Living Words

A Sermon for Ash Wednesday

Joel 2:12-17 & St. Matthew 6:16-21

by William Klock

Our Epistle today from Joel gives us a unique opportunity to view not only the day’s Gospel, but the entire season of Lent from the perspective of Israel’s story.  Joel’s ministry as a prophet probably took place at some point after the exile and the contents of his book call Judah to repentance at a time when the nation faced the devastation of a horrible plague of locusts.  We get a sense of the severity of the plague in the first chapter, where we read that the locusts have consumed even the vines and stripped the fig trees of their bark.  These are not normal locust food.  They’re what locusts would turn to once everything else had been consumed.  The vine and the fig tree were symbols of peace and prosperity and their consumption by locusts speaks to the desperate situation of the nation.  As 1:13 notes, the priests lamented before the altar for there was neither grain nor drink left in the land to offer to the Lord.

Repeatedly the prophet speaks of the Day of the Lord, a day to which Israel looked with eager anticipation.  One day the Lord would arise from his throne, he who had tamed chaos to create an ordered cosmos, and he would do the same again.  The Lord would arise to bring justice to his people and to set all to rights.  Israel’s perennial problem was that she always saw herself as the innocent victim.  On the Day of the Lord her enemies would be vanquished and she would be vindicated.  It occurred to few in Israel that the Day of the Lord might turn out to be a judgement on Israel’s own sins.  This gets at the heart of Joel’s prophecy.  The Day of Lord has come and his own people have found themselves the focus of his judgement.

The book is a call to repentance.  Judah stands condemned for having offered the outward sacrifices of grain, wine, and oil, while the people had not truly dedicated their hearts to the Lord.  But Joel reminds the people that this is not the end.  The purpose of the Lord’s discipline is to bring repentance and with repentance will come restoration.  “Even now,” declares the Lord, return to me with all your heart…Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster” (vv. 12-13).

Now, this does not mean that the outward trapping of religion and of repentance are unnecessary.  Through the prophet the Lord summons his people to fast, to weep, to mourn—but to do so from the heart and as evidence of true repentance.  Lest they are tempted to make a show of rending their garments, the Lord declares it is more important that they first rend their hearts.

The need for corporate repentance is highlighted too.  The priests are to take their place “between the vestibule and the altar” to weep and cry out for mercy while the entire nation joins them: the elders and the children—even the bride and bridegroom are to suspend their honeymoon so that the whole nation can take part in this corporate act of repentance.

In response to the honest repentance of the nation, the Lord promises restoration—even that one day he will solve Israel’s heart problem by pouring out his Spirit.  In that day he will establish his people forever and put an end to their enemies.  Here our Epistle, even as we enter our Lenten fast, sets our eyes on Easter and on the age to come that burst forth from the empty tomb.  Even as we’re reminded by the old Israel of the importance of penitence, both as individuals and corporately as the Church, we’re also reminded that we are not the old Israel; we are the new Israel, we are the people who live on the other side of the Lord’s promise to pour out his Spirit.

And if we turn over to today’s Gospel we see Jesus addressing the same old problem.  Many in Israel continued to put on a show of outward piety, while their hearts were far from the Lord.  Jesus warns that those who put on a show for others have received all they will ever receive for their efforts.  They may receive respect and honour from those around them, but it has not moved God.  Think again of the Day of the Lord, that day when the people of Israel anticipated the Lord coming to defeat their enemies, to set all to rights, and to reign forever.  Many people fasted and made public acts of repentance in anticipation of that day.  Jesus’ warning in light of that should have been frightening.  As the Messiah, he was setting in motion the events that would culminate in the Day of the Lord and here he warns that those who have made an insincere show of repentance will have no share in that day.  Rather, those who, to use the language of Joel, have rent their hearts rather than their garments, are the ones whom the Father will see and reward—they are the ones who will know the age to come.

Let your investment be in the age to come, Jesus exhorts the people.  Investment in the things of this age will not last.  Moth and rust corrupt and thieves break in and steal.  More importantly, our investments in the values and systems of the present evil age are foolish in light of the inauguration of the age to come by Jesus.  We’re reminded of the Quinquagesima Epistle from 1 Corinthians 13.  If even the good, God-given gifts of tongues and prophecy will one day cease to have a purpose when the age to come as been consummated, how much more ought we to hold lightly to the praises of others and to investment in the values, systems, and institutions of the age that is passing away.  Instead, Jesus encourages his people to lay up treasures in heaven.  As we listen to Jesus here, it’s important to remember that Jews did not understand “heaven” the way many Christians often do, as referring to “up there” or “the next life”.  In Jewish thought—as it should be in Christian thought—heaven is God’s realm as earth is ours and Jesus has accomplished the work to heal the breach between them caused by human sin and rebellion.  One day heaven and earth will be rejoined.  One day, as the Jews had always hoped, all will be set to rights and evil wiped from the face of the earth.  Redeemed humanity will live in the presence of God.  It is that dawning age into which we ought to be investing, knowing that what we do out of love for God and love for each other in this age is what will last into the age to come.

Israel struggled with repentance and so did the people surrounding Jesus.  They lived in anticipation of the fulfilment of the Lord’s promise to pour out his Spirit and to set right the hearts of his people.  There is, necessarily then, a difference between our season of penitence and theirs.  We live on the fulfilment side of the Lord’s promise.  We are the people redeemed by Jesus at the cross and in whom the Spirit of God dwells—and that has changed everything.  Nevertheless, we too live in anticipation of the day when all will finally be set to rights and so it is just as important for us to set our eyes on Jesus and to commit ourselves to investing in the thing of his kingdom.

Brothers and Sisters, this is the purpose of our Lenten fast.  Each year the Church calls us to slow down, to take a break, and to fast so that we can, for at least these few weeks, invest some time that we wouldn’t normally invest in considering God’s word, in considering the gospel, in considering what Jesus has done for us by his death and resurrection, to think on God’s love for us revealed in Jesus, and to make a point of being deliberate about our love for each other and, especially for the poor and needy, so that as we approach Easter, we will have our eyes more firmly set on Jesus and the new life and the new creation that lie before us.

Worthy is the Lamb

Revelation 5:1-14

by William Klock

A year after we moved into our last house we started receiving letters addressed to the previous owner.  When he’d moved, he’d set up mail forwarding with the post office, but they’ll only forward your mail for a year.  When the year was up, the post office stopped forwarding his mail.  But the only mail we got for him was from a bank.  I thought it was odd that he obviously gave everyone else his new address, but not the bank.  Those monthly letters from the bank started to pile up.  We didn’t have his forwarding address.  His name was John Smith and he’d moved to Houston.  I looked on the Internet.  There are a lot of John Smiths in Houston.  So the letters kept piling up.  Then we got one from a collections agency.  It was marked “Urgent” and “Final Notice” and even thought it also said something to the effect of “To be opened only by addressee”, I decided I’d better open it to see what was up and if there was anything I could do—or anything I needed to deal with before toughs showed up at our front door demanding money.

As it turned out, the previous owner of our home had taken out a very substantial line of credit for home renovations—only a small portion of which actually went into renovating our home—and had defaulted and neglected to update the bank of his whereabouts.  I didn’t feel so bad about opening a stranger’s confidential mail once I discovered he was guilty of something far, far worse.  I imagine he was relieved to stop getting those letters and I also wondered if the bank ever caught up with him.  But imagine if you were the debtor, you couldn’t pay, the bank had been hounding you, so you called the bank and by some miracle of grace, the person on the other end of the phone agreed to a payment plan you could manage.  Maybe the loan would be partially forgiven.  The agent promised to send an official notice with the details.  And so you wait anxiously for that letter with the details and when it came, you tore it open and jumped for joy at what was inside.  The pressure’s off.  Everything will be okay.

But imagine if that letter came and you couldn’t open it.  That’s a bit like the situation John finds himself in as we begin Revelation 5.  Remember that Revelation is about tribulation, about perseverance, and about kingdom.  It opens with these letters to the churches exhorting them to persevere, to stand firm, to conquer.  They’ve been living through tribulation.  Things, for most of them, are going to get worse.  But the Lord knows what he’s doing and has a plan.  His kingdom is breaking into the world and he will see his people through.  But what’s the plan?  Well, that’s the rest of John’s vision.  It’s why he’s been invited through the open door into the heavenly court—to know the counsels of the Lord.

That vision began in Chapter 4, as we saw last week, with John’s vision of the twenty-four elders and the angelic beings around God’s throne giving him praise, but now in Chapter 5 we get to the heart of it.  Look at verses 1-4:

Then I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals.  And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?”  And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, and I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it.

 

The imagery seems weird and cryptic to us, but it wasn’t to those First Century Christians to whom John wrote.  As we’ve seen many times already, the imagery of Revelation is drawn from the Old Testament.  It’s confusing to us because we aren’t steeped in the Bible the way they were.  The scene John describes here in Chapters 4 and 5 is drawn heavily from the opening to Ezekiel’s prophecy.  John and Ezekiel were both in exile.  Both are taken up to the heavenly court where the Lord reveals his plans.  Many of the details of the heavenly throne room that John reports are similar to Ezekiel’s description.  This establishes the context as John stands before God’s throne and a scroll is presented.  Something similar happened to Ezekiel.  He, too, was given a scroll with writing on both front and back.  It contained “words of lamentation and mourning and woe” (Ezekiel 2:10).  And Ezekiel was sent to deliver the message of the scroll to rebellious Israel, “to nations of rebels, who have rebelled against me.  They and their fathers have transgressed against me to this very day” (2:3).  So we know—or we should know—as soon as the scroll appears here that it contains the Lord’s plans for Israel.

But the scroll calls back to two other important passages from the Old Testament prophets.  The Lord spoke to Israel through Isaiah, but then Isaiah rebuked Israel saying, “All these sayings shall become for you like the words of this sealed book.  If they give it to a learned man, saying, ‘Read these things,’ then he will say, ‘I cannot read it, for it is sealed.’” (Isaiah 29:11 NETS).  The word of the Lord should have been easy for Israel to hear, but the nation was so far gone in rebellion that that word might as well have been on a sealed scroll.  No one was worthy to open it, let alone hear it.  But there’s also a powerful reference to Daniel here.  Daniel was given a vision of the political events that would bring Israel to a great crisis under the Greek king Antiochus Epiphanes.  And yet, having been given this prophecy, Daniel is told to “shut up the words and seal the book, until the time of the end” (Daniel 12:4).  So it may well be that the scroll John sees is this very scroll that had been sealed up by Daniel, but at the very least the imagery tells us that this scroll contains the details of a time of great trouble to come—specifically trouble for Israel, not just ethnic Jews, but for the whole people of God—and that it tells of the judgement to come on unbelieving and apostate Israel, but also the Lord’s plan to vindicate the faithful amongst the covenant people, the Church.  In short, sealed in the scroll are the Lord’s plans to set Creation to rights.

So the angel proclaims to the heavenly court, “Who is worthy to open the scroll?”  And there’s no one worthy.  No one on the earth.  That’s probably not surprising knowing our sinful lot.  But even in heaven there’s no one worthy.  And John bursts into tears.  He weeps.  He’s seen the affliction of God’s people.  He’s in exile himself on account of the gospel.  And he’s been given those messages of coming tribulation to deliver to the churches.  But he’s also heard the Lord’s promise to those who overcome.  The Lord will judge those who afflict his people.  The Lord will deliver the faithful.  The Lord will set all to rights.  And the plan for it is all right there in the scroll, but someone’s got to open it, to unleash God’s plans in order for it to happen.  And no one in earth or heaven is worthy.

This searching high and low for someone to open the scroll reminds us of the Lord’s design of Creation and, in particular, the vocation he gave to the human race.  He put us in his temple to bear his image, to steward his Creation, to exercise his dominion, to mediate his presence to the world.  We are the priests of his temple.  And as a race we failed.  And since the Lord was committed to working in his creation through us, rather than abandon us to sin and death, he began a work of re-creation.  He called Abraham and through him created a people, Israel, to mediate his presence to the nations.  But Israel, too, failed.  Israel, too, needed redemption.  John’s weeping echoes the weeping of Creation.  Where is the man who do what Adam his children have not?

He goes on in verses 5 and 6:

And one of the elders said to me, “Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”

  And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.

 

It turns out that all this searching high and low in heaven and earth to find one who was worthy, everyone in the heavenly courts looking at each other as if to say, “I thought you knew who was worthy to open the scroll,” was all for dramatic effect and for John’s sake.  One of the elder comforts him.  “Stop weeping, John, behold—look!—there actually is someone worthy to open the scroll: The lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David.

Here’s more Old Testament imagery.  This idea of Judah as a lion goes all the way back to Jacob’s blessing of his sons back in Egypt.  “Judah is a lion’s cub…he crouched as a lion and as a lioness; who dares rouse him?  The scepter shall not depart from Judah…until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples” (Genesis 49:9-10).  And this “root of David” idea is drawn from Isaiah 11.  He’s the king from the line of David.  On him the Spirit of the Lord shall rest.  “He shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked” (11:4).  And he’ll not only come as judge to Israel.  He “will assemble the banished of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth” (11:12), but even more, he will be a signal for the people and the nations will come to him.  Here’s the Messiah, who is not only the one true and faithful human being, but the one true and faithful Israelite—the one who bears faithfully the image of God as no one else has.  The elder announces to John, “Behold the long-promised Davidic King, behold the lion of the tribe of Judah who is worthy to open the scroll and to set the world to rights.

And then suddenly everything pivots.  At the announcement we think of the lion, the king of beasts, coming to fight off every contender.  We see the great King riding in his chariot, swinging his sword, cutting down his enemies.  That’s who the elder announces.  But then John sees a lamb.  The image of the powerful and noble lion, the symbol of royalty, juxtaposed against the humble vulnerability of the lamb.  Of course, here too, anyone who knew the Old Testament scriptures couldn’t help but think of the lambs sacrificed in the temple.  This one, oddly enough has seven horns and seven eyes, probably representing strength and, as we’ve seen before, the Holy Spirit—but a lamb nevertheless.  So here we see how it works, how the Lord’s plan unfolds.  He, himself, becomes one of his own rebellious people—a representative not only of humanity, but more specifically of Israel.  Israel was God’s mediator-people to the nations, but they rebelled, and so God himself comes as one of them to serve as mediator to them.  And he comes as the king, as the lion, he wins the great victory that will set Creation to rights, but in the lamb we see that he wins that victory be offering himself up as a sacrifice—he gave his life for the sins of his rebellious people.  He is the king who comes not in a chariot ready to smash heads, but on a humble donkey, handing himself over to sin and death, allowing them to do their worst, then winning his victory three days later as he bursts alive from the grave.  This is the king who is both lion and lamb and this is how he wipes away ever tear, beginning here with John’s.  This is how he is worthy to open the scroll, to set God’s plans in motion, to set Creation to rights.

John continues in verses 7-10:

And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne.  And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.  And they sang a new song, saying,

“Worthy are you to take the scroll

         and to open its seals,

for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God

         from every tribe and language and people and nation,

and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God,

         and they shall reign on the earth.”

 

Jesus takes the scroll from his Father and all of heaven falls before him in worship.  John says that those twenty-four elders, the men who represent the people of God, the Church of both the old covenant and the new, they have harps and bowls of incense and that the incense represents the prayers of the saints.  The twenty-four elders present the worship of the church to God and to the Lamb.

I can’t pass this by without making the observation that the worship we see here and throughout Revelation is a participatory worship.  It’s increasingly common these days in Evangelical circles for worship to take on the form of a concert.  The lights are dimmed making it hard for the congregation to see each other, while a band and singers on the stage—it’s no longer a chancel, but a stage, because it’s increasingly about performance—the stage is lit up with spotlights.  And the band performs, often so loudly that it drowns out the congregation.  Often the traditional songs and hymns of the church designed for easy congregation singing and four-part harmony are replaced by hard-to-sing songs meant to be performed by soloists.  And, increasingly, the trend is for the congregation to listen rather than sing.  A friend of mine who leads this sort of worship tells me it simply reflects the secular trends of our society.  Folk music isn’t much of a thing anymore.  Ordinary people don’t sing very much.  Music is now something professionals do.  We go to concerts and listen.  Or we put on our headphones and we listen.  My friend says that it’s an “immersive” model and that it’s replaced the “participatory” model.  Brothers and Sisters, while this may be true—for good or ill—in the secular world, it should never be true of the Church and her worship.  Worship is not immersive.  The worship of the church is participatory.  It’s not done by professionals alone.  We may have skilled people who lead us, we may have instruments to help us carry the tune and set the tempo, but the most important thing about congregational worship is the congregation—specifically the congregation singing.  Anything that discourages that or that drowns it out, whether a loud band or a loud pipe organ, is a hindrance to worship, not a help.  Not one of the elders sat, holding his harp and incense in silence, immersing or soaking himself in the praise the others gave to Jesus.  No, every one of them knelt before him in worship, lifting their voices and pouring out their prayers.  That is the true nature of the worship of the church.  And it pleases God.  Heavenly harps represent our often feeble singing and our humble and often stumbling but faithful prayers rise up as sweet-smelling incense to the heavenly courts.

And we pray and we sing—we worship—because Jesus is worthy.  He is worthy to take the scroll and to break the seals, he is worthy to brings God’s redemptive plans to fruit, and he is worthy because he has ransomed his people with his own blood.  From every tribe and nation, the elders sing, he has called this people and has made them a kingdom of priests to reign up on the earth.  Brothers and Sisters, here’s that language of vocation again.  Jesus has restored to us that which we rejected in Adam.  Here’s the language of the Exodus—a people purchased like slaves from the market and made into a royal priesthood.  But, too, this first song echoes the prophet Daniel.  In Daniel a series of monsters rampages across the earth, but the Lord takes away their dominion and delivers it to “one like a son of man”, and through him re-establishes his dominion.  And yet the dominion doesn’t end with the one like a son of man.  Later Daniel writes that “judgment was given for the saints of the Most High, and the time came when the saints possessed the kingdom” (7:22).

The Lord delights in exodus stories, because they display his glory.  Whether it’s his deliverance of Israel from Pharaoh or in Daniel, the deliverance of his people from the raging pagan empires or here, in John’s vision, the deliverance of his suffering church by the blood of the lamb who was slain, God displays his glory and makes himself known through the merciful and gracious deliverance of his people.  The Lord displays his glory by setting to rights what we have made wrong, be restoring us to our vocation as his image bearers.  We threw it away and submitted outselves to sin and death, but through great cost, through the death of his Son, he has brought us back into his temple, back into his presence, and made us priests and kings to mediate his presence to the world.  This is why he is worthy and this is why we worship.

And the rest of Creation joins with the church in that worship.  Look at verses 11-14:

Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice,

“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,

to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might

and honor and glory and blessing!”

And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying,

“To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb

be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!”

And the four living creatures said, “Amen!” and the elders fell down and worshiped.

 

The first song glorifies the lamb for what he has done.  Now all creation thunders in praise to give the lamb what he, because of his glory, deserves.  Notice that he is worthy to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might, honour and glory and blessing.  These are all the things due to a king—to the king.  The wealth and the might of creation belong to him.  But I wonder how often we think of Jesus in much smaller terms.  A lot of Christians see him as little more than personal savior.  Maybe we sing songs that ascribe to him this sort of praise on Sunday mornings, but the rest of the week we ascribe these things to others—to kings and prime minister…even to ourselves—power and wealth and wisdom and might and glory and honour.  Friends, the only one worthy of any of those things is the lamb who was slain, the world’s true Lord, the one who has come to set all to rights—you and I, prime ministers and presidents, kings and emperors, the whole human race and all of Creation

But it doesn’t stop there.  The third song sung out by this mighty host joins the praise of the lamb with the praise of God himself as we saw in Chapter 4.  He sits on the throne and deserve the same eternal praises as God—eternal glory and blessings—for he shares in the divinity of his Father.  And that makes this all the more profound, it ought to stir our hearts to praise even more, because it’s not just that the mighty lion, the Davidic King humbled himself as a lamb to the slaughter, but that in Jesus, God himself in humility became the King in David’s line, God took on our flesh, that he might then serve as a sacrifice for our sins.  He is worthy of our worship beyond anything we can ever fully express.

Consider all of this—creation thundering in praise as the Church kneels before Jesus offering her songs and prayers—all this and the scrolls revealing God’s plans hasn’t even been opened yet.  All this, because what has already been accomplished by Jesus—his incarnation, his death, his resurrection, his ascension—revealed not only his own worthiness, but that in him God reveals his glory—his love, his grace, his mercy, his faithfulness to do that which he has promised.  All Creation sings his praises and the entire human race is drawn to him, every knee bows, at the sight of his glory and to hear the proclamation of his mighty deeds.  There is more to come. We’ve barely scratched the surface of John’s vision.  But the praise begins here with the lamb and his redeemed people.  Christ has died.  Christ has risen.  Christ will come again.

Let’s pray: Worthy are you, O Lord.  You have created all things and you sustain them.  Worthy are you, for by the blood of the lamb you have redeemed us, you have made us your people, a nation of kings and priests, and you have filled us with your Spirit.  Give us grace that we might be faithful in our calling to mediate your presence to the world, to proclaim your mighty deeds and your great glory, and most of all the death, resurrection, and lordship of Jesus.  And may we always ascribe to you the glory that is yours.  Amen.

A Door Standing Open in Heaven

Revelation 4:1-11

by William Klock

The Westminster Shorter Catechism famously opens with the question, “What is the chief end of man?”  In other words: What is our purpose?  For what were we created?  The answer is, “to glorify God and to enjoy him forever”.  Why do we worship God?  Because it’s what human beings were created to do.  Why did God call Abraham?  Because humanity had ceased to worship him and it was necessary for someone to summon the nations to worship.  Why did God create a nation of Abraham’s children?  To worship him and to be a witness to the nations, summoning them to worship.  Why did God send his son?  Because even that nation, chosen and called to summon the nations to worship, was failing to worship and needed to be set to rights.  Do you see where I’m going with this?  What is the Church?  We are the people chosen and called by God, created anew by Jesus, and filled with God’s own Spirit, set apart to worship God and to summon the nations to that worship.  Why do we evangelise?  Because the nations still do not worship God.  One day the knowledge of the Lord’s glory will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea, one day every knee will bow, and Brothers and Sisters, that will happen because this church, chosen and called by the Father, redeemed and made new by Jesus, and filled with the Holy Spirit will have finally accomplished our divinely given purpose.

It seems like such an impossible task, which may in part be why so much of modern, popular eschatology has taken an escapist tack.  Instead of the Church bringing the nations to Jesus, people have given up on the world and put their hope in Jesus coming to the rescue to zap us to heaven instead.  But this is not why Jesus urged the churches of Asia to hold fast, to stand firm, to overcome, and to conquer.  Our Lord is prophet, priest, and king and he has made us his stewards.  We have a prophetic role in summoning the world to repent and to come to Jesus.  We have a priestly role in mediating his kingdom to the world, administering his sacraments and proclaiming the good news that he has died, has risen, is Lord, and rules.  And we share in his kingship, expanding his dominion as we conquer the world through the power of the gospel.  Is it an easy task?  No.  And Jesus tells us as much.  He said to his disciples:

I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.  (John 16:33)

That’s been the message we’ve read over and over in these seven letters to the churches.  The vision of Jesus, these letters, some of them rebuking, some of the praising, all them exhorting the church to hold fast to Jesus in the coming tribulation, all of this has been in anticipation of John’s vision.  And John’s vision begins with a look into the heavenly throne room.  Look at Revelation 4.  John writes:

After this I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven!  And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.”

 

To live by faith is to live in trust of God, not because we know his plans, but because we know and are sure of his goodness and faithfulness.  That doesn’t mean it isn’t sometimes frustrating not being privy to the mind of the Lord, but there are those rare occasions when he deigns to give us a glimpse and this is one of those times.  Jesus, having given his church an exhortation to hold fast in the midst of coming trials, doesn’t leave them wondering.  John, like the prophets of the Old Testament, is summoned into the Lord’s council chamber to know his plans.

A door is opened.  We too often have this idea that heaven is someplace far away.  It’s not a matter of distance, though, but a matter of our sin.  The Lord created us to live in his presence.  He put Adam and Eve in a garden, a place where heaven, his realm, and earth, our realm overlapped.  Adam was his steward, his image bearer, given dominion over the garden, called not only to care for it, but to be fruitful and to multiply—to expand that dominion, presumably until it filled the whole earth—the human race living in communion with the Lord, heaven and earth at one.  But instead humanity rebelled.  Genesis describes our plight in terms of Adam and Eve being expelled from the garden, from the Lord’s temple, from his presence, and the door shut behind them, guarded by an angel.  But here the door is opened.  John once again hears that voice like a trumpet.  And this time it summons him into the Lord’s presence.

Jesus isn’t just going to exhort his people to stand firm.  Through the Prophet he’s going to show them what is about to come.  Through John, those churches about to face tribulation will see what the Lord has in store for them and for the world—and they will know the glory of the Lord.  And we can’t just pass by those words, “I will show you what must take place after this” too quickly.  This isn’t some prophecy of the far future.  That would be no consolation for them.  This is not a vision of heaven as our final and eternal destination, but a vision of heaven and the heavenly council as it was when Jesus came and spoke to John.  What we’re about to see is that which was about to happen.  I’ve said before that Revelation was written about a.d. 68 and what Jesus shows John in this vision are the events that are about to unfold in the world in the years immediately following.

Again, the passage takes us back to the Old Testament prophets.  There’s a sense in which this scene certifies John as a prophet himself.  In 1 Kings 22 we read about Micaiah ben Imlah who was given a vision of the Lord, enthrone and with his council around him, so that he can hear their discussion and their plans.  In the first chapter of Ezekiel we read about the Prophet’s vision of the Lord, seated on his chariot, carried by those angels like wheels within wheels that defy description.  Look at verses 2-6.  John writes:

At once I was in the Spirit, and behold, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne.  And he who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian, and around the throne was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald.  Around the throne were twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones were twenty-four elders, clothed in white garments, with golden crowns on their heads.  From the throne came flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, and before the throne were burning seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God, and before the throne there was as it were a sea of glass, like crystal.

 

John’s attention is immediately and naturally drawn to the Lor’s throne, but when it comes to the Lord himself I’m reminded of St. Paul’s words in his second letter to Timothy where he describes the Lord as one “who dwells in unapproachable light”.  John describes the Lord as having the appearance of jasper and carnelian.  Precious stones that came in all sorts of colours.  And then there’s a rainbow that looks like an emerald—which is hard to imagine.  No one ever sees the Lord himself.  For anyone to see the Lord would be to be overwhelmed by his holiness.  Instead everyone who see the Lord is left with an impression of his glory.  Moses’ face was made to shine as it reflected that glory.  John sees glorious light that defies description, but leave no doubts about the gloriousness of the Lord.

The twenty-four elders enthroned around the Lord are easier to visualise.  Who are they?  In the Bible this title of “elder”—presbyter—is always applied to men who represent the people of God, whether it was the elders who assisted Moses in the governing of Israel or the elders who shepherded the New Testament Church.  These aren’t angelic beings; they’re men.  That they sit on thrones and wear crowns reinforces what Jesus has already said of the Church.  Those who overcome are enthroned with Jesus, share in his kingly dominion, and one day those who once persecuted them will bow before them.  That there are twenty-four is significant.  The number twelve is used of the people of God throughout scripture.  Israel was composed of twelve tribes.  Jesus founded his church, the new Israel, on twelve apostles.  Later in revelation we see the New Jerusalem with twelve gates bearing the names of the tribes of Israel and twelve foundation stones bearing the names of the apostles.  These twenty-four elders then represent the entirety of the people of God, both the church in the Old Testament and the church in the New.  But, too, this imagery takes us back to the tabernacle.  Israel’s priests were ordered into twenty-four division.  In the next chapter we’ll see Jesus, the lamb, in the midst of all of this, the high priest surrounded by the elders—by the presbytery of heaven who represent the royal priesthood that is the Church.  They are clothed in white, clothed in righteousness—just as Jesus promised to those who would overcome.

But John can’t keep his attention away from the Lord’s throne for long.  He describes the twenty-four elders, but the rumbling of thunder and flashing of lightening bring him back to the cloud of glory around him—taking us back to the Exodus and to Mount Sinai, the Lord in all his glory.  But John again manages to pull his eyes away from the Lord to describe the rest of the scene.  Before the Lord stands a seven-armed lampstand representing the Holy Spirit.  And, too, the “sea of glass, like crystal”.  Some have said that this sea should be compared to the Red Sea through which the Lord brought his people to himself, some have said that it represents evil—for the Israelites the sea represented chaos and that bit of creation that the Lord had never fully subdued, but was still within his sovereignty.  Eventually it will finally be defeated, which is why—at least symbolically—there is no sea in the New Jerusalem.  But since everything else in this vision John sees so clearly draws on the imagery of the temple—while there may be also be something to those other ideas—I think it’s safe to say that this is a heavenly analogue to the great bronze sea or laver that stood before the entrance to Solomon’s temple, between the temple and the altar.  It was the place where the Old Testament priests would wash, purifying themselves for their service before the Lord.

And so we have the Lord and we have the Church represented in council around him, but there’s more.  Continuing on with verse 6:

And around the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind: the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like an eagle in flight.  And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say,

          “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty,

                  who was and is and is to come!”

 

What John calls “living creatures” correspond to the angels of the first chapter of Ezekiel, full of eyes, with six wings—and with the difference that in Ezekiel’s vision each bore the face of a lion, an ox, a man, and an eagle.  They’re reminiscent, too, of the six-winged seraphim of Isaiah 6.  They’re awesome creatures and, like the glory of the Lord, John (and Ezekiel, too) struggle to describe them.  There are all sorts of explanation for these angels bearing the faces of lions, oxen, men, and eagles, but I think the best explanation is one that recognises that these four beings correspond to the constellations in the night sky that governed the seasons for the Hebrews.  Scripture describes the lights of the night sky as God’s heavenly host.  So if we put all of this together, we’ve got the heavenly host; we’ve got the twenty-four elders representing the people of God, who are often called the Lord’s earthly host in Joshua and Numbers; and they come together in this heavenly throne room of which the tabernacle and temple are an earthly image, the hosts of the Lord gather there to worship him, to give him glory.

And John writes that those four living creatures, the angels, sing out day and night without ceasing, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!”  The Lord has all sorts of characteristics that are worth repetition in our praise.  He is loving.  We could repeat that three times.  He is merciful.  He is faithful.  He is, as the angels sing, almighty.  And yet they single out the Lord’s supreme virtual three times in succession.  Above all else he is, he is holy.  Maybe there’s a reference to the Trinity here—the Father holy, the Son holy, and the Spirit holy—but I’m not sure the song is that complicated.  It is holiness that sums up all the other attributes of God and so the angels sing it out in joyful and reverent praise three times over—and so do we in the sursum corda each week.  “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts, heaven and earth are full of your glory.  Glory be to you O Lord Most High.”

But it’s not just the angels worshiping the Lord.  John goes on in verses 9-11:

And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne, saying,

         “Worthy are you, our Lord and God,

                  to receive glory and honor and power,

          for you created all things,

                  and by your will they existed and were created.”

 

As the angels worship, the elders representing the people of God, his Church, redeemed humanity fall down before him, they cast their crowns at his feet, and they worship too:  Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”  Notice the difference between this second song and the first.  The angels represent creation.  Creation worships the Lord.  In practical terms, creation does what it was created to do.  Trees wave their branches in the wind as the Lord created them to do.  The wind itself blows as the Lord created it to do.  The sun shines.  The rain falls.  The tide washes in and out.  The birds sing.  The lion hunts.  The bees make honey and the bear eats it.  All as God made them to do.  There is no rebellion, no sin amongst the stars or the trees, the waves of the sea or the animals.  Nature honours the Lord and it’s beautiful, but there’s no volition to it.  Humans are different.  The twenty-four elders worship the Lord because they know him and because they know that he is worthy of worship.  Again, “Worthy are you” they sing, “to receive glory and honour and praise.”  Why?  “For you created all things and by your will they exist”.  Humans worship the Lord because we know—because we know who he, what he’s done, and that he is worthy.

It’s this volitional aspect to human worship that honours God so greatly.  It’s why humanity’s choice to rebel against God was so serious.  The tide or the sun or the bear or the bees have no choice to do what they do and in doing that they give glory to their creator, but Brothers and Sisters, it means something far greater that we recognise the worthiness of the Lord and choose to praise him.  We were created for worship and the highest honour we can give our Creator is to fulfil the purpose for which he created us.  The tide washes in and out.  The sun shines.  The rain falls.  The lion hunts.  Brothers and Sisters, we worship.  It’s our purpose.  And it probably needs to be said that worship is more than singing.  The Lord created us to bear his image.  In the ancient world the people built temples and they placed an image of their god in that temple to represent his or her sovereign rule.  In contrast to the pagan people, the Lord built his own temple, the garden, but he did not place an image of wood or stone in it to represent his rule and to bear his image.  Instead, he put human beings in that role and when we take up that God-given vocation, Brothers and Sisters, it is an act of worship.  We act as stewards when we serve him as we care for our children and families, as we attend school, as we do our jobs.  Adam’s was to tend the garden.  Yours may be to cut hair, to sew, to care for livestock, to teach, to build houses, to navigate airplanes, to go to school, but when we do these things as the Lord’s stewards, as his image bearers, we honour the one who created us for this purpose.  We worship because he is worthy.  And digging deeper in to that, we worship because we know he is worthy, because he did not abandon us when we rejected our vocation.  Instead he sent his Son to give his life for us—to set us right and to set right the creation that we’ve made a mess of.  He is truly worthy of our worship.  By his will all things were created and by his love and grace and mercy we who rejected him are being re-created to once again bear his image.

Brothers and Sisters, for those redeemed in Jesus, life ought to be worship.  St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).  But a week of living as God’s new creation, a week of living steeped in the reality of Jesus, a week living the life of the Spirit culminates on Sundays in a gathering of the redeemed.  We come together, on one hand motivated and thankful because of the life of worship we have lived these last six days.  These six days have taught us that the Lord is worthy of our praise and so we come to bring him that praise together.  But on the other we also come to be renewed and refreshed that we might face the next week standing firm in faith, living for the Lord’s glory.  Worship isn’t easy.  We encounter competing loyalties, competing priorities, competing gods.  We forget—it seems like it should be impossible—but we forget the faithfulness, the love, the mercy, the grace of the Lord.  We stumble into sin.  And so we gather together on Sundays to hear the word of the Lord and to be reminded who he is, what he’s done, and that he is faithful to his promises.  We confess our sins and we are reminded of the forgiving grace poured out at the cross.  We come to the Lord’s Table and are reminded that we are his covenant people, forgiven, made new, and united in Jesus.  And we give him glory.  Glory be to God on high!  Gathered together we are invited, like John, through that door into heaven.  Here is that “thin space” where heaven and earth touch.  Here we come before the Lord in a way that we do not in our private devotions and in our daily lives of servant stewardship.  I urge you to think on the words we sing in the Gloria at the close of the service, after we’ve gathered at the Lord’s Table.  Think on those words and take them with you this week.  Take the strength to stand firm in faith knowing that God is faithful and that faithfulness is revealed first and foremost in Jesus the Messiah.  Christ has died.  Christ has risen.  Christ will come again.

Let us pray: Holy, holy, holy are you, God of power and might.  We thank you for your word, given through John, that we might have this glimpse into your courts, know your glory, and give you the worship you are due.  We have sinned, we have rebelled, but you have given your Son for our sake.  You have redeemed us from sin and death and brought us back into your presence.  And so we ask that you would keep always before us your holiness—your glory and the cross of Jesus by which you’ve redeemed us—that we might be faithful in our calling, not only to gather together for corporate worship, but each day to give ourselves as a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving and to do all that we do to your glory and looking forward to the day when the knowledge of your glory covered the earth and ever knee bows before you.  Amen.

To the Church in Laodicea

Revelation 3:14-22

by William Klock

The last church to receive John’s courier was Laodicea, about as the same distance to the south of Philadelphia as from Courtenay to Qualicum Beach.  The Laodicean church might be the most memorable of these seven churches.  It’s the one Jesus, with utter disgust, condemns for being lukewarm.

Laodicea may have been the wealthiest of these seven Asian cities.  It sat at a major crossroads. It was the banking centre of the region.  It was an assize town, where the Roman officials would hold court and administer the province.  The Laodiceans had bred a unique variety of sheep with high quality black wool that was greatly prized and the clothes and carpets made from it were famous across the world.  And the city was also famous for its school of ophthalmology.  People would travel from far and wide for the services of the doctors there, who also produced and sold a popular medicine, Phrygian powder, used for healing ailments of the eyes.  The Laodiceans had everything.

Well, almost everything.  One thing the Laodiceans did not have was good water—at least not in great supply.  The city was situated on the Lycus river at a point where the flow was minimal.  In the dry season the water often stopped completely.  But about ten kilometres away, at the top of a dramatic cliff, was the city of Hierapolis.  Hierapolis boasted some famous hot springs.  Even today those hot springs are a popular destination for travellers.  But as is often case with water from hot springs, the water of Hierapolis was loaded with minerals.  It was wonderful to soak in, but totally unfit for drinking.  All that hot water eventually poured over the cliff on which Hierapolis was built, leaving white deposits you can still see from miles away.  At the source, that water was good for what ails you.  In the First Century, to solve Laodicea’s water problem an aqueduct was built to carry that hot water to Laodicea.  The city is gone, but the aqueduct is still there and you can visit it and see the duct, thick with mineral deposits.  By the time the water from the hot springs reached Laodicea it was lukewarm.  It may have filled a need for washing and agriculture, but between the lukewarm temperature and the heavy mineral content, it wasn’t fit for human consumption—unless you wanted to be sick.

Keep this in mind as we read Jesus’ words to the Christians in Laodicea.  They begin at 3:14.

“And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: ‘The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s creation.

 

Jesus is the “Amen”.  Amen was a Hebrew word you said in response to something true—basically “let it be so”.  When Jesus says it, it has the sense of a guarantee and a promise.  And he can say “Amen” because he’s the “true witness”—the one on whom we can depend.  Why?  Because he is “the beginning of God’s creation”.  As the word of God, he was there in the beginning, the agent of God’s creative work to bring all things into being, to order them for human life, to make them good.  And it is through his incarnation, through his death, and ultimately through his resurrection that he has become God’s agent of re-creation, taking what our sin has corrupted and put wrong and making it all new, setting his creation to rights.

This isn’t the first time Jesus has presented himself to the Laodiceans this way.  Paul, in his Spirit-inspired words in his letter to the nearby church in Colossae, a letter he says is to be shared with the Laodiceans—Paul writes:

[Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.  (Colossians 1:15-20

 

If anyone knows goodness and truth, Jesus does, so when he speaks the church had better listen.  And not merely listen, but the church had better take his words to heart.

And here’s what he says to the church in Laodicea:

“ ‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.  (Revelation 3:15-17)

Again those words, “I know your works”.  And Jesus doesn’t just see the works, he knows the heart and the motivations behind them.  He knew that the Philadelphian Christians had done much with very little and he had brought fruit from those works.  He could see the works of the Ephesian church, their tight hold on the truth of the gospel and the good things they were doing, but he could also see that love—agape—was no longer their motivation.  He could see the great works of the church in Sardis, works that suggested to everyone that this was a live and happening church, but Jesus could see through to the heart and knew that he was no longer at the centre of that church.  They had the appearance of life, but the church was, in fact, dead.  And here at Laodicea he sees their works and those works are the evidence of a church that has become blasé about the gospel, blasé about Jesus, and blasé about his new creation.  “Your works are neither hot nor cold,” warns Jesus.

Think of that aqueduct bringing hot water from Hierapolis down to Laodicea.  People would travel great distances to soak in the pools and to enjoy its healing and recuperative powers—at Hierapolis.  It wasn’t good for drinking, but boy was it good for a soak.  But by the time the water made its way down to Laodicea it was lukewarm.  It didn’t feel good to sit in and it was just as unsuitable for drinking.  The mineral concentration increased by travel through aqueduct made it taste even worse and being lukewarm made it utterly vile.

The life of the Laodicean Christians had gone similarly lukewarm.  Notice that Jesus doesn’t rebuke them for any great sin or any great heresy.  There are no Nicolaitans or Jezebels here encouraging the people into idolatry and sexual immorality.  Jesus doesn’t rebuke them for a lack of love or for works that are dead.  This is a church that still believes and affirms all the right things.  They loved each other.  If you asked them if they loved Jesus, they would have adamantly said “Yes”.  And there wasn’t a complete absence of good works and the fruit of the Spirit in this church.  But it had nevertheless lost its passion for Jesus and the gospel.

“Would that you were either hot or cold,” says Jesus.  Hot is good.  The Greek word is zestos.  It’s used in one other place in the New Testament, by Paul in Romans 12:11, where he writes, “Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit.”  Today we would say, “be on fire” for the sake of Jesus.  When you consider who Jesus is and what he’s done you’d think this would be easy.  As he said, he’s the beginning of creation, the one who made it all and the one who is making it all new again.  He’s God and yet he humbled himself and became one of us for our sake.  He gave his life for our sake.  He rose from death for our sake.  And he’s setting to rights everything we’ve made a mess of by our rebellion against him.  Not only that, but in him we see the love and faithfulness of God revealed—a love we can’t fully fathom in a lifetime.  He’s even given us God’s own Spirit to indwell us and to make us his temple.  If that doesn’t set our hearts and minds on fire nothing will—or nothing should.

And yet somehow Christians become perennially blasé about all of this.  The gospel, the life of Jesus and the Spirit, the new creation is never something we should get comfortable with, but we do.  Like salt that loses its saltiness, as Jesus warned in the Sermon on the Mount.  I think there’s something to the fact that it’s impossible for salt to stop being salty, but God’s people, whether Israel in the Old Testament and even more startling the new Israel filled with God’s Spirit, all too often lose our gospel saltiness.  It should be impossible, but we manage it anyway.  And when we do, it’s oh so hard to get it back.

There’s a reason why Jesus says that the Laodiceans would even be better off cold than lukewarm.  At least if they were cold, at least if they were unconverted, at least if they’d never heard the gospel and received the Spirit, they could be reached with the good news and have that new fire kindled in them.  At least if they were unconverted, they might hear the gospel and be set afire by the Spirit and made fervent in their works.  In contrast, it’s hard to rekindle the fire in a church that’s gone lukewarm—in a church that is no longer fervent about works and about Jesus.  In a church no longer standing guard, awaiting the return of her Lord.

Jesus gives us this dramatic image to stress just how disgusted he is by a lukewarm people.  “I will spit you out of my mouth.”  The Greek word is emeo, from which we get our word “emetic”.  The ESV softens the blow with “spit out”.  It would be more accurate to say, “I will spew or vomit you out of my mouth.”  Spew or vomit carries the real sense of intolerability and disgust.  A lukewarm church is utterly intolerable to Jesus.  Jesus deliberately echoes Leviticus and the covenant with Israel here:

“Do not make yourselves unclean by any of these things, for by all these the nations I am driving out before you have become unclean, and the land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. But you shall keep my statutes and my rules and do none of these abominations, either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you (for the people of the land, who were before you, did all of these abominations, so that the land became unclean), lest the land vomit you out when you make it unclean, as it vomited out the nation that was before you.  (Leviticus 18:24-28)

Israel was to be the Lord’s witness amongst the nations and, like Jesus who is the true witness, as his people we, the new Israel, are to be his witnesses to the nations.  Our lives ought to make us unmistakably different.  But lukewarm Christians just blend in.  And when we blend in, we fail to be the witnesses we’re called to be.  But how do we end up this way?  How do we lose our zeal for Jesus?  Well, Jesus goes on in verses 17-18:

For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.  I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see.

 

If there were ever a word for the Western church today, this may be it.  Laodicea prided itself on its wealth.  Again, it was a banking centre, it was the centre of a lucrative wool trade, and it was known for its ophthalmologists.  It was a city that needed nothing.  In fact, just a few years before John wrote to them, the city was destroyed by an earthquake.  The Emperor offered funds to help rebuild and all the other cities of the region gladly took that money.  But not Laodicea.  They were rich and beholden to no one.  They rebuilt their city themselves and they were proud of having done so.  And all this local colour, all this self-sufficiency had rubbed off on the Christians of the city.  The other churches of the region faced persecution, either from the Jews or the Romans or both.  Not the Laodiceans.  In a city that put all its focus and energy into commerce and medicine and wealth, these Christians did too and they blended right in.  The Jews—and there was a very substantial Jewish community in Laodicea—the Jews were focused on wealth and seem to have taken little interest in the Christians there.  The Greeks and Romans were consumed with the pursuit of wealth and took little interest in the Christians.  Everyone probably thought they were a little weird for professing faith in a crucified Jew, but whatever.  They were all united in their pursuit of commerce and trade.  The church in Laodicea, in its lukewarmness, had lost its prophetic voice that should have been calling out the false gods and the transience of wealth, but instead the Christians there just blended in.  From the perspective of the gospel, they were less than good for nothing, because they negatively represented the gospel and the Lord Jesus.  Their witness communicated to the people around them that Jesus makes no difference, when the witness the church is supposed to have is that Jesus changes everything.

They thought they were rich, but they were, in fact, wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.  Sitting on piles of money, they were poor in everything that mattered.  Having world-famous doctors and medicine to heal ailing eyes, they were, from a gospel perspective, blind.  Dressed in the world’s finest wool, they were spiritually naked.  They should be ashamed.  And yet there’s hope.

Jesus calls them back to himself.  He calls them to repentance—to let go of these worldly riches that have distracted them.  “Buy from me gold refined by fire” and you will be truly rich.  Return to me and I will clothe you in white, I will cover your nakedness with holiness and righteousness.  Come to me and I will anoint your eyes and open them again to gospel truth.  Come to me and I will restore your zeal.

Brothers and Sisters, for all their failings, Jesus still loves these people.  They are his.  They are his bride.  This is why he’s so angry with them, but it’s also why he will not abandon them.  This is the good news here.  He says:

Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.  Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.

 

The Lord disciplines his people because he loves us.  He doesn’t give up on us.  His discipline is the evidence of his love.  “Behold, I stand at the door and knock,” he says.  This isn’t a passage about evangelism as it’s often been made out to be in recent years, an impotent Jesus knocking at a door without a handle, waiting to be let in by the unconverted person on the inside.  No, Jesus is speaking not to individuals, but to a church that already professes him.  He is the bridegroom of the Song of Solomon, knocking at the door, his bride unaware as she sleeps inside.  It’s an echo of Jesus’ warnings to Israel in the Gospels.  In the Gospels it’s the master of the house who returns at an unexpected hour and knocks at the door.  The one on the inside is the servant—who has hopefully stayed awake, waiting for his master, but all too often falls asleep and leaves the master waiting on the doorstep.  Brothers and Sisters, the Church is Jesus’ house.  The question is whether we’ve been faithful stewards, whether we’ve stayed awake, whether we’ve prepared for his coming and are ready to welcome him.  And whether, while he’s been away, we’ve been faithful stewards of the gospel and the gifts of grace he’s left with us.

There’s an element of judgement here.  When Jesus used this image with the Jews it was a warning.  The master of the house is coming in one way or another, welcomed by his people or in judgement upon them for their unfaithfulness.  He will remove the lampstand if necessary, but here he also promises: Open the door and I will come in and eat with you and you with me.  He urges this unfaithful church to take the first step in repentance, this first step in taking up their stewardship of the gospel.  Open the door and welcome me home.  You’ve been unfaithful stewards of the house, but welcome me home and once again we will eat together, once again we will share fellowship.  The banquet was always an image of the Lord’s final restoration of his people.  Fellowship with Jesus will restore the lost perspective.  As we sit with Jesus at his Table we’re reminded of the love poured out for us at the cross.  As we sit at the Table with Jesus, God’s future in which all things are made new is pulled into the present and our hope is restored.  As we sit at the Table with Jesus we participate once again in those events of the new exodus, in those events by which Jesus led us out of the bondage of sin and death, and are reminded that he has made us his own, his people, his family, his brothers and sisters and children of the Father.

The irony was that the Laodiceans surely had not forgotten the Lord’s Table.  They gathered each Sunday and very likely more often than that, they recalled the death and resurrection of Jesus and they ate the bread and drank the wine.  But it made no difference, because Jesus had ceased to be their passion.  Other things were more important.  And so they came to the Table and they left unchanged—they went back into the world and remained indistinguishable from it.  Their wealth and prosperity had blinded them to the riches of the Lord’s Table and fellowship with him.  There’s a reason why Jesus warned that a camel can pass through the eye of a needle easier than a rich man can enter the kingdom.

But Jesus promises:

The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.  He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’”

 

Again, Jesus reminds his people of his dominion and of their share in it.  He is Lord.  He rose from the grave and has ascended to be seated at the right hand of the Father.  He has established his church, this new Israel, to be his witness amongst the nations.  To proclaim his lordship to the earth and grow his kingdom.  Adam’s vocation was to act as the Lord’s steward and to have an ever-expanding dominion, not just living in the presence of the Lord in the garden, but expanding that garden temple until it filled the earth.  And in Jesus that vocation has been restored to us.  But Brothers and Sisters, we will never be faithful stewards if we have no zeal for our Lord or the task he’s given us.  We cannot be faithful stewards if we are indistinguishable from the world—if our focus in life is on building earthly treasures instead of heavenly ones, if our passion lies in the works of the flesh rather than the fruit of the Spirit.

Come to the Table this morning and remember that you come not of your own accord, but invited by Jesus.  We were his enemies— wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked—but he has sought us out and summoned us to his banquet.  He has opened our eyes, clothed us in righteousness, and given us riches beyond comprehension.  Know again the great love he has for us.  Know afresh his work of new creation.  And go forth into the world with your passion for Jesus and the good news of his death and resurrection renewed.  Be transformed by that good news and be now longer conformed to the world, for Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again.

Let’s pray: O Lord, hear with favour the prayers of your people; that we who deserve to be punished for our offences, may mercifully be delivered by your goodness, for the glory of your name; through Jesus Christ our Saviour, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

To the Church in Philadelphia

Revelation 3:7-13

by William Klock

Forty-five kilometres further inland from Sardis lay the city of Philadelphia.  It was not nearly as ancient as the other cities addressed by Jesus in Revelation.  At the time John’s courier arrived it was just a little more than two-hundred years old.  The city had been established by Eumenes II, King of Pergamon, and was named for his beloved brother, Attalus II Philadelphus, with whom he shared his throne.  Eumenes built the city strategically on the main route between Greece and the barbarian east.  It was to be a missionary city, carrying Greek culture and civilisation to the country of Phrygia.  Sardis had been a similar outpost centuries before and had been so successful in Lydia that the people there had all but forgotten their native language.  But if Philadelphia was a door through which Greek culture would be spread, it failed.  The obstinate Phrygians held tightly to the culture and to their language.  That door was shut.

Keep that in mind as we look at Jesus’ message to the Christians in this city, beginning at Revelation 3:7:

“And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: ‘The words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens.

“ ‘I know your works.  Behold, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut.

 

Through Philadelphia the Greeks had tried to spread their gospel to the barbarians, but those barbarians had shut the door.  The gospel of the Greeks had failed.  Not so the gospel of Jesus.  Jesus places before these faithful brothers and sisters a door and a promise.

Jesus comes to them as the one who is holy and true, who has the key of David.  He is the one who can promise that when he opens a door, no one can shut it.  Throughout these letters to the churches of Asia, Jesus uses images that draw on both the identities and histories of these cities and, at the same time, on the story of Israel.  That’s true here.  The people of Philadelphia, knowing their own history, would think of Eumenes’ plan for their city—a doorway to the east, a mission of Greece to the barbarians.  And now this little church in the middle of a wide pagan world, given the task of proclaiming the gospel.  It might seem impossible, but Jesus assures them that this time he’s opened the door.  This is his mission to which he’s called his church, the mission for which he’s empowered that church with his own Spirit.  This door won’t be shut by the opposition.  But Jesus also quotes from Isaiah’s prophecy when he says this.

In Isaiah’s day a man named Shebna served as royal steward to King Hezekiah.  Scripture doesn’t spell out precisely what his failure was, but what we do know is that he was unfaithful in carrying out his duties—some kind of shady double-dealing, maybe he was a traitor.  But he was a rich man and very sure of himself.  He built a grand mausoleum in Jerusalem, to preserve his name forever.  And through Isaiah the Lord spoke to him:

Behold, the Lord will hurl you away violently, O you strong man.  He will seize firm hold on you and whirl you around and around, and throw you like a ball into a wide land. There you shall die, and there shall be your glorious chariots, you shame of your master’s house.  I will thrust you from your office, and you will be pulled down from your station.  (Isaiah 22:17-19)

Shebna’s days were done.  He would die in a foreign land, leaving his grand tomb for others.  The door was closed for Shebna.  The Lord would put a faithful servant in his place.  The Lord goes on:

In that day I will call my servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, and I will clothe him with your robe, and will bind your sash on him, and will commit your authority to his hand.  And he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah.  And I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David. He shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open.  And I will fasten him like a peg in a secure place, and he will become a throne of honor to his father’s house.  (Isaiah 22:20-23)

Notice the Lord’s promise to faithful Eliakim.  He will give him the key of David.  What he shuts will remain shut.  What he opens will remain open.  And, too, the Lord’s promise is that he will be firmly established in this position, not of his own accord, but by the Lord.

So Eliakim becomes an Old Testament pointer to Jesus.  He holds the keys of David.  What he shuts remains shut.  What he opens remains open.  Why?  For a lot of reasons, but here Jesus come to the Christians in Philadelphia as the one who his holy and true.  In other words, he is the one who has been set apart—he is the Messiah, the King, the Lord—and he is the one who is true.  The sense of “true” here is that he will fulfil his word, that he will do what he promises.  I’ve said that Revelation is about tribulation, about perseverance, and about kingdom.  Clearly the Philadelphian Christians already knew that Jesus is faithful to his promises, but in light of the difficult situation in which they lived, he comes to them anyway as the one who is ultimately faithful.  It’s as much a promise to them as it is an exhortation and praise for their faith in him.

Jesus says to them in verse 8:

“ ‘I know your works. Behold, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut.  I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.

 

Jesus knows their works.  That was bad news for the church in Sardis.  They were proud of themselves.  They were doing all the right things.  Their church was alive—or at least it was to all outward appearances.  But Jesus said to them, “I know your works,” which meant, “I see what you do, but I know your hearts and your hearts aren’t in the right place.  You look alive, but the reality is that you’re dead.”  Again, we don’t know the specifics.  Jesus’ doesn’t condemn them for idolatry or sexual immorality as he does some of the other churches.  They weren’t doing anything overtly wrong, but at the same, because their motives were wrong, everything they did was wrong.  Brothers and Sisters, I said last week that Jesus has to be our motive for everything.  His cross stands behind driving us forward full of love and thankfulness for his mercy and grace.  And his kingdom stands before us, drawing us forward in hope and in joy.  Jesus is our centre.  Jesus is our reason.  Jesus is our motive.  For everything.  That wasn’t the case in Sardis, but it was in Philadelphia.

Jesus says four things about the church in Philadelphia.  First, again, he knows their works.  They’ve done well.  They’ve been faithful.  Second, he acknowledges that what they have done, they’ve done despite having little power.  Third, they’ve kept the Lord’s word.  And finally, they have not denied Jesus’ name.  They’ve faced opposition, persecution, and tribulation and despite having little power—consider that this church was probably no bigger than ours and likely smaller, despite being social outcasts for the sake of the gospel, despite perhaps many of their number being slaves—they’ve accomplished something.  We don’t know what, but Jesus uses the same language he does of Sardis.  They were known for their works, even though those works were dead.  It sounds as though the Philadelphians have accomplished something comparable, but they have done so in weakness—and they’ve managed this through their faithfulness of Jesus.  Think of Paul’s words to the Corinthians:

For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.  (2 Corinthians 12:10)

Or the Lord’s word to Zerubbabel through the prophet Zechariah:

Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts. (Zechariah 4:6)

Brothers and Sisters, the work of the church is not about numbers, it’s not about money, it’s not about cultural or political clout.  We don’t accomplish our gospel calling through pragmatic, worldly, or human means.  The faithful church accomplishes its calling by God’s Spirit and by faithfulness to Jesus and Jesus alone.  It’s very easy to forget.  It’s easy to think we can’t accomplish anything without money or lots of people or cultural and political clout.  And when we forget, these other things inevitable become our concerns and Jesus is no longer our centre, no longer our reason for being and our motivation for doing.

This is important for the church—any church—to remember in difficult times.  Persecution puts pressure on the church and, as we’ve seen through these two chapters, it often leads to compromise.  We take what looks like the easy way out rather than trusting Jesus and staying faithful to him.  The church patting itself on the back for a long list of works isn’t really alive if those works aren’t centred in Jesus and faithfulness to him.  Brothers and Sisters, don’t trust in appearances.  Don’t take the easy way.  The wide and easy way leads to destruction.  If the Scriptures teach us anything, it’s that God is faithful to his promises—that Jesus is the one who is true, who does what he says and will accomplish God’s purposes for both his church and for the entirety of his creation.  We are fools to disregard his promises.

The main source of persecution in Philadelphia seems to have been the Jews.  Both Sardis and Philadelphia had large Jewish communities.  It wasn’t just an issue of there being a big synagogue across the street from the church and causing trouble.  The Jews were part of a large community with ties into social and trade circles.  It’s more than likely that, as in other cities, they shut out Christians from the life of the city and were more than happy to rat them to the Roman authorities when the opportunity arose.  Jesus addresses them in verse 9:

Behold, I will make those of the synagogue of Satan who say that they are Jews and are not, but lie—behold, I will make them come and bow down before your feet, and they will learn that I have loved you.

 

Jesus’ words here about the Jews are harsher and take things further than in his letter to the church in Smyrna.  Who was and was not a true Jew was topic of great controversy in the First Century.  The Pharisees condemned everyone who didn’t keep the law as they did.  The Essenes—the community that preserved the Dead Sea scrolls—took an even more extreme view of things.  They were the only true Jews and they left and built their own little community in the desert to preserve themselves from defilement.  Jesus makes it clear here that those who are truly of Israel are those who have aligned themselves and who have trusted in Jesus the Messiah.  Anyone who claims to follow the Jewish scriptures, but denies that Jesus is the Messiah—well—that person has completely missed the point of the Jewish scriptures.  Anyone who claims to be a Jew, but denies that Jesus is the Messiah, Jesus says quite bluntly is a liar.  A synagogue that denies Jesus and persecutes his people isn’t a synagogue at all.  It’s a synagogue of Satan.

And where the Christians in Smyrna were facing similar persecution at the hands of the Jews and Jesus urges them to stand firm as it intensifies for a short while, he assures the Christians in Philadelphia that in short order he will be compelling those same people to bow at their feet as they acknowledge that Jesus loves his church—that Jesus will bring these Jews to acknowledge that it is Jesus’ people who are the true heirs of the covenant and of Israel’s promises.  The very Jews who had persecuted them will, in the near future, be bowing before them—not in the sense of worship, but in awe of what God has done for them and maybe even with a measure of remorse.

Those words of Jesus, “I have loved you,” are loaded with meaning.  They speak of God’s election of his covenant people quoting the Lord’s words through Malachi: “I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau.”  In other words, the Lord had chosen Jacob and his family to be his people, not Esau and the Edomites.  This was core to Jewish identity, but that promise is now inherited by the church, by those who are in Jesus the Messiah.

Jesus’ words here are also an ironic reference to the Lord’s promise through Isaiah, where God makes a promise to his covenant people who were being persecuted by pagan nations.

The sons of those who afflicted you

         shall come bending low to you,

and all who despised you

         shall bow down at your feet;

they shall call you the City of the Lord,

         the Zion of the Holy One of Israel.

 

Jesus classes apostate Israel with the pagans who once persecuted her.  She has been pruned from covenant tree while those who trust in Jesus the Messiah, whether Jew or Gentile, have been grafted in.  But I can’t help but wonder if what we see here in these Jews bowing before the Christians of Philadelphia is another ironic play, this time on Zechariah 8:23.

In those days ten men from the nations of every tongue shall take hold of the robe of a Jew, saying, ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.’”

 

And here we see the apostate Jews, now more like the nations in their rejection of the Messiah, coming to the Church as they see that in Jesus, the Lord is with them.

Jesus promises further:

Because you have kept my word about patient endurance, I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world, to try those who dwell on the earth.  I am coming soon. Hold fast what you have, so that no one may seize your crown.

 

Because these brothers and sisters have been faithful to Jesus’ call to perseverance, he promises to keep them from the “hour of trial that is coming on the whole world”.  Jesus isn’t saying that he’s going to rapture these folks out of the world before things get bad—which is what a lot of popular modern theology teaches.  No, he’s looking forward to a time of trial soon to come—soon from their perspective.  Apostate Israel is soon to be judged, destroyed, and exiled.  Rome will be thrown into tumult and an evil emperor who thinks of himself as a god will lash out at the Church with the help of the Jews.  The devil, through his Jewish and Roman minions, will do his worst to destroy Jesus’ people—and they will be tempted to give up, to compromise, to deny their Lord.  And so Jesus gives them a promise that he, himself, will see them through this time.  He will be with them.  He will strengthen them.  And they will persevere and come through this short hour of trial into a reign of a thousand years, wearing crowns, and sharing in the kingdom rule of Jesus.  Jude gives a similar a promise:

Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

Tribulation, perseverance, and kingdom.  Brothers and Sisters, we cannot do it on our own.  Jesus is the one who will keep us from stumbling, who will present us blameless to the Father, and in whose dominion we have been promised and given a share.

Jesus finishes with another promise to the one who conquers.  Look at verses 12-13:

The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God.  Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name.  He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’

 

Jesus’ promise here draws again on images familiar from both the history of Israel and the history of the city.  The temple in Jerusalem was fronted by two pillars, one named “He shall establish” and the other “In him is strength”.  That temple stood condemned and in a few years it would be destroyed.  By his death and resurrection and the sending of the Spirit, Jesus has established a new temple—this one not built of stones, but of his people indwelt by God’s Spirit.  And here, as they face persecution he promises to those who conquer that they will stand firm in this new temple like those pillars in Jerusalem.  The names are key.  They remind us that the church stands firm not on our own strength.  Jesus is our strength and he shall establish us—he and he alone.  Once again Jesus promises a name to his people who overcome, meaning that we have a share in him, in his life, and in his dominion.

I said this imagery draws on the history of Philadelphia as much as it does the history of Israel.  Hearing these words the Christians there would have been thinking about the reality that their city was built in the middle of a volcanic plain.  Earthquakes were common and a massive on had destroyed their city just fifty years earlier.  The great temples of the city had fallen.  And so Jesus promises them something better.  This new temple of which they are a part will stand firm.  When he says that he will make them pillars in the temple and inscribe his name on them, I think they’d have been thinking of a common practise in many Greek cities like theirs.  Having done many years of faithful service to the gods, priests and sometimes civic leaders, would be honoured with a pillar in a temple, inscribed with their names.  And as Jesus speaks of giving them the name of the new Jerusalem, come down from heaven, I suspect they may have been thinking about their own history.  When the earthquake destroyed Philadelphia, the Emperor Tiberius, had waived their taxes and even contributed funds for the rebuilding of the city.  To honour him the city renamed itself Neocaesarea.  The name didn’t take and not long after, Neocaesarea was once again Philadelphia.  A couple of years later I think these brothers and sisters would be remembering this promise as the city fathers once again renamed the city, calling it “Flavia”, to honour the Emperor Vespasian (“Flavius” was his family name).  This name wouldn’t take either.  Fickle names to honour earthly kings and their false claims at divinity.  In comparison Jesus’ promise stands out all the more, “I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven.”

Brothers and Sisters, tribulation, like an earthquake, exposes the shaky and worthless foundations of earthy kings, earthly gods, and every other earthly source of security.  But it also exposes both the faithfulness of the people of God and reveals his faithfulness to us.  The letter to Sardis we read last week reminded us that everything we do must be about Jesus, his cross behind us and his kingdom before us.  But this letter to the Philadelphians assures us that if we do keep Jesus at the centre, we can be sure of his faithfulness to us—to his church.  It is he who has called and chosen us, it is he who has given us our calling to go into the world to baptise and to make disciples, and it is he who has given us Gods’ own Spirit that we might be his temple that stands forever and his people who accomplish his purposes.  He has opened the door that no one can shut.  Stand firm in Jesus, Brothers and Sisters, remembering that in him the faithfulness of God is revealed.  Christ has died.  Christ has risen.  Christ will come again.

Let’s pray: Heavenly Father, keep your household the Church continually in your true religion; that those who lean only on the hope of your heavenly grace may always be defended by your mighty power, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

To the Church in Thyatira

Revelation 2:18-29

by William Klock

Revelation is about tribulation, about kingdom, and about perseverance.  Jesus calls us to single-minded commitment, but that kind of commitment often puts his people at odds with the world and the temptation is to compromise.  Brothers and Sisters, we can’t persevere in faith if we’re compromising.

I was thinking this week of a man who came by the church years ago.  Jack and I were sitting upstairs in my study when he came in.  He started the conversation by handing me a crack pipe and bottle full of crack and then asking me to get rid of them for him.  He was down from a lumber camp on the north end of the Island and had been on a bender the night before.  He wanted a place to sleep it off.  He stuck around all day, sleeping and talking.  He told me he was a Christians—or, he said, at least he was supposed to be one.  But he’d been working for years in the logging camps and they were full of drugs and porn.  He knew it was just a matter of walking away, but the money was good.  But he’d woken up that morning and knew he had to get out.  He was headed back to his wife in Nanaimo and was already lining up a job that would keep him at home, even though the money wasn’t as good.  He said he just couldn’t be a Christian and live and work in that kind of environment.  He was out.  He didn’t want to compromise anymore.  I’ve heard similar stories over the years, whether from the logging camps up-Island or the oilfields in northeastern BC and Alberta.

Aometimes it’s more than just negative influences.  Some jobs just aren’t possible for faithful Christians to perform.  There was a man in our church in Portland who came to me shortly after he started attending and said, “Father Bill, I need to ask you not to publish my name on anything to do with the church.  I used to work as high-level drug distributor for the Mafia.  I quit when I became a Christian, but there are people who want me dead.  I just want to let you know that if they ever connected me with this church, they wouldn’t have any qualms about barging into a service and dragging me out to kill me.”  (When I was ordained I never expected a conversation like that!)  But it’s not just illegal jobs.  Another friend from our church in Portland managed the mortgage division of First Interstate Bank.  When he became a Christian and began reading the Bible he was convicted.  It wasn’t just that he was daily helping people get into debt up to their eyeballs—something that doesn’t square with the Bible—but he also knew that the whole fractional reserve banking system was little more than legal fraud.  As a Christian he couldn’t be part of it anymore.  He quit.  And he eventually wrote a book applying the Bible’s teaching on debt and money to help people steer clear of and get out of debt.

In many ways these sorts of situations are present-day manifestations of a problem faced by Christians in Thyatira, the fourth city that Jesus addresses in Revelation.  It wasn’t by any means a unique problem to the people in that city, but it does seem that the pressure there was greater than it may have been in other places.

So Thyatira.  Some people think that the order in which John addresses these seven churches follows on old postal or courier route.  We started at Ephesus and moved up the coast to the north, passing through Smyrna to Pergamum.  From there we now travel inland about 50 kilometres to Thyatira in the region of Lydia and on the Lycus River plain.  It was not nearly so grand and glorious a city as the three to which John has already written.  By all accounts, Thyatira was known for its trade guilds and, especially, for the production of copper and bronze—which probably has something to do with how Jesus addresses himself to this church.  In order to work in a trade, you had to belong to the appropriate guild.  The problem was that there were religious aspects to membership in these guilds.  Pagan religion permeated everything in Greece and Rome and that meant that guild meetings and membership were usually tied to the cults of the gods who oversaw and prospered their work and business.  Meetings were often held in temples.  And this brings us back to the two specific problems we’ve seen in the last two churches: eating meat offered to idols and sexual immorality.  If you worked in a craft or trade and you were a Christian, you were faced with a choice: either you were faithful to Jesus and refused to compromise or you lost your livelihood and might not be able to feed your family.  History records that many of the early Christians were poor.  We read in the book of Acts about they ways they shared with and cared for each other.  This is why.

The major local deity of Thyatira was Apollo Tyrimnaeus, said to be a son of Zeus and patron of the local bronze trade.  Coins from Thyatira show Tyrinmaeus on one side and the Roman emperor—as far as the Romans were concerned, the “son of god”—on the other.  With all this in mind the imagery Jesus uses in addressing the Christians there is fitting.  Look at Revelation 2:18:

“And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write: ‘The words of the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and whose feet are like burnished bronze.

Jesus exhorts the church at Thyatira be reminding them that he, not Caesar, is the son of God.  And while the pagans might think that Apollo Tyrimnaeus is the one who shines like the son—Apollo was a solar deity—and oversaw the bronze trade, Jesus is the one with feet of bronze and eyes “like a flame of fire”.  Jesus knew that his people in Thyatira were being challenged by the pagans and so as he comes to this struggling church he issues his own challenge to the pagans and to their gods and kings.

Jesus begins by affirming his people for what they’ve done right.  Look at verse 19:

“ ‘I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first.

 

He’s seen their love, their faith, their service, and their patient endurance.  A better translation of the last part of the verse would be something like, “Your deeds more recently are greater than they were at first” or “Your works have been more impressive lately than they once were.”  This church has been in the crucible of pagan opposition and instead of the pressure causing them to back off their good works, it’s actually inspired them to do better.  Their love has grown.  Jesus uses the word agapé, the sort of humble love that puts others first.  Their faith has been stretched and has grown in the process.  And their service—Jesus uses the work diakonía.  That’s where we get our work “deacon”.  They not only love each other, but they serve each other, they care deeply for each other in practical ways.  This is good.

But it’s not all good.  Jesus goes on:

But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols.  I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality.

 

The problem in Thyatira is the opposite of the problem in Ephesus.  In Ephesus they’d been faithful in holding the line against false doctrine and sinful practise, but they’d lost their love, they’d lost their agape.  In Thyatira, the people had great love for each other, but the elders—with the support of many of the church members it seems—were tolerating false teaching and sinful practises.  Jesus rebuked the church in Pergamum for tolerating the teaching of the Nicolaitans and compared that teaching to that Old Testament villain, Balaam.  He couldn’t curse the Israelites so that they would lose in battle to the Moabite king, so he instead encouraged the king to send out the women of Moab to entice the Israelite men into idolatry and sexual immorality.  Here Jesus highlights the awfulness of this sin by comparing its teachers to another Old Testament villain: Jezebel.  Do you remember her?  Jezebel’s story is told in 1 Kings 16-22.  She was the wife of King Ahab.  He was a bad guy and probably would have been a bad king without her—he made the foolish choice to marry a Phoenician, a pagan—but Jezebel’s influence only compounded his wickedness.  The writer of Kings says that he did more to provoke the anger of the Lord than all the kings who were before him (1 Kings 16:33).  Jezebel led the covenant people into idolatry.  2 Kings 9:22 describes the actions of the people under Jezebel’s influence as “whorings” and “sorceries”.  The word for “whorings” is one that’s always used metaphorically for idolatry.  It’s rooted in the idea that Israel was the Lord’s bride.  He’d rescued her from Egypt, he’d provided a good home for her, he’d loved her tenderly, but rather than worship him, she prostituted herself to foreign gods.  At its root, idolatry is unfaithfulness to the Lord.  But in Israel it wasn’t an outright rejection of the Lord.  The people tried to have it both ways.  They’d worship in the temple, they’d pray to the Lord, but they’d also go out to the “high places” and worship and pray at the altars of the pagan gods too.  In Judah the worship of the Lord continued in the temple, but pagan altars were erected in the temple precincts and the priests and people would worship both the Lord and those foreign gods.  But in the end, that’s not true worship of the Lord, it’s not true love of the Lord.  Just as you can’t claim to love your wife while you cavort with prostitutes, you can’t claim love of the Lord, while practising idolatry or engaging wilfully in sin.

But that’s just what was going on in Thyatira.  It wasn’t the whole church as we’ll see in a bit, but a significant number of the people there were comprising with paganism.  It was always a temptation in the pagan world.  Rome pressured its citizens to acknowledge the divinity of the emperor as a show of patriotism.  Pagan religious practises were integrated into just about every aspect of life in the Greco-Roman world, so there was constant pressure to compromise.  Reading between the lines in Thyatira, it seems that it was the trade guilds that put pressure on people.  If you wanted to keep your job, so to speak, you had to take part in this or that ritual, whether a feast to some god or even ritual sex.

What was the justification here?  It’s hard to say, but even if it’s not what these folks would have admitted, the root cause was almost undoubtedly the pressure to conform in order to get by in a pagan world.  But, of course, hardly anyone ever gives that as the reason for their compromise.  They always come up with something that sounds spiritual—even mature.  Jesus says that this woman claims to be a prophet.  This is often the cover of people who introduce error into the Church.  They claim the status of prophet or apostle, they claim to be speaking the words of God himself.  That’s always a bad sign.  At the time Revelation was written, God was still in the process of delivering his word through the Apostles and Evangelists.  And so the Lord gave legitimate prophets to his church.  But we have his word in full today.  And that word is sufficient.  It is our authority.  And in my nearly fifty years I have yet to ever hear someone preface their words with, “I am a prophet” and not go on to say something at odds with the authoritative word of God.  Again, in John’s day there were real prophets, but there were plenty of false ones too.  They needed to be particularly cautious about anyone claiming to speak the word of the Lord.  They needed to weigh their words against the scriptures.  And the Thyatirans weren’t doing that.  Back then they had their own version of today’s justifications to compromise.  If there’s only one true God, then whatever path you take will get you to him.  It’s okay to dabble with sin, just don’t cross the line.  You’ve got to get down and dirty with sinners if you’re going to evangelise them.  Better to compromise and live, than to be a hard-liner and die.

I think, however, that we get a big hint in that Jesus notes their love for each other.  Love for each other in the Church is good.  It’s necessary.  If we don’t love each other, we’re not being the Church.  Remember how Jesus rebuked the Ephesians for their lack of love even though they’d held tenaciously to the truth of the faith.  But our love for each other often becomes the justification for tolerating heresy and sin—and I daresay that this is the single most common justification in today’s church.  Love and unity are stressed above everything else.  But, Brothers and Sisters, when this happens, love ceases to be love.  It’s like people who refuse to discipline their children in the name of love, but the reality is that if we really do love our children, we do discipline them—just as the Lord disciplines us, just as he disciplines his church.  Jesus rebukes his church here in Revelation because he loves his bride with all his heart and he desires her purity.  And if that’s what love looks like to Jesus, it ought to look that way to us, his people, too.  Love does not tolerate those who lead the sheep astray.  David Chilton writes:

“Orthodox, Biblical Christianity is intolerant.  A church that tolerates evil and false doctrine is a church under judgment; God will not long tolerate her.  This is not to say that Christians should be intolerant of each other’s mistakes, idiosyncrasies, and differences over nonessentials.  But when it comes to clear violations of Biblical law and orthodox doctrine, the government of the church is required by Scripture to put a stop to it before it destroys the church.”[1]

Now, all that said, the Lord is also patient.  Jesus says that he has given this “Jezebel” time to repent.  We see his love in this as well.  But she has continued to impose on that love and has continued in her immorality and her corruption of his bride and so he goes on in verses 22-25:

Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation, unless they repent of her works, and I will strike her children dead. And all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works.  But to the rest of you in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching, who have not learned what some call the deep things of Satan, to you I say, I do not lay on you any other burden.  Only hold fast what you have until I come.

 

This false prophetess was encouraging idolatrous sexual immorality.  People were, metaphorically speaking, getting into bed with her—or maybe they were literally—but whatever the case, Jesus is saying: “Her bed is a sickbed and if this is the direction you insist on going, if you don’t repent, I will come in judgement and you will die along with her!  Your elders may tolerate this kind of heresy and sin in my bride, but I do not and I will make sure that everyone knows that I’m paying attention and that I will purify my bride.”  Brothers and Sisters, God is the judge.  Revelation is about his coming in judgement on unbelieving Israel, it’s about his coming in judgement on the pagan world of the Greeks and Romans, but it’s also about him coming in judgement on his church where it has forsaken him.  He always puts his own house, his own children in order, before coming in judgement to others.

To everyone else in the church in Thyatira who hasn’t fallen prey to this false teaching, Jesus gives a message to persevere.  Remember Revelation is first and foremost about three things: tribulation, kingdom, and perseverance.  These brothers and sisters have demonstrated their love for each other, their faith is strong, and they’ve committed themselves to serve one another—and their theology is orthodox.  Jesus lays nothing more on them.  They’re doing what he expects of his Church.  They’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing.  They’ve held the line, even as the elders in the church have failed to do so.  And so Jesus exhorts them: Hold fast until I come.  Jesus knows the trials they face, but in faith they know that he is with them and they’re standing firm.  And so he reminds them: I’m coming.  I will judge the faithless.  I will take care of Jezebel and everyone who has assisted her in her wicked agenda and everyone who remains unrepentant in following her.  I will purify my church.

And Jesus says further to the faithful:

The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father.  And I will give him the morning star.  He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’

 

Jesus speaks all these things with authority and he quotes from Psalm 2.  This is one of what’re called the “royal psalms”.  In Psalm 2 the Messiah is given authority to rule the nations.  Here’s what verses 8 and 9 say:

Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,

         and the ends of the earth your possession.

You shall break them with a rod of iron

         and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”

 

Jesus bears this authority, but now he exhorts the faithful in Thyatira saying that they will share in this royal authority with him.  The kingdom has been inaugurated and one day Jesus will bring it in all its fullness—and that will happen through the ministry of a faithful church proclaiming the lordship of Jesus to the ends of the earth and bringing his dominion to bear on the world.  Today God’s people face persecution.  Psalm 2 opens with the question:

Why do the nations rage

         and the peoples plot in vain?

The kings of the earth set themselves,

         and the rulers take counsel together,

         against the Lord and against his Anointed… (Psalm 2:1-2)

The gods and kings shake their fists at the Lord, they make plans against his anointed—as they did against Jesus—and against his people.  And yet the Psalmist gives us a glimpse into the heavenly throne room and writes:

He who sits in the heavens laughs.  (Psalm 2:4)

Their plans are pathetic.  They will not succeed.  The forces of evil did their worst on Good Friday.  They even killed the son of God.  And he rose victorious three days later.  Even death itself, the greatest enemy of humanity is powerless before Jesus—and it has no more hold over his people than it does him.

And that leads us to the last bit here in verse 28.  Jesus says he will give to the conquerors the morning star.  In Chapter 22, Jesus himself is identified as the morning star and, I think, what he’s getting at here is a promise of his presence with his people.  He will share his authority with them—with us—but he shares with us, too, his very identity.  The morning star, literally, is the planet Venus—one of the brightest objects in the sky just before dawn breaks, and in that it’s symbolic both of Jesus and of the vocation of his people and, especially, those persevering in the face of tribulation and in the midst of others who are compromising the faith.  Brothers and Sisters, Jesus has set us apart as a people to witness his kingdom to the world.  As St. Paul wrote to the Romans:

The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.  (Romans 13:12)

 

The Church is the sign to the world of the breaking kingdom dawn—of God’s new world in which love, faith, service will be defining characteristics, where idolatry and immorality will be gone forever, and where the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea—through the glorious reign of Jesus.  Brothers and Sisters, stand firm and persevere in faith for Christ has died, Christ has risen, and Christ will come again.

Let’s pray: Almighty and everlasting God, mercifully look upon our infirmities; and in all our dangers and necessities stretch out your right hand to help and defend us, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

[1] The Days of Vengeance (Ft. Worth: Dominion Press, 1987), 113.

To the Church in Pergamum

Revelation 2:12-17

by William Klock

John’s vision recorded in Revelation begins with a vision of Jesus himself.  He appears as both Daniel’s son of man and ancient of days.  He’s clothed as the high priest.  His word appears as a two-edged sword.  As we saw last month, the vision is packed full of imagery from the Old Testament.  Jesus announced that he was the first and the last, the one who died and rose again, the one who holds the keys of death and hades.  And he urges John to write, to exhort the churches of Asia as they face the difficult times to come.  Jesus holds them in his hand.  They’re like the lampstand in the temple and as the high priest, he will tend them to ensure their flame does not go out.

 

And in the seven letters that follow, sent to all the churches, but each in turn addressed to a specific church, Jesus exhorts and, in most cases, rebukes them.  He sustains them, but to survive the coming time of trial, they also need to pursue faithfulness to him, to pursue holiness, to hold to his word with single-minded devotion.  To each church he begins by reminding them of a bit of that awesome vision of himself.  To the Ephesians he comes as the one who holds the stars in his hand and who walks amongst the lampstands.  To the Smyrnaeans he is the first and last, the one who died and rose again.  And to each church he gives a promise.  In 2:7 he exhorts them saying, “To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.”  In verse 11 he says, “The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death.”  Each is tuned to the unique situation of the church being addressed, but each speaks also to the other churches—and to us.

This morning we’ll continue with verses 12-17 of Chapter 2.  These are Jesus’ words to the church in Pergamum, a city some 70 kilometres up the coast and north of Smyrna.  Jesus says:

“And to the angel of the church in Pergamum write: ‘The words of him who has the sharp two-edged sword.” (Revelation 2:12)

Do you remember the three things I’ve said Revelation is about?  It’s about tribulation, it’s about kingdom, and it’s about perseverance.  Jesus’ people live in the midst of tribulation and it’s only going to get worse for them, and so Jesus addresses them first by reminding them who he is, again drawing on the imagery we saw in Chapter 1.  Think on how he came to the Smyrnaeans in the last passage we looked at.  He exhorted them in the end that the second death will not hurt the one who conquers.  And he can only say that because, as he came to the people of that church, he is the one who died and was raised to life.  He is the conqueror of death and so his people need not fear death.  Things are hard, but Jesus exhorts his people to persevere.  But he doesn’t just give them platitudes.  He reminds them that he is with them.  The kingdom is now.  The kingdom is here.  As his church, they are his kingdom and their king is with them.  They’re not walking through territory that is unknown to their Lord.  Jesus has travelled this path before them and he stands with them now.

This is what he’s getting at now when he reminds them he is the one who bears the “sharp two-edged sword”.  This takes us back to 1:16: “from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword”.  Jesus’ word isn’t just any word, because Jesus himself is God’s word incarnate.  His word is the truth that brings life.  But his word also comes with both authority and judgement.  We’ll see this as we work through the passage and as we learn a little bit about Pergamum.

To compare things to our world, if Ephesus was the Toronto or Montréal of the Roman province of Asia, Pergamum would have been Ottawa.  It was sort of the administrative capital of the Romans in Asia.  And while the imperial cult was big in both Ephesus and Smyrna, Pergamum boasted the oldest temple in the province devoted to the divine Caesar.  Pergamum was a seaport and, towering above the port was the acropolis—a 400 metre high mountain topped by a great temple dedicated to Zeus.  If you were approaching the city from the south, it’s said that the acropolis had the appearance of an enormous throne towering above it.  Of course, Pergamum was known for its worship of other gods too.  Asklepios, the god of healing, was extremely important to the city.

The church in Pergamum would struggle for centuries.  Pergamum was a place of deeply entrenched paganism, and while the land and cities around it gradually submitted to Jesus as Lord, the people of Pergamum did not.  The people of the city worshiped Zeus as “Saviour”.  They had a library of great renown.  Parchment was invented there and, through Latin and French, “Pergamum” is where our word “parchment” comes from.  They had the famous healing work of the priests of Asklepios who bore long lists of their god’s miracles.  And over-arching all of that was the rule of Caesar, the divine saviour and peacemaker of the empire.  So the pagans of Pergamum had a whole system to care for body, mind, and soul.  They were proud of it.  In fact, even as the Roman emperors themselves came to faith in Jesus, it would be through Pergamum that the devil would strike, one last attempt to halt the conversion of the empire to Jesus.  You may have heard of Julian the Apostate.  He reigned as emperor from 361 to 363.  About fifty years after Constantine began the process of bringing the empire to Christ.  A dynasty of Christian emperors followed him.  But the devil got hold of Julian and, it seems, he did so in large part through the paganism of Pergamum.  Julian’s person physician was from the city and a devotee of Asklepios.  It was the Neoplatonism of this teacher that pushed Julian into apostasy and, as emperor, he did his best to restore the empire to paganism.  Thankfully his reign was a very short one.  Pergamum was a very dark place and would continue to be for many years to come.  If there was ever a place where the church needed an exhortation to persevere in the face of tribulation, it was Pergamum.

Now let’s look at the heart of Jesus word to them, beginning at verse 13:

“ ‘I know where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is. Yet you hold fast my name, and you did not deny my faith even in the days of Antipas my faithful witness, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells.  But I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality.  So also you have some who hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans.  Therefore repent. If not, I will come to you soon and 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 the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.’ (Revelation 12:13-17)

Jesus knows their situation.  The Satan has his throne in Pergamum.  It’s not easy to say exactly what that means.  The Satan is a title, literally “the accuser”.  In Revelation 20:2 John refers to him as “the ancient serpent”.  And that may be one clue.  The symbol of the god Asklepios was a serpent.  But, too, there was that great acropolis, which towered over the city like a giant throne with its temple of Zeus on top.  Zeus was another false saviour.  And, too, Pergamum was Rome’s administrative capital in the East and a major centre of the imperial cult.  But I think it’s worth noting that John never identifies Rome with the devil.  What John understood was that the devil had captured the heart of Rome and was using the empire to accomplish his own purposes and, especially to attack the Church.

At the same time, we saw in the last letter, the one to Smyrna, that Jesus associated the Satan with the synagogue of the unbelieving Jews there—the Jews who, themselves, had an exemption from worshiping the emperor, but who were only too happy to rat out the Christians in the city when they refused to worship the emperor as lord.  I think the key point here is that the Satan was working to attack and undermine the church of Jesus, whether that was through the influence of false gods with rival claims to be saviour and healer, the imperial cult that pressured everyone to acknowledge Caesar as divine, or unbelieving Jews collaborating with the Roman authorities to arrest and even execute Christians.  In some places the opposition was worse than others, but in Pergamum all of these things were happening at once and it was easy for the Christians there to lose hope.  It was as if the Satan was up there on the acropolis looking down, spotting Christians, and sending his Roman or Greek or Jewish minions after them.

It was a truly difficult situation, but Jesus exhorts them.  “Yet you hold fast my name, and you did not deny my faith even in the days of Antipas my faithful witness, who was killed among you.”  Despite all the pressure they have held fast to Jesus, they have not denied his name and they have not denied their faith in him.  The Romans insisted they offer a pinch of incense to Caesar, the world’s lord, and they refused.  Jesus is the true Lord.  The Greek’s laughed at them for worshipping Jesus instead of Zeus or for calling the elders of the church to pray for the sick instead of taking them to the temple of Asklepios.  But, again, the Christians knew—and were absolutely sure—that Jesus is Saviour.  The Jews threatened to rat them out to the Romans, but again, they stood firm in their faith in Jesus.  And these weren’t idle threats.  They stood firm even as their brother, Antipas, was martyred for this faith in Jesus.

We don’t know anything about Antipas other than what’s written here.  It seems fitting that his name means “against all”.  Everything in Pergamum was against him and so he stood against everything in Pergamum, holding fast to his faith in Jesus.  He became a true witness.  And the other Christians in the church there, instead of giving up the faith after seeing Antipas killed, had only grown in faith because of his witness.  Jesus praises his people for all of this.

But.  There’s a big but.  Jesus says he’s got two things against them.  First, there are some in the church who hold to what Jesus calls the “teaching of Balaam” and, second, that there are some who hold to the “teaching of the Nicolaitans”.

Jesus mentioned this second group, the Nicolaitans, before in his letter to the Ephesians: “You hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate”.  Who were the Nicolaitans?  No one’s really sure.  The Second Century Church Fathers wrote about a heretical gnostic sect called the Nicolaitans, but it’s not clear that John is talking about the same people.  Most commentators think that the two groups mentioned here are the same—and that the followers of “Jezebel” in the next letter to Thyatira are all one and the same.  The first group follows the teaching of Balaam and the second the teaching of Nikolaus.  It seems like there’s some wordplay going on here, because Balaam, in Hebrew, means “conqueror or destroyer of the people” and Nikolaus means the same thing in Greek.  The leader of this movement was almost certainly someone named Nikolaus, and here he’s connected with Balaam, the Moabite prophet we read about in Numbers.  Let’s go back to that.

It was during the Exodus.  The Israelites were on their way from Egypt to the promised land.  Balak, the King of Moab, saw them and was afraid.  He summoned the elders of Moab and Midian for a conference.  They decided that there were far too many Israelites to risk battle, so they decided to first send the prophet Balaam to curse the Israelites.  If Israel were cursed, then the Moabite army might defeat them.  But the Lord would not let Balaam curse Israel.  And so, instead, Balaam encouraged King Balak to put a stumbling block before Israel (cf. Numbers 31:16), and in Numbers 25 we read that Israel “began to whore with the daughters of Moab.  These invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods.  So Israel yoked himself to Baal of Peor.  And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel.”

As Balak put a stumbling block before the people of Israel and enticed them into apostasy through sexual immorality and meat offered to idols, just so the Satan, through this false teacher Nikolaus and his false apostles and prophets, has placed a stumbling block before the Christians of Pergamum—one that involved the idolatry of the pagan city.

In Acts 15 we read that the apostles met together to address the issue of Gentile believers.  Up to that point, almost everyone in the Church was Jewish and what to do with the torah wasn’t a big issue.  But when Gentiles began coming to Jesus it raised the question of how the law related to them.  Did they first need to become Jews through circumcision?  Did they have to obey the torah?  And the apostles concluded that, no, they didn’t.  Here’s what they said:

For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well.  (Acts 15:28-29)

Why these things specifically?  Well, sexual immorality and meat offerings to idols were a common and integral part of pagan life.  Ritual prostitution was a regular part of pagan religious life and so many animals were sacrificed to the pagan gods that their temples were the de facto restaurants and butcher shops pretty much everywhere.  It also wasn’t a big step for many former pagans to go from eating that meat at home to eating it in the temples where it was sacrificed and then getting dragged back into the often debauched ceremonies and rituals of those temples.  So contrary to the Spirit-inspired teaching of the apostles, the Nicolaitans—whose apostles and prophets the local church was permitting—were undermining the apostles and saying that these things were actually okay.

Nothing here tells us why these false teachers were permitted in the church in Pergamum.  Maybe no one knew quite what to do with them.  Maybe no one wanted to take responsibility.  Maybe they liked what they were hearing.  They were holding firm and not denying the name of Jesus in the face of the pagans around them, but doing that would probably have been a lot easier if they weren’t turning down the invitations to feast in the temples.  People might think it was weird that you worshiped a crucified Jew, but if you still took part in the fertility rites at the temple like everyone else, well, whatever—this Christianity stuff apparently wasn’t as subversive or as counter-cultural as they’d heard.

Brothers and Sisters, compromise and immorality are tempting.  The people around us tody think of Christians, at best, as judgemental killjoys, and at worst, as haters and bigots.  And they do that because they know what the Bible and Jesus and Christianity stand for and, just like the pagans of Pergamum, they don’t like it.  Our faith challenges their gods, their sins, their selfishness.  Or at least it should.  But tt’s easy to cave to the pressure.  Sometimes we’re tempted to partake of the world’s corruption so that we can avoid its anger and hatred.  Everyone else at work is cheating and the pressure is on, so we cheat too lest everyone be angry with us or mock us for being goody-two-shoes.  Like I said last time, the world has bowed to sexual immorality and Postmodern, Marxist theories of identity and sexuality and if you don’t go along with it you’re labelled a hater or a bigot, so we go along to make life easier.  And, increasingly in Evangelical circles, it’s justified in the name of “witness”.  We compromise whatever it is about the faith that brings the hatred and scorn of the world—as if we can somehow be nicer and more gracious than Jesus.  Brothers and Sisters, we can’t.  That path leads only to compromise and apostasy.

But it’s often not the pressure to conform to avoid opposition.  It’s often just that sin is fun and when everyone’s doing it, we think we might as well join in and we find ways to justify it.  Everybody’s watching those smutty shows on TV, so why shouldn’t I?  All the other kids are having sex, so why shouldn’t I?  Everybody else has made a god of their job or their politics or their RRSP, so why shouldn’t I?  Everyone else has bought into the selfish, commercialistic, materialistic ethos of the age, so why shouldn’t I?  And pretty soon you’ve got a church that names the name of Jesus, but in practise is nothing like the church.  Whether that’s the churches catering to felt needs and our self-centred culture by preaching pop-psychology and putting on rock concerts instead of worship services or the Anglican and Episcopal churches from which many of us came that still look very churchy and traditional in terms of worship, but have embraced sexual immorality and all the other ideological idols of our day.  They confidently name the name of Jesus, but there is no obedience to him, there is no call to holiness, there is no call to sacrifice.  Brothers and Sisters, it means little to stand firm on the name of Jesus if we are not also going to stand firm on his gospel—if we are not going to repent, turning aside from every false god and every false way, and not only naming his name, but following in his way.

And Jesus makes it clear here that he means business.  In verse 16 Jesus says, “Repent!  If you don’t, I will come to you soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth.”  The Angel of the Lord met Balaam with a sword and Jesus will meet these folks with a sword too—the false prophets and apostles, but also the leaders of the church who permit their influence.  This isn’t about the “second coming”.  This is about an imminent judgment that was about to take place in history.  It’s a judgement that has come on church after church after church for the last two thousand years whenever false teachers are indulged by their people and leaders.  Jesus is jealous of his church and he will come in judgement with his word to purify it where it persists in heresy and immorality despite his calls to repent.

But, Jesus goes on, “To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.”  Throughout the New Testament the Church is compared to Israel in the wilderness.  It’s hostile country with little food and enemies all around, but Jesus promises to those who “conquer”—to those who stand firm in faith, not just in word, but also in deed—he will give the hidden manna.  He will care for us, he will feed us as he cared for and fed his people in the wilderness as he led them from Egypt to the promised land.  Whatever we need to persevere, he will provide and first and foremost that is himself.  He is the one whom John calls the bread of heaven.  Remember that he is the one who walks in the midst of the lampstands like the high priest in the temple, keeping them filled with oil and trimming the wicks that their flame never go out.  Jesus has created his church, he has filled it with his own Spirit, and he will sustain it no matter how bad things get.  Our duty is to trust him and to walk in obedience.

Jesus says, too, that to those who conqueror he will give a white stone with a new name written on it.  This one’s difficult.  There are several different interpretations and I don’t know that we can be certain of any of them, but the most likely meaning seems to be rooted in an ancient custom of guests to a feast being given a stone with their name on it as a kind of ticket to get in.  The kingdom is often portrayed as a feast at the end of the age, a feast where God comforts and feeds his people in his presence.  And Jesus is the one who brings us into the feast, into the presence of the Father.  He has died for the sins of his people and his risen to life as conqueror of sin and death.  If we will hold fast to him in faith as he exhorts us to do here, he will give us his name usher us into the presence of his Father, into that great feast, into the very life of God.  He says he will give us a new name.  Through Isaiah the Lord made this promise:

The nations shall see your righteousness,

         and all the kings your glory,

and you shall be called by a new name

         that the mouth of the Lord will give. (Isaiah 62:2)

We who were not a people, will through Jesus, become the children of God.  We who were God’s enemies, through Jesus, will become is beloved sons and daughters.  We who belonged to the satan and were in bondage to sin and death, will be set free and ushered into the life of God bearing the name of Jesus himself.  I think this explains the bit about no one knowing the name.  The point isn’t that the name is secret.  This is a Hebrew idiom and the idea is that the name is known in the sense of owning it.  The Nicolaitans claimed the name of Jesus, they called themselves Christians, but as so many have done down through the ages and as so many do today, they never truly owned it.  The name of “Christian” belongs only to those who overcome.  They and they alone, through the death and resurrection of Jesus, have a share in the feast.

So, Brothers and Sisters, come this morning.  The Lord invites you to his Table.  Here, as we eat the bread and drink the wine, we recall the sacrifice of Jesus for us, we recall his resurrection, and we participate, ourselves, in those events by which Jesus has formed a new people for himself.  Know again the depth of love, the depth of grace, the depth of mercy that God has shown for sinners in Jesus, and in return be exhorted to commit to him not just in name, but in deed—in life and every part of it.  Bear the name of Jesus faithfully and boldly no matter the cost.  For Christ has died.  Christ is risen.  Christ will come again.

Let’s pray: Lord, in the Collect we asked you: govern all things both in heaven and on earth: “Mercifully hear the supplications of your people, and in our time grant us your peace.”  Grant us your peace Lord, even as we walk in the midst of tribulation.  Remind us that your kingdom is here and that Jesus sustains us and walks with us.  Grant us your peace that we might stand firm in our faith in your promises, that we might stand firm in Jesus without compromise, that we might be faithful in bearing his name and being his witnesses.  Through him we pray.  Amen.

To the Church in Smyrna

Revelation 2:8-11

by William Klock

St. John’s second letter sees us travelling up the road, about fifty kilometres north of Ephesus to the city of Smyrna. Ephesus may have been the chief city of the Roman province of Asia, but Smyrna was more ancient and a close competitor. It was a beautiful port city that the Greek geographer Strabo dubbed “the glory of Asia”. On the waterfront, at the bottom of Golden Street, the main thoroughfare, was the Tempe of Cybele. If you were a tourist and made your way up the street through the city, you’d pass other grand temples dedicated to Apollo, Askelpios, and Aphrodite. And at the end of the street, where it met the foothills, was the great Temple of Zeus. The Christians of Smyrna lived surrounded by the glory of the gods of Greece.

But those weren’t the only temples in Smyrna. The city fathers of Smyrna prided themselves on being forward-thinking and wisely pragmatic. Theirs had been the first of the cities of Asia Minor to align itself with Rome. In 197 B.C they appealed to the Senate for aid against Antiochus III and two years later, proving their loyalty, built the first temple in that part of the world to the goddess Roma. Through the Roman civil wars, they’d always managed to choose the side of the victor. Smyrna knew which way the wind was blowing. For their loyalty, the emperors granted Smyrna the status of “free city” and the construction of an imperial temple—and two more to follow in the years after the time period of Revelation. The citizens of Smyrna were loyal Romans. And that posed a problem for the Christians there as well.

Look now at our text, it’s just a short four verses beginning a 2:8. Jesus says:

“And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write: ‘The words of the first and the last, who died and came to life.

As I’ve said before, Revelation is about tribulation, kingdom, and perseverance. Jesus’ people live in the midst of tribulation and it’s only going to get worse for them, and so Jesus addresses them first by reminding them who he is. As he speaks to each of these seven churches, Jesus calls to mind the image that John gave of him in Chapter 1. For the Ephesians he reminded them that he is the one who holds the seven stars in his hand and who walks in the midst of the lampstands. He sustains his church. For the Smyrneans he reminds them that he is the one who is first and last, the one who died and came to life. In each case, Jesus is urging his people to persevere in the midst of tribulation and he doesn’t just say, “I know it’s hard, but just do it.” He reminds them that he is with them. The kingdom is now. The kingdom is here. As his church, they are his kingdom and their king is with them. They’re not walking through territory that is unknown to their Lord. Jesus has travelled this path before them and he stands with them now.

That’s what he’s getting at in reminding them that he is the first and the last. He is the Lord of history. It was by Jesus—the word—that God created all things in the beginning and it is by him that God is now making all things new. And he is the one who was crucified and rose from the grave. Not only is that how he inaugurated his kingdom, not only is it how he broke the chains of death and sin and is making all things new, it’s an apt exhortation in light of what the Christians in Smyrna are facing. They are united with Jesus—yes, in his suffering, but that also means they are united with him in his resurrection and have no reason to fear death. As St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Corinthians 15:54).

Now look at Jesus’ message itself, verses 9-11:

“‘I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are rich) and the slander of those who say that they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death.’

The first thing we should note is that Jesus has nothing bad to say about the people of this church. We can gather from the other letters that had there been a serious problem in Smyrna, Jesus would have mentioned it. These brothers and sisters were faithful. And that’s just what’s getting them into trouble. Jesus tells them that he’s fully aware of their tribulation and their poverty—although he quickly adds that despite their poverty, they are in reality rich. This is in contrast to the Laodiceans who are materially rich, but whom Jesus condemns for being poor in faith. It’s because of their faithfulness that the Smyrnean Christians are facing opposition. The immediate cause of the problem, he says, is that they’ve been slandered by “those who say that they are Jews and are not”. He goes so far as to call them a “synagogue of satan”.

What does that mean? Given what we know of the historical situation in Smyrna, it’s not too hard to piece together. At this point in time, the Romans weren’t really the immediate problem. Until about the time of the Emperor Nero—during whose reign John wrote to these churches—Christians enjoyed a certain amount of freedom. Everyone in the empire was required to offer at least nominal worship to the emperor, but the Jews had made such a fuss over this and caused the Romans so many problems, that they’d been granted an exemption. They agreed to pray for and to offer sacrifices for the emperor and that allowed them to live in a somewhat uneasy tension with Rome. And for some decades Christians were seen as a Jewish sect and enjoyed the same privilege. But during Nero’s reign that began to change. The empire didn’t approve of new religions and the Jews about that time not only started distancing themselves from Christians, but were only too happy to insist that Christians weren’t Jews and to point them out to the Roman authorities.

Why would Jews do this? Some Jews were angry that many of their brethren along with Gentile god-fearers were becoming Christians. As far as they were concerned, Jesus was most decidedly not the Messiah. He was a criminal who had been crucified and anyone claiming he was the Messiah was a blaspheming heretic. They were also angered at the Christian approach to the law. And the idea that unclean Gentiles could become Jews apart from total obedience to the law, well, that just had them fuming. Think of Paul telling his story to Agrippa in Acts 26:

“I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things in opposing the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And I did so in Jerusalem. I not only locked up many of the saints in prison after receiving authority from the chief priests, but when they were put to death I cast my vote against them. And I punished them often in all the synagogues and tried to make them blaspheme, and in raging fury against them I persecuted them even to foreign cities.” (Acts 26:9-11)

Jesus words to the Smyrneans about Jewish slander leading to Roman imprisonment fits with what we know from the historical record. Repeatedly in Acts we see unbelieving Jews working with the Romans and other Gentiles to persecute Christians. Paul refers to this in 1 Thessalonians and we read about it in Tertullian and in the Martyrdom of Polycarp, who was Bishop of Smyrna and martyred about ninety years later.

Remember that people like Paul, when they became Christians, wouldn’t have thought of themselves as having converted to a new religion. They were Jews and they continued to be Jews. It was simply that in fulfilling God’s promises, Jesus had created a new and better way of being Jewish. So the Jews would go to the Romans to report Christians and would argue that these Christians, contrary to their claims, weren’t actually Jews and their claims to be so were disturbing the status quo. Worse, they’d argue, these Christians were only use Judaism as a cover for their refusal to recognise the divinity and lordship of Caesar. And, particularly in a place like Smyrna, that sort of accusation could be disastrous, because the Smyrneans were zealous patriots of Rome and loyal worshippers of Caesar.

In Smyrna the imperial cult permeated everything. Everyone, rich and poor, was required by law to offer sacrifices to the emperor. In Smyrna, the city fathers thought this so important, that they actually provided the citizenry with money from the treasury to purchase their offerings, just so no one would have an excuse not to. And so to have any real part in public life, in government, in trade, in a guild, in various social circles you had to take part in the imperial cult and from the time that John wrote it only got worse for Christians. The empire demanded its citizens proclaim the lordship of Caesar, but for the Christians that was impossible. Jesus is Lord. They knew it and they could not betray him. And that faith was the basis for their perseverance in the truth.

This is just how it went down for Polycarp, one of the most famous martyrs of the early Church. At one particular festival, a Christian name Germanicus was thrown to wild animals in the arena and told to renounce Jesus. He refused and was killed, but seeing his faith only made the crowd angrier. They called for Polycarp, the bishop, to be brought next. He was seized and brought to the arena. He fearlessly confessed that he was a Christian and he was given the choice: Worship the divine Caesar or die. The Jews of Smyrna shouted, “This is the teacher of Asia, the father of the Christians, and the overthrower of our gods, he who had been teaching many not to sacrifice or to worship the gods.”

Polycarp would not renounce his Lord and was sentenced to death. The account reports that despite being the Sabbath, the Jews were foremost in gathering wood for the fire to burn the bishop. And as the fire was laid, Polycarp said, “It is well. I fear not the fire that burns for a season, and after a while is quenched. Why do you delay? Come, do your will.” And as he was consumed by the flames he prayed, “I thank thee that thou has graciously thought me worthy of this day and of this hour, that I may receive a portion in the number of the martyrs, in the cup of thy Christ.”

The mob that martyred Polycarp echoed the Good Friday mob that shouted to Pilate, “We have no king but Caesar! Crucify him!” Is it any wonder then that Jesus would appeal to his own death and resurrection as the root of faith and source of perseverance for these Christians? They were truly to share in the same suffering that he did, and so he reminded them: I am the one who died and came to life. And in the same way that the unbelief of those Jews who cried out for Jesus’ crucifixion exposed them as false Jews by their rejection of the Messiah, so these Jews in Smyrna exposed themselves as false in rejecting the Messiah’s people. That’s where the “synagogue of satan” part comes from. And in accusing Jesus’ people falsely, these unbelieving Jews show who they really belong to. It’s much like Jesus statement in John 8:

If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. (John 8:42-44)

The Church is the true synagogue—the kingdom of God and the temple in which his Spirit dwells—and because of that Jesus’ people need have no fear of tribulation. Jesus urges his people to persevere even as they are thrown into prison. That didn’t quite mean the same thing then as it does now. Prison itself wasn’t a punishment. Prison was where you were held pending trial or execution, which usually came swiftly. The devil would see them thrown in prison. For many of them, release from prison would mean execution.

“For ten days you will have tribulation,” Jesus says. That’s not so much a literal statement about how long this time of persecution will last. It’s a reference to the first chapter of Daniel. Daniel and his three friends were tested for ten days as they went without eating the king’s food. The point of the test was to see if they would come out the other side as healthy as the young men who at the king’s choice food. The temptation was to compromise with pagan gods by eating from the king’s table, eating meat that had been offered to idols. To eat at the king’s table was also a symbolic act of loyalty—and remember that the king claimed to be divine. These young Jewish men just couldn’t do that. What Jesus is saying is that this time of tribulation will test his people’s loyalty to him in the same way that Daniel and his friends were tested. But it’s not just a warning; it’s also an exhortation. They will come out the other side of this time of testing vindicated, even though it may mean their deaths—because they have already been united with Jesus in his resurrection. “Be faithful unto death,” Jesus tells them, “and I will give you a crown of life….the one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death.” The “second death” is a rabbinic expression. John uses it again in Chapter 20. And if you look at the Targums, the rabbinic commentary on the Old Testament, it means exclusion from the resurrection. As St. Paul wrote in First Corinthians, Jesus it the firstfruits of the resurrection of the dead. Where he has gone, his people will surely follow if they are steadfast in faith. He has triumphed and holds the keys of death and hades. There will be tribulation, but we must persevere, following where Jesus leads and knowing that we face nothing that he has not faced himself.

Now, what does this mean for us? There is a general application here for Christians everywhere. No matter how good times are for Christians, we will always face some kind of opposition. The empire and the Caesars that once persecuted and murdered the saints would, several hundred years later be conquered by the gospel and Caesar himself would bow his knee to Jesus. That part of the world over which Caesar had claimed his pagan lordship would gradually be transformed by the gospel into “Christendom”. And yet even then, there were pockets and times of resistance. Jesus reminds Christians everywhere in all times of the need to stand firm in faith. We are his kingdom and we not only must persevere, but we have every reason to do so. And it is by our perseverance, even to death, that our proclamation of the kingdom is validated—that it becomes credible in the eyes of the world and spreads.

But, Brothers and Sisters, “Christendom” is no more. In our post-Christian world we face ever-increasing resistance and opposition. And whereas a few decades ago—I think of growing up during the Cold War—we tended to think of opposition in terms of Communism and an authoritarian government shutting churches and kicking in doors to search our houses for Bibles and march us off to prison, things have gone in quite a different direction—a direction I think even more troubling, in part because it’s far more subtle and insidious.

The Smyrnean Christians faced ostracism, imprisonment, and sometimes martyrdom because they refused to offer that pinch of incense to Caesar. In our day the pressure comes from a post-modern culture in which objective truth has been forsaken and replaced with whatever a person feels to be true. We have become our own gods, creating our own realities and truths. Nevermind that those truths are, in reality, false. And along with that—in combination with it—we’ve made everything about the therapeutic and about the self. The worst thing that can happen to a person is suffering. And this worldview is everywhere and permeates everything. If you struggle with same-sex attraction, you don’t fight it; you embrace it. Anyone who tells you otherwise be damned, because not embracing it brings suffering, shame, and oppression. A man can claim to be a woman because who’s to say he isn’t—not biology, not genetics, not reality. Science is no longer the basis for truth, feelings are—and if you say otherwise, you’re labelled a bigot and oppressor. In one of the latest applications of Critical Theory, a doctor who tells an overweight patient that his diabetes or heart disease is because he’s overweight becomes an “oppressor”. If science makes us feel bad, well it’s wrong—it’s labelled “oppressive”. Once we allow our feelings to define our truth, there’s no limit to how absurd the claims become. And we not only make our truths; we put ourselves at the centre of them. Our relationships are increasingly centre on self rather than others. Fix a relationship? Sacrifice for a relationship? No way. If someone is difficult or unpleasant—nevermind that we might be at least part of the reason for that—you cut them off and cut them out. As they say, “You don’t need that kind of negativity in your life.” No, you’ve got to take care of yourself. In fact, we’ve now got a term for this obsession with self, “self care,” and it’s fast becoming as idolatrous a cult as anything the pagan Greeks and Romans did.

But all of this isn’t just “out there”. The western Church has increasingly embraced what’s been dubbed Moralistic Therapeutic Deism—the general belief that God wants nothing more for us than to be happy and good—however you define good. How we “do” church, how we worship, everything about the church is increasingly becoming centred on the self. Worship has been turned into an experience to be judged by how good it makes me feel. Biblical sermons have been replaced by pop-psychology and self-help. Commercialism increasingly dominates how we do things. We stop asking if what we do will please God and instead ask how it will increase our marketshare. And without any deep biblical and theological anchors, Christians are increasingly compromising the good—and truth and everything else—because it’s easiest just to go with the cultural flow. The Church is leaving people utterly unprepared for the cultural tide that’s now breaking over us. Rod Dreher wrote last year, ““Relatively few contemporary Christians are prepared to suffer for the faith, because the therapeutic society that has formed them denies the purpose of suffering in the first place, and the idea of bearing pain for the sake of truth seems ridiculous.” If you have a chance, find a copy of his book, Live Not by Lies, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest it.

And there’s a flood of Christians now capitulating to the culture, offering their pinch of incense to the gods of post-modernism. It’s become so common we now have a term for it: Deconstruction. And it grieves me to see friends and colleagues going through this process, sliding down this slippery slope that inevitably ends in apostasy. Once orthodox Christians face the pressure and the conflict between Church and culture and they begin to “deconstruct” their faith, pulling it apart piece by piece and then rebuilding it after reconsidering the pieces. It’s so often presented as a faithful, mature, intellectual and spiritual exercise, but it’s telling that in the end the result is the same very time. You end up retaining whatever bits of Christianity you can without being in conflict with the culture, and whatever is at odds, whatever causes conflict is cast aside. It’s always the same bits discarded. The uniqueness of Jesus? Gone. A biblical sexual ethic? Gone. The reliability and authority of Scripture? That’s gone too. Justice? Oh, they held on to that, they say. But the version of justice they’ve got after deconstruction is no longer the biblical understanding of justice; it’s a post-modern concept of justice that has far more to do with Marxist ideology than it does the Bible. At least as often as not, you’ll find that the person who has gone through this process has a close family member, often a child, who has “come out” as “gay” or “trans”. That’s a difficult situation to be in. If you stand firm in faith, there’s going to be conflict. But after deconstruction the conflict is gone. You can once again be at peace with yourself and with the world—and most importantly, no one out there can call you a hater or a bigot or whatever the insult of the month is.

I’ve seen it happen over and over again. I’ve watched friends slide down this slope. I’ve watched pastoral colleagues slide down this slope. I’ve watched churches that slide down this slope—listening to one acquaintance locally whose last few sermons have been full of apologies for the sexist and patriarchal language of the Bible. Brothers and Sisters, if you find yourself apologising for the Spirit-inspired words of Scripture, stop. Now. Something’s gone wrong. But this is the problem. Our culture values niceness and the therapeutic. The worst thing you could do in Smyrna was to be disloyal to Caesar. In our culture it’s to make someone feel bad—even if they should. Shame, which until now we’ve always understood to be a positive in that it discourages us from doing things we know we shouldn’t, well, now shame is a dirty word. And almost as bad as making someone else feel bad is to feel bad ourselves—to be in conflict with the mainstream, to be called out as a hater. Oddly enough, in the incoherence of post-modernism, the one time it is okay—and not just okay, but necessary—to shame someone is when they aren’t on-board with the spirit of the age.

And Brothers and Sisters, if you think it’s hard to be called a hater or a bigot or intolerant, consider how difficult it is for our children. Especially if they’ve live in the environment of government schooling, they’ve been immersed in this culture to an extent you and I may struggle to grasp. This is why we need to be diligent and faithful in teaching them the faith, in discipling them, in ensuring they know what’s true and what’s false, and making sure they are not overcome by our therapeutic and self-centred culture. We need to recover a deep sense of the sinfulness of sin and of the holiness of God. We need to grasp the deepness of the love and grace and mercy of God and to recover a sense of the costliness of the sacrifice that Jesus made to show us that love and grace and mercy. And we need to know that if we are going to identify ourselves with Jesus, it means that we will walk with him in his suffering—in conflict with the gods and kings of this age—but that we do so in faith and in hope—even in joy—knowing that in doing so we are carrying his kingdom to the world and knowing that our kingdom hope is for life and for a world set to rights—truly set to rights by God’s standards, which are far higher than those of our culture. It’s not just about perseverance in the face of tribulation. We persevere—we will only persevere—because we know the deep truth of the kingdom: Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again.

Let’s pray: O Lord, come among us, we pray, with your power and strengthen us with your great might; that whereas, through our sins and wickedness we are grievously hindered in running the race that is set before us, your bountiful grace and mercy may speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, to whom with you and the Holy Spirit, be honour and glory, now and for ever. Amen.

To the Church in Ephesus

Revelation 2:1-7

by William Klock

The first church to which John is instructed to write is the church in Ephesus.  John’s attention must have been captured when he heard Jesus say that name.  According to tradition, John was for many years the bishop of the church in Ephesus.

If you were to travel to Ephesus today you’d find only a ruin—an impressive ruin, but nevertheless, just a ruin.  In John’s day it was already an ancient city and the most important in the province of Asia.  It was a hub of trade, culture, and politics situated on an important harbour.  Ephesus now sits about six kilometres inland.  Deforestation and agricultural activities led to the silting up of the harbour.  The harbour was dredged repeatedly in ancient times.  But there was no stopping the inevitable and as the seaport declined, Ephesus shrank into a small village and, by the Fifteenth Century, ceased to exist entirely.

But in the First Century, Ephesus was a bustling city with as many as a quarter million people—one of the largest cities in the world and the largest in Asia.  From the busy port, Harbour Street made its way through the city, ending at an impressive theatre.  Along the way a traveller would pass the public library, the gymnasium, bathhouses, the market, and the public brothel.  But Ephesus’ real claim to fame was its Temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the world.  The local form of Artemis was a fertility goddess and protectress of the city.  Her statue was kept decorated with symbols of fertility and on her head she wore a mural crown, representing her guardianship of the city walls.  We don’t know much about the specifics of her cult in Ephesus, but it’s safe to assume it involved all the usual perversions associated with fertility cults in the ancient world.  Ephesus was a city of art and science and commerce, but it was also a city of idolatry and witchcraft and perversion—all done in the open.  Christianity has had such a sanctifying influence on Western Civilisation that even knowing the perversions of our own decadent, post-Christian era, it’s very difficult for us to really understand what life was like in the pagan world of the Greeks and Romans.  But there, in the midst of that idolatry and perversion, holding high the light of Jesus in the surrounding darkness, was a church.

And Jesus speaks to the Christians in Ephesus.  Look at Revelation 2:1.

“To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: ‘The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands.

 

We don’t know how large the church in Ephesus was at this time, but however large it may have been, these people were a tiny minority living in a morass of paganism.  Even without overt persecution, in standing for Jesus, they stood in opposition to everything around them.  And so Jesus reminds them from the outset: “I’m the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand and I’m the one who walks in the midst of the lampstands.”  We saw this imagery in last Sunday’s passage from Chapter 1.  The lampstands represent these seven churches and the stars their “angels”.  There are differing ideas on what exactly is meant by “angels”, possibly heavenly beings with some kind of oversight of the churches, but more likely they’re the presbyters or bishops of these churches.  And Jesus begins by reminding them that he holds them in his hands.  He sustains the “angels” and, like the high priest tending the lampstand in the tabernacle, he stands in the midst of the churches and tends to them that their light not go out.  It’s an image of reassurance.  These brothers and sisters have been called to be light in the darkness and Jesus reminds them that they do not do so alone and that they do not do so on their own power.  He sustains them.

Do you remember what I said last Sunday?  Revelation is about three things.  It’s about tribulation and it’s about kingdom and it’s about perseverance.  On account of the testimony of Jesus, on account of the good news that he is Lord, the Church will face tribulation.  The gods and kings of this present age will oppose the Lordship of Jesus and the spread of his kingdom.  But Revelation also assures the Church that the kingdom is now.  By his death, resurrection, and ascension Jesus has inaugurated his kingdom and he will reign until he has put every enemy under his feet, which means his people can face tribulation with faith and hope.  That also means that Jesus expects his people to persevere.  We do not walk an easy path, but we know where we’re headed and he assures us that he walks the path with us.  Jesus’ words remind us of the Lord’s promise to Israel in Leviticus 26:11-12:

I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you.  And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people.

He who has died to make us his own will not abandon us to the darkness.  He who has called us make disciples of the nations will surely prosper our work.

Now, having reminded them that he is the one who sustains them, Jesus moves on to the heart of his message for the Ephesians.  Look at verses 2-7.

“‘I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false.  I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary.  But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.  Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.  Yet this you have: you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.  He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.’

 

Jesus gives them great praise coupled with a serious rebuke.  On the positive side, he praises these saints for toil and their patient endurance.  If we look at the Greek words that Jesus uses we get a deeper sense of what he’s getting at.  The toil he’s talking about is the sort of toil that wears one to the bone, the sort of blood-sweat-and-tears toil that leaves you ready to drop to the ground when it’s over.  We don’t know the specific details of their situation, but to follow Jesus has truly cost the Ephesians and Jesus knows it.  Second, they’ve not only toiled long and hard, but they’ve patiently endured.  This isn’t a hide-until-it’s-over kind of patience.  This is a stand-your-ground-and-defend-the-walls-until-the-reinforcements-arrive kind of endurance.  This is the endurance of people who fight an awful battle, confident of the outcome.  Christ has died.  Christ is risen.  And because of both of those truths, they knew that Christ will come again and they lived and fought and ministered and preached accordingly.

Jesus does mention two specific things that have been part of the Ephesians’ battle.  First, in verse 2 he praises them because they “cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false”.  Second, in verse 6, Jesus praises them saying, “you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.”  The sense we get here and elsewhere in Scripture is that the Ephesians were people who took both doctrine and practise very seriously.  It’s worth noting that in his letter to them, Paul didn’t have to take them to task over these sorts of matters.  Paul warned them in Acts 20:

Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.  I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them.  Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish every one with tears.

 

The Ephesians took Paul’s warning and exhortation to them seriously and stayed on the alert.  About forty years after John wrote Revelation, Ignatius wrote to them, praising them for their zeal for gospel truth:

“Truth is the rule of life for all of you, and heresy has no foothold among you. The fact is, you have nothing more to learn from anyone, since you listen to Jesus Christ who speaks truthfully…. I have heard of certain persons from elsewhere passing through, whose doctrine was bad. These you did not permit to sow their seed among you; you stopped your ears, so as not to receive the seed sown by them…[You are] Christ-bearers and bearers of holiness, with the commandments of Jesus Christ for festal attire.” (Ephesians 6:2, 9:1, 2)

False apostles showed up in Ephesus and the church, weighing their teaching against what they had been taught, turned them out and refused to listen.  Specifically, at the time of writing, they’ve been resisting the teachings of the Nicolaitans.  We don’t know a lot about this group.  Irenaeus says they were followers of Nicolas of Antioch, one of the first seven deacons, but one who went wrong.  This false teaching comes up three times in these letters to the churches.  In verse 14, as Jesus speaks to the church in Pergamum, he refers to a group called the “Balaamites”, whose teachings were the same.  Jesus warns the church at Pergamum that these people, like Balaam in the Old Testament, enticed God’s people to eat food sacrificed to idols and to engage in sexual immorality.  Both of those things are noteworthy, because they were part of the short list of things gentile Christians must avoid that the apostles drew up at the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15.

Jesus refers to this heresy a third time in the letter to Thyatira, where he rebukes them for tolerating “Jezebel”, a false prophetess enticing the people into sexual immorality and to eat food offered to idols.  So this heresy was making the rounds of the Asian churches in one form or another and, to their credit, the Ephesians have rejected it entirely.  In contrast, the church at Pergamum has tolerated this heresy amongst some of her members and, worse, the Thyatirans have allowed at least one prominent proponent of this heresy into some sort of leadership or prophetic teaching position.

So this is all wonderful.  These brothers and sisters know the gospel and the scriptures and they’re well-taught in the faith.  Not only that, they have been faithful in discipline and giving no quarter to false teachers, false doctrines, or sinful practises.  They not only know the wolves when they see them, but they’ve faithfully fought them off.  But, not everything is wonderful.  Jesus says to them, “I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.  Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first.”

In her zeal for gospel truth in a battle with heretics and false prophets, the Christians at Ephesus had lost their love.  From our perspective it may seem that some of the other seven churches are guilty of greater failures—tolerating a false prophet who promotes sexual immorality, for example—but only two of the churches are actually threatened with destruction for their failings and Ephesus is one of them.  “But we’ve kept the gospel pure, Jesus!  We’ve cast out the idolaters and the sexually immoral, Jesus!  We’ve preserved orthodoxy, Jesus!”  And Jesus responds, “I hate the works and false teaching of the Nicolaitans just as you do and I appreciate your zeal, but where is your love?  Without love you are nothing.”

Think of the thirteenth chapter of St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian Christians:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

  Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Corinthians 13:1-7)

And Paul finishes a few verses later, writing:

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.  (1 Corinthians 13:13)

There’s the key.  Even if we’ve got everything else right, if we lack love, we fail to be the Church.  But what exactly does Jesus mean when he says they’ve abandoned the love they had at first?  If you read the commentaries, some will say that it’s simply love of Jesus.  They’re so focused on doctrine, that they’ve forgotten Jesus.  Others say that their battles with false teachers and apostles have left them inwardly focused and that they’ve lost the love that had once motivated them to engage in mission, proclaiming the gospel, and caring for people both inside and outside the church.  Others say that the battle for orthodoxy has left them cold, angry, bitter, and suspicious towards others.

Brothers and Sisters, from my personal experience living through the “Anglican realignment”, I can’t see any reason why Jesus mightn’t have all these failures to love in mind.  I have observed that as we hunker down doing battle with apostates, those fights can consume all we’ve got to the neglect of other critical aspects of ministry.  And, when the fight’s over, it can be terribly difficult to stop fighting.  Many in the Anglican Church and the Episcopal Church fought valiantly for the gospel against men and women who held it in contempt and had abandoned the faith.  They fought a life and death ecclesiastical struggle.  And that battle is largely over, a new orthodox province has been established, but some just can’t stop fighting.  And after fighting for so long, it’s often easy to forget that the smaller battles we now face within our own church are not with the enemy, but with brothers and sisters who love Jesus and are trying to be faithful to Scripture.  They may be wrong on some issues.  And some of those issues are gravely serious: “Three Streams” theology, women’s ordination, Critical Theory, language relating to sexual identity.  But these are brothers and sisters, not the enemy.  We need to be zealous for gospel truth, but we also need to be equally zealous to love.

We need to pray for wisdom and discernment to know where to draw the lines between friend and enemy and to know how to love in each case—because we are called to love our enemies.  It’s not easy.  I struggle with this myself.  I hate going to meetings of the local ministerial because they leave me so discouraged.  There are mainline churches that have forsaken the gospel and that, much as the Nicolaitans, are fine with sexual immorality.  There are churches that have mixed the prosperity heresy with the gospel.  More recently Marxist social theories that are antithetical to the gospel are being promoted.  There are churches that promote false prophets and teachers—not too many years ago we even had a pastor making bogus claims to be an apostle.  And, Brothers and Sisters, it discourages me and it makes me angry.  And I sit there thinking that I’m doing Jesus a disservice being there and pretending that I share the same faith with some of these people—because in some cases I really don’t.  And I ask, what do truth and love demand of me here?  How, in my desire to preserve and even fight for gospel truth, do I love the folks who call themselves Christians, but have forsaken the faith.  How do I love the folks whom I know are brothers in Christ, but with whom I have serious disagreements and grave concerns?  I don’t always know.  I tend to err on the side of love and then I’m frustrated, because I know that I’ve sacrificed truth.

It’s not easy, but it’s vital that we be both zealous for truth and love.  If the love is lacking, it becomes a cancer that will destroy the church from the inside out.  A zeal for truth coupled with a lack of love, I’ve observed, first makes us a very unattractive community, and second, it kills our mission.  We circle the wagons and start shooting at everyone on the outside—and sometimes on the inside, too—and forget that many out there need our gospel ministry.  Jesus warns the Ephesians, “I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.”  Honestly, I’m not sure that such a church actually needs Jesus to come and remove its lampstand.  When we forsake love, we kind of kick over the lampstand ourselves—or like Israel in Jesus’ parable, we hide it under a bushel.

St. John, I think, had it figured out.  Consider that on the one hand, John was known as a “son of thunder”.  Peter was the “rock”—the apostle who was solid and unmoving.  John—and his brother, James—preached the good news about Jesus with power like thunder.  He took it seriously and he wasn’t afraid to speak and act on the truth.  There’s a story that has come down through history about John’s time in Ephesus.  John entered a local bathhouse only to be informed that the heretic, Cerinthus, was already inside taking a bath.  John ran outside, forgoing his bath, lest he share even a public space with a false teacher.

At the same time, this same John is sometimes called the “apostle of love”.  This is the man who wrote to the churches:

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.  Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.  (1 John 4:7-8)

A second story that has come down to us from John’s time in Ephesus is that as he approached old age, he distilled all of his preaching into a one-sentence sermon that he would frequently repeat, “Little children, love one another.”  John, I think, had an equal zeal for both gospel truth and gospel love.  I don’t want to say he found the “balance”, because I don’t think it’s a matter of balance.  Balance means you end up compromising, giving up some measure of the truth in the name of the love, for example.  What we really need is to learn how to be equally zealous for both, compromising neither.

“Hear what the Spirit says to the churches,” Jesus says.  “To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.”  I think the Ephesians thought they had conquered.  They’d fought the good fight against false teaching—and were continuing to fight it—and by all accounts they were winning.  But their vision of obedience to Jesus, their vision of what the Christian life entails had become too narrow.  They’d won the battle on one front, but were losing it badly on another—and weren’t even aware of it.  Love is just as important as truth.

But to those who do hold the course in faithfulness to Jesus, he promises the tree of life, paradise restored, the life of the age to come lived in the presence of God.

Brothers and Sisters, the good news is that the Christians in Ephesus did take Jesus’ warning here to heart.  Again, we have that passage from Ignatius’ letter to them from some forty years later in which he praises them.  They continued to be zealous for the truth, but he also notes that they are a holy people who wear the commandments of Jesus as their festal attire.  Ephesus remained the centre of Christianity in that part of Asia for many centuries.  Ephesus hosted the Third Ecumenical Council.  The church in Ephesus only ceased to exist, hundreds of years later, because the city itself ceased to exist as its harbour silted up.  But I think it’s worth something that while the name “Ephesus” disappeared from the map, the name “Ayasuluk” replaced it in Turkish.  The name comes from the Greek Hagios Theologos, the name of the great basilica built in Ephesus and named after St. John, whom they called “Theologian”.  Not even the name of the city survived the march of the ages, but the name of the church in Ephesus lives on.

So Brothers and Sisters, persevere, firm in the knowledge that Jesus holds us in his hands as we walk this difficult path.  But remember, too, that perseverance isn’t limited to the sometimes obvious struggles—the ones over doctrinal and practical orthodoxy.  It’s true, we cease to be the Church when we fail to uphold those gospel truths.  But remember that love is just as important.  Come to the Table this morning and experience once again who we are as the people of God, set apart to holiness, but set apart by the one who gave his life for us.  The one, who on the cross, shows us not only the importance of love, but also what it looks like.  Little children, love one another.

Let’s pray: Lord Jesus, in the collect we asked you to grant that we, like John the Baptist, might be faithful ministers and stewards of your mysteries, preparing the way for you by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just.  We prayed that in doing so, you will find us an acceptable people in your sight.  We ask specifically for zeal for gospel truth and equally for love.  Give us wisdom that we might never compromise one for the other, but stand firmly for both in equal measure.  Amen.

In the Midst of the Lampstands

Revelation 1:9-20

by William Klock

We’ve all heard that old statement, “Consider the source,” haven’t we?  When I was a kid, someone would insult me and I’d get upset and say something about to my mom and she’d say, “Consider the source.”  In other words, “Why would you take what someone like that says seriously?”  If someone you know to be an inveterate liar tells you something, you probably won’t believe it.  For a number of years someone was sending me thick envelopes stuffed with poorly made, oddly shaped photocopies of newspaper clippings and weird, barely coherent explanatory letters claiming to be from a prophet.  The person who sent them was obviously a lunatic, it showed, and they went straight into the trash.  But other things we take seriously.  A letter from Revenue Canada?  The stationery itself demands we take it seriously.  An order from the Provincial Health Officer?  Bonnie Henry may be fairly unassuming, but we know that behind those orders stands the authority of the Province of British Columbia.  Or maybe you’re experience something difficult.  Someone you love has just died.  Or you’re going through a crisis of faith.  Someone comes alongside you, someone sends you an email or a letter, someone calls you.  And that person offers encouragement—maybe some advice.  And we all know that it means a lot more coming from someone who has walked the same road or from someone whose great faith we respect.  When a mature Christian offers a bit of spiritual advice or, maybe even a rebuke, it carries a great deal more weight than similar words coming from a brother or a sister who is worldly or immature.

As I said last week, Revelation is a letter and Chapter 1 is the introduction.  We’ll be looking at verses 9-20 this morning.  John is the author of the letter, the one who penned the words, and sent it off with a courier to be read in the churches, but as we saw last week, this is Jesus’ revelation.  God has given it to him and he has given it to John.  Jesus is the one who speaks with authority in this book—he’s the source, he’s the authority behind it—and here John gives us a glimpse at who it was who spoke to him.  Here John shows us just who this Jesus is and the picture he paints with his words tells these churches—and us—that we’d better pay attention and take this seriously.

So, verses 9-11:

I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.  I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying, “Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea.”

 

John, first, tells them his own situation.  He is their brother and their partner—he is their sharer—in three things: in tribulation, in the kingdom, and in patient endurance.  He, himself, is living in exile on the island of Patmos, a little island about fifty kilometres off the coast of what’s now Turkey.  It had a military garrison there, but we don’t know if John was literally in prison or if he’d just been forced into exile.  He had an apostolic role when it came to these churches and, presumably, someone hoped that by removing their leader, this movement of Jesus-followers would flounder, maybe even die off.  We don’t know who exiled him, whether it was local or Roman authorities, but what’s important is that John says he’s there “on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.”  Notice that he doesn’t say he’s there because of his own testimony, because of his own preaching, because of his own witness to Jesus.  No, he says that he’s there because God has spoken and because Jesus has given testimony.  Jesus, by his death, resurrection, and ascension has borne testimony against the gods and kings of this age, and they have lashed out in retaliation against his apostle.  And not just against John.  They have lashed out at the Church.

Brothers and Sisters, there are three things that are a certainty for the believer.  The first is tribulation.  There is no escape.  Jesus warned his disciples in John 15:20, “A servant is not greater than his master.  If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.”  First the Jews, then the Romans went after the fledgling Church.  Those early believers suffered great tribulation, but they had faith in the words of Jesus, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:10).  In Acts 14 Luke writes that Paul and Barnabas travelled, visiting these churches, “strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.”  They knew that Jesus had inaugurated his kingdom and that tribulation was the prelude to its consummation.  Their suffering was in union with the suffering of Jesus.  Paul wrote to the Colossians, “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (Colossians 1:24).

And that’s the second certainty: the kingdom.  We can face tribulation because Jesus has already inaugurated the kingdom.  As Paul wrote to the Ephesians, Jesus reigns “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.  And he put all things under his feet” (Ephesians 1:21-22).  The battle with the kings and gods of this age wages on, but Jesus has been given dominion over all.  John draws on the language and imagery of Daniel 7.  The Prophet writes:

Behold, with the clouds of heaven

         there came one like a son of man,

and he came to the Ancient of Days

         and was presented before him.

And to him was given dominion

         and glory and a kingdom,

that all peoples, nations, and languages

         should serve him;

his dominion is an everlasting dominion,

         which shall not pass away,

and his kingdom one

         that shall not be destroyed.  (Daniel 7:13-14)

The Church faces tribulation precisely because Jesus’ kingdom is here and now, because it stands in conflict with the gods and kings of the present age.  But that means that the Church—Brothers and Sisters, that we—can pursue the mission Jesus has given us with confidence.  Jesus won the decisive battle at the cross; his kingdom shall not be destroyed.

That leads us to the third certainty: perseverance.  This is the heart of the book of Revelation.  The individual letters to the churches highlight this.  Where they have done well, they must persevere in well-doing.  Where they have compromised, it is critical that they return to Jesus and persevere.  And the rest of the book goes on to reveal the faithfulness of God to strengthen faith that they might persevere.  But notice, all these things are centred in Jesus.  We face tribulation because we are united with Jesus and because of his witness against the present age.  But we have confidence because we are united with Jesus and know and are part of his kingdom.  And we persevere as we are united with Jesus—sharing in his life and empowered by his Spirit—and knowing that what he has begun he will surely complete.  In the incarnation and at the cross, God has invested his beloved Son in the redemption of his creation from sin and death and we can be sure that no matter how bad things may get, God will never cut his losses.  The resurrection of Jesus was the decisive victory over the present age.  He will continue until he puts every enemy under his feet.

Now, John goes on to say that he was “in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day”.  The Lord’s Day is a reference to Sunday.  I think, too, that there’s some intentional symbolism here, drawing on the Old Testament idea of the Day of the Lord—the day when God would come in judgement to vindicate his people and to destroy their enemies.  And being “in the Spirit” is language drawn from the Old Testament prophets to certify John’s status as a prophet.  Throughout the Old Testament the prophets speak of being in the Spirit as God speaks through them.  Prophecy is not a gut feeling, an impression, or a vague idea.  Prophecy is the distinct and clear word of God, delivered to man, through the mediation of the Holy Spirit.  This is why prophecy is taken so seriously in the Bible.  God’s word is true and because of that his people can have confidence in it.  That trust, however, is undermined by false prophets and so to prophesy falsely is a grave offense.  It’s an offense against God and against God’s word.  The test is simple.  Does the word spoken come to pass?  Does it jibe with what God has already revealed about himself?  In the Old Testament, if it didn’t, the false prophet was sentenced to death.  The equivalent in the New Testament would be excommunication.  It’s something that, sadly, the modern church does not often take seriously with the result that we’ve cheapened prophecy and have a multitude of false prophets running around leading people astray and undermining faith in God’s word.

But, John, truly in the Spirit, hears a voice like a trumpet—a clarion call and a summons—and he is instructed to record what he is about to see and to send that record to seven churches: Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea.  This is a cluster of churches in western Asia Minor, western Turkey—churches where John’s ministry was well-known.  If it were today we could say that he was their bishop.

First John hears that great voice and then he turns to see who it is.  Look at verses 12-16.

Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest.  The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters.  In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.

Who is it that speaks?  Why should we care what he has to say?  Does his word carry authority?  Well, his summons to John was like the summons of a trumpet—imagine the sound of trumpets blown by royal heralds.  And now, turning he sees this awe-inspiring image.  If it’s hard to wrap your head around John’s description, that’s because it’s a composite of a bunch of different images drawn from all over the Old Testament, but especially—again—from Daniel.  Whatever John saw, this was the best way he could describe it.

So, first, John is drawn into a sort of heavenly analogue to the holy place of the tabernacle or temple.  That was the place where, in Israel, the lampstand stood, burning always and filling the tabernacle with its light.  But here there are seven—a connection with the seven churches to which John writes—but united in Jesus.  Jesus stands in the midst of them.  The long robe and the golden sash around his chest show him as the high priest.  He’s the one who tends the lamps, trims their wicks, keeps them burning.  These churches were struggling through difficult days, but the Lord Jesus sustains them.

And John describes him as one like a son of man—that’s a figure from Daniel 7—but he also uses imagery to describe him that draws on Daniel’s description of the Ancient of Days.  The son of man—and I read the passage about him from Daniel just a bit ago—was the representative of Israel, of the people of God, to whom the Ancient of Days gave dominion, glory, and kingdom forever.  This is Jesus.  But what’s really interesting is that John’s physical description of him is that of the Ancient of Days, of the one who gives the son of man his dominion, of God himself.  Here’s Daniel 7:9-10.

As I looked,

thrones were placed,

         and the Ancient of Days took his seat;

his clothing was white as snow,

         and the hair of his head like pure wool;

his throne was fiery flames;

         its wheels were burning fire.

A stream of fire issued

         and came out from before him;

a thousand thousands served him,

         and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him;

the court sat in judgment,

         and the books were opened.

 

So this isn’t just a description of Jesus as majestic and awe-inspiring.  John uses this description to equate Jesus with God himself.  It’s a remarkable testimony to the divinity of Jesus that does so drawing on the Old Testament.  And that’s not all.  There just isn’t time this morning to get into every detail.  The flaming eyes, the bronze feet, again the gold sash, are all drawn from Daniel 10.  And while his call was like the sound of a trumpet, when he addresses John, it’s like the overwhelming sound of rushing waters, which is how Ezekiel describes the sound of God’s glory returning to the temple.

Jesus holds a constellation of seven stars in his hand.  This one’s pretty cryptic, although John does tell us in verse 20 that these stars are the angels of the seven churches—possibly heavenly beings with some kind of oversight of these churches, but I think more likely referring to their bishops or elders.  It’s not an easy bit of imagery to sort out.  The sword proceeding from Jesus’ mouth, however, is much more obvious.  This is his word.  In 2:16 we read that by it he will make war against his enemies and in 19:11-16, by it he will conquer the nations.

Even to trace all the pieces of this image of Jesus back to their Old Testament sources is overwhelming.  It’s good to do so, but I like George Caird’s warning not to “unweave the rainbow”.  He writes, “John uses his allusions not as a code in which each symbol requires separate and exact translation, but rather for their evocative and emotive power.  This is not photographic art.  His aim is to set the echoes of memory and association ringing.”[1]  That’s a good way to understand the imagery of Revelation and, especially, passages like this.  It’s something like look at a rainbow—or it should be.  The rainbow is made up of bands of colour as this imagery is made up of allusions to the Old Testament.  But as the rainbow itself is more than just sum of its colours, so John’s images are more than just the sum of all these biblical allusions.  Our problem is that we lack that memory and association those first Jewish Christians had.  I think the image, which seems so “weird” to us, would have been far less weird to the original audience and would simply have inspired a natural awe.  They saw the rainbow, where we see the bands of colour and struggle even to put names to them.

And natural awe exactly John’s response.  As I was reading this I was thinking of a recent conversation I had with Rob.  He was talking about visiting anther church here in Courtenay and said he could understand why people went there.  I think the words he used to describe it were “fun” and “party”.  I know, the services there—as is increasingly common—are modelled on rock concerts.  It’s not just them; it’s symptomatic of our culture.  We have lost a sense of the holy.  We have little space left for reverence.  We’re increasingly familiar and casual with everything and everyone—including God.  And yet that’s just not what we see in the Bible when people encounter God.  Throughout the Scriptures, the people who encounter God are overwhelmed with awe and fear.  Even Peter, who was comfortable to argue with Jesus as the rabbi who got into his boat and told him to row out into the lake, fell to his knees and begged him to leave—his exact words were, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”—when the understanding of just who Jesus was sank in.  Even meeting an angel inspires fear throughout the Scriptures—with the odd exception of Jacob’s, who decided to start a fight.  No one with a real sense of who God is—or who Jesus is—walks casually into the presence of holiness.  Here’s what John has to say about his own response in verses 17-20:

When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead.  But he laid his right hand on me, saying, “Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one.  I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.  Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this.  As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.

 

Like everyone else who has ever had a real encounter with God, John prostrates himself.  But human fear in the presence of the holy is only half the story.  Like every other time God’s servants fall at his feet this way, Jesus says those wonderful words, “Fear not.”  The fire will not consume those whom the holy One calls into his presence.  This is language drawn from Isaiah.  “I am the first and the last,” Jesus says.  He identifies himself with the God of Israel and he does so again with those words we find across the Old Testament, “I am the living one”—a title closely tied to God’s very name, the I AM.  But in Jesus this title takes on new meaning.  He is the one who died—who was crucified—and whom God raised from death.  He is the firstborn of the resurrection, the firstborn of God’s new creation.  He’s not only alive forevermore, but in conquering death itself, he now holds the keys to death and hades—he holds the keys that will release humanity from bondage.

And in a scene that recalls Isaiah, Jesus commissions John.  There is no purifying coal held to John’s lips as there was to Isaiah’s.  The old Israel was an unclean people in need of redemption, but the new Israel, John and the people, the seven churches to whom he is commanded to write, have already been purified by the blood of the lamb.  They have already been made holy—now they’re being exhorted to persevere.

And, Brothers and Sisters, that brings us back to where we started.  That whole thing about “consider the source”.  Jesus speaks to the Church and John shows us our Lord as he speaks.  And on the one hand we see the God of Israel, the Ancient of Days, the living God, the great I AM.  We enter in the presence of the holy.  This is the God before whom we can only fall on our knees and sing out with the greatest of reverent fear, “Holy, holy, holy!  Lord God Almighty.”  But he is, at one and the same time, the Son who has lovingly humbled himself for our sake, who has taken upon himself our flesh, who has submitted himself to hatred, to abuse, to torture, and to death to redeem a people for himself.  He is the Ancient of Days, but he is also the one of whom we can sing, “The Lord’s my shepherd, I’ll not want.”  He is the good shepherd who has given his life for the sheep and who now draws us near.

Here’s the heart of this revelation.  Here are those three certainties: tribulation, kingdom, and perseverance.  We struggle to reconcile the joint presence of tribulation and kingdom.  How can God’s kingdom be present when we face tribulation?  But this is just it.  Jesus took his throne, he established his kingdom, he won the victory over sin and death through suffering.  And now, Brothers and Sisters, he exhorts his people to follow the same path.  The Church will be victorious, the Church will see the consummation of Jesus’ kingdom one day, but it will triumph over the would-be gods and kings of this present age ultimately through tribulation.  It is not an easy path, but the purpose of this Revelation of Jesus the Messiah is to show us the way and to assure us that our Lord is with us every step we take.

Let’s pray: Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning—and in particular the Revelation of Jesus that you gave to St. John: help us so to hear them, to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them that, through patience, and the comfort of your holy word, we may embrace and for ever hold fast the hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

[1] The Revelation of St. John the Divine (London: A & C Black, 1973), 25.