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Um, one thing I do love about our church, though. Um. This morning, as I was getting ready, I did the mandatory check with the wife to make sure I looked right. Um, and I had a tie on underneath the sweater, and I was like, what do you think? Should I lose the tie or should I keep it? And she was like, yeah, definitely lose the tie. And I like that about our church, because in most churches, I wouldn’t be allowed to be up here if I didn’t have a tie. So the fact that I don’t, I shouldn’t wear a tie because it looks weird. I think that’s pretty cool. Um, so that was just a little side note. One reason why I think our church is awesome. So, um, so we’ve been, uh, last week we started our first, uh, week in a new series called Church The Right and the Wrong Way. Um, last week we looked at the churches in revelation. We looked at Ephesus and Sardis, and we realized that they had some serious problems. And, uh, we are not exempt from those problems today. We are very much in jeopardy of falling into the same traps that these churches in revelation fell into. And if you remember, last week we looked at Ephesus, and Ephesus was doing a lot of things that were right, but they were doing a lot of things that were wrong, too. And the thing that the that it says that they were doing wrong is they left their first love.
You see, they were doing church, they were coming to church, they were singing the songs. They were doing the right things. They were helping the poor, and they were doing all these things, but they weren’t doing it out of doing those things, out of a love for Christ. They were doing them out of obligation and out of, uh, out of tradition. And just this is what we do. So this is what we’re going to do. And Sardis fell into a very similar trap. And it says you have the reputation of being alive, but you’re really dead. And we saw that while they were doing these things again, they had forgotten the reason why they were doing these things, and they forgot why they were helping the poor, why they were coming to church on Sundays, why these things were happening. And they they looked like they were alive because they were doing the right things, but they were really dead inside because they weren’t doing them out of a love for Christ. So today we’re going to look at a couple more churches. We’re going to look at Pergamum and Thyatira today. So not only are you going to get to see some difficulties that these churches had, but you have some really cool names for future children or grandchildren if you want to keep in mind.
Thyatira, I think, would be awesome. Um, but these two churches suffer from very, very serious problem that it’s a viral problem. Once it starts, it’s very hard to stop and contain and it’s cancerous and it’s very hard to keep it from spreading. Uh, and it’s it’s something that today I think is extremely prevalent in churches in America. And as Alpine Bible Church, as we grow as a group of believers in a body together. Um, it’s something that we definitely need to be on the lookout for and on the watch for because, um, it can destroy a church quicker, I think, than anything else. So we’re going to jump right in and ruin. I forgot to bring the remote up here, so I’m just going to give you the little point when I need you to click. Um, so we’re going to be in revelation chapter two. We’re going to be in 12 through 17 today. Um, for the first church. And it says, and to the angel of the church in Pergamum, write, the one who has the sharp two edged sword says this I know where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is, and you hold fast my name, and did not deny my faith. Even in the days of Antipas, my witness, my faithful one who was killed among you where Satan dwells. But I have a few things against you. Because you have.
You have there some who hold the teaching of Balaam, who kept teaching Balac to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols, and to commit thank you, Ross, and to commit acts of immorality. So you also have some who in the same way hold the teaching of the nicolaitans. Therefore repent, or else I am coming to you quickly and I will make war 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, to him I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone and a new name written on the stone, which no one knows, but he who receives it. Um, so a little bit of background to Pergamum. It was a city. It was kind of a melting pot. There was a lot of it was a major trade hub. And so there was a lot of different people coming in. And as a result of that melting pot, there was a lot of different religions, a lot of different cultures there. Um, it was known as the birthplace of the imperial Roman cult. This was a cult that worshiped, uh, Roman leaders, uh, worshiped Rome itself, the country. It saw its leaders as deity and as gods, and they worshiped them. As such, they would often have statues of the gods of their, um, kings.
And emperors, I’m sorry, as statues throughout the city, and would burn incense in front of them and offer sacrifices and pay tribute to them, just like any other of the Roman and Greek gods of that day was also, um, the reason why revelation says, I know where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is, because they were in the heart of a pagan cult society, and it was also known for the worship not only just the Roman leaders, but it also worshiped all of the Greek and Roman mythological gods. To specifically, it was known for its worship of Asclepius, which is the Greek god of healing. It’s where we get our symbol for, uh, the medical staff today, where you have the rod and the two serpents wrapped around it. And they’re also known for their worship of Zeus. And you can still to this day go to the ruins of Pergamum and see altars to Zeus and temples and things like that. It was a very pagan society. It was a melting pot for everybody to come and just kind of take a little of this, that I like of this religion and a little bit of this and just kind of make it whatever. And as a result of that, it made the church there one incredible and miraculous that it was able to survive and to be planted there in such a such a hostile, negative environment towards Christianity and towards Christians, because not only was it a melting pot for all these pagan religions, but we know it was hostile towards Christians because in verse 13 says, you hold fast my name and did not deny my faith.
Even in the days of Antipas, my witness, my faithful one who was killed among you where Satan dwells. So hostility towards Christians was great here. So we know that the church being started was was remarkable enough. But just because they started a church in a place that wasn’t friendly, That was anti-God. Anti-christian. Doesn’t mean that they were set from then on. They still had problems and a really big problem. And what we find as we read is that the the problem that the church had was they were accepting of false teachers. It says that you hold to the teaching of Balaam, and then it also mentions the Nicolaitans Balaam. You can read the story of Balaam in the Old Testament. A moabite king who was Balak, was petrified of the Israelites because he knew who they were and who they served, and that they had just walked over anybody that stood in their way to this point. And so he was scared. So he asked Balaam to curse them. And Balaam said, I can’t curse them. God’s protected them. So the king just ends up finding ways to make Israelite the Israelites mess up so God isn’t happy with them.
And the way that he did that was by having them intermarry with the Moabite women, which God forbid. Um, and that caused them to stumble. But then the main one that I want to look at today is the teachings of the Nicolaitans. And if you remember last week, one of the good things that Ephesus was commended for and they actually did well, was they hated the nicolaitans. So you have Ephesus, who left its first love but hated the nicolaitans. And then you have Pergamum, who was faithful to martyrdom and martyrdom, but loved the Nicolaitans and accepted them. And here you see a big contrast, because the nicolaitans what they would do is, and it’s not uncommon of a lot of false teachers today is they would they saw the church and they went and checked it out, you know, went to a couple Sundays, saw what it was all about, and they took some things that they liked from Christianity. And then they just kind of took a little bit over here from their pagan rituals that they were used to and worshiping these other gods, and they would just sprinkle it in a little bit at a time. And over time, it became kind of a morphed combination of Christianity that Paul taught and helped found the church with. And these pagan cults and rituals that surrounded the church. And Christianity isn’t something that you can mix and match with, okay? If you’ve ever taken a chemistry class, I haven’t.
But I know that you don’t want to mix certain chemicals because it would blow up. It’s dangerous. And Christianity is one of those things. You can’t take a little bit of this and add it to something else, and it still be called Christianity. And what the Nicolatians were doing was exactly that. And as a result, it caused a lot of problems in the church in Pergamum. So how does the church in Ephesus, who had lost its first love, hold fast and keep sound doctrine, and not accept these false teachers and these false witnesses? And the other church in Pergamum doesn’t? And the answer is the church in Pergamum compromised. They saw the church in Ephesus, or they saw these nicolatians come in and, you know, hey, I want to teach a Bible study. Yeah, okay. That’s fine. You can. Yeah, you can teach a Bible study. And then all of a sudden in that Bible study, they, they, they misquote a scripture here and there and. Okay, you know, well, they misquoted that. That’s fine. That’s fine. We’ll let it go. And then the next time they misapply something here and well, you know, they just they’re young, they don’t they haven’t really studied a lot. They don’t know. And then by the time they were done, the Nicolatians had completely warped their doctrine because they just let them keep going.
And they didn’t stop it when it happened. And the church in Ephesus, if you want to find the reason that they were able to withstand these nicolatians is if you flip back to first Timothy one three through four, Paul is writing to Timothy, um, this is one of the pastoral epistles, and he’s giving Timothy instruction on how to be a pastor. And he says, uh, in verses three through four, he says, as I urged you upon my departure for Macedonia, remain on at Ephesus, so that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines, nor pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculation, rather than furthering the administration of God, which is by faith. See, Paul knew that a compromise in doctrine would mean the end of the church. He knew that it was a serious thing that needed to be addressed immediately. So he tells Timothy who he trained and trained, who he discipled, who he did ministry with. He says, you stay there and teach them that when these things happen, when somebody comes in and starts teaching something that’s contrary to what I’ve taught you and what you’ve heard and what you know to be true, to take a stand on that and not to to listen to. He says, uh, genealogies, um, and uh, and speculations because it’s not profitable. Don’t listen to these things that these people would try and intermingle with, but take a stand.
And the way that Paul tells Timothy to take a stand is found in his second letter to Timothy. If you look in second Timothy 316 says, All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. You see, Paul knew that compromise and doctrine in what we believe, and we just spent our church just spent. I think it was almost 12 weeks or more going over the core beliefs of what we believe as a church body. We didn’t just do that because we couldn’t think of another way to spend 12 weeks. We did that because it’s really important to know what you believe and to stand on that belief. And Paul says that all Scripture is inspired by God. It’s profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness. The reason that he tells Timothy this is because when you know the word, when you’ve studied the word, when you’re applying the word, and you’re in God’s Word every day, when you hear something that doesn’t match up, the little red light’s going to go off and go, wait a minute, that’s not what I was reading. He’s got something else. I don’t know what he’s got but it’s not what I have. And you’re going to know. You see, when it says all Scripture is inspired by God, it literally means that all Scripture is God breathed.
It’s God’s Word. It’s God’s breath for us so that we can know what is right, what is wrong, so we can teach properly in truth so that we can correct wrong behavior, that we can correct misbelief so that we can do these things. It’s a standalone resource. You don’t need to add anything to it. You don’t need to take anything away. The Bible is and always will be God’s inspired word that he gave us to live our life by. I’ve. I’ve had people argue with me that at the time Paul wrote to Timothy, the only scripture that they had was the Old Testament scriptures and the writings of Moses. So the only thing that is actually inspired by God and God’s, and 100% accurate is the Old Testament. And we should just ignore the New Testament. But the problem you run in there is that by admitting that all Scripture referring to the Old Testament, you have to admit that Paul’s writings are true. And a chapter before he writes this, Paul quotes Luke and the Book of Numbers as Scripture together. So you have to accept the entirety of the Bible. You can’t just take part of it, okay? The Bible is our defense against compromise. It’s our defense. When someone comes in and starts teaching something that doesn’t quite add up, if you just sit there and nod your head and say, yep, sounds good, okay, because there’s a lot of stuff out there that sounds good.
I, you know, if you just believe in Jesus hard enough, you get a Mercedes Benz and you don’t have any health problems. That sounds pretty good, but it’s wrong. But if you don’t study God’s Word and you’re not in his word, you’re just going to say, okay, yeah, that sounds right. That makes sense. If I love Jesus, he’ll bless me. So I should get a Mercedes Benz. That’s good. Okay, but that’s not the way it works. Paul. One of the churches that he started, if you read in acts 1711, was a church in Berea and in acts 1711 it says of the Berean Church, it says, now these were more noble than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see whether these things were so. So when they were being taught even by Paul. Okay. And Paul was he was known in his day. Everybody knew who Paul was. He was one of the religious leaders that everybody knew because he was so strong in his faith. He was so committed to Christ, and he was so committed to the cause. And he’s sitting here teaching these people face to face, and they’re still saying, well, I like what you’re saying, Paul, but let me just make sure.
And it says they searched the scriptures daily to see if these things were so. They weren’t satisfied with somebody telling them what the Bible said. They wanted to read it and study it for themselves. And and because of that, it says in acts that they were more noble than those in Thessalonica. When Nathaniel’s preaching or teaching or if I’m preaching or teaching or Russ or Mark or anybody, when anybody’s teaching you anything from the Bible, don’t take them at face value. Don’t take them for your word, for their word. Open up the Bible and see what it says. Search it out. Study it. Make sure that what they’re saying and teaching and telling you lines up with what the Bible actually says. And if you don’t, if you’re not sure how to study the Bible, where to get started, how you can do that. There’s tons of great study tools that can help you. A study Bible is a great place to start. It has the verses and then at the bottom it has little notes on verses and kind of background on stuff that can help you understand. If you have a computer, go to Biblegateway.com. There’s a ton of resources on there. If you go to S.org, it’s a free download. It’s a Bible study program. I use it a lot when I prepare my sermons and my youth lessons, but you can see commentaries, you can break stuff down, you can see what words are in the original Greek, and you can study on your own.
You don’t have to go to Bible college to study your Bible. You don’t have to have a degree. And in fact, you should study your Bible before you even go there. Um, but if you’re just taking what everybody’s teaching at face value and you’re not studying it out for yourself, what’s going to happen is you’re going to start to compromise, and you’re going to take a stand here and say, this is what I believe. And then somebody teaches something and you don’t really study it out, and you slide a little bit over and say, yeah, okay. I would I would think that’s right too. And then something else comes along and before you know it, you’ve compromised so much that you’re all the way over here and you’re looking back saying, wait a minute, that’s what I used to believe. And now I’m way over here and I don’t even. I can barely even see what I used to believe now because I’ve compromised so much. But when you’re in God’s Word for yourself, you can see. Wait a minute. I don’t want to take a step that way, because that’s not what this says. And I’m going to stay right here. Last week, I told you the story about the lady who cut the ends off of her ham to fit it, to put it in the roaster pan, and she didn’t really know why.
So her husband asked her and she didn’t know. So he asked her mom and she didn’t know. She just said, well, my mom always did it that way. Well, my mom always did it that way. And they found out the reason that they cut the ends off the ham is because their great grandma’s roaster pan was too small to fit a whole ham, so they had to cut the ends off. So for all these generations, they were cutting the ends off the ham for no reason. And if somebody would have just said, hey mom, why are you cutting the ends off the ham? Because my roaster pan doesn’t fit. Oh, okay. They wouldn’t have done it for all those years, but nobody thought to stop and question what they were being taught by their mom. Okay, don’t just take what I’m teaching you at face value. Open your Bible and study it. Study it. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Study it throughout the week. Don’t just come on Sunday. Open your Bible for that 20 minutes and call it good. Take it home and dive in. Find out what’s right. What’s wrong. Make sure that what’s being taught is accurate. And this preventative step, this precautionary step against compromising in what we believe and what our doctrine is, is also the same thing that could have saved the church in Thyatira.
Because if you read in Thyatira, Thyatira, they suffered from the same basic problem. And in 18 through 20 of revelation two it says to the angel of the church in Thyatira write, The Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and his feet are like burnished bronze, says this I know your deeds and your love and faith, and service and perseverance, and that your deeds are of late are greater than at first. But I have this against you that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads my bond servants astray, so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols. So like Pergamum, who was accepting of false teachers, says Thyatira was accepting of Jezebel and her false teachings, and as a result, that led them into immorality. Now, Jezebel probably wasn’t this woman’s real name. She was a false prophetess. Her the name given to her here of Jezebel probably just refers back to the Old Testament to the woman Jezebel found in the Old Testament in the Book of First Kings, and she taught similar things to the Nicolaitans. She just came in and crept in, seemingly unnoticed. Just said, hey, I know you’re not really supposed to do this, but everybody else is doing this, so you should just go ahead and accept this kind of behavior and do this.
And they compromised and allowed her to teach these false things. And as a result, a large portion of the church large enough that it was problem enough that it’s addressed here in the book of Revelation, began to fall into habitual sin and to fall into continuous immorality and things that God commanded them not to do. And it’s all because they gave in just that one time that led to the second time, and the third and fourth, instead of just putting a stop to it. And the same way that Pergamum could have stopped false teaching is the same way that they could have stopped their moral backsliding and their moral compromise here in Thyatira. If you read in Psalm one 1911, your word have I treasured in my heart that I might not sin against you? The psalmist is crying out, God, I know I’m going to sin, but the way that I’m keeping myself from sinning more than I should and more than I could sin, is by studying or by treasuring it in my heart, not just reading it, treasuring it in your heart, studying it, memorizing it. Second Timothy 215. Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman who needs not be ashamed. And if you read in Matthew four one through 11, Christ is being tempted by Satan in the wilderness. And the response every time Christ is tempted is he responds to the devil with Scripture, and he responds by quoting Scripture to fight off that temptation, to fight off that sin.
When you know God’s Word and you’re in God’s Word on a regular basis, it’s a lot Harder to give in and compromise. I had a friend who was a truck driver and he’s an awesome guy. He, uh, he was probably about £400. His head was as big as a basketball, but he was the nicest guy in the world. I talked to him for hours, and he. He drove a truck. And every time I talked to him, every time he came back into town, I always heard the same story. And I always loved hearing the story because he was awesome. Jd was the man, but he always told me, he said, man, you know, I’m driving on the road and I’m by myself and ain’t nobody know me from Adam. You know, I could do whatever I want. But you know what? I got Bible all up on my dashboard. He took post-it notes and just put them all over the dashboard, down the console of his door, on his door handle. When he flipped down his sun visor. He had verses there because he knew when he was on his own, when he wasn’t surrounded by his family, it was going to be. It was going to be temptation. But he surrounded himself with God’s word so that he wouldn’t fall into that temptation and make that compromise.
He knew how important God’s Word was for him to stay pure to God, and to not compromise who he was and to compromise what he believed. If you’re not in God’s Word, it’s going to be a lot harder to stay true to God and follow what he’s teaching and what he wants for your life. And I’m not saying that if you do study God’s Word and that you do make it a habit, that you’re going to be free of sin and your life’s going to go smoothly, because that’s just not true. Okay. And if you study your Bible, you’re going to realize that’s not true. Um, but what I’m saying is that the more that you study God’s Word, the more that it affects every aspect of your life, not just Sunday mornings when you come here. And if you come on a Wednesday night for the occasional Bible study, it affects every day because you’re ingraining and you’re studying and you’re memorizing every day. Compromise is a dangerous thing that we don’t even really realize happens a lot. It just kind of sneaks up on us. But as it sneaks up, it takes us further and further away from where we’re supposed to go. James one if you’re reading James one, it says that lust grows into sin and sin into death. Compromise just starts with that one little thought and then acting on that thought, and then that thought grows into sin, and sin eventually leads to death.
And when we give in that one little time, it’s not like the church in Pergamum, Thyatira, just they all woke up one day, got together and said, you know what, guys? What we’re believing. I think it could be more fun. So we’re going to go ahead and bring in. This is Jim. He’s our guest speaker today. He’s going to teach us some different stuff that we’re going to go ahead. And they didn’t happen like that. They didn’t decide that they wanted to change it just happened because they weren’t paying attention and they weren’t studying the scriptures, and they weren’t searching out to make sure that the things being taught were accurate to God’s Word. And the same thing in Thyatira. Not a whole lot of people wake up and say, you know what I think? I think today is a good day to go out and try some heroin. You know it. It’s not I’m going to go try some some hard narcotics. No, it starts gradually and builds and builds and then eventually they step back and say, man, a year ago I said I would never be in this kind of a situation doing this kind of a thing, but here I am. And how did this happen? And while it’s because at that first party I went to, I gave in and I tried this, and then I did this, and then I did that, and it just built and built.
Compromise, whether it be doctrinal, whether it be moral or a combination can simply be fixed by a study of God’s Word. And the last couple of weeks, last week and this week have been kind of a little bit heavier, a little bit. This is corrective behavior that needs to happen. But I promise if you stick with me, next week is going to be a little bit more encouraging for you. So stick through the rough part and I’ll get to a little bit of happy stuff. But this is important to know because as a church, as we grow, the more we grow, the easier compromise is going to become as a whole and as individuals. As we grow, it’s easier to just slip to the back and get lost in the crowd and stop sacrificing and stop giving like you used to. It’s easy to to compromise and let somebody something go that maybe you would have stopped sooner when we were a smaller church. But as we grow, we need to be on the lookout for these things. And the best way to be on the lookout is by being in God’s Word. I love it in the Psalms when he says, I meditate on your word day and night. Because when he’s talking about meditating, I shared this in youth group and they thought it was kind of gross, but I think it’s awesome.
It’s talking about a cow chewing its cud. And so a cow will bite a chunk of grass and chew it up and swallow it, and goes into one of its stomachs. But then later in the day, it’ll bring that back up and it starts chewing on it again to get more nutrients out. And that’s what he’s talking about with God’s Word. You don’t just read it once in the morning. Oh crap, I woke up late. I gotta hurry up and get to work. Uh, John 316 For God so loved the world that. Okay, good. I read the Bible for today, and then you go on about your day and do your thing. No, you read that. And then throughout the day, man, God loved the world so much, he died for everybody. That’s awesome. How should that affect me? What should I do about that? And then later on you think back, man, really? The whole world. What should I do about that? Does do they know? Should I tell these people? It should affect you. You should bring it up throughout the day. Don’t just let it go at a one time quick glance. Study it out. Meditate on it. Let it affect you. We should study God’s Word so much that it permeates all of our life, that everything that we do, the decisions that we make, should be geared and affected by what God’s Word says for our lives.
Second Timothy 215. Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman who needs not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. Accurately handling the word of truth. Properly interpreting and applying God’s Word to your life so that when somebody comes up and tells you something that this is right, you can say, no, it’s not because I studied and you’re wrong. This is what the Bible says. But if we’re not careful, that compromise can take us a long way from where we want to be. So as our church grows, possibility of false teaching emerges and it gets even bigger when those false teachers can cause us to compromise what we believe and what we stand for as a church. And it can cause us as people, as believers, as individuals, to move away from our moral standard. That is God’s Word, and that is the Bible that tells us what is right and wrong. And we don’t want to follow that moral standard of what’s right and wrong in the Bible, because that’s what we’re supposed to do, and that’s what gets you to heaven, or that’s what makes you a good person. We do that because we love Christ and we want to see him glorified. So as you go home today, just think about the last time that you opened your Bible and studied it.
You know, we just sang breathe. I love that song. Man, this is the air I breathe. This is my daily bread. When’s the last time that you felt that way about God? And when you think about the last time you felt that way about God, I’m going to go ahead and guess. It was pretty close to the last time you really studied the Bible and you really studied God’s Word. So as we go home this week, like I said, next week will be a little bit happier. It’ll be a little bit more encouraging for you. But if I didn’t warn you about the things that could happen as our church grows and these things to be on the lookout for, I’d be doing you a great disservice. Um, this week for construction. There’s not a ton to do, but if you’re interested in helping get Ahold of me or Mark, if you don’t have either of our numbers, just let us know. We can get it. Get them to you. But we’re getting close to the finishing stages. Hopefully by next Sunday, you won’t feel like you’re in a construction zone and the floor will be done and the walls will be painted and everything will work. Right. But, uh, all of that coming and helping is for not if we’re not doing it for the right reasons, and we’re not doing it out of a love for God. Um, and we’re not studying our word to make sure that we aren’t compromising in any way. Let’s pray.