Episode 16

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:08] Speaker B: Good afternoon, My name's Pastor Peter and this is my wife Sherry, co founders of Eyes to See Ministries International. We're located in Gettysburg and we are here being recorded in New Oxford, Pennsylvania Community Media at South Central for South Central Pennsylvania. We are continuing in a very lengthy discussion of Christ's seven letters to the churches, which also included a biblical timeline of eschatology, of where we are at as a church and why these letters are important. We're going to look at the third church in the book of Revelation today, Pergamum. It's the fourth one that we looked at last week and the week before. We began with Smyrna and Laodicea, which we titled the Contrasting Churches. One church was spiritually rich, the other one was wretched, naked, blind, and it didn't even know it. Now, the importance of looking at these is regardless of what doctrine, theological doctrines that you have been, that you've adhered to because you heard, you cannot deny the fact that in the very last book of the Bible, Jesus is going to use the word repent. And there are severe consequences that come upon those churches and those individuals that do not repent, which we see all throughout the Bible. And I'm going to give you the definition, the true definition of biblical repentance in a few minutes because it's important, important that we understand this. So for today, I want you to remember that in most of these letters that John was given and he was told by Jesus himself to put this in an A book and send it out. So many of the letters that were written, Paul's letters, are referred to as circular letters. They were addressed to a church, but when they got there, they were supposed to send them out to the other churches, churches. So if we look at that as an example by itself, the Bible is always going to give us life application principles for today, Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever. The Word of God is eternal. So when you and I are not here anymore and we depart these earthly bodies, Paul referred to him as our tabernacle. When that happens, the word of God will still exist. So whatever you believe today, whether you're on the right side of truth or the wrong side of truth, the truth is going to be the truth. And every knee will bow and every mouth is going to confess on Jesus Christ. We will all find out what we missed and what we didn't miss. The important thing is if you have never acknowledged Jesus Christ for who he is, the Son of God, you're going [00:03:39] Speaker A: to be [00:03:42] Speaker B: in one of two places you're either going to be in hell and we already looked at the second death, what that was, or you'll be with Christ forever. So it's important that people understand this. If the church doesn't understand the time that we're in. And every day it's more and more difficult for myself with the burden that God gave me to deal with things that appear to be trivial in life, but they're a, it just, they're such a burden to let go of the things of this world and have an eternal destiny. And what does that mean? Mean? And to speak about these things to as many people that will, will have an ear to hear. And we'll, we'll look at that phrase in a minute. So this church is in Pergamum. This is in what is today modern day Bergama, Turkey. So this is Paul, one of the churches that he started, planted, we use today. And this is, it's a difficult area if you're a Christian to be in. All of these churches were begun in pagan communities. This is also a city that was involved in imperial worship. It's where the, the, the, the, the citizens within the Roman Empire, the people that were conquered were made, forced to worship the emperor of Rome as a God. So they've got, they're right in the midst of pagan temples and temples of Zeus, Dionysus also. And I can't pronounce the name, but the third God that's here is represented by the serpent on a post because they had medical areas here and that's a pagan. It amazes me when I look at that, that the medical world's embraced, I think, a pagan symbol for this God. So the church is birthed in Pergamum in an area where the darkness exists. Now I remember when I first came to the Lord and I read 1st and 2nd Corinthians and studied where Corinth was. I thought, that's amazing that a church could exist here. Only, only God and Almighty God could do that. And yet later on I came to realize where else would you want to put a church? Wherever the darkness is, the light needs to shine in there. And this is way beyond the scope of today and even the next month. But the darkness has always existed and it's going to be like water. It's going to look for the path of least resistance. So as the gospel goes forward in this paganistic part of the world, the darkness is being pushed out by the light. Well, where does it go? It's going to go somewhere. And I would go so far today as to Say that it settled into the Western world and in America. And if we don't have an awakening here in this country, if the church is not revived, resuscitated, and an awakening happening out in the world, for the church to be the church needs to be the church today or there's going to be some. There's going to be serious consequences and ramifications for this country. And I know you could make an argument why isn't America in the Bible in the last days? And there's different ideas and thoughts on that for the scope of today. All you need to know is if you don't know Jesus Christ, you need to know him because he's the only way, the truth and the life. So Pergamum. And you'll see that either spelled as an M U M, which is the ancient Latin variant of it, or Pergamon, M O N or M O S, which is Greek based on what version of the Bible you have. And if you do some research of ancient texts on your own, you'll see the different spellings. Why that would be. So we're going to go through these seven, six verses. I'm going to read them to you. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. And I'm going to give them to you from the Amplified Bible. We're going to do this kind of as a commentary. As a commentary. And if you look at the English Standard Version and the King James Version, the new King James Version, you're going to see the wording is very similar other than what the Amplified Version has in parentheses. I like to do that because people always have an opinion on a Bible version. And a lot of times when you start speaking, that's the first thing that'll come up. Somebody will bring that up because that's all they know how to comment on at the time. So let's go through these verses. We're going to see what is this message to this church at the end? There's three. There's three phrases in here that we may or may not go over. But we're going to definitely take a look at the Nicolaitans because they're mentioned not just in this letter, but also in the letter to Ephesus. And those two churches are contrasting one another as far as one, the church of Ephesus does not embrace the doctrine of the Nicolaita Laitins. And yet the church in Bergamum is. And we're going to see what Jesus response is here in Pergamum to that. There's also two terms in there, hidden manna and a white stone with a new name. And theologians have not been able to come up really with a definition or an explanation of what that is. If we have time, I'll give you some of the more the mainstream ideas that they could be. But this is just, this is not the doctrine of Peter here. This is just information. And while, while I'm listening to that myself, say that whenever you hear a doctrine or a message that appears either to not be. To be contradictory to something you've heard before, but you haven't gone and looked at the Scriptures yourself, you need to do that. You need to be what Paul said is a berean saint. Because in my travels, what I find more and more is, as you teach, a lot of the pushback that comes against the truth that's in the Bible is what people have heard, but they don't know what the Bible actually says. And that's important. That's a tool of the devil to deceive people. We are, we're given instructions in the Bible to be doers of the word and not hearers only. And the second part of that, which you don't hear many people say, is if you do that, what is the consequence? Deceiving yourself? You're deceiving your own self. And there's enough false doctrines and false teachings out there to deceive anybody. And, and what really breaks my heart is the people that it's hurting are the unsaved. Those people that don't know the truth. They're out there seeking the truth. And my daughter is one of them. And she's being driven away by professing Christians because of as. As she is like anybody else, she's a researcher and she wants to look things up herself, which is exactly what I wanted to do. I did not want to be influenced by people. When I decided I wanted to find out if Jesus was real or not. I didn't want opinions. I wanted the truth. And there are people that don't go to church because of what the church has done to them. We looked at the definition of church in the last couple days and these are all things that, that I believe. We need a revival within the church. The church needs to be revived, resuscitated. And the definition of revival means to bring something back to life. So it needs to come back to life. It needs to come back to its first love, if it really had a first love. Because there are people in the church that are not saved and there's a lot of them by their fruit, you will know them. And that's one of the reasons we're going to talk again about repentance. What actually is that? Because if, if you are a. A group of people that believe a certain doctrine, and that doctrine can be found to be the truth or the denial of the truth within the Holy Bible, which is the truth, and yet you assign what the marketing world would call a tagline, and you start speaking on that, you now have created what the marketing world and television knows, that when people hear that one sentence, they don't need to watch the rest of the commercial. They already know what it says. So a television commercial initially is going to play for so many minutes, and then each week they cut it back. Because until they get to the point where they know that when you see what you see and hear the beginning of what the commercial is, you already know what the rest of it was, whether it's going to play or not. And when that happens, you have strife, you have division, you have arguments, which is all the silliness of the enemy, because people are arguing. And many times I've heard people argue and they really do believe the same thing, but because they've heard some phrase, they're arguing with one another and neither side will let the other one explain and give an understanding of what they're talking about. So it just becomes this circular, a waste of air time at that point. So we're going to look at the Bible, we're going to look at the truth. And if you hear something, if you hear a salvation message, I'll call that the words that you need to hear to be able to respond to a message. Because all people are drawn in by God. You can't receive Christ, the Bible says, unless you're drawn in. So we can pray for people to be drawn in. And that one phrase alone is going to contradict a lot of doctrines that are out there that you can look at, say predestination, the doctrine of that and other doctrines that people argue over. And what I would challenge people to do is if you want to look up and study, and we'll just use this as an example, say the doctrine of predestination. Take all the Scriptures that lend to one side that you'll hear on social media, and all the scriptures that can people make an argument for the other. And I would, I would go so far as to say that's what the Bible says in context. So who are we to now add to that and say this is right or this is wrong? You give the truth and you let the Holy Spirit go from there. And probably the most infamous one right now is the phrase once saved, always saved, which is just this semantical argument that doesn't go anywhere. And the best, the best, the best message I saw in that this person did exactly what I said. They gave all, all of the, the, the scriptures that lend that say that that can't happen and all that say that it, that it could. And then they say, this person said. So I've come to the conclusion in my study that I can't deny these scriptures. So what I am going to do is I'm going to look at the truth in the Word of God and I'm going to embrace and apprehend God's promises without denying God's warnings which are throughout the Bible. And I challenge anybody that wants to argue that term that I just said to think about what I just said. Embrace the promises and apprehend what God says is in his truth is a promise. And then look at the warnings. And if you don't give the warnings with the promises or the promises with the warnings, you're not preaching and teaching the whole counsel of God. You now have a whole group of people that have a one sided view of what the Bible says and you can use the Scriptures to justify what you just said. But I've heard theologians that, that I, I would hope that they went home with the Lord say to people when they did that they gave all the scriptures of a promise, all the ones that say you can't have that and ask somebody, can you explain that? And the person that they were that asked the question said no. And they said, and the theologians said neither can I, but let's go over here and look at this part. So they're discounting half the Bible and that's wrong. You can't do that because those scriptures are given in context. And I believe it's for us who are for, for us to go after the Word of God and seek him in our personal relationship and let him tell us what's that truth. Because I can't find a person other than that one man three weeks ago that I heard speak. Give me what I would say would be a logical and a theological explanation of one phrase that the Church is so divided over. So let's look at the truth in the Word of God. And at this point I'm going to ask my lovely wife if she wants to read those scriptures. Pergamum, chapter 2, verses 12 through 17 right there. [00:21:07] Speaker A: And to the angel of the church and pergamos right these things says he who has the sharp two edged sword. I know your works and where you dwell, where Satan's throne is. And you hold fast to my name and did not deny my faith even in the days in which Antipas was my faithful martyr who was killed among you where Satan dwells. But I have a few things against you because you have there those who hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit sexual immorality. Thus you also have those who hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans which I, which thing I hate. Repent, or else I will come to you quickly and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna to eat and I will give him a white stone and on the stone a new name written, which no one knows except him who receives it. [00:22:29] Speaker B: So there's two promises in verse 17 and you have to look at that and ask yourself who's going to receive these promises? Because it's only the people that overcome. There's also the sword of my mouth. Jesus says he's talking about judgment, the word of God. The word of God is the truth. And at the end, when these days are over and human history is done, people are going to be judged by the word of God and Jesus is the word. So later in the book of Revelation it's going to talk about the wrath. We've seen the wrath of God, that phrase before when we looked at the catching up of the church because the church was not called into the wrath of God. So we can piece things together, but we have to look at the whole Bible to get the scriptures and scripture will confirm scripture or it will deny something that you think if it's out of context. So I want to take a look at who the Nicolaitans may have been and what that doctrine, we're not sure exactly who they are. We're going to take a look at the Satan's seat and we're also going to look at this doctrine of Balaam. So before we do that, Jesus says in verse 16, and this is from the Amplified, therefore repent and then in parentheses, change your inner self, your old way of thinking, your sinful behavior. Seek God's will or else I am coming to you quickly and I will make war and fight against them with the sword of my mouth. So Jesus is going to fight against a group of people. I don't. I would say Jesus never lost the battle. And I would not be one of one to. To want to stand and say, I think I'm going to go fight Jesus today and get in that ring. Maybe I can, you know, maybe, maybe the gods will be on my side. Mars, who the Romans believed. So what is the definition of repentance? I'm going to read These from the 1828 dictionary, American Dictionary of the English Language. Noah Webster, he used. Webster used 1828. He used the Scriptures to confirm definitions and would not write this dictionary when he was asked if he couldn't use this Bible. And he's quoted even today as saying, education without the Holy Bible is useless. That knowledge that you learn without the Bible is useless knowledge. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. I had somebody argue with me last night that the Scriptures say it's the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And I had to look at the NASB, the NASB 95, the NASB 20, the NIV, the NLT, the King James Version, the new King James Version, and the English Standard Version, all say the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. But that's what happens when we try to teach people whether they're in the church or not. They will have predetermined ideas of what they've heard and what they've embraced. And you have to give them the truth in love and you just show it to them. So repentance, that word is a noun. It means it's a thing. So a person, place or thing, the first definition, sorrow for anything done or said, the pain or grief which a person experiences in consequence of the injury or inconvenience produced by his own conduct. Now, this is a fear of a consequence, but it's not true biblical repentance. And we're going to get to that in a minute. Number two, and it's interesting on what Noah Webster wrote because he's going to say in theology, and yet we're going to have the real biblical definition that comes next. So number two, in theology, the pain, regret, affliction which a person feels on account of his past conduct because it exposes him to punishment. Now this is, this is a, a like a building block coming off of the first definition. So this person is feeling sorrow or regret because of the consequences or punishment from bad behavior. This sorrow proceeding merely from the fear of punishment is called legal repentance. So in theology, legal repentance means you feel Sorry for the consequence that may come upon you for one of your. For an action you had. Number three. Actually, the legal repentance is being excited by the terrors of legal penalties, and it may exist without an amendment of life. In other words, you can feel this fear without changing your behavior. And that's important. Remember John the Baptist said, you brood of vapors, vipers. And he talked about bear show fruit worthy of repentance. Jesus said, you'll know them by their fruit. That's how we can tell if somebody has been and I'm not going to use the word saved. Let's use the word a true convert. Have they been converted? Has their mind been renewed? Has their behavior been changed? Number three. Real repentance, that is sorrow or deep contrition for sin as an offense and dishonor to God, a violation of his holy law, and the basest ingratitude towards a being of infinite benevolence. This is called evangelical repentance and is accompanied and followed by an amendment of life. You've changed your behavior. So I hear many people talk about repentance, and they say, simply change your mind and agree with God at this point. And I attended a church where for a year, I heard them say to people, new people that were in the church, all you got to do is repent. And that means you change your mind, agree with God right now and come up here and receive communion. And if you go look in First Corinthians, chapter 11, Paul's going to close his discourse on the Lord's Supper with some consequences that are coming within that church, because these people are doing certain things. So repentance is a relinquishment of any practice from conviction that you believe has offended God, a holy God, a benevolent God. Unless you have a contrite and humble spirit, you're not going to want to do that. You need to be broken in your spirit and in your heart. And when that happens, you'll experience what David said in Psalm 51, a broken and contrite heart. The Lord will not turn away from. Godly sorrow works repentance to salvation, but the sorrow of the world worketh death. That's Second Corinthians, chapter 7, verse 10. Now that that one sentence says a volume. For Godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation, not to be repented of, but the sorrow of the world worketh death. So notice there's sorrow used in part A and part B of that scripture. And that sorrow either leads to life or death. The definition of relinquishment which I used in a sentence. Repentance is the relinquishment of any practice. It's the act of leaving or quitting a forsaking, the renouncing, a claim to forsaking is leaving or deserting. So that means that you've made a decision when you've heard the truth and you're not doing that, that you're going to change. So the repentance that led to salvation meant you heard the gospel, you heard what you needed to hear. Faith came by hearing and hearing by the word of God. You were drawn in at that point by God, you heard the truth, and then by God's grace, you were saved through faith at that point. That's when salvation came. That was the very, very beginning of your walk with the Lord. And now you would have or you should have said, I want you, Jesus, to be the Lord of my life. I'm a sinner and I want to be more like you. I believe I was created in your image and without knowing the scriptures yet that say, and there's many of them that say we're now to be conformed after the image of the likeness of Christ. There's a difference. Humanity was created in the image of God and then the enemy deceived the first creations. And we have what we call the fall of man, mankind and the consequences of that fall. Now I'm gonna, while I hear myself talk about fall and we're going to get into it, we're going to see in one of these verses where Jesus said my faith. And you'll see throughout the book of Hebrews is one example where there's a group of people that are falling away. There's a great falling away and there's also people falling away. And what are they falling away from? Falling away from the faith. The faith of Christ Jesus called that my faith. You kept my name and my faith faith in him. So the Nicolaitans, the exact origin of this term, I can't find it, I don't know. But two of the major train of thoughts with these people. There's some commentators that believe that this is a heretical sect of people who followed the teachings of a man named Nicholas. He may have been a deacon within the early church there, but that name Nicholas means one who conquers the people. So there's a. I don't want to say an argument, but there's a presentation of who these Nicolaitans were and that's one of them that they were birthed a sect birthed by this person Nicholas, whose name means one who conquers the people. Now in the book of Acts 6, 5, in the early church there's a mention of this person Nicholas. So it is possible that this person became an apostate. So once again he's a deacon in the church and he's apostate. So you need to think about that. What happened to this person? He fell away from the faith? Or did the early church make a mistake and put someone in leadership position that shouldn't be there? They didn't have discernment? I don't know. But we don't know that. But again, apprehend God's promises and don't discount God's warnings. We have warnings all throughout the letters of the New Testament. We have warnings from Jesus. We have those warnings expounded upon by Paul when he went to the Gentiles. Separate me, said the Holy Spirit, Paul and Barnabas, for the work that I have for them to the Gentiles. And then now we have warnings from Jesus. In the last book of the Bible. There's another train of thought that believe that the Nicolaitans were called. They were not called after a person but after the Greek word Nicola, which means let us eat, which is what they were eating food presented to idols. So whatever theory may be true, the fact is that their deeds and the reason I'm saying this is you could argue about both of these trends or train of thoughts from these commentators and miss the main point. And the main point is regardless of where this originated from, who these people were, there's a doctrine and Jesus, it's an abomination to Jesus Christ. That's the important thing. So don't argue over whether this is Nicholas or the Greek word Nicola when you, you know, if you've got nothing else to do in your day, start looking at the ancient transcripts if that, if that bothers you that much. But don't lose the fact that Jesus said in verse 15 you also have some who in the same way are holding to the teaching of the Nicolaitans. That's the verse after he talks about the corrupt teaching of Balaam. Now I'm going to reemphasize something here. In the very beginning of Revelation, the first sentence, it says this is the revelation of Jesus Christ. And it's important that you know that this John penned this, but Jesus told him write these things in a book. This is Jesus speaking to the church. This is not my opinion, my own theology, what I put together and said, hey, you know, I figured out this great Mystery or revelation in the Bible. These are the actual words of Jesus. So all sin is hateful to Christ. We are to hate sin. We're supposed to hate sin if we do. The more that we do that, the more sorrowful we can become. And the more that I would say say, the more that I ask God every day to transform me into the image of Christ, into his character and his integrity, the more I will have a disdain for sin and the more tuned in I will have ears to hear what the Spirit is saying today to Peter Yanada. So while salvation we recognize is an important. It's a gift, a free gift from God. I would go so far to say is repentance is God's free gift to keep you in right standing with the Lord every day. So I'm not a tormented person, as somebody said. If the church believed what I believed, they said they would be the most tormented people in the world. And I say no, because my assurance is in Christ and his ability to transform me if I cooperate with him. And I believe in repentance. How we doing on time? [00:41:57] Speaker A: You got about seven minutes. Seven minutes before I get to take over. [00:42:02] Speaker B: All right. My wife's giving me seven minutes. Right. [00:42:06] Speaker A: What time do we start going? About 43 minutes. About four? Yeah. So seven. You got to give me a little good time. [00:42:13] Speaker B: All right. So Jesus for the church at Pergamum, Jesus had not commendation, but he had censure. So unlike the Ephesians, they actually embraced the teachings of the Nicolaitans where the Ephesians did not. So Jesus warns them that if they do not repent that they're in danger of being in judgment that is sure to fall on those who teach false doctrine, attack the church and destroy the people. The lesson for us, for this church, one of the lessons is that Jesus throughout the ages, the church, the church of Jesus Christ, that the. The church. Remember we looked at the church that word 80 times last week, 48 times. The church, the church of Jesus Christ throughout the ages has been plagued by this Nicolaitan spirit. And the only way to recognize false teaching is to be intimately familiar with. With the truth and diligent study of the word of God who is Jesus. If you want to proclaim and profess that you're in an intimate relationship with Christ, then there should be fruit in your life based on the truth and not another doctrine. Now, I'm going to let my wife have the floor in a minute, but really quickly, I want to get over to. I'm going to say the Nicolaitans apparently engaged in sexual immorality. And if you go back and look in the first letter to Ephesus, you'll see sexual immorality does affect one's right standing with Christ. The New Testament clearly says and warns us that such persons will not inherit the kingdom of God. Anti pass was somebody that was martyred. They believe he might have been a pastor or a leader in the church. So they were under persecution. They're in a pagan society. There's imperial worship imposed upon them. He refused to bend a knee and he was martyred. They put him in a copper tomb basically, and heated it up till it was red hot and martyred, crucified him. Balak and Balaam. You can go in the Bible and look this up on your own, but you'll see that there's sexual immorality and they're eating food that's been given to idols. So again, the false teaching, the corrupt teaching of Balaam and the doctrine of the Nicolaitans is running hand in hand. And we see both of them mentioned here in this letter. And now I will let my wife Sherry speak on her volumes of notes. [00:46:13] Speaker A: She has do not violence. But I got writer's cram, right. [00:46:22] Speaker B: I put her on this bot last. She wasn't ready. [00:46:26] Speaker A: Oh yeah, well, no, I like to have everything in front of me. That is it. But anyway, I just wanted to. To speak about. You were talking about the once saved, always saved. And you know, that is semantics. If you look up the word saved and its definition, you know, there are so many explanations of what that word means that it needs to. You need to take it out of your own personal context and see the fullness of what that means. Yes, because it'll change the way you view that statement. Okay, so, you know, God is an if, then God. He is a conditional God, you know, so I've always called him the if, then God. You know, if you take a Look at Deuteronomy 28, you know, the promise, there are promises that he has there that it says you'll be blessed in the city and blessed in the country. The fruit of your womb will be blessed. The crops of your land, your livestock, your calves, your basket, your kneading trough will be blessed. You, everything that you do, everything that you put your hand to will be blessed. He'll even make the enemies who rise up against you be defeated before you. They'll come at you from one direction and flee from you. In seven. He'll send a blessing on your barns. Just his blessings are incredible, but they are conditional. It says, if you fully obey the Lord your God and you're careful to follow all my commandments, I will give you today. The Lord your God will set you high above the nations on earth and all these blessings will come upon you if you obey the Lord your God. So, you know, it's up to us to be renewed, renew our minds, change our behavior, not be carnal. By your fruits you will know them and, and these are the things that come and that, you know, your salvation is dependent upon these things. So it's like it's in, in John it says that, you know, Jesus came and he died for us to give us the right to become sons and daughters, the right to become. Not that, just we become. So, you know, like you said, people, you just need to be able to study the Bible and, and, and, and eat of the meat that's in there. And you have to look at all of the scriptures together as in, you know, as a totality before you can even speak in, in something like that nature. And going back to like where, where we were talking last, last week. With the information about the, the Laodicean church and what was said about the two different cities that were close about, you know, being hot, neither hot nor cold. Now this is. So Laodicea was in present day Turkey near a modern city called Denizli. I don't know if I've pronounced that right, but you know, of course, you know, they're well known for being the church that was called lukewarm. The Lord said, because you're neither hot nor cold, that I will spew you out of your mouth. Well, this is a rhetorical thing. There isn't anything in the Bible that specifically speaks to this situation. But there were two cities that, very close to Laodicea. Laodicea did not have its own water Source. So the two cities were Hierapolis and Colossae. One was six miles to the north and the other one was 11 miles to the south. Hierapolis was famous for its hot, healing thermal springs. And Colossae was renowned for its cold, refreshing mountain water. So because of the, of Laodicea not having their own, they had to. There were these long, you know, miles and miles of aqueducts that were built to be able to draw from these two cities to lay out a sea to provide water. But the problem with that was that by the time the water got from where they had the cold springs, it was lukewarm. By the time I got to the city and the one of the hot springs, it was the same. So that it was, it was neither, it was neither hot nor cold. And I believe the people that lived there at that time, when Jesus actually, when this word came from John, this letter to the church of Laodicea, they would well know, understand, you know, possibly what Jesus was saying by being, by saying because you're lukewarm, you know, he's. The water supposedly was not the best, but you know, because of its lukewarmness and the mixing, once it got there, it wasn't real palatable from what, what I've researched. But anyway, and also, you know, Laodicea was a major trade route hub. So it was about 100 miles east of Ephesus at the crossing of major Roman trade routes. And so it was extremely wealthy and it was a banking and textile center. And more than like, that's probably why Jesus was saying, because you say, I'm rich, we've become wealthy and am in need of nothing. You know, that that was their mindset. And, and of course the Lord said that you're wretched and you're naked and whatnot. But anyway, it, you know, this thing in the condemnation of the church in Laodicea as being lukewarm, it's kind of like a rhetorical connection to those two cities, unique infrastructure and famous local industries. And being rhetorical, it's not a direct truth, it's just drawing on speculation is where, where that, that was drawn from. So, and supposedly the water was kind of a mineral heavy and foul tasting by the time it got there. So the Laodiceans probably knew exactly what Jesus meant when he, when he made that statement. And the thing with the anointing of the, the eyes of the Sab, which he also mentioned last week, because of their textiles, they had black wool textiles. The, the region was famous for producing a soft, glossy, luxurious black wool from a special breed of local sheep. And they took immense pride in its high end garments and what they made there. And that's why he said, I counsel you to buy for me white clothes to wear so you can cover your shameful nakedness. He, he exposed her that despite their expensive black clothing lines, they were spiritually naked and needed the purity the white robes of his righteousness and the eye medicine was. There was a renowned medical school associated with the temple of Menkaru there. And the school manufactured a famous ophthalmological treatment known as Phrygian powder. This powder was mixed into an ointment or ISAB and exported globally to treat various visual ailments. So in essence, Jesus was kind of capitalizing on this medical fame that they had of having these, this salve put in your eyes. And he was pointing out the ultimate irony there, that the eye healing capital of the ancient world was entirely blind to its own spiritual decay. So that you, they needed to buy salve from him and to cleanse. [00:55:21] Speaker B: Yeah, by his stripes we are healed. I hear people say that. I heard people say that last night, but then they said, but I, I'm going to have chemotherapy just as an insurance policy. So it's. What are we going to believe? Do we believe God at his word or not? And I know for, for the, the salvation disagreement, the fact that we're saved by grace, through faith and not by works of our own, lest we should boast. That's where most people start to say that anything else you do is of works. And yet you have to look at the rest of the scriptures like you were saying, to see what actually is the Bible saying. So I would say do not disregard God's warnings because if you are going to use the scriptures that talk about the seed sower as an example of salvation, then you, by your own analogy, are admitting that people within the pews, there's people there that aren't saved. And you can't, you don't know what their heart is like. So to make that statement at the end of a message is going to do damage. And I would say that the only reason you're doing that is out of fear. Maybe people would leave the church or whatever. But you need to look at the word of God we have. Peter called them like precious promises. He spoke a lot on faith. And there's lots of statements in the Bible where if you look up at Paul's introduction, his greeting, he's talking to the saints and faithful people. So these are the believers in the church that he's addressing in that letter. So you could argue all you want. Just make sure that if you're opinionated, your opinion is lining up with the word of God and that not just something that you heard. And on that note, we'll close. Father, we just thank you for the time that we have to study the Word of God rightly divided. I thank you that as Jesus gave seven letters to the churches and that number seven has a Hebraic meaning to it, that these are an example, I believe, of the totality of things that existed within the universal church at the time and they are still applicable to today. So Lord, I pray for a spirit of conviction to come upon your church. I pray for a divine hunger and thirst to pursue righteousness. Because when that revelation to pursue pursue righteousness comes upon a human heart, that heart is driven not in a works based theology, but out of a love for Christ and a recognition that I am a child of God, of a holy God and Jesus himself when he was said, who is my mother and my brother and sister, but those that hear my words and do them. And James later would write, be a doer of the Word and not a hearer, only deceiving your own selves. So church I pray that the church's eyes are opened, that we are no longer blinded and tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine and that we come to the knowledge of the truth in the person of Jesus Christ, the word of God. That's my daily prayer for the church and I repray it right now as the Word God went forth, that it will not return empty. It will accomplish that which you send it forth for your purposes, that your purposes God come to fruition within the Church, the Church of Jesus Christ for the glory of you, Father. That's what your Word says, that we glorify God through the church of Christ. So I pray that we see that we know that the remnant, there always is a remnant and that when we see Christ, we will be like him. I pray that our eyes are opened and we're no longer blinded to the reality of who we are in Christ today and what it is that we're to do. And that all this petty squabbling over different doctrines and phrases, It's what divided the church where it refuses to work together. And once that happened, it dug its heels in and created its own traditions. And many times when the church is questioned, Lord, they can't answer biblically through the word of God. The answer is, well, that's how we've always done things. Those traditions have become strongholds in the church. And we need the trumpet of God to blow today to break those walls of Jericho down within the church before that last trumpet sounds. And it's too late for the lost because the church has a job to do and it needs to quit squabbling, adhere to the basic facts of salvation. That there's a lost and dying world, that we need to be witnesses. Salt and light of that, we stay focused on the main things. I would like to see my prayer that six churches in Adams County, Pennsylvania can come together and actually not squabble with one another nor divide themselves and say we're only from the northern part of the county. We won't let any passionate people from below this demarcation line. Join us in any kind of revival meetings. God, I break that right now. I ask you to smash that mentality that we have standards of man. Destroy it. Lord, you came to destroy the works of the devil. And those are doors opened by mankind to weaken your church and to keep the church focused on arguing among itself while the lost and dying people die every day and go to hell, multitudes of them. So help us, God. Help us to be repentant people. Help us to be people that can recognize that if you don't have the same passion that you had for your first love when you first got the revelation and your eyes were opened to the condition of your sinful heart, that those people come back. Jesus said, you left your first love. And the only way, the remedy was for them to go back and to remember. Remember how far they fell. So I pray that all of us go back and examine our hearts and ask the Lord to show us the height of the fall from that original passion and zeal to where we are today so that we can cast aside the busyness like the church of Ephesus and get busy back in this preparation period for the wedding feast. We are in a preparation period, a betrothal period. So open the eyes of the church, God and I pray. Let those with ears hear what the Spirit saying to the churches in this last hour. In Jesus name. Amen. [01:04:19] Speaker A: Okay, one thing before we go. When I. When I mention scripture, I like to be able to give the exact address. It is John 1:12 that says, but to all who receive him who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. That is John 1:12. All right, that's a wrap. [01:04:45] Speaker B: Those that call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. [01:04:48] Speaker A: That's a wrap. Holy, holy, holy. Lord God Almighty.