Northstar Church Blacksburg

The letter to the church of Pergamum encourages those who hold on to the name of Jesus even in the face or persecution. Pergamum is described as a place where Satan has his throne even with its vast wealth of knowledge. This is a sobering reminder that intelligence may lead towards pride and we must be aware of God's ultimate authority and power or Satan may tempt us into intellectual atheism and spiritual anarchy. Jesus's message reminds us that you cannot belong to Christ and sin without conviction and discipline.

In the letter to the church of Smyrna, Jesus encourages the church by assuring them of His knowledge of their affliction, poverty and how others are slandering them. He also seeks to prepare them for future suffering that He tells them is coming. This message is an encouraging and sober reminder for followers of Jesus today to be prepared for hardship and to stand strong in our faith in Christ.

Last Week Pastor Jeff gave us background into the letter to the church of Ephesus. We see that at first the letter tells us the nine goods things about the church, but then shows they abandoned the love they had at first. One negative outweighs all the good because … love is central. You cannot claim to love God and not love His people, especially His church. And you cannot claim to love people if you do not love God. The solution to this problem is to change your mind and your heart thru repentance. Lastly the cross of Christ that provides us a path to paradise.

Last week, Matt shared with us the joyful declaration of biblical Christianity - “Jesus is God.” This week we dive into the letters to the seven church's specifically with the letter to the church of Ephesus. We see that it is Jesus and not the particular church that is Sovereign. There can be no room for pride but to endured hardships for the sake of Jesus Christ. This is seen by the followers of Ephesus as they have not grown weary in the face of hardships. There is a direct relationship between the letters to the churches to how we as Christians have endured with patience, and yet somewhere along the way, began to operate by a system - a list of do’s and don’t’s - rather than love of our lord and savior.

Because of its nature, it is so easy to misunderstand and misinterpret Revelation. Chapter one of Revelation serves to introduce some of the foundational themes and principles that we need to keep in mind as we go through the book of Revelation. What we forget is that Jesus is God and that we can think of God as being full of wrath and angry at us all the time, and Jesus is the one that actually loves us but that God is the gentleness and grace.

Jeff continues our series through Revelation, honing in on the beautiful Magnificence of Christ and his comfort through our trials. As we examine the different titles for Jesus in these verses, we are struck by the breath of Jesus' authority and the depth of His love for us.

Too often we get distracted - even by Jesus Himself, as we seek to control Him or get His attention. We get absorbed in our needs/problems. But Jesus was consistently turning His disciples’ attention away from themselves to the Father and to His mission. Jeff describes why why membership is biblically-based, spiritually encouraging, socially necessary, and mission-centered.

Revelation was written to give us certainty in Jesus’ sovereignty as the events of the final days unfold. As we will see in our study, some of the prophesied events have already taken place. Most of the predicted final days are yet to come. Revelation is meant to encourage us. To prepare us. And to remind us that we are to be set apart and unsurprised by trouble, tribulation, and persecution by telling us that Jesus is coming back.

The last six commands detail how God desires that His people relate with one another. In this message, we consider Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and discover that in it, Jesus connects the heart of God to the commands as He continuously says, "You've heard it said, but I say to you..." Learn how the Ten Commandments should impact our lives and the world daily.

God invites us to enjoy a relationship with him using the first four commandants by describing why he is the only one for us. His glory and power shows his love for us even as we struggle and put idols before his immense wonderment. God invites us to awe in his everlasting glory by seeing his gift in the Sabbath to renew our spiritual, emotional, psychological and physical health.