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In the Jewish world into which Jesus came, the theme of holy war was prominent. There was the memory, of course, of the Maccabeans, who revolted violently against the Greeks, their overlords. In Jesus’ day, the very presence of Jewish zealots among the disciples of Jesus highlights the militaristic dimension of some of the thinking, the popular thinking of that time. For them defending the faith meant literally going to war.  

We think of what happened in England during the period of Oliver Cromwell, where resisting the king led to violence and to the death of a king, all in the interests of preserving the faith. More recently, Christine and I in our first church in Northern Ireland back in the 70s, we were there during “The Troubles.” “The Troubles” were between the north and the south, between Northern Ireland which had been settled by Scots who’d been evicted from Scotland by the English, of course. Many had stopped in Northern Ireland, just across the Irish Sea and the rest all kept going to the Carolinas and other points in these United States. But when we were there, the issue was the rise of military groups within the Republican movement in Northern Ireland, and a rash of bombings and so on that was taking place. Those who felt bound to the United Kingdom were goaded, one might say, to think in terms of military action.  

So in our church on a Sunday evening, as I was preaching, I could hear the paramilitaries mustering themselves in our church car park that was right behind the wall behind the pulpit. And they would be gathering there with their paramilitary uniforms. In fact, at one stage the whole area of where our church was sealed off from the outside world.

Police and soldiers were unable to get in, burning cars prevented any access, and paramilitaries took over and were found in all the high-rise buildings, and so on. And in the church the conflict was no more simply unionism or nationalism, monarchy or republicanism, it was Catholic and Protestant. So holy war has a bad reputation. And yet when we come to the book of Revelation, holy war imagery is everywhere. You can see that in our text in verse 16: 

“I will come to you,” Jesus says, “and war against them with the sword of my mouth.”  

Revelation 2:16

Richard Bauckham of Cambridge University has called the book of Revelation “a Christian war scroll”, and there’s no doubt that as you read the book you discover that we’re led to understand that the Christian and the church are locked in a latter-day war. A war that began with Jesus’ resurrection. A war that will not cease until Jesus comes again. In fact, throughout the New Testament we learn that the grace that reconciles us to God alienates us from the world and mobilizes us for battle. Each of these seven letters to the churches assumes that we as Christian people and as Christian churches are not simply observers of but are combatants in this latter day holy war. 

You can see that in the language of the promises to those who conquer, to those who overcome, in the mobilization of the members:  

“He who has an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”  

Revelation 2:17

But having said all of that, I also have to say that the warfare that is in view here is spiritual rather than physical, metaphorical rather than militaristic, religious rather than secular. All that’s true, but the war is on, and the battle is real, casualties there will be, and triumph is sure. Someone has said this, “Revelation makes lavish use of holy war language while transferring its meaning to a non-military means of triumphing over evil.” So I want us to listen to Jesus as he speaks to us in this letter, because he’s speaking to all the churches everywhere at all times, as he’s doing in each one of these letters that we’re studying. He speaks to us here of context and conflict and conquest. 

He speaks to us of context. Jesus says to this church,  

“I know where you dwell.”  

Revelation 2:13

“I know where you dwell.” Like a bully at my school once said to me, “I know where you live, Goligher.” It was terrifying, but here it’s not terrifying; here it’s reassuring. Jesus is speaking to his church. “I know where you dwell.” We’ve already learned from this letter Jesus is present with his churches all the time. He possesses perfect knowledge of his churches. He knows the environment where his churches are placed.  

Now let me tell you a bit about Pergamum. Pergamum was a regional seat of government. The Roman regional governor lived and ruled there, though there’s no mention of him in this letter. In fact, what’s, what’s amazing as you read the New Testament is that we’re told – and we were reminded this this morning as we were praying for the President and the Vice President, past and present – that the Bible tells us that we are to respect those in authority. We’re to pray for those in authority, and by the way, if we fail them by praying for them, they’ll only make more mistakes than they’re destined to make because of the fact that they’re human and we’re human and the world is a messed up place. So let’s remember to keep praying for them. But nonetheless, there’s very little reference made to the outside world.  

Jesus, you see, is far more concerned for his church. His primary interest is his church, and that’s who he’s speaking to in this letter to Pergamum. Pergamum was also a strong center of paganism. If you visited the city, you’d be amazed at the number of altars and temples there. There was a thousand feet high hill that dominated the city. On top of the hill was a huge, I might say humongous, an immense altar to Zeus. The main god who was worshiped there is Asclepius, was known as the savior god. He was the ancient Roman god of healing. He’s familiar to us because of his symbol his symbol was that of a staff with a snake curled round it. That symbol is still used today in medicine. According to mythology his children included Hygieia, the goddess of health, and Panacea the goddess of healing, and so crowds of sick people would come to Pergamum to worship at his shrine and to find healing for themselves. 

Jesus does not ignore the presence of the savior god of Pergamum, because he’s going to refer to Satan who is that ancient serpent, as he’s defined in the book of Revelation. So Pergamum then was the center of that kind of worship. People came there to be healed. They came to the famous school of medicine there. And Pergamum was the very first city way back in 29 B.C. to build and dedicate a temple to Augustus Caesar. That’s the context of this church, but then Jesus goes on to tell us about the conflict. I want to put this what he has to say about the conflict. I want to break it down into three parts for you.  

First of all, it teaches us, Jesus teaches us that Christianity exalts Christ. Listen carefully to what he says in verse 13. Jesus commends them,  

“You hold fast my name, and you did not deny my faith even in the days of Antipas my faithful witness.”  

Revelation 2:13

The name Antipas comes from “antipater” or “pator” and it means “in place of father or the father.” This reminds us of course of Jesus. Jesus came into the world in place of the Father. “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.” He speaks to us the words the Father wants him to speak, and Antipas followed Jesus in that respect. He sought to follow Jesus as Jesus had lived his life. In fact, Jesus points that out by using a designation that is used of he himself. Jesus uses it of this man. He was a faithful witness. He had the family resemblance. He was like Jesus who in his life sought to honor the Father and obey the Father. So did this man Antipas and he was killed for doing so.  

But what is the issue? You see, we will not understand what Christians mean by holy war unless you understand what the issues are at stake. Look how Jesus summarizes them: my name and my faith. What does he mean by these words? What does he mean, for example, by his name? His name stands for himself, who he is, what he has done. It encompasses what we Christians talk about when we talk about his person and his work, his divine being and his saving action as a man on our behalf. These people held fast to his name. The language suggests they were holding fast with both hands to his name, to the revelation that they’ve been given of who he is and what he is. 

So let’s make this very clear right at the very beginning. What is of utmost importance to the Christian is the name of Jesus. Who he is and what he has accomplished on our behalf. That is the preoccupation of the church. “There are lords many,” says the Apostle Paul, “and there are names many.” In other words, there are many figures who demand our attention, but in fact the church, the church’s attention is focused, taken up with, absorbed by our attention to the name of Jesus, openly acknowledging and proclaiming that Jesus is Lord. On the other hand, when it comes to the faith that is our faith in Jesus, means openly confessing him, avowing him, professing him as our Savior. It means not being ashamed of him, not shifting and judging or compromising or befuddling or discombobulating what we say about him. When we’re speaking about him, we speak the truth about him, we say clearly what we believe about Jesus. Like the Apostle Peter did, confronted with all kinds of opposition, he says this: 

“There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” 

Acts 4:12

Only one name, only one way of salvation, found in Jesus and in Jesus alone. So when we’re asked the question as we frequently are: “Do Muslims and Christians worship the same God?”, our answer is simply, clearly, respectfully, “No. No.” Muslims are our fellow citizens, we want them to be safe in America, as we want everybody in America to be safe, but we don’t worship the same gods. 

Antipas found out the hard way. What this is, what we know about his story, he was summoned to appear before the proconsul of the province who met him in the courtyard beside a bust of the emperor Augustus. All Antipas had to do was to take a few grains of the incense and throw them on the fire and say with his hand on his heart “Kurios kaiser.” “Kurios kaiser — Caesar is Lord.” But how could he?  

How did he become a Christian? How do you become a Christian? You become a Christian by being able to say with your lips, confess with your mouth, with your hand on your heart: “Kurios Jesus.” “Curios Jesus – Jesus is Lord.” Antipas could not renege on his confession of Jesus as Lord. He could not because he saw that that would be a sign of him saying, “Jesus is cursed, and Caesar is Lord”, and he was killed for it. We’re in the same boat. What we have to say to the world is precisely what this man was forced into saying to the world. That despite all the claimants for our attention, our affection, our allegiance, it’s only “Kurios Jesus – Jesus is Lord.”  

“God has given him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that he is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” 

Philippians 2:9-10

So when it comes down to it, and we’re faced with Caesar and Jesus, we are to “give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” that is, to the powers that be what belongs to them. Our prayers belong to them. Honor and respect belong to them. But we may only give the allegiance of our hearts to King Jesus because Christianity exalts Christ.  

Christianity promotes holiness. Christianity promotes holiness. For not only does Christ define what we should believe, Christ defines how we should behave. Now here’s where we very often make a mistake as Christian people. We allow ourselves to become sidetracked into talking about the world around us, the world’s wrongs, and sins and evil, the things it does that are incompatible with Christian faith. We talk a lot about those things. It’s almost like a diversion really from examining our own hearts. 

Jesus is not talking to the world here; he’s talking to his church here. Listen to him as he talks to his church. To say that you know God and trust in Christ, and to ignore all the clear demands of Jesus, commands of Jesus, is for you to be a liar. What we read is that specifically the church of Pergamum harbored people who were trying to come to terms with the spirit of the age, the zeitgeist of the times. Some of these people we’re told, we read this, were holding to the teachings of Balaam and to the teaching of the Nicolaitans. 

Balaam, Old Testament character, a prophet, but not of Israel, taught Balak the local king to put a stumbling block before Israel, so that Israel might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice immorality or infidelity. Somebody’s put it like this: “One of the simpler lessons that, is that the food one eats, and the people one eats it with really do matter. To eat is always to commune, whether with the meal or with the table companion, but it may also mean to commune with the god that they represent. Eating with people with someone establishes intimacy.” That’s why Jesus calls eating meat sacrificed to idols a kind of infidelity, sexual immorality. 

The church is the bride of Christ; and if she is sleeping with the enemy she is being co-opted and manipulated by her adversary the devil. What Balaam did was to encourage Balak to get the Moabite girls to seduce Israelite men to go to their idolatrous feasts. Balaam knew that if they went there, they were engaging in the idolatry that these girls were engaging in, and therefore they were being sinful against their God. So the Nicolaitans were doing exactly the same thing. They were doing what many progressive so-called Christians are doing today, insinuating into the camp of Israel – now into the church – the idea that Christian liberty is freedom to do what you want. Freedom to tolerate what you want, freedom to go in any direction that you want, freedom to think that you can support things that are outside and away from the things of God. All you need is a little bit of the world, the Nicolaitans suggest. 

The language of infidelity here is used in the Bible, it’s the word “pornea,” but it’s used in the bible of political infidelity. When Jerusalem, you remember, instead of trusting in the Lord made foreign alliances. It’s used metaphor, metaphoric infidelity, when the church as the bride of Christ is unfaithful to its heavenly Bridegroom. Christianity promotes holiness. 

And then thirdly, Christianity resists Satan. All around us is a suggestion and sometimes the pressure for the church to become friends with the world. Yet the Bible says very clearly that friendship with the world is enmity against God. The basis of this enmity goes all the way back to the garden of Eden, where enmity is put between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. In other words, the church is in eternal enmity with the with the ancient serpent as he’s described in Revelation — the devil and Satan.  

The people of Pergamum saw that serpent everywhere in their city. Jesus is reminding them of what the serpent ultimately represents – the devil and all his works. He is the god of this age. He is the ruler of this world. He is your adversary the devil. He is a liar and the father of lies. He is a murderer from the beginning. He is the accuser of the brethren. “The whole world,” says John, “lies in the power of the evil one.” Jesus says to Pergamum, “I know where you dwell where Satan’s throne is.” Where the devil, Satan, dwells. In other words, where Christians live in this world Satan also dwells. The world, he is the god of this world. He manipulates and he inhabits the world of our leaders and our structures and our institutions. Those who have killed Christians will kill Christians again. And though we pray for a quiet life – which we pray for, as we read from First Timothy this morning – as we pray that we might have a quiet life and a peaceful life we are not guaranteed it, because it’s wartime.  

Our problem is that very often we think the problem is with people, be those people politicians or celebrities or our neighbors or the gangs or whoever it might be, and we point at them, and we throw our stones at, verbal stones at them, and we say, “Look at the evil we see all around us in the world here”. Do you know the Bible doesn’t do that? Jesus is not doing that here. He’s not talking about any people who are doing the stuff that he’s telling the Christians not to get involved with. No, he goes straight to the top. 

When we look at what’s bad in the world, we need to look behind and beyond that to the source. That’s where our real enemy lies. Our enemy, says the Apostle Paul in Ephesians, is not flesh and blood. It is not flesh and blood. We are struggling “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” That is real. When someone goes into high office, the higher you get, the more power you have, the greater the temptation. That’s why there’s a warning about elevating people too quickly to office in the church. Why? Because power tempts, and people fall. We have to realize, brothers and sisters, when we’re talking about the evil in the world the thing we’re talking about when we talk as Christians is what lies behind and beneath that evil – the ancient Prince of Hell who makes a power grab for the affections of men and women in the world. 

So Jesus then equates compromise with the world, with sexual infidelity. Now that’s a good, a good way of connecting it, because both of them – spiritual and real physical infidelity – involve giving and taking, a binding and adjoining, a taking in of sorts. So when the church adopts or adapts to the philosophies of the world and takes them into its own thinking, it is committing spiritual adultery. Here’s how it works: one wants to please and to be pleased by one’s lover. So we accommodate our interpretations to suit science, or we take up the world’s latest iteration of what human identity is. We become unwilling to say or believe things that will cause our lover – the world – to reject us. Being united to the wrong someone changes us. We know that at human levels. What we will do or say or even think to keep the pleasure and the perks of their company. But the world is a tyrant of a lover, always demanding more change, more accommodation, and always with the threat of rejecting us or punishing us. 

Somebody wrote this week, “I think today the temptation is to seek the approval of this kind of lover by capitulation to its demands, seeking to please, becoming invisible, or losing one’s voice. The world will always be an abusive lover that consumes until there’s nothing left but a quiet, subservient, dependent lover who has no agency whatsoever. And such an abusive lover woos their victim in with flattery and false praise until they’re addicted to the affirmations and desperate for it.” The conflict and then the conquest.  

We’re in a war zone. This letter is a wartime communication. It’s a summons for the church to face the enemies without and within. And so Jesus identifies himself as the one who “has a sharp two-edged sword.” In chapter 1 we read he has a sharp two-edged sword coming out of his mouth. This is not a literal sword, in other words. this is his speech. He is the Word of God himself. What he says is the word of truth. What he says can cut right into the heart of things, and separate even things that are inseparable – the soul from the body from the, from the spirit. This word of Jesus is the word of Truth. He will bring the truth to bear upon the world. The world is in the grip of the lie. Every agency of the world is in the grip of the lie. That’s the great message of the New Testament. And Jesus comes as the truth to break into the darkness, and to speak the truth. And if the church doesn’t repent, Jesus says, “I’ll come there myself. I’ll visit the church, and my word will do its work.” “My word will do its work.”  

So this is a spiritual battle, you see, with spiritual weapons.  

“The weapons of our warfare are not carnal or natural but spiritual and mighty under God to demolish strongholds.” 

2 Corinthians 10:4

Those concentrations of evil, Satanic power, that operate in the world and in every area, every area of the world – don’t think your area is unaffected – strongholds everywhere. 

Well, Jesus ends with a reassurance:  

“To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and give him a white stone, with a new name written on it that no one knows except the one who receives it.” 

Revelation 2:17

It ends on a note of intimacy. Jesus comes to his bridegroom, and he distinguishes, and he speaks to those who are his own. “I myself will give them.” It’s the beatific vision; it’s seeing Jesus face to face. It’s being with him, being like him. He will give us the hidden manna. There’s is a great feast coming, we don’t know what’s on the menu, but he’s going to show us the menu. He’s going to sit us down at the table. He’s going to refresh us and meet the deepest needs of our lives. And we will absorb his love, we will be enraptured by this. And he will tell us something about himself, each individual one of us something about himself, that no one else knows. But you, But you. That’s where we’re going. That’s Jesus’ promise. May God help us as we fight the good fight of faith, not with weapons of man’s making, but with the word of God, and with the promises of Jesus ringing in our ears.  

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Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: By Liam Goligher. © 2024 Tenth Presbyterian Church. Website: tenth.org