The Book Of Revelation (part 3)

of reviewing what the Holy Spirit through His servant John has written to the seven churches.

Very briefly by review, as we begin to look into the book of Revelation, this is the discussion, the part of the things which are that John has been instructed to write.

He is writing to seven real churches that exist in what is now called

Asia Minor, and up in Turkey, and God has a message for each one of these individual churches.

And in most cases, as he talks to these churches, each church is, first of all, an actual entity that existed at the time that John wrote this.

Each church is also typical of a type of Christian, because there are

Christian individuals that fall into each one of these categories. It's also representative of a church age, of an age of the church that will take place as the church age unfolds.

And so John is writing to these churches, and in most cases, the

Spirit writing through John has something good to say about each one of these churches. He has something to call them down for, a concern, a condemnation, if you will, and it was pointed out to me the last time that I was up here.

I said there was only one church that had no condemnation. There's actually two. The church at Smyrna, which is the church under persecution, he has nothing bad to say to them.

He has nothing, no words of condemnation or no words of concern for the church at Smyrna.

And that can be understood because persecution very quickly drives away the hangers -on.

The people who are not committed do not stay when the church is being persecuted.

And so that's one church. And then the church at Philadelphia receives no words of condemnation, only praise.

Not that that church was perfect because there are no perfect churches, but that, you know, the thrust of that church, as we will see this morning, was they were doing what they should be doing.

They had everything together. And so we begin to proceed. We've looked at three of the churches.

We'll try to get through the other four this morning. And so starting at verse 18 of chapter 2 in Revelation, "...and

unto the angel of the church in Thyatira write," the angel being the leader of that church, the pastor of that church, "...these

things saith the Son of God, who hath his eyes like a flame of fire, and his feet are like fine bronze,

I know thy works, and love, and service, and faith, and thy patience, and thy works, and the last to be more than the first.

Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou allowest that woman Jezebel, who calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants, to commit fornication and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.

And I gave her space to repent of her fornication, and she repented not. Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation except they repent of their deeds.

And I will kill her children with death. And all the churches shall know that I am he who searcheth the minds and hearts, and I will give unto every one of you according to your works.

But unto you I say, and unto the rest in Thyatira, as many as have not this doctrine, and who have not known the depths of Satan as they speak,

I will put upon you no other burden, but that what you have already hold fast till I come.

And he that overcometh and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations, and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, and as the vessels of a potter they shall be broken into shivers, even as I received of my father.

And I will give him the morning star. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the

Spirit saith unto the churches. Let's open in prayer. Now, Heavenly Father, we are thankful and praise you this morning that you have given this message unto your church and that it has been recorded and brought down to us so that it can benefit us as well.

Open our hearts, Lord, and may the Holy Spirit minister to us this morning as we read and study your word in Jesus' name, amen.

Thyatira is the church that tolerates sin. Now, up to now, we've looked at three churches.

We had the church at Ephesus, which is the type of church, there's loyalty there, but they lost their first love.

And then we've looked at the church at Smyrna, and this is loyalty tested by fire.

And then we've looked at the church at Pergamum, and even though they were worldly, they still had loyalty but without the passion that drove it.

But all three of these churches are true to the faith. They're all true churches, they're all true to the faith, even though each one of them has something that needs to be addressed.

When we get to Thyatira, we get to a church of a different sort.

We're starting in on a downward spiral of churches as we begin to look at these.

And the problem that Thyatira has is that they are tolerant of sin. They are tolerant of sin.

And so the correspondent, again, in each one of these cases, the correspondent is always Jesus, but in each case, he reveals himself some aspects of his character that are appropriate to the people being addressed.

And so, first of all, he refers to himself as the son of God. Now, in chapter 1, he referred to himself as the son of man.

And when Jesus calls himself the son of man, that's emphasizing his humility, his humanness, if you will.

But now, he presents himself as the son of God, he's emphasizing his deity. And this, interestingly enough, is the only time in the book of Revelation that he uses this title.

So he says, I'm the son of God, I'm God, I'm deity, and I'm the divine judge.

I'm not a sympathetic high priest, I'm the divine judge, I've come to judge.

And judgment is in view, not comfort. When Jesus refers to himself in various passages as the son of man, he's identifying himself with us, and that's to comfort us, and to give us, to bring comfort to our situation, whatever it is, that we can say, well, yes, we have a great high priest who understands our infirmities, who understands the things that oppress us every day and that we deal with because he's dealt with them all.

But that's not who is presenting himself here. Here we have the divine judge presenting himself.

And it goes on, he says, he has eyes like fire. There's no comfort here.

Nothing is hidden from the one who has eyes like fire. He sees things as they really are.

He sees things as what's really going on. And he has no illusions about any of this.

You can't fool him. You know, we can fool each other, and in some cases, we can even fool ourselves.

We can delude ourselves, but not Jesus, not the divine judge. And then it also says, his feet like burnished bronze.

And this is representative of purity and holiness because what do you do with your feet?

You trample on things. And he's the one that tramples on impurity.

And so he's presenting himself as the standard, if you will. He's saying,

I am the standard by which you are measured, and frankly, Thyatirans, you don't measure up.

You're lacking. Now, no real record exists of this church besides this one.

It's been suggested that maybe Lydia had a hand in the founding of this church.

If you remember in Acts, Paul goes to Thyatira, and he meets Lydia, who is identified as a woman of some substance, who was a worshiper of God, and Paul led her to the

Lord, and she and all of her household were saved. And perhaps she was instrumental in the starting of this church, or perhaps not.

We don't know. We don't know, but the city itself, we know quite a bit about it. It was a commercial center.

It was a producer of fine cloth and textiles. If you remember the story in Acts, that that's what

Lydia did. She sold purple cloth. That was her business. And it was a business center.

It was not particularly a religious center. It was a business center. Historians tell us that in Thyatira, there were all kinds of craft guilds, sort of like trade unions, that every one of the crafts that were practiced there had its own trade group and sort of trade union type thing.

And each one of those, of course, had a patron saint, and each our patron false god, and each one of those had its own feast, and all that kind of stuff.

And if you were going to engage in business in Thyatira, you had to belong to a guild.

And so this is not conducive. When you convert to Christianity, this is not career enhancing in a situation like that.

So the people that had become Christians and were part of the Thyatiran church, they had come out of some pretty serious situations.

And it had affected them personally. It was not something that they did casually. Actually, during this entire period of time, when the church was first building up during the first century, it was not something you did casually to identify yourself with the

Christians. Because if you were Jewish, it meant to be ostracized.

It meant to be thrown out of the synagogue. You could no longer associate with any of those that you had been associating with.

You were cut off from your family. And then later on, as the persecution started, it was probably going to your risking your life when you were publicly baptized.

And to be baptized, again, was also not something you did casually. Because once you had done that, once you had been baptized and had openly declared your allegiance to the

Christians, you were a marked man or you were a marked woman. So here they are. And as is typical in all of these, in most of these situations, these letters, the writer,

Jesus Christ, starts right off with his words of commendation. And they've got some good things.

First of all, they have a love for God. They have a love for God. They have a love for each other.

Unfortunately, this love has no firm foundation under it. Love is a marvelous thing.

And it's something we want to emulate within our church body. Love for each other, love for other saints, love for the lost.

But unless you have a firm doctrinal foundation under that, you have a house that's not supported by anything.

And that's what the Thyatirans had. They had no sound doctrinal foundation underneath what they were doing.

And they had faithfulness. They had faithfulness. They had faith. And they served.

They served one another. And they served their community, I'm sure. And they persevered in this.

They kept it up. And this is the natural outgrowth of having the love and the faithfulness that they were commended for.

And they were growing. They were growing. He said, your deeds, your latter deeds are more than your former deeds.

So, you know, things are increasing. You're going up. But he says, I have something against you, and it's that you tolerate sin.

As we gather from the text, there was a woman in the church who had set herself up as a teacher, as a prophetess, she calls herself.

And she was leading, she was teaching false doctrine. And she was leading members of the congregation astray.

Now, she was able to do that, of course, because they had no doctrinal foundation. That's the thing.

That's why we stress, sometimes you may get tired of it. Why do we stress doctrine so much at this church?

Because that's the foundation. That's what supports all the other efforts.

All of the functions that we want to have done around here, you have to have this doctrinal foundation underneath it.

So that when false doctrines come down the road, as they will inevitably, we are, as the leaders of the church, we are desperately concerned that you will have a foundation and that you will be able to tell there's something wrong there.

I may not be able to identify precisely what it is, but I know that this does not ring true, whatever it is.

And see, they didn't have that. So, when some sounds good, you know, this sounds good,

I'm going to go along with it. And so, on several levels, there are problems here.

First of all, whoever this woman was, and most commentators agree that Jezebel was not her name, that's a characterization of her.

She is like the Jezebel of the Old Testament that Ahab married, if you remember that story.

In fact, it's interesting that it is identified in Scripture that the worst sin that Ahab committed out of all of this list of sins that he had, and he was world -class in this.

But the worst thing that he did was to marry Jezebel. And so, she was a foreign princess and he brought her in along with all of her idols and idol worship and all of the rest of that.

And the effects upon the nation of Israel went on for centuries literally after that.

And so, it's a characterization rather than her actual name.

But she's typical of ones that corrupt God's people. But she's violating the biblical prohibitions against women teaching in the church.

But the result of all of this is immorality and immoral acts. And exactly what she taught is not detailed, but probably there were philosophies running around at the time, one particular

Greek philosophy that taught that only the spirit was good.

Anything connected with the spirit is good. Anything connected with the flesh is evil. And so, therefore, since God is only interested in the good or the spirit, that what we do in the flesh, we can do anything we want in the flesh, you see, because God's not concerned with that.

And this was just one of the heresies that floated around during the first century. It floats around again on different titles today.

But possibly that was some of what she was teaching. Anyway, whatever she was teaching, it resulted in the

Christians at Thyatira being led off into immorality. And this had been challenged in some way and she would not repent.

The text says, I gave her space to repent. So, obviously, she was challenged on this in some way and she would not repent.

We have here willful disobedience. This isn't something merely that someone is sinning, sinning through ignorance or sinning through laziness or something else.

This is deliberate active disobedience and she would not repent. And so,

Jesus says, the penalty for that is death. And her followers, the penalty for that is death, physical death and spiritual death as well and eternal damnation to follow that.

And so, he gives the command because there are genuine believers in the church in Thyatira.

He says, the command to you is don't follow the false teaching. Don't follow the false teaching and hold on.

Hold on to what you have because this is not going to be easy. It's never easy to hold to the truth, particularly if the majority are going off into error.

For one thing, that shakes your confidence, doesn't it? You begin to wonder, well, do

I have something wrong because nobody else seems to agree with me or only three or four seem to agree with me and everybody else is going off in this other direction.

And it's difficult. You have to be sure you're ground. And that's when it goes back again.

We circle right back to the thing why sound doctrine is so necessary. You have to have the firm foundation.

Otherwise, you're very easily swayed. And so, he says, hold on.

It's not going to be easy. Hold on. And his counsel is keep

Christ's deeds. Do, without being too flip here, do what Jesus would do.

Stay with what Jesus taught and stay with what the apostles taught about Jesus.

Because by this time in church history, Paul's letters are available.

This is, we're fairly well into the first century now. Paul's letters are available.

They're being circulated. Lots of other resources are starting to become available.

So, he's saying, you know what has been taught about Jesus. You know what sound doctrine is available to you.

So, study that and hold on to it and persevere. Persevere.

Hang on until the end. That's the mark of a Christian, is perseverance.

And your reward, interestingly enough, is going to include authority over the nations.

And this is a universal message. He who hath an ear, let him hear.

It goes not just to the church of Thyatira, but to everyone who hears it.

And that's us today. And one of the real dangers that faces us as Christians is that we will become tolerant of sin.

That we no longer see sin as serious as it is.

That we become jaded. You know, we have seen whatever it is, we have seen it so much, we've been faced with it so much that it no longer offends us as it should.

Sin should be offensive to a Christian. And yet, we are surrounded on every side so much of the time that don't we become just sort of blase about it?

We become jaded to it. It gets to where we don't even notice anymore. And that's what he's warning against.

You know, don't let the scar tissue build up, as it were.

You know, when you get an injury, it scars over and after a while, there's no sensitivity in where the scar is anymore.

You know, you can stick pins in that and you don't even feel it, right? And so, that's the warning here is don't become immune, if you will.

Yes, question. That's difficult.

It's difficult in both situations. Particularly in a business situation, we are told, we are instructed, slaves are instructed to obey their masters.

And modern day translation of that is businessmen and workers are instructed to obey their bosses.

If a boss is consistently acting in an inappropriate manner, whatever it is, how to handle that situation, first of all, you need to handle it discreetly.

Don't call your boss down in a public meeting. That's one. You know, if you think you need to speak with him or her, do that privately.

Because, you know, don't put them in a situation where they're immediately going to become defensive.

And there may well be consequences if you do that. And so, whatever those consequences are, you have to be prepared to take those.

And some bosses might say, you know, you're absolutely right,

I appreciate you coming to me in this way, and, you know, we will, I'll try to watch it in the future.

Maybe not. The other situation you ask about, which is the one, what about family?

That's where it really gets tough. First of all, it's just across the board, it is harder to have a consistent testimony before your own family than it is among the outside world.

The people in the outside world, they don't see you all the time. The folks in your own family, they know what you're really like.

And so, you know, it's very easy for you to get pegged as the religious nut, you know, in the family, and so forth and so on.

And again, I wish there were formulas that I could give you for this, and there aren't any.

Except that you must be sensitive, and pick your battles wisely, and pick where you fight the battles wisely, because you don't want to, you can't climb on something every time right then.

You have to have some sensitivity as to when to confront something. And generally, in a large public gathering where all your friends and cousins and aunts and uncles and what have you are around is probably not the place to do it.

That's not a whole lot of help, I'm afraid. But that's about the best I can do for you right now.

Yes, Gladman. Yeah, well, certainly, the question was, is there a difference between believers and unbelievers?

If it's a believer, then, with the backing of Scripture, you can come and say, you know, brother or sister, and confront them with this.

You can say, this is sin. This is not pleasing to God. And you can just start into the whole process that you've been given.

And what we would hope would happen in a situation like that, that the individual would say, you know, you're absolutely right.

I'm going to confess that sin, and would you pray with me, you know, so that my behavior changes.

So certainly, when you're dealing with someone that you know to be a believer, your whole approach is different.

If it's an unbeliever, that's when your challenge is actually greater.

Because with a believer, it's really somewhat simpler.

You simply say, you know, this is offensive to God, and, you know, this is not who you are.

I know for a fact that you're a believer, you know, and therefore, this is offensive to Jesus Christ, and this is offensive to God, and you shouldn't be doing that.

And hopefully, they would respond positively to that. Anyway, let's move ahead. I notice there's no clock up now.

That means we can go as long as we want, right? Okay, good. It's worth noting, and final note on the church in Thyatira, that by the close of the second century, the church of Thyatira was gone.

It was not there. And so now we come to the church at Sardis.

Incidentally, one other thing, too, is that you notice that of the messages to all the churches, the message to Thyatira is the longest one of all of them.

And so starting chapter 3, he says, And unto the angel of the church at Sardis write, These things saith he that hath the seven spirits of God, and the seven stars,

I know thy works, that thou hast the name that thou livest, and art dead. Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die, for I have not found thy works perfect before God.

Remember, therefore, how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast and repent, and if therefore thou shalt not watch,

I will come upon thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.

Thou hast a few names, even in Sardis, that have not defiled their garments, and they shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy.

He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment, and I will not blot his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my

Father and before his angels. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.

Sardis is the dead church. Sardis is the dead church. The church that has a name, that they're alive, but they're dead.

And so this is a fairly short thing, and it's interesting. There's no persecution in Sardis.

There's no false teachers in Sardis. There's no problems with false doctrine in Sardis, because why should you bother persecuting the dead?

They're dead. They don't do anything. And so Jesus identifies himself, interestingly.

First of all, he calls himself the one that has the seven spirits and the seven stars. Now, the seven is the number of completion and perfection, and the seven spirits, this refers to the

Holy Spirit. It's a reference to the Holy Spirit as the representative of Jesus Christ.

In all of his fullness, the Holy Spirit is one, but he's referred to as the seven spirits because of the number of fullness and that he ministers to each one of these churches.

And the seven stars, again, that's the leadership of these seven individual churches that we're dealing with, and Jesus is saying,

I'm the one that I rule over all of the churches through my appointed representatives, both human and spiritual.

The Holy Spirit is his spiritual representative, and he has human representatives in each one of these churches, but I hold all of that in my hand.

I'm the one that rules that, Jesus is saying. And the seven stars, it's been suggested also that the seven stars may also be seven individuals who actually carried the copies of these letters to the seven churches because a star can also be a messenger.

And so that's possible. He's talking about the leadership and those that bring the message to these churches.

And his whole presentation here is that I'm sovereign over the church. I'm the one who is sovereign over this church.

I appoint rulers in places. I raise up churches in places, and I put down churches because just because a church exists and is prospering is no divine guarantee that it will continue to prosper.

The churches that these messages were written to are by and large gone.

There are actually churches in a few of these places that still exist, but there is no church at Ephesus, for example.

There is no church at Thyatira. And so Jesus is saying that I'm the one who rules and establishes where this congregation will be.

And for us here, he put this church here. It was not just a group of people that got together some 25, 30 years ago and said, let's found a church.

It is Jesus that establishes where the churches will be and who will be in that church.

Do not think that you are in this church as a casual thing. You were put here.

The Holy Spirit assembles a particular group of believers and sometimes he takes some away and sometimes he brings new ones in as he works his work upon the earth.

So we don't have any details of the church itself, but we do know some things from history about Sardis.

There is a mention of Melito who is the bishop of the church at Sardis. We know that out of history, and he wrote the earliest known commentary on Revelation.

Interesting. But as I pointed out, there's no record of persecution, no record of false teachers, no record of any of that because this church is dead.

This church is dead. The city itself, it was a very wealthy city.

It was founded in 1200 B .C. And some of the expressions that you may have heard from history, if you've ever heard the expression, indicating someone who is extremely wealthy, well, guess what

Croesus was the king of? Sardis. It was a city in which gold was mined in that area and refined.

So it was a financial center. It was a center of gold mining and gold refining and all of this.

And it was located up on a very, very high bluff that had sheer drops on three sides.

It could be approached only from the south, and therefore it thought itself to be impregnable. And the problem with thinking yourself to be impregnable is that you tend to become lazy and complacent.

And so Sardis was conquered first by the Greeks who, guess what?

They climbed the unclimbable walls. And they were so certain, so certain were they, that the city was under siege, but they were so certain that they were protected that they didn't even have a child back on these back walls watching.

Historians say that if anybody had seen the Greeks coming up, it would have been a massacre.

But they came up one night and took the city. And just proving that people never learned any lessons, 350 years later, the

Romans did exactly the same thing. They came up the unclimbable walls. And so he starts in.

He has very little to say by way of commendation, and he actually, in this one, the pattern is swapped.

Usually he did the commendation first and then the condemnation second. In this one, he goes straight to the condemnation because there's so little to say.

There's essentially nothing to say by way of commendation to these people. There is a handful, but basically he addresses the condemnation first.

And he says, first of all, you've got a name. You have a reputation as being alive, but you're actually dead.

And doesn't that describe so much of the modern liberal church? They have a name.

They've got the word church over the door. They hold services.

They do all kinds of religious stuff. But there's no substance there.

They're dead. They're just going through the motions. And while they might be fooling men, they're not fooling

God. They might be big. They might have a great edifice that they have built.

They might have all kinds of, they put on a good show every Sunday. You know, they've got the big pipe organ.

They've got the big orchestra. They've got the huge choir. They've got, you know, there may be thousands of people sitting in the congregation, and yet they're dead.

They're dead. And that's what Jesus is pinpointing.

He said, I see what you're really like. I'm the one who knows. I know your works, and there's nothing there.

You're performing deeds. You're going through the motions. You're doing religious stuff, but there's no substance.

There's no substance. And, yes, you may be huge and you put on a good show, but over here in some little community somewhere, there's a young man and maybe ten families, and that's much more of a real church than this huge thing, which is dead.

It has a name, but there's nothing there. And so he gives them a command.

There are a few there. He says, I know there are a few.

There's a few people there, a faithful remnant. There's a handful of faithful believers still in this congregation.

And so he gives them a command. He gives them a command, and his command is, wake up.

Wake up. In the words of Bach, sleepers awake.

Wake up. Strengthen what remains. Remember, keep what you already have and repent.

And so what's he saying? Don't just go with the flow. Evaluate the situation. Change what can be changed.

Confront sin. Confront error. And strengthen what little remains.

There are a few little embers still glowing here, so get out the bellows and start pumping away.

Fan those embers back into flame. Make the effort.

Even if it seems futile, make the effort. And so remember, also remember, somewhere at some time, somebody came to Sardis and preached the gospel because people got saved.

There's a church there, and it didn't come up out of a vacuum. That meant that somebody at some time preached the gospel there.

There was a group of true believers. They founded this church. And that church apparently grew to some size before it started to fade.

And so he's saying, you know, you're not totally without resources.

Somebody must know something. So remember what was preached when the church was founded.

You know, remember what went on when the church was first founded. Remember that. Fan it up.

Stir it up. Return to the doctrinal foundation. Recall that first time and what was taught.

And keep the truths of Scripture. Keep the truths of Scripture. You don't want just blind orthodoxy.

Orthodoxy without obedience is worthless. So it's not only remember what the doctrines were that you were taught, but obey them.

Because if there's no obedience, you don't really believe it. Belief, true belief, implies obedience.

And so finally repent. Turn away from your sin. Turn back to the path that you should be on and go.

And if you do this, you're going to receive white garments, festive garments that represent purity and holiness.

And all true Christians, now let me stress this here because this gets used occasionally.

Let's see where I want to go. Oh, yes. Chapter 3, verse 5. He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment.

Understand that. And I will not blot his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my

Father and before his angels. This is one of the proof texts that people use occasionally to prove that you can lose your salvation.

See, it says right there you can have your name blotted out of the book of life. But that is not what he's referring to.

That's not what he's saying. He's stressing the fact that all true

Christians have their name permanently written in the

Lamb's book of life. It's the exact opposite of what the naysayers tried to make out of that verse.

But watch out for that. You're going to run into that occasionally if you talk to people and the various groups that hold that you can lose your salvation.

That's one of the texts they like to go to, so watch out for that. And so, again, he repeats the same message.

He who has an ear, let him hear. The message is to us too, not just to them. So moving on, so we're starting to run short of time here.

We get to the church in Philadelphia, and this is one of the two churches in which he has no condemnation for them.

He has only commendation. Again, not that this church is perfect. There are no perfect churches.

But, I mean, because the church is made up of people, right? Sinners saved by grace.

But, yes, Karen, good question.

What do you do if you find yourself in a church like that? Keep in mind at the time that John wrote this, there was not a church on every corner in Sardis.

There was only one Christian church in Sardis. In most communities, there was only one church, one

Christian church, and you were a member of that or you're nothing. You're not a member of anything.

And so fast forward to today where you do have options. My advice to anyone that found themselves in a

Sardis church would be to get out of there. Find yourself a church where the word of God is preached, where the word of God is preached faithfully, the whole counsel of God is preached, and get there and begin.

This actually consists, this is a modern -day application of remember. How do

I go about remembering what the true doctrines are? Well, I go find somebody who will teach me those.

I go find a church that holds those up. I know they're out there because I heard them one time before I was saved, and so I'm going to go find somebody that's going to reinforce in my mind what

I was taught or maybe even expand what maybe I haven't been taught.

Yes, Steve, I would definitely say so.

And also, always keep in mind salvation is individual.

There are saved individuals in all sorts of places that you would not expect them to be.

And even in denominations that are not known for holding the faith, every now and then you stumble across somebody who preaches the word.

Dallas and I had an interesting experience. We went to a wedding one time in a church of a denomination that shall remain unnamed, but we didn't expect to hear anything except good music because we knew they had a good pipe organ in this church.

And so we did hear some good music. Out comes the pastor wearing his clerical garments, and he starts preaching the gospel.

We're sitting there saying, hey, what it is. So you run across these people. But, yes, and the other thing, too, is that we're going to get the final church we're going to talk about this morning is totally dead.

There's nobody in it that's saved. But there are some genuine believers in the church at Sardis, even though as a corporate body it's dead.

So now let's speed ahead here. Talking to Philadelphia, he calls himself, holy and true, the holder of the keys.

And, first of all, it's a claim of deity. He's holy. Holiness is an attribute of God alone.

It is also a messianic title. It is a claim to deity. So Jesus is emphasizing his deity again.

He calls himself true, which is what is genuine and authentic. He has the keys, which are symbols of authority.

Particularly at the time of John's writing, if you had keys, that was a symbol of authority because not every door had a lock on it in those days so that the keys were much more symbolic.

We don't think of the symbolism today. But he said, I'm the one who shuts, and if I shut the door, it stays shut, and I'm the one who opens, and if I open the door, it stays open.

A symbol of sovereignty and omnipotence. I do what I want to do, and no one can thwart me, he's saying.

He said, if I shut doors, I open doors. The symbols of authority. I have the authority, and I can do what

I want to do. And so skipping ahead a little bit, we're sitting on the trade routes.

Philadelphia was called the gateway to the east. It's in an earthquake zone, really good. It's good wine -growing country.

They have a big monument to Caesar there because the Romans came along and helped rebuild after a big earthquake.

But skipping ahead to the commendation, he said, first of all, there's nothing in your deeds that causes concern.

You're small in number, but you're great in your impact. You have a little power, he says.

You're great in your impact, even though you're small in number. You are obedient. You know the word, and you keep the word.

They've obviously been pressured, but you have not denied the faith, even under pressure. And you've been patient, and you've endured.

You've been patient, and you've endured. And so this church, along with the church at Smyrna, are the only two that have no condemnation.

There's no word of warning, no word of concern. There's nothing but encouragement that they receive and promises.

And he promises them several things. First of all, you're going to have an open door. He identified himself as the one who opens the door.

And he said, you're going to have an open door. There's going to be an opportunity for service. You're going to have the opportunity to serve and to make an impact on the area where you are.

And you will see your enemies defeated. So apparently they were being pressured by somebody.

But he said, you're going to see those people defeated, and you're going to be kept from the hour of testing.

And they've passed many tests up to this time, but they're going to be spared from the ultimate test.

And this is a reference. The ultimate test is a reference, actually, to the Great Tribulation, and this is also a reference to the pre -tribulational rapture.

Those of us who are pre -trib, this is one of the verses that we go to to illustrate that the church will be taken out before the tribulation starts.

And I'm not going to expand on that at this point because we're going to have entire lessons on that. So that's just a preview of coming attractions.

But he says these things about this church. You're doing a good job. Keep doing what you're doing.

I'm going to give you opportunities to serve. Keep serving. And so that brings us to the final church, the church at Laodicea.

And this is the church that is totally apostate. It is also illustrative of the final state of worldwide apostasy for the church.

And so who does he call? The correspondent. He calls himself, first of all, the Amen. And this is a unique title that's used only here.

It means that which is unchangeable. It harks back to what Jesus was saying all the time when he was here on earth.

What would he say? Somebody would ask him a question, and he would say, Verily, verily, or truly, truly, or another way to put it is,

Amen, amen. He said, I'm the firm and unchangeable word.

I'm the one that's faithful and true. I'm the faithful and true witness. That's an expansion on Amen.

You know, I am the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God.

And he says, I'm the beginning of creation. That is, I am the origin of creation.

I am the agency of creation. The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ himself was the agency, was the agent that actually performed the acts of creation of the universe and the earth and all that was around.

And he also says, the beginning of the creation of God, he is not only the agent of creation, he is also the premier, the first of creation.

Not that he is first chronologically, like the firstborn son. It's not like that. He is the most important one.

He is the premier one. And so, not none, because I emphasize that because some people say,

See, this also says that he's a created being. That's not what it's saying at all. He's not a created being.

He is the creator of all beings. And so, again, this church is probably an offshoot of the

Ephesus ministry, but they're in an area where they felt secure.

They were geographically secured. It was very wealthy. There was a very large

Jewish population here. It was a center of banking. They were wealthy enough that with the great earthquake of 60

A .D., they rebuilt themselves without any Roman help. They could pay for it. They were also famous for their textiles, for their black wool, and for their medical college, and for this eye salve that they made and distributed, exported all over the known world at that time.

And we're going to see where all three of those things play in in a minute. There's no commendation here.

There's nothing worthy of positive mention about the Laodicean church.

Alone of the seven churches, it receives no word of commendation whatsoever, which leads us to believe that there are no believers in this church.

It has the name church only, but there is not a single believer in this church. And so the condemnation is that they're lukewarm.

And this is a reference. The water supply for Laodicea came in through an aqueduct, and it had to come several miles so that when the water arrived, it was dirty and it was lukewarm.

It was not hot so that you could use it to refresh yourself and to relax and like that, and it was not cold, which would also be refreshing when you drank it.

It was pretty useless. It was wet. That's about all you could say for it. And God is saying that, you know,

I hate that. I would like to have hot people, people that are spiritually alive, that are growing and available for service, or cold people who are unbelievers who reject the gospel, who have no spiritual response at all.

They're easier to deal with than somebody in the middle who thinks they're okay, but they're not.

When Jesus was here on this earthly ministry, who did he go to? He went to the tax collectors and prostitutes.

Why? Because he didn't have to convince them that they had a problem. They knew they had a problem.

It was the self -righteous Pharisees that wouldn't listen to him because they thought they were already okay.

And so this is the condemnation that God delivers to the church at Laodicea.

You're not true Christians. You don't actively reject Christianity.

You do religious stuff, but you're hypocrites.

You're self -righteous. And because you don't even know you're sick, you're not going to seek the physician.

You're self -deceived about your true condition. They thought themselves wealthy, that they didn't need anything, and they thought themselves, you know, here we are, we make this fantastic soft wool cloth, and we export that everywhere, and we're famous for our medications and the eye salve.

And what does Jesus say? He said, you're wretched, you're poor, you're naked, and you're blind.

He hits them on all of the things that they were so proud of. He says, you think you're wealthy, you're not, you're poor.

You think that you make this eye salve that helps the eyes. No, you're blind. You think that you're clothed in this fine wool cloth that you make.

No, you're naked. You know, come to me, come to me. And so he gives them the command, and he's offering the symbols of true redemption.

First of all, buy real gold. Buy real, pure gold. And salvation is referred to several times in Scripture as more precious than gold.

You know, the simile is used often. And buy from me, he says, white garments.

You're proud of your black textiles. Well, I'll give you white garments that you can clothe yourself in righteousness and the righteous deeds that accompanies salvation.

And buy the real eye salve and correct your spiritual blindness, he says.

Be zealous and repent. And one final word in closing. This verse has been used in all kinds of evangelical tracts.

If you were raised in the right environment, you probably memorized this. Verse 20, behold,

I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice, open the door and I will come in to him and sup with him and he with me.

And we say, see, Jesus is knocking at the door of your heart. He wants you to let him in and, you know, come to Jesus.

And that's not what this verse is talking to. He's writing to the churches. Now, it is an invitation for fellowship, but it's an invitation for fellowship directed to that church.

And, yes, there is a side to that because salvation, as we said, is individual.

But what he's, what he's, the emphasis here is to the church. And if there was, if there was any believers were, any believers in this church, he said,

I will fellowship with you. If there's any believers at all,

I'll fellowship with you. But this leads us to, confirms also that there's no believers whatsoever in the

Laodicean church. It's purely, totally apostate at the very end and represents the end, the final state of the church as it spirals down.

Not the true church, of course, but the church as viewed in the world. Yes, John, yes.

Oh, what a perfect transition. I have never worked with this man before. Now, the point's well taken.

Revelation, the chapter one's the introduction. Chapters two and three are directed to the church in the church age.

That applies to us. We take these, we take these messages and apply them to ourselves. Chapter four is going to see us a view in heaven, and we are going to see the church raptured.

From chapter five on, that's telling us what's going to happen to national

Israel and how God wraps up that whole side of things. Because the book of Revelation, Revelation's a marvelous book.

It tells us what happens to the church. It tells us what happens to Israel. It tells us what happens to the

Gentiles. It tells us what happens to the believers. It tells us what happens to the unbelievers.

It tells us all about Jesus returning in glory to set up his kingdom as he sets everything right.

It truly is the book that tells us how it all comes out. It's a great blessing and a great comfort to us.

Let's go ahead and close right now, though. I'm not sure when we're going to pick up the next lesson because we're starting to run into scheduling problems, but we will get there,

I promise. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you that you have given us the Bible, number one, and that you have given us

Revelation so that we're not totally flying blind but that you've given us a glimpse of how everything is going to come out and how it will all be set right.

We have confidence, Lord, that whatever the situation seems to be, that you have things in your hand and that you indeed will work all things to your own pleasure and for your own purposes, and we rest in that,

Father. Be with us for the remainder of the service this morning. Lay your hand upon the speaker this morning.