Pergamum – A Compromised Church (Rev 2: 12-17)

1. GIBC (5 Oct 2025). 2. Friendship Baptist (12 Oct 2025). 3. PMPG (12 Oct 2025). 4. Seedlings (19 Oct 2025).

1. Intro

A few weeks’ ago, I was invited me to speak on one of the churches in the book of Revelation. I welcomed that invitation because in the past few years, I have been observing churches. Some slowly decline into the throes of atrophy. Yet, many are growing. There’s one in particular who just recently completed their building project but are now finding that they do not have enough space! What a wonderful problem to have. They are thinking of having several sites. We’re also in the middle of a sermon series on the Book of Acts, which is about how the early church started and grew, and as my research interest is church revitalization, I willingly obliged to speak. So, today, I want to say a few things about the 3rd church in Revelation, Pergamum!

2. Background: At present, ancient Pergamum is in ruins but close by is Bergama in Izmir Province, Turkeye. There are 2 ancient buildings that we should take note of: The temple of Asklepios, who was the god of healing. They placed sick people in a room of non-poisonous snakes, and contact with the snakes was believed to bring health and healing.

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The Mysterious Healing Centre of Asklepion in Pergamum | Ancient Origins

Smarthistory – The Pergamon Altar

The building on the right is the remnant of the temple dedicated to Zeus, which is now the front of the museum at Bergama. Zeus is the chief God of the Greek pantheon. Now, we will have the Scripture reading.

3. Jesus Holds the Sharp Two-Edged Sword (2:12)

3.1. Jesus’s Words Divide: In Hebrews, we are told that God’s word is sharper than any two- edged sword. In Ephesians, the sword of the Spirit is the word of God. Here, we interpret the two-edged sword to mean Jesus holds truth in his hand and his truth removes us from darkness. It cuts and separates good from bad. Our culture has both good and bad, and Jesus is about to wield that truth against the Pergamum church in order to cleanse it and if that fails, Jesus will close it altogether. Why? Because it is a church that has gone lax and lost its discernment. It has compromised with the surrounding culture, bought its corrupt message, and become a vassal of evil. What message has it bought?

3.2. Church and Culture: we need to understand the culture that we find ourselves in. And I don’t mean understand to go with the flow. I mean really understand why society does what it does. What makes this place tick? Why do people think in a certain way and what are society’s values?  This makes sense as Christians have no business living in hermitage. That means we are not a remote, isolationist, and ignorant community, and therefore unable to communicate with the people of the culture in an idiom they understand. That also means we need to be wise and we can only be wise if we know what Jesus stands for lest we be swept along by the cultural currents of the day. Today, we live in 21st Century post-modern Canada. What is post-modernism? It is a culture that wants to broaden truth. There is a greater acceptance of norms and values across the board. An example is when our king said – when he was Prince of Wales - that he is not just gong to be the defender of the faith when he becomes king but the defender of all faiths! That’s post-modernism; many truths!

3.3. First Century Pergamum: Here people were influenced by Grecian culture. Jesus tells John that the Pergamum church is where Satan dwells. The chief influencer of culture is religion. Here, there are 2 temples. The 1st temple was where the serpent was the chief motif. The touch of the serpent was considered a healing touch. And the 2nd temple honors Zeus. Zeus is the chief god and this idolatry blinds the people against the Gospel of redemption in Jesus. That tells us all we need to know about who rules. But, amidst all this, the Gospel has been known to change cultures and change the hearts of the people. That is Yahweh’s will for his church.

3.4. The Trojan Horse: what has slipped through and severely weakened the church was the teaching of Balaam and the Nicolaitans, who have caused many to be in spiritual bondage. The word “Nicolaitans” is from the Greek Nikan - conqueror - and Laos, means the people*.* Nicolaitans mean conqueror of the people! Whereas, “Balaam” is made up of “Baal” and “am” (“the people of Baal”)!  **Both groups seek to conquer the minds of the people. Both encourage the people to   eat food sacrificed to the idols and practice sexual immorality. Eating food sacrificed to idols is not an innocuous practice even if these idols are made of wood and stone, and appear powerless. They are anything but. These foods are part of a worship ritual where the spirits and gods are special guests. It means the eaters are forming a bond with the spiritual powers to whom the food is offered to. Behind the façade of the wood or stone idol are spiritual forces that those demons are a part of and eating the food means a connecting with those forces. Here, the Balaam- Nicolaitan group had a practice that justifies sexual immorality. As we are all sexual beings, you can imagine the instant popularity that this philosophy will receive even among church people. The most popular groups are those that teach sexual laxity. The culture supports such groups that wish to break way from the straight and narrow way that Jesus prescribes. The way of Jesus is the way that treats sex as something sacred and confined to the marital bed. Why because the body is holy and is not meant to be shared in a popular way. What I do with my outer self impacts my inner self.

4. Exposing The Lie of the Culture

4.1. Hurting Oneself: The world encourages us to get gratification from wherever. The inner self is one’s essence and can you imagine if someone whether male or female shares that inner self with anyone we come across. They have shared more than their physicality but their essential being!

“16 Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” 17 But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit. 18 Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. 19 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own.”  (1 Cor 6:16-19)

“It does not matter what the two people . . . have in mind. . . . The reality of the act, unfelt and unnoticed by them, is this: It unites them—body and soul—to each other. It unites them in that strange, impossible to pinpoint sense of “one flesh.” There is no such thing as casual sex, no matter how casual people are about it. The Christian assaults reality in his night out at the brothel. He uses a woman and puts her back in a closet where she can be forgotten; but the reality is that he has put away a person with whom he has done something that was meant to inseparably join them. This is what is at stake for Paul in the question of sexual intercourse between unmarried people. “(Lewis Smedes)   ****

4.2. Differ non- Judgementally: Christians have historically come across as prudish and sometimes as judgmental in the past. We speak of ethics without understanding why we abstain. Allow me to put it this way. When we disagree with the culture we can do so self righteously and judgementally, we lose our audience. When we do so respectfully and thoughtfully, and when we give good alternate grounds, people who instinctively know we are right but who choose to disagree with us because we appear intolerant and judgemental, we gain their respect. Living in a post-modern age, there is renewed respect for the spiritual. It takes very little persuasion to move the conversation from spiritual to spirit. That means it is a strong and valid point even to secular ears, that the reason why we don’t is because the connection is not just physical but spiritual. That means lax sexuality causes great harm and contamination to our spirit, the inner person. And we become a slave to that lifestyle.