Faithful in a Bad Place-Pergamum- Rev. 2:12-17; I Kings 19:10-18

Vacations are a real luxury and a great blessing.  I just came back from a vacation at the beach, and it is truly wonderful to be able to hear the ocean waves and feel some sea breeze blowing in.  I am aware that there are billions of people who cannot take a vacation because they have a sickness in their family, or they must work all the time just to survive.  It is really nice to get away from it all and to escape the worries of life for awhile.  However, the desire to escape needs to be held in balance with facing life.  Purpose and rest should always be juxtaposed to each other.  I think we are in a mode today where the desire to escape is truly great.  We have a lot of ways to escape in our culture- you can pick your vehicle for escape—literally.  The name of my car is a Ford Escape.  There are boats, kayaks, jet skis, airplanes, bicycles, four-wheelers, dirt bikes, motorcycles, go carts and more.   We escape life through movies, books, and music.  We escape life through games—and we have a lot of them.  When you’re young you can participate, and when you’re older you generally watch- football, baseball, basketball, soccer, tennis, golf, cards, board games, volleyball, the list goes on- Frisbee, polo, horse shoes.  In fact NSpend.com indicates we are spending almost twice what we did five years ago on entertainment and recreation, and we spend as much on vacations per household as we do on education (about $631/year).    South Carolina’s tourism industry has grown by 18% in the last two years alone!  I would take an 18% return on my money today (when inflation is about 4%).  I would contend that we spend a lot of time and money trying to get away from the pain of life.  I would further contend that we are an escapist culture—yet we still are a frantic culture with high crime rates, high depression rates.  We really don’t know how to love each other very well.  We have one of the highest cohabitation rates in the world—maybe the history of the world.  This has changed in our generation.  We value the loyalty of commitment and perseverance less. More children (in number and percent) are born out of wedlock than ever before in the history of America.  We are escaping our responsibility to raise our children in stable homes, and to love each other through thick and thin.  What we are missing in our escapist culture is something fundamental to the human fabric- and that is loyalty and perseverance. 

John is writing to the church that is in a bad place.  It is like the police station movie, Fort Apache.  It is a church in a bad neighborhood.  It is not a bad neighborhood in terms of looks- it was a beautiful place- high on a conical hill.  It was the capital of Asia, but it was also the center of Emperor Worship.  It was a bad neighborhood spiritually.

Emperor worship is when we place a king or an elected official or a country in the place of God.  Rome was at its height of power when this book was written, and it was a magnificent, powerful thing.  Each year a person was to go to a magistrate give a pinch of incense before a godhead of Caesar and say, “Caesar is Lord.”  This process began when Julius Caesar died, and one of the first places to start this was Pergamum.    This worship was essentially tolerant.  It was seen as a way to unite a very diverse people with different languages, cultures, and religions to the empire.  After you’ve given your pinch of incense you could go and worship any God you pleased.   But to not give this pinch of incense was to not be patriotic.   Some people viewed not giving the pinch of incense worse than refusing to say the pledge of allegiance.  Ironically, this is one of the reasons why the phrase “one nation under God” is so important to Christians.  

Pergamum was the site of the first temple to Caesar.  This is probably what the phrase in our passage “Where Satan has his throne” comes from.  Emperor worship was enthroned in Pergamum.  Antipas, the first Christian martyr in Asia died about three years before this was written.  It is not too much of a stretch to say he probably died because he refused to pinch the incense and say “Caesar is Lord.”  Christians were looked down on as different, as unpatriotic, and were literally being killed.  There was tremendous pressure in such an environment to run away and also to give in to become more like everyone else.  Whenever there is a lot of pressure on the church in terms of persecution, there is also a lot of pressure on the church to just give into the world and become like anyone else.  These are pressures that I believe are rising in our own day in our own land.

The pressure to compromise in this kind of spiritually evil environment showed in two different problems.  One was the compromise of Balaam.  Balaam was paid to destroy the people of God.  He couldn’t do it through some kind of disaster or plague, so he conjured up the idea of destroying the people by temptation.  He tempted them primarily though sexual immorality and secondarily through idol worship.  He would destroy the people of God by taking away their holiness- their otherness- their distinctiveness.  Moab couldn’t defeat them in battle or in magic spells, so they would defeat them through temptation.  The Bible says that the men of God “began to indulge in sexual immorality with Moabite women who invited them to their sacrifices of their gods.  In fact, sexual immorality was part of the worship of the Moabites and Canaanites.  Today, many a strong man of God and woman of God have fallen away from their faith because of the temptation of sexual immorality- the temptation of Balaam.  Two years ago a study found that there appeared to be as much sexual immorality among those who professed Christ as those who did not. For the first time in the history of America this has happened.  The divorce rate for church members is statistically the same as those who are not members.  Divorce is not the unforgivable sin, but it is not the ideal either.  We have fallen into Balaamism, and the church is suffering for it. 
For those who think sexual purity doesn't matter, there is a physical reminder that it does.  It used to be pregnancy, but now it is the scare of AIDS and other STDs.

There was a theological justification for those who gave into sexual temptation.  It was the practice of Nicolaitans.  The church in Pergamum gave into their practices as well.  The Nicolaitans believed what is a growing trend in theology today.  They believed that we are saved by grace so it really doesn’t matter what you believe or what you do.  In fact, they would say, the more you sin, the more God is glorified because he forgives us!  It doesn’t matter if you worship other gods because we are after all saved by grace and no one believes perfectly.  The practical advantage of such a Nicolaitan theology is that no waves are made- no one is offended, and distinctions and persecutions are avoided.  But Christ clearly is not pleased by such a heresy.  Bonhoeffer, one of many Christian martyrs to Hitler, stood up against such theology in Germany in the 1940’s.  He said saying it doesn’t matter what you do/believe because you are saved by grace is an abuse of God’s grace-an d it is.  There is a cost to discipleship- we must take up our cross- persevere and follow Him.  Yet today we hear it again—“All religions are alike, all are different roads to the same place- it doesn’t matter what you believe- just love people.”  We hear things like, "sexual purity is antiquated."  Such talk is like the talk of the Nicolaitans.

Christ’s command to them is to repent or Christ will turn against those who have turned against him.  These are powerful words written in the last book of the Bible.

Christ ends his words to this church that is trying to faithful in an evil place with an encouraging note.  He said he will give two things to those who overcome. 

One is hidden manna.  Manna was the nourishment (daily bread) God provided for His people in the desert.  When we are in the desert of temptation and surrounded by sin and those who tempt us away, it is important to know where our nourishment lies.  God’s giving manna to the people every single day was a reminder that they should trust in God not in their lusts.  They were able to resist Balaam because they were aware God provided for them, and was their source of strength. 

The second thing promised is a white stone with their new name written on it.  White was a symbol of holiness, purity, and God.  When Jesus comes back he is described as being dressed in white.  In ancient Rome when the jury passed judgment- white stones were put into the hat proclaiming innocence and freedom while black stones meant guilt and death.  Often in the ancient world a small stone was given as kind of a ticket.  In large houses, the dependents would receive stones for their allocation of food and money for the day.  Victors at the games were often given a stone that granted them free admission to any event.  A gladiator, if they continued to win, would eventually retire and were given a stone of victory that had the initials SP on it that stood for “spectatum.”  This stood for “one who has valor.”  The Christian who overcomes their obstacles and is victorious over sin is one who is given this stone of victory.

Jesus knows what we have to overcome to get this stone.  He says “I know where you stay- where Satan has his throne.”  What is important is what the Christ does not say.
He does not say, “Satan has his throne there, Antipas died there, so you better high-tail it out of there!”  Perhaps if we lived in Pergamum we would rather hear that advice.  But instead, Christ knows where we stay.  Though we might escape for fresh air every now and then we are not called to try to run away from our problems.  We are not called to run away where life might be more comfortable and the Christian life might be more easy. 

This past week Christian Exodus made the headlines for coming to South Carolina.  Their plan was to have all these Christians move to Anderson County and influence the county through their presence and voting to make it basically a Christian county, and then move on to influence South Carolina in the same way.  I went on their website to see what they believed and they say they basically want to secede from the union.  This, in my mind, is another form of escapism.  Let’s go where everyone agrees with us and make a Christian state.  This is so typical of our culture today when we form new denominations and new churches at the drop of a hat trying to find the perfect church or perfect state.  It is another form of escapism.  What I see in scripture is the call to be faithful to God’s call right where you are.  Oh I suppose there is some value in monasteries or Christian communes, but it is not the norm.  The norm is to stay where you are being salt and light and making where you are a briighter, holier, godlier place.  This is a tough, hard, cross-bearing calling.  It is the calling of the missionary- to go to the dark places and make them light.  It is your calling and mine.  We are called to be missionaries in northwestern Richland and northeaster Lexington counties.  I don’t think Satan’s throne is here either.  We live in a great place, which makes our task of preserving the physical, mental, and spiritual beauty of this place even more important.  Christ knows where we stay.  His eye is on us.  Therefore let us live our lives as missionaries for him!