Christian at the time and he got invited to church with a friend of his he walked into the church he's a Jewish guy he's a Jewish kid he walked into a Roman Catholic Church and you know what they have in there her statues all up along the side there's a big statue of Jesus hanging on the cross up in front and the people are bowing down before statues of Mary with with candles all around it and all of that kind of stuff and he walked in there and he was freaked out because all these people are bowing down to graven images and the first commandment in the Old Testament and the Ten Commandments is I'm the Lord your God you shall have no other gods before me and the second one is no graven images no graven images and what the Roman Catholic Church did was they took out the second commandment they left it out of the ten commandments and they took the 10th commandment which is thou shalt not covet and they divided it up into two parts and so most Catholic kids don't know that the second commandment his thou shalt have no graven images but the Jews know that and so he walks in and he immediately you know thinks that this is nothing but pagan it's one of the reasons that the Roman Catholic Church has has had no ability to reach out to the Jewish to the Jewish people because they're involved in paganism you know you'll notice in the building here we don't have any symbols up you know we used to have a dove up but the reason I always had a dub up is because nobody knows what the dove is you know they walk in they go it's like Texas are you guys from Texas what is that and it was the old Calvary dove and it's a symbol of the Holy Spirit coming down at the time that Jesus was baptized but we don't have any symbols up and the reason is because we need to have a focus on a relationship with God not just the symbols and there's a there's a cross on the back of the church I'm not adverse to crosses I you know I I don't I don't care about that you know the cross is a good thing but the cross on the back of the church is not the cross it's not any cross that gets put up on a church that's not the cross the cross is the cross that Jesus died on and so you know it's a cross it actually the way that we use crosses a lot of times we use them as as symbols of our love for Jesus and and that kind of thing and I understand that you know the when I first got saved first thing I did the day after I got saved was I went to the swap meet and that got me a cross and I put it you know it's on a little leather you know thong you know what do you call him like a leather leather thong thing I don't want to say Tommy because it doesn't have the same meaning if it did when I was a kid you know like a leather string basically with some beads on it was a hippie thing a little clay cross and so I don't know where that is I always loved that thing but I got it and you know I started wearing around because I'm a Christian now right and and that kind of thing and so I didn't know a lot about Christianity but I knew the Christians wore crosses so I figured that's what was up you went across you know what wearing a cross is like it's like taking a little gas chamber and putting it on a string and tie it around your neck a little electric chair and tying it around your neck taking a little noose and tying it around your neck that's what the cross was it was a place where people died and so you know it's it's kind of interesting how the symbolism has changed over the time when we're thinking about the cross we're thinking about the cross that Jesus died on and we're thinking about the fact that that's where sin was paid for we're thinking about the fact that that's where my way into heaven was made that's what we're thinking of when we're thinking of the cross and so you know a cross is not something that keeps away vampires you know across is something that represents the death of Christ and not only the death of Christ but his resurrection that's why it's empty and so it's not a cross with Jesus on it it's a cross with Jesus off it and Jesus has been raised from the dead and so again you have you have that whole thing so this is a lady who's leading these guys into paganism and it's again one of the things that happened during the Middle Ages with a church a lot of paganism started coming into the church and all kinds of arenas including ancestor worship including hero worship that's that's what it is when you're worshiping Saints here's here's another thing about this let me let me just address this really quick because I don't want to just pick on people when when the Roman Catholics started doing the whole thing with Mary worship there was a there was a doctrinal issue that was involved it had to do with what they called Mary and there was a whole issue during the basically the 400s where where when they were writing up documents what title they should give Mary should we give Mary the mother the title the mother of God or should we give her the title the mother of Christ and who is God right and there was a big theological argument about it and so when you're talking about the fourth in the in the fifth centuries a lot of times people like to take the Roman Catholic Church and say that it's always been the same it's not always been the same they were having arguments about this stuff and later on in the next century they were having arguments about idols in church there was a whole period of time where the churches went through and tore down anything that had a statue any any actually they took they tore down any images and this was after the the the state adopt adaptation or adoption of the Roman Catholic Church so there was a there was a lot of fights that were going on during that time and one of the fights was has to do had to do with what you called Mary and there were there were church pastors who said we do not want to call her the mother of God because she's the mother of Jesus who is God and if you call her the mother of God this is not going to go good places and that's basically what they said so we need to keep it totally biblical we need to keep it totally scriptural she did not bear God she didn't bring God into existence she's not the mother of God and so that was the argument yeah from on the other side of the argument is we want to exalt Christ and it was right after people had been calling Jesus a lesser God and so we want to exalt Christ we want to exalt the deity of Christ and so the title that want that one out was Mary the mother of God and it have to didn't have to do with Mary's position it had to do with Jesus's position that he was God well we know what happened with that and what happened with that was because that name was given to Mary she became exalted in ways that the Bible doesn't recommend and so she started being you know being exalted in the in the sense that if she's the mother of God then you know everybody listens to their mom and so she'll listen to you know Jesus will listen to her and so that's basically I'm simplifying everything's I'm dumb you know I'm not dumbing it down for you but I'm just trying to make it as simple as I as I can but that's basically where this whole praying to Mary thing came from because you know Jesus is a busy guy and people still think this you know Jesus is a big busy guy he's got lots of things to do and so you know he may not notice me and so if I want to get to Jesus I need to go through his mom and guys would teach this stuff as if Jesus doesn't care about you and Jesus doesn't no ever thing Jesus can't see you it's the same thing with the Father now the father is way too busy and I've had conversations with Roman Catholics Roman Catholics who knew their doctrine who said the father is too busy the sons too busy if I go to the mother the mother can the intercede for me and if I can't get to the mother then I can go through Saint Stephen or I can go through Saint Mark where I can go through Saint whoever and they'll intercede to Mary for me and and that kind of thing and we're going through one person after another person trying to get through the through the bureaucracy of heaven to get to God and what the Bible teaches is that I can go straight to the Lord I'm a priest of God every single one of us are priests and we go straight to the Lord and God will listen to us he'll hear us so I'm not the priest and you're the lady we're all priests and I'm the teacher you know the messenger of the church is what we could do and so you can see how things over the years they start out with a good intent and over the years what happens is they get twisted and they become something that the guys who started them off never never wanted them to be the guys who were who were advocating for Mary the mother of God again this is what I'm telling you they weren't advocating for Mary to be exalted they were advocating for Jesus to be exalted as God that's what they were doing and what it did what happened with with it was it was unscriptural Mary's never called the mother of God in the Bible it was unscriptural and it ended up were those kinds of things always end up with people tweaking them and taking the wrong message from what's being done there and so you have lots of idolatry in the Roman Catholic Church and it's something that's condemned in Scripture what we're supposed to be doing is following Jesus and again not to take away from what Jesus has said about these guys and you don't want to do that either in any case he goes on and he and he warns them and he says to them that there's going to be judgment coming there's gonna be judgment coming and he talks about the great tribulation of this passage I gave her time to repent verse 21 indeed I will cast her into a sight the sickbed verse 22 and those who commit adultery with her into Great Tribulation unless they repent of their and so the last four letters look to the end it's the closing of the church's testimony and so Thyatira mentions the Great Tribulation and warns of it in Sardis there's a warning that Jesus is going to come like a thief in Philadelphia there's a promise that that church will escape the hour that's going to come to try the world and Laodicea is unrecoverable and they're promised that they're gonna be vomited out and that their testimony is gonna end and so you have that from there he goes on in verse 23 and he says I will kill her children with death and all the churches shall know that I am he who searches the minds and hearts and I will give to each one of you according to your works any time that God says I'm going to give you according to your works it is not a good thing that's not a good thing you want the grace of God I want the unmerited favor of God where he's giving me good things that I don't deserve I don't want to be rewarded according to my works in fact in Revelation chapter 20 verse 12 everybody who goes to hell in that passage it says they're rewarded according to their works and so there's a book that's open and one of the books is the book of life they're not found in it and the other book that's opened is a book recording what they've done with their lives and they're rewarded according to their works and they end up in the pit you don't want that and so he says verse 24 now to you I say and to the rest in Thyatira as many as do not have this doctrine who have not known the depths of Satan as they say I will put on you no other burden this is another one to think one of the things that you need to keep in mind again premise is this is historical and we're talking about the Roman Catholic Church not everybody in the Roman Catholic Church is a non-christian and so Jesus can reach people and reach Jesus can reach people in the Roman Catholic Church in fact when we first started Calvary here we were over on 3rd and Washington and there was a lady who was coming to our fellowship who got saved and she was Roman Catholic and she would come to every night service that we had and so we were meeting on Thursday nights and we were meeting on Sunday night she was faithfully there every single time and she would come up to me afterwards and we would talk and there were a lot of times when she would ask could be asking me questions about doctrinal issues and that kind of thing and she didn't worship Mary she you know she loved the Lord and she was walking with Jesus but she was still involved in the Roman Catholic Church you know how she was I'm outing her I think I'm safe because I don't think oh she's not in town anymore but she went to st. Joe's and she ran the kids catechism classes and what she did was she evangelized all the kids in the catechism classes she told them about Jesus told them about the fact that they needed to have Jesus as their Lord and Savior that they needed to accept him into her life she was she was getting kids saved there left and right and I was like praise God it was a very cool thing that was going on and you know she was really really fruitful her name was nina and so again protestant churches came out of the roman catholic church and again I know I know all the junk that's in the Roman Catholic Church and I would never recommend the Roman Catholic Church as a place to go to hear the word of God and understand things but I have been to Roman Catholic services where all the people in the room had no idea what they were saying and the things that they were saying were very cool because the liturgies that they read and I know what they're doing they stand up they read it sit down you know kneel stand up sit down kneel and they're just going through a whole litany of things and they're not paying attention to what's said but you come in from the outside as a Christian and you walk into that place and you hear the things that are being read and the things that are being said and they were written down by people who love Jesus it's just that you know they just turned it into a ritual and now it means nothing but the people who wrote him love Jesus some of the some of the coolest hymns that I know were written by guys in the Middle Ages who loved Jesus Oh sacred head now wounded with grief and shame weighed down now score flees surrounded with thorns thine only crowned how pale thou art with anguish with sore abuse and scorn how death that visit your face languish which was once was bright as warned what language can I borrow to thank thee dearest friend for this thy dying sorrow they pity without end o Lord be mine forever and should I fainting be Lord let me never never outlive my love for thee is that cool that's written during the 1000 my row McHale a guy who loved Jesus and you could tell right and so lots of stuff in the Roman Catholic Church that's junk but there are people as there was in Thyatira who loved the Lord verse 25 the holdfast what you have till I come and you overcomes and keeps my works until the end to him I will get power over the nation's this is another one of those things that that really lines up really well with the whole historical thing because have you guys heard of Christendom the term Christendom that's a Roman Catholic term and it came from from doctrines that came from Augustine where Augustine basically taught that what the church was going to do was going to it was going to be empowered more and more over time and bring more and more people into the fold of Christianity and there was going to be a Christian Kingdom on the earth that's where you get the idea of Christendom and so there was going to be a Christian Kingdom on the earth that the earth that basically the church was going to present to Jesus and so the whole idea of amillennialism came from a guy named Augustine and it was the idea that the church was going to rule the planet before Christ came back well we know that's not what the Bible says what the Bible says is that the planet is going to be turning away from Christ in the end times there's going to be a major apostasy and there's going to be some real problems to the point where Christians and Jews are going to be persecuted but the whole idea of Christendom is something that's that's thoroughly Catholic and so Jesus and talking to these guys he says hold fast what you have till I come and he who overcomes and keeps my works until the end to him I will give power over the nation's you're not gonna get power over the nation's on your own I'm gonna be the one who gives you power over the nation's you're not going to exert power over the and then present them to me I'm the one who's gonna be doing that and then he says he shall rule them with a rod of iron and they shall be dashed to pieces like The Potter's vessels that's a quote from Psalm 2 where it talks about Jesus coming as the king who rules rules over all the earth and he says as I also have received from my father and so again Jesus is the one who presents the kingdom to the church not vice-versa and then he says finally he says and I will give him the morning star and Jesus is called the bright morning star and so again what this church needs is a healthy dose of Jesus I'll give you the morning star I'll give you myself is is what Jesus says there he goes on and he says he who has an ear let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches so things that we need to listen to so pergamus is a church and compromise diet IRA is a church that's gone full bore in into worldliness and there are warnings in both of those things so again when I when I look at the things that I'm going to include in my life as a Christian I need to make sure that they are not conflicting with what the Bible has to say if they're not conflicting with what the Bible has to say then it's okay and so I can wear a sweatshirt because the Bible doesn't say anything about what I'm supposed to be wearing right and I can I can buzz my head because the Bible doesn't say anything about my haircuts that kind of thing and I understand through passages that that deal with certain things but you know basically what God does is he looks on the inside he looks on the heart and doesn't look at the outward appearance and so although you know I don't want to I don't want to just look like a bum my outward appearance is not a thing that I'm really all that worried about I'm not that worried about it with people coming in either because Jesus reached out to people who were slaves Jesus Pete reached out to people who were fishermen Jesus reached out to people who were poor and people people who were pitiful and the early church was almost nothing but that group of people and you can't demand a dress code from those kinds of people obviously and you have that in Scripture and there's other things that we need to again watch out for and so if something that the Bible has to say then I'm all behind it but if the Bible doesn't say anything about it it's just a rule that's tacked on just for somebody to tack on a rule and we don't want to live that way that's where you get into compromise that's where you start messing around with the Word of God and get yourself into all kinds of goofy things so let's end it right there I thought I was gonna get further but you know how that goes we'll finish it up next week actually we'll finish up chapter three next week so let's pray and that good stuff you know father thanks for your love thanks for your work in our hearts god I know that sometimes we allow things to creep in that get in the way of our relationship with you and it's not good Lord and we don't want to be like this church whether we're talking about the church as a whole or whether we're talking about us as individuals we don't want to allow things to creep in that that separate us from you you know put put something in between us and you we don't want to allow things that creep in that turn our hearts away from you in the in the sense of getting getting our focus on something else besides you Jesus when we all first got safe all we had on our lips was our love for you and God we just pray that throughout our lives that would be the main thing on our lips there wouldn't be any other issues that would be the in the forefront of what we have to share except for the fact that we're in love with you and you're in love with us and all the rest of the stuff is secondary god help us to be focused on our walk with you lord I thank you for these people thank you for the hearts that love you who love your word want to hear it Lord and I just pray that you bless them as they go their way bless their families Lord bless their bless their work Lord just bless them in all the places that they're going and make them a good testimony of who you are Lord we ask that you do this all in Jesus name Amen

Channel: Calvary Chapel Tri-Cities

Views: 5,385

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Keywords: The End of the World in the bible, Truth, Jesus' Return, The rapture, the second coming, The book of Revelation, The Revelation Of Jesus Christ, The last book in the bible, The Bible, Calvary Chapel Tri-Cities, Steve Whinery, Gosphel, God, Biblical Prophecy, The End Times, End Of The World, The Millennial Kingdom, Revelation's meaning, Jesus

Id: ImMOY3jODsE

Length: 68min 21sec (4101 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 04 2019