to the seven churches. Back in
Revelation 1 and verse 11, the apostle John recording the vision
and the words that he was given by the Lord Jesus Christ. This
vision, this great vision of the glorified Christ who said
in verse 11, I am Alpha and Omega, there's only one person that
can apply to, and that's our Savior, our Redeemer. That doesn't
apply to any man. He says the first and the last,
the first word and the last word, as we talk about Him being the
author and finisher of our faith, Christ is all in our salvation. He's all our righteousness. We
stand in Him complete, the chorus says, and we worship Him. And he says, what thou seest,
what you see, John, write in a book, and this is the book
we're reading, and send it to the seven churches which are
in Asia, that's Asia Minor. Several of the churches in Asia
Minor, seven of them. Paul had a widespread ministry
in this area. The book of Galatians, the church
at Galatia was in Asia Minor too, but these seven churches,
Ephesus, we know about Ephesus, and Smyrna, and Pergamos, and
Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. And those are the
seven churches. And these were seven local assemblies
located in that region called Asia Minor. Christ called them,
in verse 12, the seven golden candlesticks. He says in chapter
1 verse 12, I turned to see the voice that spake with me, and
being turned I saw seven golden candlesticks. Another translation
of that would be lampstands. That goes back to the Old Testament,
in the tabernacle, in the temple, the golden lampstand that was
in the holy place. Right before the holy of holies,
you had the golden lampstands, and of course, The churches that
he's talking about here were churches that, at least in their
beginning, as they were started by God through the Apostle Paul,
they shined forth with the light of the gospel. And that's why
he calls them the golden lampstands. and understand, or candlestick,
a candle or a lampstand, we need to understand that it doesn't
shine forth with its own light, but the light that's given to
it. In other words, this church here, Eager Avenue Grace Church,
is one of the golden lampstands here in this town, or is the
golden lampstand in this town. And we're not the source of the
light, Christ is, Christ is the light. And so we shine forth
with the truth. But what I want to do is, if
you look over in chapter 2, it starts off with Ephesus and then
it goes all the way through these seven churches in chapter 2 and
3. And what I want to do is give you an overview of this because
there are three things that are common to every one of these
letters, these epistles to the churches. They're each different.
They all, as I said, at least in their beginning, started out
as gospel churches. Some of them had declined. But there's three things. But
let me give you this first. Three of the main keys to understanding
the book of Revelation are these, number one, It is the revelation
of Jesus Christ. I made a lot of that in the first
lesson. This is not just a revelation given by Christ, it is. But it's
also the revelation of Jesus Christ. That's what this book
is about. It's not just about future things, even though there
are future things there. This is a revelation of the gospel
of God's grace in Christ, and that's the whole foundation of
this book that ensures that whatever we go through in the last days
leading up to his second coming, we will be victorious. You're
going to find that he rebukes some of these churches very harshly,
not in a harsh manner, but I mean, I'll put it this way, very strongly.
because their problem was dire, it was great, I mean it was serious.
But don't get the impression that that means that the true
Church of Christ is a failure, and we'll talk about that in
a minute, it's not. We're victorious through Him. The second key to
understanding Revelation is the Old Testament references. The
symbols and types that are here, you can go back to the Old Testament.
and find their meaning, just like we talked about seven golden
candlesticks, seven golden lampstands. Go back to the Old Testament,
what were the golden lampstand in the tabernacle? That was a
type of Jesus Christ, the light of the world, and his people
preaching the gospel, shining forth as lights in a dark world. The knowledge of the glory of
God in the face of Jesus Christ, the light of grace, the light
of righteousness, that exposes our sin and shows us that Christ
is the only way of righteousness for sinners. That's the lie. A lot of times you'll see, especially
back in medieval times and later on, the Renaissance, you'll see
pictures or paintings of the book of revelation, like in chapter
one there, where it describes the Lord Jesus Christ. His hairs
were white like wool, white as snow. His eyes were a flame of
fire. And it pictures him literally as having white hair, flames
shooting out of his eyes, a sword coming out of his mouth. That's
not what this is for. You'll see that today. Just turn
around and watch John Hagee sometime. He's got all them charts, you
know, got pictures, you know, monsters and dragons and stuff.
That's not what this is. These things, this is Christ
in his glory and these are metaphors and symbols and types showing
that the white hair, that's the, he's the eternal wisdom of God,
pure and holy. That's what that means. And when
John saw this vision, I don't know exactly how he saw it or
how it depicted, but that's what it means for us. It's not to
be, not to be drawn in a picture literally here. We're to see
the glory of Christ here in a spiritual way. So the Old Testament references
tell us that. The third key, and there's a
lot of, I'm not gonna go through all the rules of interpretation
or anything like that, but the third key to understand, and
that's essential for what we're gonna study about these seven
churches, is the atmosphere, the economy, and the persecution
that came from the Roman Empire. These churches in Asia Minor
were under, like all the churches in the Roman Empire, true churches,
they were under severe persecution from Rome. And we need to understand
that to understand the historical context, so we'll see that. But
look here, let me give you these three things. First of all, look
at chapter two and verse one. He says, unto the angel of the
church of Ephesus. Down there in verse eight, he
says, unto the angel of the church in Smyrna. In verse 12, to the
angel of the church in Pergamos, and he goes all the way through.
Each time he starts an epistle or a letter to a particular church,
that's how he starts it, unto the angel. And I told you last
week, I believe, or maybe the week before, that the word angel
has to be interpreted by its context. It literally means messenger. That's what angel means. Sometimes
it refers to the angelic beings. Lucifer was an angel and he fell. And there are angelic beings.
The Bible does say that the Lord gives gives the angels charge
over his people. Guardian angels, you might say.
And of course, people, there's a lot of mythology and a lot
of speculation that revolves around angels. There are people
who have it in their minds that when we die and go to heaven,
as they say, it's almost like we become angels. We sprout wings
and have halos and play harps. And you know better than that.
That's not so at all. But there's a lot of mythology and a lot
of speculation that's false about angels. But there are angelic
beings. The scripture teaches that. And
God does give his angels charge over his people. There are ministering
angels. Even angels ministered to Christ
himself as God-man, all of that. So we know that's so. And there
are interpreters who say that this is talking about a guardian
angel over the church. Well, we don't have anything
in the context that would say that's so. But we do know it
means messenger also. Sometimes the Lord himself is
referred to as the angel of God or the angel of the covenant.
That's Christ. In prophecy, that's a messianic
prophecy, the angel of the Lord, the angel of the covenant. But
sometimes his ministers, pastors, and teachers, leaders of the
church are called angels in the sense that they are messengers.
And I believe that's what it's talking about, and most, I think,
reputable commentators will back me up on that. So he's a messenger
of the church, probably the pastor. And what it was is this message,
this letter was to be delivered to the pastor, and the pastor
was to deliver it to the church. Now some people believe that
these letters were circulated around all these churches, and
that may be so, and that's fine. But here's the point, all true
pastors or who are pastors true to God's calling are under shepherds
of Christ. This church does not belong to
me or any other man who stands behind this pulpit. It belongs
to Christ. And that's what this is all about. And I always, you
know, anytime I ever talk about that, you know, the church at
Corinth had a problem with this. They were separating over pastors
and teachers and apostles following men. And Paul set them straight
in 1 Corinthians 1 and 2 and 3. We don't follow men, we follow
Christ. Now there are people who say,
well, therefore I don't wanna listen to any man. No, that's
not the way either. We have spiritual guides, we
have men who are called of God. Now it's impending upon you to
be a noble Berean. Check us out by the scripture
in other words. You don't take it take my word because I say
it you take it because you believe it because it's God's Word and
You start with the gospel What is the gospel that I preach?
I've often said about the charismatic movement today. I don't argue
with them about tongues. I know their tongues are gibberish.
The tongues in the Bible was the ability by the Holy Spirit
to preach the gospel in other languages that people understood.
It wasn't some kind of a heavenly gibberish that nobody could know.
But I don't argue with them about that anymore, whether they can
heal or not. I mean, I know God heals. I mean, there's no doubt
about it. Sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn't. I can't
tell you why he heals one and leaves another. I can't tell
you that. That's God's business. I know
he heals. I know that he communicates the
gospel. So I don't argue with them about
that. What gospel do they preach? That's the key. Whatever else
they do, what gospel? And if they preach anything but
the gospel of God's free and sovereign grace in Christ Jesus,
who lived and died and rose again to establish righteousness for
his people in order to enable God to be just and justifier,
whatever else they do is for nothing. That's right. You can talk about preaching
in his name, saying it's in your name. You can talk about raising,
you can talk about exorcising demons. We've cast out demons,
done many wonderful works. But if it's not, if they don't
preach the gospel of God's grace in Christ, wherein the righteousness
of God is revealed, and it's his righteousness imputed and
received by God-given faith, nothing else matters. It really
doesn't. So understand that. Now, he says
in chapter two and verse one, unto the church, over in verse
11 of chapter one, he talked about the churches. So let me
just say a word about that, because we need to make a distinction.
There's church, singular, and there's churches, plural. And
what he's talking about is, for example, the church, singular. The Bible teaches what we can
call the universal body of Christ. The church universal. And what is the church universal?
Well, when Christ was talking to his disciples in Matthew chapter
16, He asked him the question, who do men say that I am? And
of course, they were telling him what different people were
saying about him and it was all wrong. And then he asked Peter
and the other disciples, he said, but who do you say that I am?
And of course, Peter, by the spirit of God said, you're the
Christ, you're the son of the living God. And Christ said,
flesh and blood has not revealed that to you, but God, my father,
which is in heaven. And then he said this, he said,
you're Peter, you're that little rock. That's what we are, we're
little rocks. The stones, the maid of the building,
alright? Peter talked about that in 1st
Peter chapter 1, you as living stones are built upon the foundation
of Christ. Paul talked about it, 1st Corinthians
3, about laying the foundation, being built upon the foundation.
We as individual sinners saved by grace, washed in the blood
of Christ, made righteous in him, brought to faith in Christ
by the Holy Spirit, we're the little stones. That's what that
word means when he said, you Peter, Petras, you're that little
stone. But he said upon this rock, there's
another word that he used, Petra, and it means a large, like a
rock of Gibraltar, like a foundation rock. All right? So he wasn't
talking about Peter. And he said this, upon this rock,
I will build my church. Now what rock was he talking
about? He's talking about the rock of Christ. The foundation. Christ is our foundation. Peter's
not. I'm not. If I'm your foundation,
you're on shaky ground. It'll fall. No, this rock is
Christ. who he is and what he accomplished. And he said, upon this rock,
I will build my church, singular. I know some people up north who
argue, say, no, that's his churches. There's no such thing as a universal
body of Christ. It's all local church. No, no,
that's his church. That's the elect of God. That's
what the scripture says. I know people don't like to hear
that word, but that's what it is. That's what the Bible says.
And I make no apology for that. If the Bible says it, I'm comfortable
with it. How about you? That's the chosen of God. That's
the ones whose names were written in the Lamb's Book of Life before
the foundation of the world. That's what the scripture says.
And they were redeemed by the blood of Christ. Remember Paul,
when he spoke to the Ephesian elders, he met them in another
place. He was, I think, north of Ephesus. And they came up
there to meet with Paul, and his last words to them, as recorded
in Acts chapter 20, remember he talked about, feed the flock,
feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own
blood. Well, who did Christ, he purchased
his church. That's all whom he redeemed by
his blood, all who are justified before God based on the righteousness
of Christ freely imputed and received by faith. And what the
word church literally means, called out. That's what it means,
ecclesia, ecclesiastes. The book of Ecclesiastes means
the congregation. Here's the wise man writing to
the congregation, and that's the church. Ecclesiastes. And so that means called out. That's what the word means. The
church, the true church of the living God is those who have
been born again by the spirit and called out of the world into
the fold by the gospel. They've been sanctified by the
Holy Spirit and called out by the gospel and belief of the
truth. And so that's the church. So anyone who truly believes
this gospel is a member of Christ's church, all right? Now, then
there are local churches, local bodies of believers identified
by their location. Here's a church in Ephesus. Here's
a church in Pergamos. Here's a church in Laodicea.
And these are local assemblies that God has planted through
his preachers in various areas of the world. Here's a church
in Albany. There's a church in Ashland.
There's one in Jacksonville. You see, we can talk about those,
all right? And some people talk about, well,
that's the church militants, you know, the church here on
Earth, all right. Now Christ taught, there are a set of parables
that Christ taught beginning in Matthew chapter 13 called
the kingdom parables. And what those parables do is
they tell, he told, he was teaching his disciples what the church
here on earth, these local assemblies, what it's gonna be like throughout
the last days, the day we live in, starting with his ascension
all the way through to his second coming. And you remember what
parable he started with in Matthew 13? The parable of the sower
and the seed. A sower goes out to sow. Now,
he's sowing the seed. The sower is the preacher of
the gospel. The seed is the gospel. And he
said, whenever you go out to preach the gospel, men and women
are gonna react differently to it. You're gonna have some who
will hear it, but they won't listen to it at all. That's the
wayside hearer, remember? They'll listen to it just for
a little while. Remember he talked about the
birds of the air came and picked the seeds up, and they didn't
even consider it. I'm not even gonna think about
that. Now how many, don't raise your hand, but y'all have had
people, you tried to talk to them about the gospel. They say,
I don't wanna hear anymore. I don't wanna hear it at all.
That's the wayside hearer. But then there are two kinds
of hearers that he says embrace it initially. Remember the stony
ground hearer? It says in Matthew 13 that he
receives it and the word that the King James Version uses is
anon, A-N-O-N. That means immediately, now,
that's what that means. In other words, he hears it and
he just grabs hold of it real quick. But it doesn't take root. Now, what's the problem? There's
no Holy Spirit conviction there, all right? He hears it and he
likes what he's hearing for a while, but then persecution comes over
the word and he leaves it. Well, wait a minute, it's kind
of like the person who didn't count the cost. And then the
other kind of hearer that he mentions is the thorny ground
hearer. This is the one who hears it, receives it, and then he's
taken away from it because of love of the world, the love of
riches. He gets sidetracked. What's the problem there? There's
no Holy Spirit conviction there. It was just that. And then the
last kind of hearer is the good ground hearer, and he receives
it, And then it brings forth fruit, the fruit of faith, the
fruit of repentance, the fruit of obedience, the fruit of perseverance. That's the true child of God. That's the one who's been born
again by the Spirit. So his point in that parable is that while
we exist here on this earth in our local assemblies, you're
gonna have within the local assemblies, you're gonna have both believers
and unbelievers. Now, He goes on with those parables. I'm not going to go through all
those parables, but another parable that he teaches there in the
kingdom parable is the parable, the weed and the tears. Now a
lot of people believe that what he's teaching there is that while
we're here on this earth in our local assemblies, inside the
true, where the gospel is preached, you'll have both wheat and tares.
I don't believe that's what he means by that parable because
he says that Christ goes around and he sows his wheat. Satan comes along and sows his
tares. And he says, the field is the
world. What I believe he's talking about
is in the last days, as Christ plants his true churches where
the gospel is preached, even though in those churches there'll
be believers and unbelievers, there'll be stony ground hearers,
thorny ground hearers, all that, and good ground hearers, Satan
is busy sowing his tears in the world. Those are his false churches. And in appearance, they call
themselves Christian. You know, a tare, the word is
darnel, it looks like wheat, but once you get to investigating
it and seeing the reality, it's not wheat at all, it's fake.
And that's what Satan's churches are. And what kind of churches?
It's churches where the gospel's not preached, where the true
gospel is not preached. So here's what this chapters
two and three tells us. Number one, it's our responsibility,
number one, to make sure that we're in a church where the gospel
is preached, where Christ is preached, where the true gospel
of God's grace in Christ, based on salvation, hit by his grace,
based on his righteousness is preached. That's number one.
I've gotta be where the gospel is preached. People have all
different kinds of reasons to go into all different kinds of
churches. but our focus is the truth of God's grace preached. That's number one. Secondly,
It's our responsibility, while being under the true gospel,
to examine ourselves whether we be in the faith. That we're
not a stony ground or a thorny ground here, that we are truly
saved by the grace of God. And we do that by looking to
Christ. So that's the issue here, to the churches, to the church,
all right? Another thing that is common
to each one of these churches, he says this, he says in every
one of them, he says, I know thy works. Look at verse two
of chapter two. He starts off to the church at,
I know thy works and thy labor and thy patience. Now I'll get
into all that next week in the church of Ephesus. Look down
at verse nine. He says it to the church at Smyrna.
I know thy works, thy tribulation. Look at verse 13. He says to
the church at Pergamos, I know thy works and on through. Each
one he tells them, I know your works. You know, the Bible tells
us in Hebrews chapter six and verse 10, for God is not unrighteous
to forget your work and labor of love, which you have sowed
or showed toward his name and that you've ministered to the
saints and do minister. And what he's telling us here
is that God does take notice of our works. He does. Our works do not save us. Our works do not make us righteous
or holy before God. They can't do it. Our works do
not earn our rewards for us. No. Our works, the works of believers
that please God, that glorify God, are the fruit and the effect
and the result of God's power and grace. And he takes notice
of those works, not by way of merit, how much have you earned
for me or yourself? No, not by way of merit, but
by way of his glory and grace in Christ. And the works of believers
that please God and glorify him are literally, the scripture
tells us, the work of God in us. In other words, we're not
the source of that work. If it's a good work, if it's
pleasing to God, we're not the source of it, we're not the cause
of it, we're not the power of it. Christ is by his spirit.
And even our works have to be presented before God through
Jesus Christ, washed in his blood. Our righteousness before God
is not our works. It's His work. Ephesians 2.10,
we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto, not because
of, unto good works which God hath before ordained that we
should walk in. But now, God does take notice
of our sins and our shortcomings too. Now, there are a lot of
people who say, well, God doesn't see our sins. Because you can
go to passages of scripture like in the book of Hebrews chapter
eight where he says, their sins and their iniquities will I remember
no more. And that's true. But what's he
talking about? When God says that our sins and
our iniquities he will remember no more, what is he talking about?
He's talking about our standing before God in Christ legally,
positionally, forensically. How do I stand before God in
Christ? I stand without charge. My sins were all imputed, accounted
to Jesus Christ, and God cannot and will not impute those sins
to me. Christ died for them. I have
no legal debt or obligation to God because Christ paid my legal
debt. My obligation to God is not of
law, it's of love. I owe him everything. And that's
a debt that'll never be paid. So it's not a legal obligation. Who shall lay anything to the
charge of God's elect? So in this sense, we can say
God does not see my sins so as to charge me with them or condemn
me for them. There is therefore now no condemnation
in Christ. I have Christ's righteousness
imputed to me and that's how God sees me legally, positionally. And He cannot condemn me, because
I'm righteous in His sight. And that's not fake now. You
know, there's a lot of people who say, well, that's just pretending.
No, it is not pretending. God doesn't pretend. This is
reality. In fact, the reality of what
I am as God sees me, you can't even see. Because you see me
as a man who's sinful and growing old. And some of you see a little
more of my shortcomings than that. So you can't really see
what God sees. And it's the same way with you.
If you're in Christ, I can't really see with the physical
eye how God sees. He sees you as righteous, perfectly,
without flaw. What is it Colossians 1 says?
Holy, unblameable, and unreprovable. Now how can I stand, I'm a sinner. A sinner saved by grace. How
can I stand before God, holy and unblameable and unreprovable?
Only in Christ, by the cross. That's what he's talking about
in Colossians 1. So yes, but does that mean that God doesn't
see when I mess up and when I fall? You know, what did David say
in his penitent prayer in Psalm 51? He said, against thee and
thee only have I done this evil in thy sight. You remember the Corinthians?
We're gonna talk about the Corinthians in the message a little bit.
They had a lot of problems, didn't they? Remember how they were
abusing the Lord's Supper? And Paul made this statement.
He says some of them were even dying, and they were believers
now because of their abuse of the Lord. It was a chastisement.
It wasn't a condemnation. Well, God saw what they were
doing, or he wouldn't have addressed it in 1 Corinthians. This is
the word of God, isn't it? So yes, God, now God sometimes
chastises us for our sins and our shortcomings, and sometimes
he doesn't. Think about this. If God chastised
me or you for all of our sins and shortcomings, what kind of
state do you think we'd be in? We'd be miserable all the time. Sometimes God chastises his children,
not for any specific sin, but just to teach a lesson. In fact,
that's the major thing of chastisement. It's correction. It's not condemnation. You say, well, how do you know
God chastises them not for specific? Job. Look at the book of Job. In fact, the severest chastisements
that I found in the Bible of a human being is Job. And the
first thing God said about Job, he was a just man and upright. He didn't say, now Job messed
up over here so I'm gonna get him, no. But God does chastise
us. And here's the glory of that,
here's the comfort of that, Hebrews chapter, can't think of it now,
11, no 12, Hebrews chapter 12 talks about it. Chastisement for a child of God
is not a sign of condemnation from God, it's a sign of love.
You're his child. Do you chastise your children?
Yes. In fact, he goes, he used a strong
language. He said, if you're without chastisement, you're
a bastard and not a child, not a son. You're an illegitimate
son. So when he says I know thy works, understand he's not saying
I'm looking at you to see what you do and what you can earn
from me, no, no. And he's not saying I'm looking
at you trying to see how I can condemn you. Now some of these
were false believers. Sometimes the punishments that
are given reveal a person not to be a child of God. We'll talk
about that, but that's chastisement, all right? And then lastly, and
I'll just give you a few minutes on this, He says, in each one
of these lessons, he that hath an ear, let him hear what the
Spirit saith unto the churches. Look at Revelation. You know,
he said that back in Revelation 1-7. No, it wasn't 1-7. I'm sorry, 2-7, yeah. Look at
Revelation 2 and say, I think I got 1-7 in your lesson, so
you need to correct that. in your lesson there, it says
in the last point, it's Revelation, that should be 2-7, so that's
my fault. All right. But he says in Revelation
2-7, he that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith
unto the churches. And he says that to each one
of them. And as I said, the gospel churches,
while here on earth, it's plagued with, you know, Satan's going
to attack the true churches. Later on, we'll see that in the
book of Revelation. We've got three main problems
in our church. Some come from outside the church,
some come from inside. Outside the church, Satan attacks,
and he tries to attack from within the church. You remember in Galatia,
the false preachers? See, they infiltrated. Remember
John says in 1st John 2 that spirit of Antichrist was prevalent
in those who what what they do they went out from us They were
not all of us. They were in the church for a
while, but then they left so you got a tax from without tax
from in from Satan you got the world and You've got the flesh
to deal with three things and while we're here Here's what
he's saying to us as we go through these lessons. He's saying, if
you've got an ear to hear, then you hear, you listen, you heed
what the Spirit's saying to the churches. Now, who has ears to
hear? Well, remember what Christ said
when he began those kingdom parables to the disciples in Matthew 13?
He said, blessed are your ears for they hear, blessed are your
eyes for they see. It's those who've been born again
by the Spirit. who've been given spiritual life, and so what he's
telling us is if life is there, you'll hear and you'll see. And
if life is not there, you won't hear and you won't see. You say,
well, what am I to do? I'll tell you what to do, hear
and see. Hear what the Spirit says to the church. All right.