Tag Archives: Letters to the Churches

The Message to the Church in Ephesus

2 “Write this letter to the angel of the church in Ephesus. This is the message from the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand, the one who walks among the seven gold lampstands:

² “I know all the things you do. I have seen your hard work and your patient endurance. I know you don’t tolerate evil people. You have examined the claims of those who say they are apostles but are not. You have discovered they are liars. ³ You have patiently suffered for me without quitting.

⁴ “But I have this complaint against you. You don’t love me or each other as you did at first! ⁵ Look how far you have fallen! Turn back to me and do the works you did at first. If you don’t repent, I will come and remove your lampstand from its place among the churches. ⁶ But this is in your favor: You hate the evil deeds of the Nicolaitans, just as I do.

⁷ “Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches. To everyone who is victorious I will give fruit from the tree of life in the paradise of God.

The Message to the Church in Smyrna

⁸ “Write this letter to the angel of the church in Smyrna. This is the message from the one who is the First and the Last, who was dead but is now alive:

⁹ “I know about your suffering and your poverty—but you are rich! I know the blasphemy of those opposing you. They say they are Jews, but they are not, because their synagogue belongs to Satan. ¹⁰ Don’t be afraid of what you are about to suffer. The devil will throw some of you into prison to test you. You will suffer for ten days. But if you remain faithful even when facing death, I will give you the crown of life.

¹¹ “Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches. Whoever is victorious will not be harmed by the second death.

The Message to the Church in Pergamum

¹² “Write this letter to the angel of the church in Pergamum. This is the message from the one with the sharp two-edged sword:

¹³ “I know that you live in the city where Satan has his throne, yet you have remained loyal to me. You refused to deny me even when Antipas, my faithful witness, was martyred among you there in Satan’s city.

¹⁴ “But I have a few complaints against you. You tolerate some among you whose teaching is like that of Balaam, who showed Balak how to trip up the people of Israel. He taught them to sin by eating food offered to idols and by committing sexual sin. ¹⁵ In a similar way, you have some Nicolaitans among you who follow the same teaching. ¹⁶ Repent of your sin, or I will come to you suddenly and fight against them with the sword of my mouth.

¹⁷ “Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches. To everyone who is victorious I will give some of the manna that has been hidden away in heaven. And I will give to each one a white stone, and on the stone will be engraved a new name that no one understands except the one who receives it.

The Message to the Church in Thyatira

¹⁸ “Write this letter to the angel of the church in Thyatira. This is the message from the Son of God, whose eyes are like flames of fire, whose feet are like polished bronze:

¹⁹ “I know all the things you do. I have seen your love, your faith, your service, and your patient endurance. And I can see your constant improvement in all these things.

²⁰ “But I have this complaint against you. You are permitting that woman—that Jezebel who calls herself a prophet—to lead my servants astray. She teaches them to commit sexual sin and to eat food offered to idols. ²¹ I gave her time to repent, but she does not want to turn away from her immorality.

²² “Therefore, I will throw her on a bed of suffering, and those who commit adultery with her will suffer greatly unless they repent and turn away from her evil deeds. ²³ I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am the one who searches out the thoughts and intentions of every person. And I will give to each of you whatever you deserve.

²⁴ “But I also have a message for the rest of you in Thyatira who have not followed this false teaching (‘deeper truths,’ as they call them—depths of Satan, actually). I will ask nothing more of you ²⁵ except that you hold tightly to what you have until I come. ²⁶ To all who are victorious, who obey me to the very end,

To them I will give authority over all the nations.
²⁷ They will rule the nations with an iron rod
    and smash them like clay pots.

²⁸ They will have the same authority I received from my Father, and I will also give them the morning star!

²⁹ “Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches.

Revelation 2

Dear God, I’ll be teaching a Sunday school lesson at a local church this morning on these letters. Frankly, studying them closely has been a good reminder to me that you don’t just look the other way at our sin. You bring us to yourself. You call us to yourself. You offer forgiveness. But then you still command us to go and sin no more. You tell us, “You have heard it said…, but I say…,” raising the bar to a level that is uncomfortable for even the most self-righteous person. So this morning we will talk about not loving you enough, not loving others enough, and making compromises with sin. We will talk about how doing all of the right things and even being faithful in the midst of persecution is a problem if our hearts are still not discerning and allowing you to examine us for sin we’ve allowed to infiltrate our lives. Sin I’ve allowed to infiltrate my life.

So here is my lesson for this morning that you and I worked on yesterday (at least I hope you were part of it–I think you were):

The Set-Up

• John was on Patmos in exile for preaching about Jesus.
• Jesus appears to him and identifies himself.
• Jesus tells him to write everything he sees down and send it to the 7 churches in Asia

The Church at Ephesus

About the city itself:

• Important trade city.
• Beautiful city with many temples
  • Temple to Artemis, one of seven wonders of ancient world
    • Artemis was goddess of the hunt, the wilderness, wild animals, transitions, nature, vegetation, childbirth, care of children, and chastity
  • Also had amphitheater that held 45,000
• Visited by Paul, Timoth, Priscilla, Aquila, and Apollos.
  • Some traditions say Apostle John lived there in old age.

How does Jesus describe the Ephesians:

• The Good
  • Hard working
    • What kind of work is Jesus referring to?
  • Patient endurance
    • What were they patiently enduring?
  • Rejection of evil people
    • What would an evil person look like for them to reject?
    • What would rejection look like?
  • Discerning who is a false apostle and rejecting
    • How do you identify a false apostle (Christian)?
  • Patiently suffering for Jesus
    • What do you think their suffering looked like?
• The Bad
  • Don’t love (agape) God/Jesus/Holy Spirit like they used to?
    • Agape, Eros, Phileo, & Storge
      • Agape (ἀγάπη): This refers to unconditional, selfless love, often associated with divine love or charity. 
      • ·         Eros (ἔρως): This describes passionate, romantic love, often involving physical attraction and desire. 
      • ·         Philia (φιλία): This denotes the love between friends, characterized by affection, loyalty, and shared experiences. 
      • Storge (στοργή): This refers to the love between family members, particularly between parents and children, highlighting natural affection and bond. 
    • What does agape love for God look like in this case?
  • Don’t love (agape) each other like they used to?
    • What does agape love for each other mean or look like in this case?

How do you think “The Bad” happened?

• How does one or a collective group lose their agape love for God and others?
• What does it look like when a person or group of people look like the church in Ephesus?
  • Quoting Earl Palmer: In this way the love of God had become for the Ephesians a theoretical starting fact, one of the sentences on the menu, but not the very daily bread by which they were even alive in the first place and through which they would continue to stay alive. This was a spiritual illness that haunted Ephesus, and until this letter arrived, it was an illness of which they were probably unaware.
• Selfishness creeps in: It seems like when selfishness creeps in we just don’t have the capacity to love God and love those around us like we should, or even at all. We start getting concerned about our rights. Then we eventually start to fight for ourselves instead of for others. We stop sacrificing for others and start to expect others to sacrifice for us.
• What other areas of our lives does this pattern of losing our agape for others play out?
  • How do we keep that from happening?

Hope for repentance:

• Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches. To everyone who is victorious I will give fruit from the tree of life in the paradise of God.
  • “Victorious” is repentance.

The Church at Smyrna

About the city itself:

• Wealthy city 40 miles north of Ephesus
• Temples to different Greek and Roman gods, including Zeus and the “goddess of Rome.”

How does Jesus describe the church in Smyrna:

• The Good
  • They faithfully suffer through persecution and poverty
    • Their poverty might be, at least partially, due to persecution
    • Poverty can be especially difficult in a wealthy environment
    • They might be persecuted because of denouncing worship of other gods or the emperor in Rome
• The Bad
  • None

Jesus’s encouragement to them

• Not much material hope for this present world
  • No promises of wealth
  • No promises of physically surviving
• Promise of not being harmed by the “second death.”
  • Acknowledges the existence of Satan (verse 9) and/or the devil (verse 10)
  • Satan/devil does not have ultimate power.

Hope for repentance:

• Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches. Whoever is victorious will not be harmed by the second death.
• Earl Palmer: As a Christian I am able to face up to tragedy as tragedy and not artificially to assume the stnce that it has somehow not really happened. It means that there are bad experiences and events that happen to us and because of us. These events are negative and harmful. They are like jagged rocks that scar the landscape of our life’s journey. But the discovery we make in the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that they very landscape uon which the angry outcroppings stand is surrounded by a larger grace and will so that life can go on. The field will grow see and bear healthy crops because the power of God’s gift of life is greater than the deadening effects of either human sin or cosmic evil. This is the reason we do not lose hope; this is also the reason we are enabled to call a jagged rock a jagged rock. “I will give you the crown of life (verse 10).”

Rebuking the cultism of fear:

• We do not need the world’s power to stand up to dangers of this age.
• Jesus gave us four tools and four tools only to impact the world around us:
  • Prayer, service, persuasion, and suffering.

The Church at Pergamum (Pergamos)

About the city itself:

• 45 miles north of Smyrna
• Was the Roman capital for the area (133 B.C.) (throne of Satan acknowledges its role as capital for the region)
• Center of emperor worship in the Roman world.
• Many impressive temples to Asklepios, Zeus, Athena, Nikephoids, Dionysus, and others.

How does Jesus describe the church at Pergamum:

• The Good
  • Faithful in the face of persecution
    • Antipas martyred
  • Do not deny being followers of Jesus
• The Bad
  • Eat food sacrificed to idols
    • 1 Corinthians 8:4-13
  • Sexual immorality
    • What do we make of the “sexual immorality” Jesus refers to here?

How do you think “The Bad” happened?

• Allowed outside influence.
• Gave into the temptation of something they already wanted.

Hope for repentance:

• Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches. To everyone who is victorious I will give some of the manna that has been hidden away in heaven. And I will give to each one a white stone, and on the stone will be engraved a new name that no one understands except the one who receives it.
  • How do we examine our own hearts and discern what sins we have allowed into our lives?
  • The manna is the good food we need as opposed to the junk food we have selfishly pursued
  • Earl Palmer: The white stone was a symbol in the Roman world used in legal trials, academic grading systems, and at athletic games…The point is dramatically symbolized for the Christians at Pergamum. Their drift into sinfulness does not need to be the last word for either themselves or for others. In spite of the harm that has happened, there can be healing—a new identity to fulfill the identity distorted by sin; healthy food from God who knows of the human need to be fed and healed, and made whole.

The Church at Thyatira

About the city itself:

• 30 miles inland (east) of Pergamum.
• Outpost to protect the trade road between Pergamum and Sardis.
• More trade guilds than any other Asian city (Sir William Ramsey).
  • In the biblical context, a trade guild was a group of individuals practicing the same craft or profession, organized for mutual protection, social, and religious benefits. These guilds were less like modern labor unions and more like fraternal orders, focused on regulating trade, ensuring quality, and providing social support for their members. 
  • Big temptation to give into religious views of trade guild in order to be able to commercially participate and survive.

How does Jesus describe the church at Thyatira

• The Good
  • Love
  • Faith
  • Service
  • Patient endurance
• The Bad
  • Focused around one person and her influence: Jezebel
    • She is leading the people in the same type of sins described for Pergamum
      • Sexual sin
      • Eating food offered to idols.

How do you think “The Bad” happened?

• Why did some follow Jezebel
  • Gave into the temptation of something they already wanted.
• Who are people who have the opportunity to be Jezebels in our lives?

Explicit promises for both good and bad groups

• Jezebel and her followers
  • Great suffering for Jezebel and those who follow her
  • Jezebel’s children will die
  • Each will get what they deserve
• Those who repent and/or remain faithful and do not follow Jezebel
  • No further suffering will happen beyond what they have already endured.
  • They will get authority over all the nations

This one closes differently than the first three letters.

• Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches.

Father, I want this to be a time of real self-examination and repentance. I’ll do the other three letters next week, and then we will see how to tie it all together. For right now, however, I just want us to sit with these four churches and the Holy Spirit and ask that our hearts be examined. Convict us where we need to be convicted. Comfort us where we need to be comforted. Teach us through your Holy Spirit and through each other.

I offer this prayer to you in Jesus and with your Holy Spirit,

Amen