Hope From the Word

Guest (Male): We begin today's hope from the word broadcast with this from pastor Bill Lubeck in.

Bill Luebkemann: There are people here in Pergamum compromising their faith. There are people here who are living for the Lord part time, maybe on Sundays and Wednesday nights or something, maybe just a little bit, but not all the way. They were compromising their faith. They were living for the Lord part of the time.

Bill Luebkemann: And they were living the way they wanted to live part of the time. They wanted to have their cake and eat it too. And you know, it's time to choose. You have to choose who you're going to serve. Are you going to serve the Lord of heaven or the ways of this world? As Joshua said, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. That decision needs to be made.

Guest (Male): The city of Pergamum was a center of sophistication and high class. The wealthy flocked to the city for commerce, even taking up residence. Materialistically, Pergamum was doing very well. But how were they doing spiritually? This is hope from the word, a ministry of Calvary Chapel of Marlton. We continue today with our look at what Jesus had to say to the church at Pergamum in Revelation 2. As we do, listen for lessons we can apply to our own lives. Here's our pastor and teacher Bill Lubeck in.

Bill Luebkemann: These people were trying to have their cake and eat it too by serving the Lord part time and the rest of the time not doing that. And you know, it's time to choose. You have to choose who you're going to serve. Are you going to serve the Lord of heaven or the ways of this world? As Joshua said, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. That decision needs to be made. I know where you live, the Lord says in some translations. I know your works and I know where you dwell. Where Satan has his throne.

Yet, you remain true to my name. You did not renounce your faith in me even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, who was put to death in your city where Satan lives. I know your works, he says. And you know, their works, they may have been doing good things for the Lord. Maybe they were teaching Sunday school and maybe they were telling other people about him and maybe they were helping the poor and they had some good deeds and the Lord knew about that. But he also knew where they live and he says, isn't this interesting?

I know where you live where Satan has his throne. There's a lot of opinions on why what he means by that. Most of them center around the fact that there's so much idol worship in this town. Some people say, well, it was because the the temple of Zeus was up on the up on the hill and everybody could see it for 50 miles. That was what they meant by Satan's throne. I think just good enough to realize how much idolatry there was there. And there must have been a happy place for Satan to enjoy. You know, some people say Satan has his throne in hell, but there's no thrones in hell.

Hell, the lake of fire, there's no accommodations or anything. You get thrown in there and that's it. It's interesting though the describing here, I think probably metaphorically that this that Satan's throne is there. In other words, this is a place where Satan is really happy about what's going on. He's really leading the church astray and we're going to find out more about that in a few minutes. I know where you live, where Satan has his throne. Yet, yet you remain true to my name. You did not renounce your faith in me. These people were steadfast in their belief even in spite of increasing persecution.

And it was a hard place for a believer to live. Um yet they were firm in their faith and if if you know, that's why I gave you that whole description about what Pergamum was like. And I have some pictures here. I'll leave them up here. I have pictures of the temples and the theater and everything, what they look like now. There's not much there, you know, some ruins, but you can see it. A hard place to live and yet in all of that, they did not renounce their faith. And notice this, Jesus refers to it as your faith in me.

You did not renounce your faith in me. They didn't have faith in themselves, you know. They weren't going to some psycho nut who was telling them to trust in yourself and you have the power within and you know, if only you'll believe in yourself, you can you can achieve everything you want. You know, it's all within you. No, none of that stuff. They had faith in him. We need to make sure that we have our faith grounded in him because he's the only name under heaven by which a man can be saved or a woman too.

You know, when it says man, it means mankind, right? We don't need to write rewrite the whole Bible to make that clear. We need to be sure our faith is grounded in him. There is no other name by which you can be saved, no other God. And these folks didn't even deny the Lord in the face of such opposition as someone being martyred for their faith killed. And who knows if there weren't more martyrs here. He mentions the one. You did not renounce your faith in me even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, who was put to death in your city where Satan lives.

The word for martyr here is interesting in the Greek. It's a classical Greek word martys. And really what it means is witness. And it's been used here in the New Testament to mean martyr as one who died for their faith, but I think it's interesting that the word's original meaning was witness because what a witness is when you're not willing to compromise your faith, what a witness it is. When you're not willing to compromise your faith to the point of going being fed to the lions or chained to a pole and tied to a pole and burned at the stake or or whatever.

What a witness it is when someone's willing to lay it all down on the line for the Lord. Consider this guy Antipas. His name means against all. Against all. And that's the way it feels sometimes in America, I think as a Christian in some circle. You watch the news, you see what's going on. Sometimes you wonder, am I the only one here that has it right? Is there something wrong with me? Cuz all these other people, what they're saying is baloney. It may sometimes seem like the whole world is against us and we are against them.

And if you ever feel that way, you need to know you're not the only one and you are the first one and you're not the last one that feels that way. There were many before you and this guy was one of them. Many believers have felt that way before. This guy was pretty obscure. In fact, he was so obscure, nobody knows anything about him. His name's not recorded anywhere else, anywhere in the Bible, in any other book. This guy is not mentioned anywhere in history except here in this verse. That's it. So what we know about this guy is what's here.

You know, that's it. We don't know a thing about what happened to him before, you know, how the events led up to him being killed as a martyr. We don't know. We only know that he was killed for his faith. We don't know exactly what happened. We don't know anything about his parents. We don't know his genealogy. We don't know his upbringing. We don't know what he did for a living, what kind of a house he had, if he was married or had children or any of that stuff. This guy is total obscurity here. We just know his name against all.

And he was standing against the system of the world. And he paid the ultimate price for that. We know that he stood up for his faith. And we know that the Lord saw fit to mention it here in the scriptures. There's a lesson here in obscurity. And I think it's simply this, no matter who you are, no matter how many people you have an influence on, if you minister in some small town or in a big city or in a poor country, it doesn't matter. The Lord sees what you're doing. You may think, who am I?

I'm not having any impact. I only led one person to the Lord in my life. I'm not even doing a great job of that or whatever. I have this problem or that problem. You know, Billy Graham, look at him. He's preached to 100 million people. Who am I? What can I do for the Lord? Look, here's a guy lived in complete obscurity. And he's mentioned here in the Bible. Billy Graham's not mentioned. The Lord knows your heart. He knows your faith. He knows the truth about who you are and what you've done, every one of us.

And your reward is based on how well you have follow, how well you follow what he's given you to do. Don't ever feel you're a nobody because in God's eyes we're all equally important. He has no favorites. We matter to him. We're important to him. He died for us, each and every one of us, you, you, you, you and you and all of you. This guy here Antipas lived in obscurity, know nothing about him, but God called him my faithful witness. I know that he would be able to say that about every one of us.

This guy was put to death in this city for what he believed in, the city where Satan lives. Look, verse 14. Nevertheless, look he's been complimentary now. Okay, he knows about the city. He knows how bad things are. He knows how they remain true to his name. He knows they didn't renounce their faith even to the point of death. He You know, these are all good things. Now come the bad things. And these seven churches here, I think around five of them have some bad things they have to deal with. And the Lord says in verse 14, nevertheless, I have a few things against you.

There is a few things you're doing wrong here. You need to improve your act, guys. You have people there who hold to the teaching of Balaam who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin by eating food sacrificed to idols and by committing sexual immorality. Balaam was an example of a false teacher. In many ways, he was a lot like a politician today. I love to slaughter the politicians. So look, if you want to look in numbers, look you might want to read this this afternoon sometime to fill yourself in, but we'll take a quick look at it.

And numbers 22 through 25. No, we're not going to read all three chapters, but here there's what was going on. The Israelites were out in the desert, right? They were traveling around the desert for the 40 years. At this particular point in time, they had conquered several other kings out there. And the king of Moab was really worried. So you have the Israelites in the desert, you have the Moabites and the king of Moab seeing these Israelites going around conquering everybody and he's scared to death that he's going to get conquered. Now his name is Balak, b a l a k.

I wish the Lord would have used names that didn't sound so similar here cuz it makes it so confusing. But his name was Balak, the king of the Moabites. So here you have the Israelites, here you have the Moabites with king Balak. And now you have this guy Balaam who's some other guy. He's not a Moabite, he's not an Israelite, he's just some other guy. Okay, and he's he's got some kind of connection to to to God. He's a prophet of some sort. And for the real God, he's a prophet for the real God. And it says here in chapter 22 of numbers, verse 1, then the Israelites traveled to the plains of Moab and camped along the Jordan across from Jericho.

Now the Moabites were terrified of this, I might add. In verse 2, now Balak, son of Zippor, saw all that Israel had done to the Amorites and Moab was terrified because there were so many people. Indeed, Moab was filled with dread because of the Israelites. The Moabites said to the elders of Midian, this horde is going to lick up everything around us as an ox licks up the grass of the field. So Balak, son of Zippor, who was king of Moab at the time, sent messengers to summon Balaam, son of Beor, who was at Pethor near the river in his native land.

Now this is what Balak said to him. A people has come out of Egypt. They cover the face of the land and have settled next to me. Now come and put a curse on these people because they are too powerful for me. Perhaps now I will be able to defeat them and drive them out of the country. For I know that those you bless are blessed and those you curse are cursed. So here we have the Israelites, we have the Moabites and the king of Moab knows this guy Balaam is a prophet and has some kind of connection to God, some kind of hotline, and he sends messengers to him.

And he says, I'm scared to death of these people over here. They're mopping up everything in sight and they're going to come through and plow us right down. And I know when you bless people, they're blessed. And when you curse them, they're cursed. And I want you to come here and I want you to curse these people. And so they go and give Balaam this message here and Balaam says, well, look, spend the night here and I'll bring you back an answer tomorrow. I'll find out what the Lord wants me to do. So the Moabite people stayed with him.

God came to Balaam and asked, who are these men with you? Balaam said to God, Balak, son of Zippor, king of Moab, sent me this message. And he repeats the message to God. And God said to Balaam, do not go with them and don't put a curse on these people because they are blessed. So Balaam got up the next day and told the messengers, you know, I can't go with you. I can't put a curse on them. I checked in with God. He said they're blessed. And they went back and told the king that and well, he was very unhappy about that.

He sends him back another message, the king does. This is what Balak, son of Zippor, says, do not let anything keep you from coming to me because I will reward you handsomely and do whatever you say. Come and put a curse on these people for me. So the the king gets the word, I won't come. The king sends back and says, look, don't you have to come. I really need you. Any price you want, anything you need, anything, I'll give you anything. I need you to come. And he goes and they go back. The messengers go back and give this message to Balaam.

Hey, the king says he really needs you. He'll give you anything you want. You just name your price. He'll do it. And what does Balaam do? He says, well, let me go check in with God again. I'm going to paraphrase here to go faster. He I'm going to check in with God again. Now he already checked in with God. God already told him, don't go. But why is he got to do it again? The guy's confused. And so he really wants to go because he's thinking, well, anything I want, you know, I can get some money here, get maybe I can get a few wives, maybe I get a house, some possessions.

He he wants to do this. You have to see this guy here. Balaam wants to go. He wants the power, the prestige, the money that these people are offering. He wants to be able to put a curse on these people. And God tells him the second time to go with him. You can go with him, but only do what I tell you to do. Now that sounds contradictory. And we'll talk about that some other time, but basically he was going to go anyway. So God said, okay, go. And this is the famous story where the donkey stops and talks to him and cuz the donkey knows what he's going to do.

God knows what he is going to do. Well, we'll skip over that part. And he gets there and he's with the king and the king says they go to some mountaintop and they look at the people and the king says, you know, curse these people. And what comes out of the guy's mouth instead is blessing, blessing Israel. And the king says, what are you doing? I brought you here to curse him, not to bless him. Well, they go to the top of a different mountain. And he's going to curse him and instead what comes out of his mouth is blessing.

He wants to curse him cuz he wants to get paid for cursing them. But instead every time he opens his mouth, the Lord speaks through him three times. And the fourth time he actually tells them what's going to happen to them, the Moabites. That you're the ones that are going to get chopped down. He actually does speak forth God's word, but it's not because he wants to. And every time the king gets progressively more and more mad at him. And finally at the end, Balaam got up and returned home and Balak went his own way.

Balak never got Balaam to curse the people. But here's what happened next. Here's the interesting part in chapter 25 of numbers. While Israel was staying in Shittim, the men began to indulge in sexual immorality with Moabite women, who invited them to the sacrifices of their gods. So what happened was the Moabite women started coming over and and hanging out with the Israelite guys. Hey baby, want to see how we worship our God? And there was a lot of sexuality involved in their idol worship. And they started leading the Israelites astray. Now you could read this here and you can say, well, you know, that's a shame.

What did Balaam have to do with it? Balaam only did the right thing, but if you if you look further on in chapter 31 of numbers, verse 15, have you allowed all the women to live? He asked them, they were the ones who followed Balaam's advice and were the means of turning the Israelites away from the Lord and what happened at Pethor so that a plague struck the Lord's people. So what happened was it doesn't say it back here in chapter 25, but Balaam is the one who gave him this advice. The king wanted Balaam to curse the Israelites.

He wouldn't do it. He said they're blessed by God, but he gave him some advice. Look, they're blessed by God. I can't curse them. They're under God's protection, but you can get them out of God's protection by enticing them with your woman. Send your woman over there, get them to hang out over there. This was Balaam's advice. And by the way, Balaam got killed in chapter 31 also. So he didn't live around much. This caused a plague by the way and it says 24,000 people in the Israelites were killed in that plague. That's back in chapter 25.

Balaam's advice was simply this, they're under God's protection. I can't I can't curse them. They're only going to get blessed, but there's a way you can get them out of God's protection, entice them into sexual immorality, entice them into idolatry. Get them out from that covering that the Lord's providing for them and then they'll no longer be protected by God. They'll no longer be blessed by God. He wasn't able to curse them, but he kind of gave them a practical kind of a way that you could lead these people astray. And this was an example that was impacting this church back here in Pergamum when the Lord says, I have a few things against you.

You have people there who hold to the teaching of Balaam who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin by eating food sacrificed to idols and by committing sexual immorality. There were people there who thought it was okay for Christians to do these things. There were people there that thought it was okay to entice the other Christians to say, hey, let's go down to the festival. You know, they're worshiping the god Zeus and they're serving T-bone steak and it's juicy, medium rare, just the way you like it. Lots of sour cream and a and a baked potato also.

And this was meat that was sacrificed to idols. And they were saying, well, it's okay. I don't believe in their idol. I'm just going to go how can I turn down a free meal? And there were people there that were enticing others to sin, maybe even in the church thinking, you know, it's okay if if my girlfriend sleeps with me or my boyfriend sleeps with me. There's nothing wrong with that. God doesn't mind. He knows our hearts. He knows we really love each other. Yeah, right. There were people here who were holding to this teaching that it was okay to slide into a little bit of this thing, to eat this food that was sacrificed to idols, to commit sexual immorality, that it might not matter that much.

And God says, that's compromise. And I don't want compromise in my church. Likewise, verse 15, likewise, you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans. We talked about this a few weeks ago. Some believe that they were a group of people who were sexually immoral, that they practiced adultery, that they liked to enjoy the food sacrificed to idols. Others believe they were just a bunch of people that were messed up in their doctrine, but look, um there's not really any proof of any of those things, but we know what the word means.

Nicolaitan, nikao means to conquer. And laos means laity, like the people at, you know, clergy and laity. So it means to conquer the laity or to conquer the people. And it might be referring to claims where the clergy says, well, they're superior to the laity. You know, in some churches you have the reverence and you have the people, you know, and there's some golf in between them. And that's a bunch of nonsense. There's been all kinds of problems over the years due to hierarchies. You know, I'm better than you are, I'm higher, more important, know more about God, you know, etc, etc, etc.

That doesn't make any sense. There are some churches today where the clergy and the laity almost are two different classes of citizens. The people are subvert subservient somehow to what the preacher, pastor, priest says. These people that believe this fail to understand the the veil of the temple was torn in two. There's people today, we call them veil menders. They're trying to put that veil back together again. When Christ died on that cross, that veil was torn in two and we have access to the throne of God ourselves. We don't need to have somebody in between us.

We don't need to go to someone else and say, would you ask God uh to to do this for me? That'd be like expecting your kid to go to the butler and then the butler come to you. Sir, your son requests a cookie. What shall I allow him to do? I stole that from Joe Posh. He did a much better imitation of the of James the butler though. James, bring the rolls around. Um you know, we don't expect there to be some go between between us and our children. Get the horses ready for polo, James.

Guest (Male): Yes, pardon me. Do you have any grey poupon?

Bill Luebkemann: I always like that joke where the two airplanes were flying close together. This was back when they had those near misses like a maybe 15 years ago. I think it was always Delta. They had a few near misses and and one cartoon in the newspaper showed two Delta jets real close to each other and the one pilot was saying outside the window, pardon me, have you any grey poupon? Look, the veil in the temple was torn in two. Access to God is free for all. We don't not going to sew it back together again and create some system where you have to go to God by going through some other person.

I'm going to go ask the preacher if he'll You know, it's okay to ask your friends to pray for you, but you know, you need to know that your prayers are just as good as anybody else's. You don't need an intermediary. You're the child and he's the father. And there's nothing in between there. You can go to him anytime you want. And what the Lord is condemning here, I think when he says, likewise you have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans, I think he's condemning here those who allow this kind of stuff to go on in their midst.

In other words, they're compromising in areas of their lives. Who knows? They might have been saying, look, if we sit down at this big feast here, we can witness to the people there. You know, we'll we'll go to the feast, eat the food, sacrificed idols and we'll witness to the people there. You know, like going to a bar. So you know, we don't really like bars, but we're going to go there cuz there's a lot of unsafe people there we can witness to them. Yeah, right. There's a great feast to Zeus, you know, all the people from work are going to be there.

My boss is going to be there. Oh look, if I go there and my boss is there, people from work, you know, I'm trying to get a promotion. Maybe if they see me there, that'll be good socially. Got to be in that atmosphere. You want to see them large stakes they're serving there. You know, it was it was compromise. Something that also the Lord kind of addresses over in 1 Corinthians, which we could probably best call the compromising church. But in chapter 5 of 1 Corinthians, the Lord uh well, Paul writing 1 Corinthians, but in the God's word it says, it is actually reported.

Let me rephrase that. It is actually reported that there is a sexual immorality among you and of a kind that does not occur even among the pagans. A man has his father's wife and you are proud. Shouldn't you rather have been filled with grief and have put out of your fellowship the man who did this? The Corinthian church was compromising in various ways. You can read 1 Corinthians and find 100 ways they were compromising here. And that's perhaps how we would describe these people here in Pergamum, the compromising church. And what does the Lord have to do about it?

Repent. Verse 16. Repent therefore, otherwise I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. Here's the solution. The same advice given to several of the other churches. It was basically what Paul told the Corinthians also. The answer is repent. Look, if you don't repent, you're going to be looking at that double-edged sword. And so repenting is going to be the less painful option, the option that God wants you to do.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to hope from the word. We're currently in a through the Bible series. You can hear this message or more hope from the word with pastor Bill Lubeck in by going to ccmarlton.org or wherever you find your podcasts. Pastor Bill's messages can also be found by downloading the Hope FM app on your smartphone or tablet. And finally, if you'd like a CD copy of the message, please call 856 983 1662. Again, that's 856 983 1662. We'd love to have you join us at Calvary Chapel of Marlton either in person or online. Our Sunday service begins at 10:00 a.m.

and there's a Wednesday evening service at 7:00. To catch us online, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel at Calvary Chapel of Marlton or just go to our website for the link at ccmarlton.org. And if you take a moment to write to pastor Bill, it would be such a blessing to us. We're thankful each and every time we hear what God is doing in our listeners' lives and we want to pray for you too. Either email us through the website at ccmarlton.org or call 856 983 1662. We'll continue our through the Bible series next time on Hope from the word with pastor Bill Lubeck in, a presentation of Calvary Chapel of Marlton.