175. Revelation 2-3 The Introduction

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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the podcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 175, introducing

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Revelation 2 through 3. Well, welcome back to the podcast.

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It is a joy to be with you again after the longest break that I have ever taken on this show.

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To say that ministry in New England has been kind of all -consuming lately would be an understatement.

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But I'm glad to be back. I'm glad to be back with you. I'm excited for what we're gonna be covering in the days, weeks, and months ahead.

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And if you're new, if you've never been on the show before, this is your first time watching this, our mission for why we do this is crystal clear.

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I want this show to be about strengthening the church of Jesus Christ in truth and in courage and in joy.

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I want this show to be about building Christians to stand firm in an age of compromise, to advance

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Christ's kingdom in an age of retreatism. We're not gathered here to mourn the collapse of Western civilization.

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We're gathered here to marvel at the beauty and the power and the rule of Jesus Christ and the rise of his kingdom, even in our own day.

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Jesus has inaugurated his kingdom. He sits enthroned now in heaven.

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His gospel is conquering now. And the gates of hell cannot stand against the advance of Jesus's church.

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They are collapsing. They will continue to collapse. And that's not a pie in the sky,

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Pollyanna thought. That's what Jesus says. That's what Paul says. That's what the entire witness of scripture says that he shall have dominion.

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And that's what we say. That's what we teach. That's the assumption that we have on this show, that every false god, every pagan altar, every pretend sovereign is gonna fall beneath the power of Jesus Christ's pulverizing feet.

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This world is not destined for universal apostasy, but for universal discipleship.

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That's why he told us to disciple the nations, because he expects that we will do it.

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The earth is gonna be covered with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

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That's a statement of fact. It's gonna happen. It just hasn't yet. That means on this show, we talk about every aspect of what it means to be

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Christian in a world that is becoming more Christian. We talk about scripture. We talk about theology.

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We talk about eschatology, politics, culture, all of it, because every square inch of reality is under the dominion of Jesus Christ.

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You can't hide from that fact. You can't soft pedal that fact. And you certainly can't be the

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Evangeli Bellies that we see in culture, or we see that in the modern day church. We speak in this show plainly about the things of God.

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We think biblically about the things of God. We love his truth fiercely, and we advance it, and we talk about it courageously.

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So if that is the kind of show that you've been looking for or hungry for, then welcome home. If that's the show you've been missing while I've been on my little hiatus or break, welcome back.

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This show is for you. Now, if you wanna help us in sharing the mission, then like, subscribe, and share this episode with friends, believers who also wanna stand firm and fight well and learn what these things mean, especially the book of Revelation.

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So I would encourage you to share those episodes. And if you wanna go a little bit further, you can actually become a member of this show where you can financially help support us and help us get the message out to more people.

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Now, I'm gonna be very clear here just for a moment. I'm not promising you any perks. I'm not promising you a free little plastic gimmick.

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I'm not promising you special gimmicks or special trinkets or special benefits. If you wanna give, praise

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God. I want to help bring this message to more people. And if you wanna help do that, amen.

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And it really should be about that, advancing Jesus's dominion, getting more of Jesus in front of more people, not me, not promising more content from me or more of me or more access to me.

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I suck, but Jesus is King. And if Jesus is King, I want you to join me in declaring that message with as many people as we can.

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And sometimes things cost money. Microphones need to be replaced or we get light bulbs that burn out, camera memory cards that go the way of the dodo bird or whatever, or maybe marketing it or maybe sharing this with more people by spending a little bit of money on advertising.

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All of that I wanna do because I want more people to understand what the book of Revelation has to say and what the

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Bible has to say. So if you want to join, you can do that. There's no promises.

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There's no hidden decoder rings, none of that, but you get the satisfaction of knowing that you get to help us share the message with more people.

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And that's greater than anything that I could promise you in after hours or whatever else.

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Anyway, now, if you do want something tangible, if you do like merchandise, if you do like gear, then we have it.

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We have excellently made products that are really good. You can go check that out at www .prodthesheep .com.

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That's all I wanna say about that. But I do, before we begin, wanna say one more thing that I am thankful for you, for watching this show and for supporting this show.

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Ministry is hard. You can go through ups and downs, pits and valleys. Ministry has a lot of those.

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There are highs that are really wonderful and there are lows that are really low. There are days when you feel like that you're on top of the world and you're seeing

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God move in so many amazing ways. Then there's other days that make you weep. Many pastors actually quit the ministry because they feel lonely.

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They feel betrayed by the people who are closest to them. They feel like they're carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders.

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It is a lonely calling in many ways to be a pastor. And I'm not sharing that with you to complain or to whine about it.

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I'm saying it because I wanna say thank you to you. You don't have to send me messages.

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You don't have to send me comments or emails or phone calls and voice messages and all of the various things that you've done.

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But I've been so encouraged when you have. And there's been weeks where I've thought to myself, you know what, am

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I supposed to be doing this show? Is this something that maybe I should cut out and then I'll get an email from someone who says, thank you so much for doing what you're doing.

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It really helped me understand this or it really helped me be free of the dispensational doom and gloom and all of that.

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Thank you for sharing those things with me. It means so much to me. I share them with my wife. We celebrate the fact that God has used this little show in so many ways.

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So thank you. Your comments have helped keep me in the fight and help keep me strong so that we can do this together.

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Now, after that introduction and after that thank you, I want us to go back to the book of Revelation.

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Today we're moving out of chapter one. Maybe you thought we weren't gonna do that. Maybe you thought we were gonna be in Revelation until Jesus returns.

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I don't know. We did, I think, 19 episodes in it. So now we're moving on to chapter two and to chapter three, which are the seven letters to the seven churches of Asia Minor.

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Now, over the next week or so, we're gonna give some introductory thoughts about this passage of scripture, that Revelation two through three.

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We're gonna see how Christ is shepherding, strengthening, warning, and judging his covenant people in the first century as Jerusalem was on the verge of collapsing.

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And we're gonna see a lot of background information, but we're also gonna get into a lot of incredible information on these seven churches.

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I wanna do at least one episode on every single one of these churches. It's gonna be great.

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And with that, without further ado, let's jump into part one, reorienting back to Revelation.

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Now, we've been off for a little while, so we need to recap on where we were. Revelation one, when we were there, we were standing with John on the rocky coast of Patmos.

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We were watching with him as the heavens opened and the veil between earth and glory was torn asunder for a moment.

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And for 19 episodes, we've beheld Christ unveiled before the apostle, not merely as the carpenter from Nazareth, not merely as the suffering servant from Calvary, but as the cosmic king, as the radiant, risen, transfigured

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Christ robed in cosmic priestly splendor with eyes of fire, with a voice like many waters, with a sword coming out of his mouth.

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We saw that Revelation, especially chapter one, is not about a doomsday scenario at some point in the future, but it's about the downfall of Jerusalem.

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It does not announce the triumph of the beast. It announces the triumph of the lamb.

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It's not talking about the world ending in ruin, but it's talking about the renewal of the world that is coming under the

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Messiah's dominion and leadership. Chapter one declares this theme, that Jesus Christ is the ruler of history, that he's the one who grinds his enemies to dust and he pours blessings on his people eternally.

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He is the alpha and the omega. He is the one who holds the keys of death and Hades in the palms of his nail -pierced hands.

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He is the one who will have supremacy over all things. That is what

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Revelation one is saying, and we learned that setting. We learned that the setting was covenantal, not chronological.

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We learned that John is not peering down the corridors of time into the 22nd, 23rd, 24th century.

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No, he's being ushered into the heavenly courtroom where Jesus is, where Jesus is inspecting the realm that he purchased with his blood and where he's preparing to conform it to his will.

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What do I mean? Jesus died on the cross. Jesus rose from the grave. Jesus ascended to heaven. He bought and paid for the world.

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And now the book of Revelation is telling us the story of how Jesus is beginning to make this world that he bought conform to his will and conform to his plan and his image.

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That means that he's gonna bring judgment on his foes, that he's gonna bring discipline to his people.

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Like Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel before him, John is caught up in the spirit and he sees that on the

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Lord's day that Jesus is bringing both of these things, judgment and discipline.

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Judgment to his enemies, disciplines to his covenant people. And John sees that Jesus, and the way that he's gonna tenderly and affectionately bring discipline and love to his church is as a high priest.

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That's what Revelation 1 is really pointing out, that Jesus is the high priest who serves in the true temple.

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He is the one, even while earth is trembling below, he's the one who comes in, serves and cares for his people and trims their little wicks because they're like lampstands.

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The architecture in the book is liturgical. The lampstands, the priestly garments, the golden altars, all of this is temple language in chapter one.

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And it's that way because Christ appears as the new and better, true and greater high priest after the order of Melchizedek.

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He's the one who tends the new lampstands in the new temple, except now the temple is not made of gold, it's made out of flesh and blood.

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Now the temple's not in Jerusalem, it's in the seven churches of Asia Minor. Now you don't have one lampstand, you have seven lampstands, which means that the temple itself in Jerusalem was only a small picture of the cosmic reality that was going to come in Jesus Christ.

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Now the gospel light is not shut in the holy place in a temple in downtown

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Jerusalem. Now the holy place is the world and Christ's light is shining everywhere.

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That's what chapter one is really getting us to see. And in that vision, especially at the end of chapter one, the son of man is walking among his lampstands, fulfilling

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Daniel seven and fulfilling the expectation of a Levitical priest in the old covenant.

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He's inspecting, he's purifying, he's defending his bride. The same eyes that once blazed with compassion are now blazing with holy zeal, ready to destroy the ones who are persecuting

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Jesus's church. Revelation one is about a temple motif, but it's also about covenant lawsuit.

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Christ is also not just appearing as a priest, he's appearing as a judge, as a prophet, and as a king.

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He's the one who's bearing titles that assert his authority. He's the faithful witness.

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He's the ruler over the kings of the earth. He's the one who loves us and who freed us from our sins. Chapter one is about the priesthood, the kingship, and the prophetic office of Jesus.

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All three of his ministerial offices are coming to bear in chapter one for the good of his people and for the destruction of his enemies.

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And what revelation is going to show us is in chapters two and three, we're gonna get hints of it.

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Four through 20, we're gonna see it explicitly that the first century Jews, the old covenant people, are going to be ripped out of their standing with Christ or with God.

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He's gonna do what he promised in Matthew 21 where he says, I'm gonna rip the kingdom away from you and give it to a people who bear its fruit.

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He's gonna do what he promised in Matthew 22 through parable when he says that the king was enraged that they rejected his son and refused to come to the wedding feast of his son, and the king, that's

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God, is gonna send fire upon their city. He's bringing down, like he did in Matthew 23, the seven covenant woes of judgment upon Jerusalem for murdering their

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Messiah and murdering his bride in every city in Judea and in all throughout the

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Roman world. What we're gonna see in the rest of this book is that it is very focused on the judgment of Jerusalem and also secondarily on the eventual downfall of Rome, which happened.

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Jerusalem was destroyed in AD 70, just like Revelation predicted, and the Roman empire eventually fell and became

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Christian because God is going to conquer the nations with his gospel.

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Chapter two through three is right before we get into that judgment motif.

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Chapters two through three is the disciplining of his church. It's the pruning of his church.

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It's the refining of his church. And chapter two through three is here to help us understand how

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Jesus loves and cares for his church and make sure that their light will forever shine.

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And now, as we turn to chapters two and three, we're gonna see that more clearly, how

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Christ is now the one who's walking among his congregations. He's commending their faith, but he's rebuking their compromise.

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He's warning the wicked who still exist inside the church, but he's strengthening the faithful.

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He's preparing them for what is soon gonna come upon their world.

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And in order to understand that, we need to actually go to part two, the

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Roman landscape. Now, when John has this vision in Revelation chapter one, he's almost catapulted into Asia Minor.

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He's been on the island of Patmos. He's been looking out, maybe sitting down on the beach on the rocks, and he's looking out at the ocean, hoping, dreaming that a ship will come by and bring him supplies.

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But when Jesus steps out of heaven and into John's world of Patmos, he's almost teleported to Asia Minor.

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It's almost like he could smell the dust and the incense from the streets. It's almost like he could hear the familiar voices of the old bishops who that he knew and he served along with in these churches.

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You'll remember John was an elder in Christ's church, but he was also a bishop over these seven churches.

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These seven churches were his churches. The pastors who served in these churches were men that he discipled.

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So on the island of Patmos, John is taken in a moment to be able to see what

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Jesus is saying to these seven churches that he knew full well. John had visited every one of these seven churches.

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He had preached sermons in every single one of these seven churches, and he knew the people.

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He knew their names. He knew their families. He had eaten at their dinner table, and now the old

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John is seeing Jesus speak to these churches that he loves, seeing him speaking to them about the things that they need to repent of and the things that they need to continue in in order to face the tumultuous days that are coming ahead.

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Now, I think it's important that we understand who Asia Minor is in order to understand the situation that's going on in these

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Asia Minor churches. John is seeing Jesus, and he's seeing

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Jesus talk to, talk about, and write this letter to these seven churches. This letter's gonna be sent by a postal worker who's gonna be going and delivering it to all of the seven churches.

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So if you'll allow me, if we wanna understand Revelation two through three, we really need to understand what it was like to live in Asia Minor.

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See, long before John penned the book of Revelation, Rome had conquered Asia Minor with a very swift sword, and they crowned it with their

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Roman peace, the Pax Romana. That, the peace of Rome, was the empire's only gospel.

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It was her creed, it was her confession, and it was her counterfeit religion. And it was the kingdom that was actually standing in the way of the one true

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Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. You see, the Caesars preached salvation through subjugation.

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They promised order through political obedience, and they promised ruin for anyone who would stand in their way.

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The peace that they forged was a tranquility of sorts.

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It was a cessation of war, but it was a subjugated kind of sanguinity, the kind of calm that's known in cemeteries and among tombstones.

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And the people of Asia Minor embraced the peace of Rome. They embraced the

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Caesars of Rome. They loved it, and they bowed down before their statues as some of the most dutiful and ardent worshipers of the imperial cult in all of the empire.

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They burned their little pinch of incense to the Caesars, and they called their emperor Lord and Savior for extra points.

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Their allegiance was political, but it was also religious and liturgical.

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To be a Roman citizen at that time was to be a worshiper of the Roman state. It was to have the

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Roman state as your chief god. Rome didn't care if you had a bunch of other gods.

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They just cared that they were your chief god. And nowhere was this man -centered, mangled religion stronger than in the province of Asia Minor, which was one, if not one of the most dazzling parts of the empire itself.

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By some accounts, Asia Minor was the richest single area in the

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Roman world. Her ports were thronged with great, beautiful, strong ships.

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Her markets were glittering with gold. Her cities were alive with theaters and temples and law courts and a bustling

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Mediterranean culture with a food scene that would make the rest of the empire jealous.

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In this place, in Asia Minor, the emperors were not distant figures who were stamped upon their legal tender in coins.

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No, these men were the known powers who they loved and who they worshiped.

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And because it was at least likely that Caesar was gonna come and visit

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Asia Minor because it was one of the crown jewels of the empire, well, they did everything that they possibly could to procure

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Caesar's favor. Every city competed for the favor of Caesar.

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They poured their wealth into the temples that rose like mountaintops over the horizon.

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The state -sponsored worship of the Caesar as a living God was present in all of these cities, and they competed with each other on who could be the most ardent in their worship.

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They had priests, they had sacrifices, they had festivals, they had all of that to try to impress the emperor so that he would come and don them with his godlike presence and to be chosen as one of the guardians of these sanctuaries.

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The neochros, the temple warden, was one of the highest honors that a city could win.

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It meant that you were entrusted with housing the emperor's cult, that you were responsible for maintaining his temple, funding his priest, hosting his elaborate games and his parades and the sacrifices that were done in his name.

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It meant that you were in his good graces. It meant days of feasting, weeks of celebration, rivers of animals slain to the glory of the empire, smoke and worship curling to the heavens for the glory of Caesar's name.

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It was a civic competition for divine attention. It was a race to see which city could worship the emperor with the most zeal so that they could win his approval.

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It's like, in a weird sort of way, neighborhoods that compete with one another to see who's gonna have the best

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Christmas lights so that they can win the neighborhood competition that year. For these cities in Asia Minor, to bear the title of neochoros was to bear the empire's favor.

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It meant the eyes of Rome were resting fondly upon you. But beneath the appearance of all of the beauty and all of the pomp and circumstance and culture that was going on and bubbling in this

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Asia Minor region, there was a very deep besetting bondage in it all.

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Because every trade guild, every feast, every civic celebration was soaked in God -defying idolatry as the people scurried to obtain the favor of man instead of the favor of God.

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To work, even just to work, was to incorporate worship into your daily vocation.

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To eat was to offer sacrifices to an approved list of idols.

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The butcher carved the meat that was consecrated to the gods.

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The merchant had to pay the dues at the altars. The magistrate poured out libations before he made judgments.

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To refuse to participate in the religious culture of Asia Minor, which was a

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Roman -centric worshipful culture, meant that you would not participate in your society because at every level of it, there was emperor worship.

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There was worship of pagan gods. And if you as a Christian said, no, I can't do that because only

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Jesus Christ is my Lord, you would be considered an enemy of the state. People would think that you hate your people, that you hate your customs, and that you hate your very way of life.

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I've talked to people who come from places in the East, like in the

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Orient, where ancestor worship is still a thing. And then they become a

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Christian and they don't wanna participate in worshiping their ancestors, of course, because their ancestors aren't

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God. And their families turn on them. And their families believe you hate us.

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You hate our traditions. You hate our customs. You hate our people. You've turned against us.

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That sentiment happens today when Christians, when people become Christians in animistic cultures, well, the same thing was happening back then, except back then you made

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Rome your enemy when you didn't participate in all of this worship. And as a result of your mutiny, you would lose your sense of livelihood.

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You would lose your home. You would lose your reputation. You would lose your name. This was not theoretical.

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It was a slow grinding exile as you were being cut out and removed from life and home and everything.

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And at the forefront of all of this decadent captivity stood the chief city of Asia Minor, which is known as Ephesus.

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Ephesus was a harbor town known for its commerce and its culture. It was the chief city of all of Asia Minor.

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It was the unofficial capital of the province. Ephesus was called the metropolis of Asia.

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And she deserved that title because her avenues were lined with statues dedicated to the gods.

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Her harbor gates were open to the world of many ideas and peculiar religions. Her theater seated 25 ,000 people who roared approval at the civic pageantry of imperial worship.

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High above all of this in the city of Ephesus was the Temple of Artemis, which was one of the wonders of the ancient world and pilgrims would travel from all over the empire to stream towards it from every single cardinal direction to worship at the

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Temple of Artemis of the Ephesians. Sailors, merchants, nobles, slaves, they would all bring their tribute to the goddess that they called the queen of heaven.

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The city of Ephesus was drenched in all kinds of wealth and superstition and it was perfumed with all kinds of power and pride.

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And it is to this city that Jesus writes first, which means that the very first church that Jesus begins to address is the church in the chief city of Asia Minor that is addicted to the worship of Caesar more than any other.

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He begins not in the periphery, but in the very furnace of the idolatry where loyalty to him is gonna cost his people, his

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Christians, everything. And the battle between what's true and who is the true king versus who is the false gods was most ardently being fought.

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Now, after Ephesus, the message would travel northward to Smyrna and then upward towards Pergamum and then inward towards Thyatira and then down through the cities of Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.

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What you are seeing in the ordering of these seven churches in the book of Revelation is the postal route by which the letters would have arrived.

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These churches are not arranged in happenstance or in some kind of nonsensical order.

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They're arranged by the way that a mailman would have visited them. It was a circuit where you would take your letter first to Ephesus, the port city, and then you would go all the way through Pergamum and Thyatira and Sardis and Philadelphia and Laodicea and all of those.

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This was a known mailman's circuit. It was the crown of cities that were all bound together by the imperial postal road.

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And couriers galloped along this road to bring Caesar's messages, Caesar's decrees,

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Caesar's announcements. Any time that Caesar had a wonderful message to share with his people, the couriers would go on this very particular route and address these very particular seven cities.

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So it's interesting here that Jesus takes the same route as well because heaven now has a message to share with Asia Minor.

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Heaven has a message about the overturning of the entire empire by a new king, a new

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Lord, a new Savior, which is Jesus Christ. And the number of churches not only is indicative of the postal route that they were actually on, and it's also not coincidental either because seven is the number of perfection in the

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Bible, which means that yes, there were seven churches on this postal route. Yes, this is exactly the postal route that Rome would have used as well, but seven is by providence of God, not just the number of these churches, but it's the number of creation, it's the number of covenant fullness, it's the number of the

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Spirit's perfection, and it's in this detail, these seven churches, that it's very clear that Christ is not just addressing seven churches.

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Yes, he's addressing them. Yes, he's sending a letter to them. Yes, it is to the Ephesians, to the

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Thyatirans, to the Smyrnians, all of them. Yes, of course. But because there's seven churches, just like seven lampstands in the first chapter, we can understand that this is a message to all the churches, all the churches in Asia Minor, all the churches in Rome, all the churches in Judea, and all the churches in Massachusetts 2 ,000 years later.

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He is symbolically addressing all of us, all of the first century churches in the

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Roman world and all of the churches throughout time and space and geography as well, using these seven lampstands and these seven churches and these seven letters as mirrors for the whole.

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And notice how fitting it is that the universal message of Christ would travel along the very same arteries of Rome.

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That their Caesar, their Lord, their God sent his messages because Christ is the only

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Lord, Savior, and God that there is. The same roads that carried the imperial decrees are now carrying divine revelation because God loves to overthrow imposters and competitors.

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People who say that, no, no, no, I'm the real power in the world, you better watch out because our

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God will not allow any rivals to stand against his throne or against his name.

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You see, the same empire that sought to unify the world under Caesar without knowing it actually became the courier of Christ's kingdom.

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The irony of the providence is actually really staggering. The empire that built roads to extend its dominion, those same roads were used to build the kingdom of Jesus.

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They made the foundation for the kingdom of God to be built.

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They built the roads, they built the network, they built the infrastructure, they built the postal route, they built all of it.

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And Jesus says, no, no, no, mine. They're now my roads, they're my postal courier routes, they're my cities, they're my people.

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The world belongs to me, Caesar, not you. I think it's so funny that the emperor's couriers who carried tidings of taxation or triumph in some battle are now being used by the couriers of God to talk about repentance, resurrection, and the downfall of every empire that opposes

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Jesus. I find that glorious. The empire that minted coins that bore

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Caesar's likeness upon it now is being replaced by a kingdom where its king bears his image upon his people's hearts.

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The empire that promised an eternal city that would sit upon seven hills is being replaced by a

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Christ who walks among the seven lampstands that's gonna outshine them all.

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And yet, as Jesus began to write his message and march that message down through those

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Roman roads, the contrast between these two kingdoms could not have been more stark.

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To the naked eye, Rome was indestructible. Her architecture had been carved in eternal marble stone, yet every pillar was infected with her moral depravity and decay.

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The lamps of Asia Minor, small and trembling as they seemed, were in truth the torches of a new world, the first embers of a new kingdom that would outlive

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Rome, that would outlive the Spanish Empire, that would outlive the Dutch Empire, the

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British Empire, and that would outlive the American Empire. And it's that great paradox that Revelation begins to unveil.

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The church, though it began by looking quite poor and quite broken and quite defeated, is gonna be the one who holds the very treasures of heaven.

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She may have been scorned, but one day she is going to be the one who judges the world.

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She was the one who was hunted, and yet now she's the one who's holding the leash. The empires of men, they'll roar for a moment, but then they'll crumble.

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But the kingdom of Christ, though beginning very quietly beneath the surface of the

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Roman Empire, will become like a deep river running unseen, running patiently and then eventually unstoppable throughout the world.

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And so Jesus speaks, not from the Palatine Hills, but from Patmos, not from the

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Senate in the city of Rome, but through a suffering apostle on an exiled island, not to conquer by steel and by sword like the

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Roman Empire had done, but to extend his reign through the preaching of the word, the administration of the sacraments, and the application of the

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Holy Spirit. This is the Roman world into which Revelation 2 and Revelation 3 were written, were gilded into this idolatrous empire that was trembling with splendor, but yet entirely unaware that its glory was fading.

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Because in its midst, hidden in plain sight, the true empire was rising and the true king was on his throne.

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And the empire of light, whose sovereign walks among his lampstands, is trimming the flames of his people.

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He's guarding their glow until finally they have snuffed out the darkness. This is the world into which these seven churches lived, and it is in that world in which we will see how horrifically they were persecuted in part three, persecution from the imperial cult.

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Now, at the time that Revelation was written, circa AD 63 or 64,

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Nero was ruling like a deranged lunatic, wannabe god and would soon be dying like a rabid mongrel beast.

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When John penned this letter that we're now studying, Nero sat upon the world's most powerful throne, not as a dignified statesman by no means, but as a young, belligerent maniac who was drunk on his own divinity.

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He was not merely the emperor, but he was, in his mind, the incarnation of the empire's self -worship.

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He was the living embodiment of its own theology. For Rome did not separate politics from religion or religion from daily life like America has tried to, and I would agree wrongly, or I would argue wrongly.

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The politics are the outworking of the poleness, or the city, and the poleness is the conglomeration of worshiping people with worshiping ideas that make up a worshiping society.

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To divide politics from religion is actually impossible because you're dividing people from their beliefs, and that's also impossible as well.

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And I would argue that it's not one of Rome's sins. In fact, I would think that it's one of Rome's great virtues that they included the religion and the state together.

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The problem, however, is that they adopted the wrong god. Instead of Jesus, instead of the triune god, instead of Yahweh, they worshiped the emperor, and in this case, it was

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Nero, the most mangled, distorted, and morally tone -deaf, broken, disgusting person that the empire could have produced, which is obviously where things got a little whompy -jawed.

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At the time, to speak the name Caesar was to evoke the divine.

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His statues glimmered in every marketplace. His bust presided over every council.

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His name was sung in hymns of loyalty. And when Nero entered a city, garlands would be hung, incense would be burned, and the crowd would roar with the same kind of liturgical confession that filled the temples.

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Nero curias, Nero soter, which is Nero is lord and Nero is savior.

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And that is where the gale -force winds began with the birth of Christianity, because a new confession had appeared in the world, proclaimed by God himself, who came and he visited with fishermen and tax collectors and slaves, and he didn't spread his gospel in the halls of power and prominence, but in the dusty, backwater parts of Judea and Galilee.

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And this, of course, would not only have been a rival religion for Rome, but it would have been a personal affront to the sovereignty of Nero.

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You can imagine the beastly man himself scoffing, a god from Judea?

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And to make matters worse, this new group of people called Christians were spreading like wildfire in Roman provinces.

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They were gathering as churches all throughout the Roman world. They were chanting the very Roman -sounding anthem, but with Jesus, not

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Nero, at the heart of it, saying, Jesus is lord, Jesus is savior, and worthy is the lamb.

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These were Roman anthems that used to be given to Caesar, but now the

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Christians are giving them to Christ. And to add more salt in the womb, the Christians refused to bend their knee to the empire's god, which was the real problem.

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Unlike Judaism and Christianity, Rome was perfectly happy for every tribe, tongue, and people under the auspices of their subjugated empire to worship whatever distinctive and local religion you wanted.

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You could worship whatever god that is in your parts and in your country. They didn't care.

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They didn't care in the slightest which gods you worshiped, so long as you had room for the emperor to stand at the top of your personal

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Mount Olympus. Thus, what made Christianity so contagious and also so dangerous is that they believed that there was only one god,

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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that Caesar was not him, and that Caesar has no room on Mount Rushmore with the

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Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And in a world where worship was integrated into your politics, and politics was required for life and flourishing, then those were fighting words that Rome could not ignore.

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And in this way, the imperial cult, the worship of Caesar was not an optional superstition that was tacked on to civic life and family traditions.

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It was your life. The empire was your temple. Its rulers were your high priest.

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Its subjects were the congregation. Every feast, every festival, every trade was an act of devotion to this

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Nero figure who was at the top of the totem pole when it comes to the gods, and it infected everything.

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For instance, when the local guilds met to toast the success of their vocation, they offered wine to the emperor's genius, the divine spark that was said to dwell within him.

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When a new contract was signed, whatever that may be, I give you this pot, you give me this amount of money.

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When a new contract was signed, a lot of times it was sealed with a sacrifice. Sacrifice to who? To the emperor.

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When merchants bought and sold in the agora, which is the marketplace, they did so beneath the altars where the incense was burned to the

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Roman gods. The city's loyalty was its liturgy. Its patriotism was a part of its prayer life.

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To refuse participation in the home of the society was to declare yourself a stranger in your own homeland, and it included dire consequences, like you couldn't buy and sell if you did not worship the emperor, and you could not feast or celebrate with your family if you were not willing to go along with the beast's little dog and pony show.

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And just in case you're wondering, yes, I have been calling Nero the beast here, but we're getting a little ahead of ourselves because there will be more to come on that in future episodes.

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But suffice it to say, Christians did not have to seek persecution in the

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Roman empire. They merely had to live with the exclusivity of Jesus Christ at the center of their life, and people would be lining up to murder them.

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The people of Rome would have looked at that kind of behavior the way that conservatives would have looked at the mostly peaceful protesters of 2020, or maybe even a better example would be like Kyle Rittenhouse would have been viewed if he showed up at the

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Democrat National Convention. To say he would be unwelcomed is of course an understatement, and that is certainly but worse what was going on in the first century.

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That's how our Christian brothers and sisters felt 1 ,900 years ago, believing in Jesus Christ, the only way, the only truth, the only way to God.

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They would have been viewed as disturbers of the peace, people who hated the Roman way of life, and if the terms existed in those days, they would have also been called

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Nazis, white supremacists, and they certainly would have been in Hillary Clinton's basket of deplorables.

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They were enemies of the state. They were enemies of Roman progress.

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They were enemies of pluralism and polytheism. Thus, for a

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Christian to withhold the pinch of incense that was given to the emperor, it was looked at as if they were betraying their neighbors, they were betraying their homeland, they were betraying themselves as enemies of the state and enemies of all things good.

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To skip a feast was to insult the patrons, to remain silent during the acclamation that Nero is

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Lord was to invite scrutiny and suspicion, and suspicion was enough to get the persecutions going because under Nero, the paranoia that fueled him personally in his mental illnesses and lunacy mixed with the off -color nonconformity of the first century

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Christians was a powder keg, and it was enough to catapult his suspicions into martyrdom and murder.

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The emperor who fancied himself a mini -god would soon cast his empire into a nightmarish scenario when the fires threatened to burn down the city of Rome in July of AD 64.

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Maybe you've heard of it. The Roman fires nearly consumed the entire city and Nero blamed it on the

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Christians. Why? Because the Romans hated the Christians. Because they said that Christians hated the

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Roman way of life. They hated the Roman civic religion. They didn't participate in the incense or the imperial cult, and that made them bad people with dangerous ideas according to Rome.

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They were the kind of people that Rome could not trust, which meant that they were exactly the kind of people that Roman citizens would believe would be behind starting this kind of fire.

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Now, none of that, of course, was true. Nero started the fire. Nero blamed it on the Christians, but no one said anything because it was at least plausible that this group of disturbers of the peace who hated the

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Roman civic religion could have done such a thing, and all that was needed was a little bit of suspicion and a little bit of plausibility, and then

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Nero was lighting Christians on fire and setting his, and using them as torchlights in his garden all while laughing and playing his fiddle as the city was burning.

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Christians at that time were some of the best citizens in the empire, but it was because of their exclusivity in Jesus Christ, believing that Jesus was the only way, the only truth, the only life, because of that, it made them repugnant to the rest of the

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Romans, and Nero found them to be the perfect scapegoat, and he easily deflected the fury away from himself and onto the early church, and we know this is the case because of the historian

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Tacitus, who was no friend of Christ, no friend of Christians, but he did not hold back when he said this.

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Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations called

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Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origins, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators,

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Pontius Pilate, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment again, broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular accordingly.

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An arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty. Then upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city as of hatred against mankind.

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Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt to serve as nightly illumination when daylight had expired.

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Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle and was exhibiting a show in the circus.

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While he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car, hence, even for criminals who deserve extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion, for it was not as it seemed for the public good, but for the glut of one man's cruelty that they were being destroyed.

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Now, that persecution radiated outward like heat from a boiler. People thought that they were bad for the public.

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You heard that in Tacitus quote where it was crimes against humanity because they didn't participate in the

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Roman gods. And subsequently, the provinces like Asia Minor followed in lockstep with the capital and the empire -wide

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Roman -induced persecutions because as we've learned, Asia Minor wanted to curry favor with Rome.

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And in Asia where civic devotion was fervent, the emperor's image became not only a test of your loyalty, but also of your life and of your death.

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Every citizen had to offer incense before the bust of Caesar in order to receive a certificate, a small token declaring that he had worshiped rightly.

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This was the competition that we talked about earlier to procure the favor of Rome. To hold that certificate was to belong to the nation.

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It was to show that you were a good citizen, a citizen in good standing, but to lack it was to be marked out as an enemy of the state, which is why

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Christians began leaving the trade guilds. That's why Christians left the theaters.

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That's why Christians left the public square because they were being killed for their faith in an area where you could not be faithful without outing yourself as one who would not participate in the

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Roman civic religion. So they became economic ghosts. They were excluded from the rituals that made society run.

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They became the laughingstock of the culture. This was also in addition to the

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Jewish persecutions of Christians, which were already extreme in cruelty and frequency in their own right.

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And like I've said before, this is why the book of Revelation speaks of buying and selling and marks and images of beast and worship and trade, because John is not telling us cleverly designed fables about something that's gonna happen in the 21st century.

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He's telling us about real life that's happening on the ground where Christians can't buy and sell because they're not worshiping the beast, because they're not worshiping

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Nero. He's revealing what life looked like on the ground for Christians who were being killed for their faith in Jesus, because they wouldn't bow down to other gods.

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The empire was stamping its seal, its image upon men's consciences, and the church was refusing to bear it.

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And because they would not bear the mark of the beast. This meant that the saints would rather be poor than profane the name of Jesus Christ.

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They would rather be outcast than idolaters. And it was their refusal to participate in all of this that eventually led to their victory, evidenced by the

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Christianization of the Roman empire. This is why Christ, through the apostle

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John, was not calling for his people to despair. He was calling for them to have courage.

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He was revealing the cosmic theater in which their suffering was playing its part in the story of redemption.

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Nero's throne, while it looked unbreakable, was made of things that would soon be broken.

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And Christ's empire, while looking homely and unassuming, would soon be proved to be unshakable and unassailable.

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That is why Gentry notes that Revelation takes the same words of worship and acclamation that Rome used in its emperor cult, words like worthy, glory, power, and dominion, and applied them to Jesus Christ because he's the true king, and he's the one who's gonna crush the raving

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Roman emperor very soon beneath his feet. He's the one who's going to destroy the

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Jewish enemies of the gospel. He's the one who's going to bring the entire world under his rule.

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That's why the book of Revelation, the elders are crying out, worthy are you, O Lord, to receive glory, and honor, and power, and dominion.

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They are echoing here a very peculiar form of worship that found its origination in Rome.

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They're echoing a Roman worship song to Caesar, but by actually applying it to Jesus, the true king, which is astounding.

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The church here in that verse that I just read is not coining its own new songs, its own new vocabularies.

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It's reclaiming the things that the world had twisted and naming them specifically for Jesus.

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This is also what differentiates a right interpretation from the escapist theology of Darby, Schofield, and futurism because this book is not about the future persecution of the church in the modern world.

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It's not. It's a manifesto of hope to first century Christians who were struggling with first century issues where they couldn't buy and sell in first century markets because they weren't worshiping a first century emperor named

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Nero. All of this is contextual to them. It's about Jesus overthrowing not just the

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Roman empire, but the old covenant world, and replacing it with a new covenant kingdom that would never end.

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In this way, Christ's kingdom is not a secret mystery religion for the eschatologically timid.

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It was and it still is the empire that's rising that will take dominion over all the earth.

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Rome understood this actually about Christ and about his people, which is why they were trying so ardently to destroy it.

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Rome understood that Christianity did not play well in pagan culture because we will not bow down to their gods, and we will not submit to their idolatry, and we will say

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Christ is Lord, whether you like it or not. Rome understood that Christianity would be its downfall if they didn't destroy it, and they tried and they failed, and Christianity succeeded, and Christianity has continued to succeed for the last 2 ,000 years, and it will continue on for 2 ,000 more should the

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Lord tarry. Now, finally, I want you to notice the genius of the irony of this whole situation.

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Nero demanded worship as a living embodiment of Rome's glory, and in so doing, he became the image of its decay.

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Isn't that ironic? His reign began in splendor, but it ended in suicide.

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The man who wanted to be a god fled like a beast before the shadow of the king.

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In his empire, while it roared with applause for a moment, he trembled with paralyzing fear in his death.

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His last words were the lament of a madman. Qualis artifex pareo, he cried.

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What an artist dies in me, which is the final shrieking words from the demons that controlled him.

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The world had crowned Nero lord and savior, and yet death exposed him as a fraud.

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And this is the great reversal at the heart of the book of Revelation. The powers that claim divinity will always die in ashes, and yet the one who died as a man will reign as God.

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Christ doesn't merely outlast Caesar, he outshines him, overturns him, overpowers him, and redefines what the word lordship means forever.

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For in the Lamb's kingdom, power flows downward. Kings serve the people, priests bleed for the congregation, and the crown is shaped like a cross.

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In that light, the persecutions of Nero were not defeats for the early church, but they were demonstrations of her victory.

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The blood of the martyrs was the seed of the rising Christendom. The more that Rome tried to snuff out that fire, the brighter and hotter the lampstands burned.

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Each execution was a splash of gasoline on a growing wildfire.

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Every martyrdom they perpetrated was the oxygen that was making it roar. The empire that sought to erase the name of Christ would be overthrown by Christ.

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That is the story through persecution that the book is trying to tell us, and it's the encouragement to the first century saints that Jesus was giving them in Revelation two through three, that he will reign supreme, and those who conquer in his name, those who endure in his name, those who continue in his name will be a part of his expanding dominion.

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Now, having established that Roman context, next week,

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I wanna talk about the Jewish persecution that was happening in Asia Minor as well.

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We'll look at that, and then in the weeks ahead, we will get into Revelation two through three.

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But until then, God richly bless you. Hold fast to Christ. Cling to him.

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Serve him. You live in the world that Jesus bought and paid for. You live in the kingdom that crushed the

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Roman Empire. You live in the kingdom that will bring all the kingdoms under his feet for his glory.

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So live in that, work in that, praise God in that. We'll see you next time on the broadcast.