GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS (PART 1)

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

“To the angel of the church in Pergamum write:

These are the words of Him who has the sharp, double-edged sword. I know where you live—where Satan has his throne. Yet you remain true to My name. You did not renounce your faith in Me, not even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, who was put to death in your city—where Satan lives.

Revelation 2:12-13

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

In today’s message, we begin to look at the third letter Jesus dictates to John, a letter to the church Pergamum. This follows the previous two letters to the churches in Ephesus and Smyrna and you’ll recall that all of these churches fell in the Roman province of Asia and today would be considered part of modern day Turkey.

What makes these series of letters fascinating to me is when you look at these seven churches geographically, you will see that they form a rough circle and the order of the letters follows this, beginning with the church in Ephesus and moving clockwise to the church of Philadelphia. There was a defined order to them.

On the map, Pergamum sat north of Smyrna and as we will see in this letter, Jesus has some good news and some bad news for the Christian believers there. I’m going to cover this in a two part series, looking at the good news first. Let’s read again from verses 12 through 14 of Revelation, chapter 2:

“To the angel of the church in Pergamum write:

These are the words of Him who has the sharp, double-edged sword. I know where you live—where Satan has his throne. Yet you remain true to My name. You did not renounce your faith in Me, not even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, who was put to death in your city—where Satan lives.

Here, we find John identifying Jesus as the true author of the letter, ensuring the Christian readers in Pergamum know the words were spoken by the One “who has the sharp, double-edged sword”. Go back to chapter one of this book and we found these words about Jesus written there:

In His right hand, He held seven stars, and coming out of His mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance. v.16

In physical form, a sharp, double-edged sword was a valuable, deadly weapon in the hand of whoever wielded it. Here, it is used as a metaphor to underscore the power and sovereignty of Jesus, the One who God had delegated all authority to rule over all things in Heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18). 

So Jesus, the King of kings and Lord of lords, the One who was the head of the church, was giving these words that John wrote and initially these were words of commendation. For as we read, the area that the Pergamum church was operating in wasn’t the best. In fact, Jesus proclaimed it as the place “where Satan” had “his throne.

Yikes!

But note that despite this and the danger it posed, Jesus praises the Pergamum believers for remaining “true to” His name, refusing to “renounce” their “faith in” Him, even when harsh persecution happened, persecution that led to the martyring of a Christian named “Antipas” who was “put to death” in the city, the place where Satan lived.

Today, we Christian believers are still living in places where Satan lives and find ourselves persecuted for what we believe with people in many parts of the world still being killed for the cause of Jesus. In the midst of all this, let us follow the lead of the church of Pergamum, remaining strong and steadfast in our faith while never refusing to deny our faith in Him.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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