Revelation chapter two, continue
our study this morning, beginning in verse 12. The title of the
lesson is no compromise, no compromise. That's the subject to the, of
the letter to the church at Pergamos is to not compromise the gospel.
And you remember that these letters to the churches are written to
the whole church on earth. Every local church faces these
issues at some point in their history. So this letter is to
us. The church at Pergamos had remained
faithful for many, many years. But the writing of this letter,
they had begun to tolerate some false doctrine. They began to
tolerate error in both doctrine and conduct. And the warning
here to the church at Pergamos applies to us. I can say this
is true. By God's grace, this congregation,
for many, many years, has remained faithful to the name of the Lord.
I'm so thankful. We, by God's grace, have remained
faithful to His name. We've remained faithful to His
gospel. This congregation, at some cost, maybe not like the
church at Pergamon, definitely not like that church, but at
some cost, has taken a stand for the truth. I'm thankful.
But the warning is, don't compromise now. After all this battle, don't
compromise now. The letter begins in verse 12.
And to the angel of the church at Pergamos write, these things
saith he which hath the sharp sword with two edges. Now you
know the angel there is the pastor. The letter is written to the
pastor of the church. And the writer of the letter is our Lord
Jesus Christ. He identifies himself as The
one is he that hath a sharp sword with two edges. Well, that can't
be anybody but Christ, the word of God speaking. Christ is the
incarnate word. He's the incarnate sword. You
can't separate the incarnate word and the written word. You
can't separate the Bible from its subject, which is the Lord
Jesus Christ. He is the word. And, you know,
scripture calls the word of God a sword, a sharp two-edged sword. One edge kills. The other edge
gives life. One edge wounds and the other
edge heals. Only the word of God can do both
at the same time. Only the word of God can kill
the flesh and give life to the spirit. And it does that by revealing
Christ, the incarnate word, Christ, the savior, the word at the same
time, all in one fell swoop reveals our sin and reveals Christ the
remedy for our sin. The sharp two edged sword. And
this sword is our only weapon. Our only weapon is to preach
God's Word. We don't use man's logic and
philosophy. We don't try to find different
ways, you know, to motivate people, psychological ways. Our only
weapon is the Word of God. It's both for offense and for
defense. One edge is for offense to conquer
the law. The other edge is for defense,
to reveal the error of false doctrine. This is our only weapon. And the church at Pergamos had
remained faithful to this word for years and years and years.
And the Lord commends them for it. Look at verse 13. I know
thy words and where thou dwellest, even where Satan's seat is. And
thou holdest fast my name and hast not denied my faith, even
in those days where an Antipas was my faithful martyr who was
slain among you where Satan dwelled. Now the Lord says, like he said
to the other churches, I know your works. He's not saying that
he's pleased with their works of the law. He's not saying their
religious works bring him pleasure or impress him. What he's saying
is he's pleased with their works of faith, their labor of love. The Lord knows our works, good
and bad. And what he's doing here is not
commending them for their works necessarily, but their faith.
in genuine faith is revealed by our actions. And the Lord
says, I know your works. I know your faith. And he says,
I know where you dwell. I know where you show your faith,
where you dwell. He said, you dwell in the seat
of Satan. And even though you live in the
seat of Satan, the Lord says, you remain faithful in my name.
Now, Pergamos was a powerful Roman city. The word means a
fortified place. That's what it means. This was
Satan's stronghold. In this city, there were many
altars to the idol Zeus. And they also, this was the home,
the capital of this idol, an idol of healing. And that idol
took the form of a serpent. They made them an idol in the
form of a serpent, the form that Satan took to deceive them. This
is the seat of Satan. They're worshiping Satan. I've
seen the very same thing in Mexico. In these religious pyramids,
they have carved in there a winged serpent, a feathered serpent.
Worshipping Satan. This is the seat of Satan. Also
in this city, and I guess all through Rome, but I know in this
city, they worship Caesar. They said Caesar was a deity.
He's a God. And they wanted the Christians
there. They said, hey, you worship on Sunday any way you want. But
the rest of the days of the week, you come out here and you offer
incense to this idol we've made of the statue we've made of Caesar.
And you say Caesar's Lord. You say this man is Lord. This is the seat of Satan. Where
man, man's will, man's form, man is worshipped and Satan is
worshipped. That's where they lived. Yet
the believers there in that congregation remained faithful. They remained
faithful even when some of them were martyred. They knew this
being faithful, staying faithful, not compromising, staying faithful
to the name of the Lord could very well cost them their life.
One of them it did. A man named Antipas. Now I went
searching for this man Antipas. Couldn't find out one thing about
him. Not one. The only thing we know is what
we know from this verse. This man was martyred for believing
Christ He was martyred for refusing to denounce his faith in Christ.
That's all we know about Antipas. We don't know him. But the Lord
knows him. The Lord knows him. And that's
all that matters. The foundation of God standeth
sure having this seal. The Lord knows him. He knows
his people. And even when Antipas was killed,
and I'm sure it was in a gruesome way, the brethren there remained
faithful. They held fast. They just insisted
on holding fast to the name of Christ. Now that's faith, isn't
it? That's faith. They remained faithful
to his name. The name of Christ reveals his
character. The name of Christ reveals his
attributes, his characteristics, who he is, what he's like. His
name is Jehovah. What's that reveal about him?
He's the Savior, God my Savior. His name is Jehovah Sidkenu,
the Lord our righteousness. My righteousness doesn't come
from anything I do or don't do. He's my righteousness. His name
is Jehovah Jireh. The Lord will provide. Now you
trust Him. You rest in Him. Everything God
requires of His people is found in the Lord Jesus Christ. He'll
provide. That's His name. That's who He is. And they refused
to compromise that name. That's why they wouldn't call
Caesar Lord. There's one Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ. And there's
no doubt they had true faith in Christ. They wouldn't compromise
it. I tell you, in times of adversity, in times of trial, that's where
true faith is really revealed. In times of adversity, and even
in extreme adversity, when it might cost them their life, they
remain faithful. to the name of Christ. They remain
faithful. It says they haven't denied my
faith. They didn't deny that salvation
is in the faithfulness of Christ. To accomplish all of our salvation
for us. That's what Judas prayed. They
remain faithful. It's the faithfulness of Christ.
They remain faithful to trust in and rest in His work for His
people. That's how we're saved. Not in something that we do.
But something eventually happens. They remained faithful, they
wouldn't compromise for all those years, but something happened
that prompted the Lord to write this letter to them. And what
happened was they began to compromise. They began to compromise with
error in doctrine, and that led them to compromise to error in
conduct. Look at verse 14. But the Lord
says, I have a few things against thee. Because thou hast there
them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast
a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things
sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication. Now the first
error here is the error in doctrine. It's the error of Balaam. Now
what's the doctrine, the error of Balaam? Well, Balaam was a
prophet. And to have the doctrine of Balaam,
the error of Balaam is this. to have your message controlled
by money, that you'll just say whatever the highest bidder wants
you to say. That's what Balaam did. The doctrine of Balaam is
also to avoid saying some things for the sake of money, which
is exactly what he did. Balaam said a lot of true things. He sure did. He never outright
lied on God. He never went as far as to curse
Israel. God wouldn't let him. Balaam,
just because he said true things did not mean he preached the
truth. No, he preached a lie. You know what made him preach
a lie? It's what he held back. What he held back made him a
false prophet. Balaam, who held something back
he knew was true, makes him the biggest example of a false prophet
in Scripture. He held back something he knew
was true. Now, the natural mind will think,
You know, is it really that big a deal as long as everything
he is saying is true? Well, you know what happened
to Israel because of Balaam's message? Because he held back.
So he didn't tell them a lie. But it's what they were. He didn't
say something that was untrue. His message was a lie. He didn't
say something that was untrue. And yet, but he held something
back. And you know what happened because that message? Israel
fell into idolatry. He put a stumbling block before
them. and caused them to fall into idolatry and fornication. And he did it in order to get
money. That's exactly why he did it. Balaam never outright said to
Israel, y'all ought to quit worshiping God. He never said that. What
he said was, you know, there's some good things about these
idols too. You know, we can kind of compromise and fit in and
make the two fit together. And when he did that, he cast
a stumbling block in front of people. The error of that message
causes people to fall into fornication and idolatry. That's where compromise
ends up every time without fail. And I tell you how you and I
can fall into this error of failing. It's by seeing the plainly revealed
will of God in Scripture. It's by seeing the plainly revealed
message of Christ, that salvation is all in Him. It's in nothing
that we do, it's all in Him. Salvation is not my decision,
it's His. Salvation is not my work, it's His. Salvation is
not in something I sacrifice and give up, it's all in the
sacrifice of Christ. It's not in my life, it's in
His life. It's to see that truth in Scripture, but hold it back. Because we're afraid somebody
in the congregation is going to get mad at us. It may make my life a lot easier
if somebody don't get mad at me. I don't necessarily like
it when people get mad at me. But I'll tell you what, that
person is going to go to hell unless they hear and believe
the truth. That's so. And besides the obligation we
have to men, we've got a higher obligation. We've got an obligation
to our Savior to hold something back that we know is true. is
to dishonor our Savior. To hold something back, it's
true, is to lie on Him. To lie on Him who gave Himself
for us. Oh, no compromise. No compromise. And this happens in the life
of every believer. I'll give you an example. When
we first moved to Wheelersburg, it was a a different day then.
The welcome lady called, you know, people came from the different
churches in town, tried to get us to attend there. And whenever
somebody from one of them churches would come, I don't know about
you, I remember I got sent downstairs. I couldn't be around to hear
this conversation. And a fella came one day, years
later, Dad told me about the conversation. They were sitting
in the living room talking, and I don't know how long the conversation
rolled around. And Dad finally Told him about
the song, Amazing Grace. He said, salvation's by grace.
Salvation's by not what we do. Salvation's by God's free grace. Amazing grace that saved a wretch
like me. You know what that man said?
He said, huh, I've never seen myself as a wretch. I'm not a
wretch. Dad said, this conversation's
over. You get out of my house. The doctrine of Baal. to hold
something back. We're not gonna compromise with
that. That compromise, that error in doctrine, will always lead
to an error in conduct, verse 15. So hast thou also them that
hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I hate. Now the Nicolaitans, we better
find out what this is, because the Lord says, I hate that doctrine. The doctrine of the Nicolaitans
was antinomian. Now they believe salvation is
by grace. They said they believed that.
But they said sin's salvation is by grace. Let sin that grace
may abound. The more we sin, the more glory
God gives. That was their doctrine. They said now we're saved by
grace. God's grace can never fail. No matter what we do, we cannot
out sin God's grace. He's never going to cast his
people out. Salvation is by God's grace. So it doesn't matter how
we live. I tell you what they were really
doing. I don't they didn't believe salvations by grace. They got
a hold of some doctrine, you know, and they used religion
as an excuse for sin. I tell you that the specific
sin they were very interested in was sexual sins. They used
this as an excuse for sexual sins. They used God's grace as
an excuse to fulfill the desires of the flesh. You listen very
carefully to me. Salvations by grace. We don't
contribute one thing to it. Salvation is by grace. But if
you think it doesn't matter how you live, God's never saved you. The Lord says you've not denied
my faith. You've not denied faith in Christ
to save us by His work, not ours. But there are several ways we
can deny the faith. There are several ways we can
deny the name of the Lord. First, we deny the Lord. We deny faith in Him. We deny
His name by refusing to confess Him publicly. There's no such
thing as a secret disciple. There's no such thing as a secret
follower of Christ. Joseph of Arimathea eventually
took a stand publicly. He went and claimed the body
of the Lord. There's no such thing as a secret disciple. If we refuse to confess Him publicly,
we're denying the faithfulness of Christ to save us. Second,
we compromise. We deny the faith by embracing
false doctrine. By just saying, yeah, that doctrine
of Balaam, that's true. That's a good way. That's a good
way to build a church. Let's tell a lie and gather people
in here. And once we got them all in here, by using a lie to
bait them, then we'll switch and start teaching them the truth.
Now, how do you think that's going to work? Once you start
preaching the truth, they're just going to leave. Remember,
this is our only weapon. This is our only weapon. God's never going to bless a
lie. If we embrace this false doctrine, if we embrace the way
of man's religion, we've denied faith in Christ. And thirdly,
we deny the faith, we deny the name of Christ by living a life
that's contrary to the gospel. A believer does not want to sin
that grace may abound. Never. A believer loves God's
law. We love His law because He wrote
it on our heart. We love His law. Now, we still can't keep
it, but we love it. A believer loves obedience. A
believer desires to be obedient always to the will of our Father.
We don't want an excuse for sin. We hate sin. Look what my sin
caused my Savior to suffer. I don't want to sin anymore.
A believer's got a heart that hates sin. And we love God's
law. Now that doesn't mean that we
look to the law to find out how we're supposed to live. That
doesn't mean that we look to the law to find out what we're
supposed to do. No, the believer has no relationship with the
law. We love the law, but we have
no relationship with it. We don't have to look to the
law to find our rule of life. A believer looks to Christ. Love
for him is our rule of life. A believer desires to be holy
because our father in heaven is holy. We want to be just like
Him. So we don't want to sin that
grace may abound. But the Nicolaitans, they came
up with this idea, let sin that grace may abound. And the church
at Pergamos tolerated it in their midst. The Nicolaitans also came
up with this idea, the idea of clergy laity. The word Nicolaitans
comes from the word that means above the people. And this idea
of clergy laity is like the clergy, the preachers, you know, they're
better than everybody else. They're closer to God than everybody
else. So if you want God to hear you, what you've got to do is
go to the clergy. You've got to go to the priest. You've got
to go to this man and he'll speak to God for you, you know, because
he's closer to God than you. You've got a whole lot better
chance of God hearing you if this fellow is speaking for you. You know
what that is? That's putting something between
the sinner and the savior. That's deadly. The gospel puts
nothing between the sinner and the Savior. The gospel gives
us a clear view of Christ. It says, now you look. We take
away every obstacle and say, now look to Christ. That's the
gospel. But you put something between the sinner and the Savior,
you put a man between the sinner and the Savior, that will always
lead to licentious living, lawless living. And all you got to do
to find proof of that is look to the Catholic Church. They
put a man in a little box between the sinner and the Savior, and
it leads to licentious living every time. Now the church at
Pergamos, they hadn't denied the faith yet, but they had started
down a slippery slope. No one in the church was saying
openly, Let's quit preaching Christ and start preaching this
other stuff too. You know, they said, let's take
the edge off the message so we can get a bigger crowd in here.
No, they kept preaching the gospel, but they tolerated those errors
in their midst. There are two main ways you can
do that. Tolerate error in our midst. Number one, they tolerated
error by going to the worship of an idol. It wasn't just that
they went to the market and bought meat offered to idols. Nothing
wrong with that. Not what you put in your mouth
that's going to defile you. If you buy meat that's been offered
to an idol to have at your dinner table, you're already defiled.
So that meat's not going to defile you. They did more than eat meat
that's offered to idols. They went to the ceremony. They
didn't wait till the meat was in the market. They went to the
ceremony and joined in this feast to an idol. And that would be
like us going to hear a false prophet. You know, every once
in a while, I'm going to go down there and hear this false prophet
preach. Yes, he's denied the gospel. Yes, he's spoken evil
of men who preach the gospel. He's just outright denied it. He's like Balaam, though. He's
not saying something that's not true. He's just holding something
back. So I'm going to go down there and hear him preach so
everybody knows how loving we are. You know, look at us. We
love you. When you do that, all you've
done is put your seal of approval on their life, on their methods,
on their message. That's all you've done. And their
message, their methods are sending men and women to hell because
they're holding something back. They're putting a stumbling block
before people that caused them to fall into idolatry. And when
you go hear them because you want to show everybody how loving
you are, what you've done is you've showed you don't love
the Lord. You just, you're compromising. You put your seal of approval
on their message. When you attend a place of false
worship where the basic truth of Christ has been denied, you
put your seal of approval on a message that makes Christ a
harlot. They're trying to get people to do something to accept
Christ, they're making Him a harlot. You'd never tolerate such foolishness,
such a lie about your mother. Why would you the Savior? I tell
you there's only one of two reasons. Number one, it's cowardice. It's
afraid to call a lie a lie. That's right. Or number two,
it's blindness where you can't tell the difference. That's the
only two reasons. Second, we can tolerate error
in our midst by allowing these people to come into the church
and maybe they stay silent while the preacher's preaching. But
afterward and through the week, they talk to people, whatever,
and they're trying to spread their air to people. And we just
allow it to continue. Don't correct it. We don't put
a stop to it either by in conversation telling them. Cut this out. This is not right. We're not
going to tolerate this. Or correcting it from the pulpit.
You gotta believe. If we preach Christ. Plainly
enough and boldly enough. Balaam and the Nicolaitans won't
like being here. They'll despise that message.
and they'll either leave or God will save them. Maybe that's
the best way to get them to leave is plainly and boldly preach
Christ. Christ is either going to save
them by his word or he's going to judge them by his word. Look
at verse 16. He says, repent or else I'll
come unto thee quickly and will fight against them with the sword
of my mouth. I'll come and fight against them
with my word. Then let's just preach God's
word. and don't tolerate them and don't hold anything back.
You know, don't don't think, well, they're going to get upset
because they think I'm I'm not loving, you know. If we think
that if we operate that way. It's cowardice, it's it's afraid
to take a stand because somebody is going to be mad at me. And
what we've done is allowed a cancer into the church that will eat
it from the inside out so that eventually there'll be no gospel. Once we compromise like that,
we've just allowed a cancer and eventually there'll be no gospel
left. Now, let me say this about compromise.
There used to be a thought in this country when we operate
in our government, you know, that we can compromise between
the two sides, the left and the right, and we can get things
done. That seems to be gone in our day. Well, let me say this
about compromise. In the church, we ought to compromise.
We ought to compromise our personal wants. We ought to compromise
our personal glory for the good of the whole. But never, ever,
ever can we compromise this word. Never. You think about straddling
the fence. If you're going to compromise
the word, you're trying to straddle the fence, aren't you? That's
going to be a painful way to live. Spiritually, it's going
to send people to hell trying to straddle the truth, trying
to straddle the fence. The gospel that God uses to save
people is the truth. The whole truth and nothing but
the truth. So don't compromise it. Don't compromise the word.
Don't compromise faith in Christ. And Lord gives a promise to those
who don't compromise here in verse 17. He that hath an ear,
let him hear what the spirit saith unto the churches. To him
that overcometh, I will give to eat of the hidden man, and
will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written,
which no man knoweth, saving him, he that receiveth it. Now
the Lord has a word to those who overcome. And overcome, they
do not compromise. Now how is it that we overcome?
I showed you this in the lesson last week. How is it that we
overcome? It's through faith. through faith.
Look back at 1 John chapter 5, just a couple of pages here.
1 John 5 verse 5. Who is he that overcometh the
world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the son of God.
That's how we overcome by faith, by faith in Christ. We don't
overcome by our strength. We don't overcome because we
hold on, you know, better than somebody else. We overcome the
world if God's the one who's given us faith. God-given faith
will always endure to the end. Now, we may stumble and fall
along the way. We may stumble like David stumbled.
We may stumble like Peter stumbled, but we'll never compromise. We'll
never fall out of the way. And you know where that leaves
us? That leaves us completely dependent upon the Lord, doesn't
it? It leaves us completely dependent
upon His faithfulness to save us. That's who overcomes. It's everybody who's completely
dependent on Christ. That's who will overcome. Now
if God's given you an ear to hear, you hear what the Spirit
says to you. If you don't compromise and you
keep the faith, the Lord has three promises, three things
he'll give you. Number one, I'll give you hidden manna to eat.
That hidden manna is Christ in the heart. He's hidden from the
world. We're not hidden from his people.
He's revealed in your heart. God's people feed on Christ in
the heart, no matter what's going on outside the body. We feed
on Christ in the heart. Salvation is a heart work. And
it's feeding on Christ that sustains us. It's feeding on Christ that
keeps us from compromising. Second, to everyone who overcomes
by faith, the Lord says, I'll give you a white stone. Now,
that white stone means not guilt. But someone was on trial in Pergamos
and maybe all through that region. When they put a person on trial,
at the end of the trial, they'd give them one of two stones.
If they found them innocent, not guilty, they'd give them
a white stone. If they found them guilty, they'd
give them a black stone. The Lord says, you stay faithful.
I'll give you a white stone. In Christ, we're not guilty. Not guilty because Christ obedience
has been imputed. He makes us not guilty, holy,
white and spotless in the end. And thirdly, the Lord will give
everyone who overcomes. He'll give everyone who remains
faithful and does not compromise. If they stay faithful to his
name, the Lord says, I'll give you a new name. He'll give us
his name. Jeremiah said, this is the name
wherewith she shall be called. Jehovah Sidkine, the Lord, our
righteousness, that's his name. Look back in Isaiah chapter 62.
Here's another promise in the Old Testament of a new name that
the Lord gives his people. Isaiah 62 verse four. Thou shalt
no more be termed forsaken. No more will you be termed the
one who's forsaken God, the one who deserves for God to forsake
you. No more shall you be termed forsaken. Neither shall thy land
any more be termed desolate. That's who we are in Adam, we're
desolate. We're dead, we don't have any way to produce life.
But no more shall thy land be termed desolate. But thou shall
be called Hephzibah. My delight, the delight of the
Lord. And thy land, Beulah, married,
married to the Lord, for the Lord delighteth in thee. And
thy land shall be blessed. Now, that's a hidden name. That's
a name in the heart. No man will be able to see it
in the flesh. But if God gives you that new name, you'll know
it. It's a name in your heart. How I pray that the Lord will
make us dependent. Make us dependent on Christ.
If we're dependent on Him, we'll never compromise the gospel.
We'll never compromise the name of our Lord or His word. How
I pray He'll cause us to remain faithful and be able to say with
John, no compromise. All right, the Lord bless you.