A tenuous cease-fire has at least temporarily silenced the rockets and artillery in Lebanon.  Both Israel and Hezbollah are quick to declare victory, although only time will tell who the real winners were.  As I read and study the aftermath of those 5 weeks of fighting, I am not sure that Israel was the decisive winner as it had been in previous wars with its neighbors.  Perhaps it is a combination of several things: 1) having a Prime Minister who has no experience with the military, thus not fully understanding military strategy; 2) being confronted with a different type of enemy this time - Hezbollah was neither the conventional armies of Syria or Egypt that Israel has faced before, nor was it the disorganized PA gangs that Israel faced in Gaza; Hezbollah was well armed and well trained and fought the new type of warfare - a terrorist guerrilla style; and 3) one wonders about the spirit of the Israeli people to maintain this constant alert status at all times. 

 

I was asked this week if I thought the cease-fire would hold.  Honestly, I am not that optimistic about it for several reasons.  First, the cease-fire does not address the real cause of the war in the first place - the intrusion of Hezbollah into sovereign Israeli territory and the kidnapping of two soldiers.  Nothing is said in the present cease-fire about those soldiers nor their return.  Second, it was Israel's intention to force Hezbollah into submission.  But, according to the cease-fire Hezbollah does not have to disarm.  In fact, I read this morning that the leaders of Hezbollah have told the generals in the Lebanese army that they will not rearm themselves if the Lebanese army does not search for their cache of weapons hidden in the southern zone.  Third, the French are being put in charge of the UNIFIL forces, and we know about the French.  Someone has said that they will run at the first sign of trouble - and now the French leaders are saying that it will take a year to get the 15,000 men in place.  And finally, Kofi Annan is really in charge of this whole operation.  And, if you know anything about him, he has never found anything of value in Israel.  So, friends, I do believe that we will see a cessation of fighting for awhile - maybe even for several months.  But a greater struggle lies on the horizon...this time it will include Syria and possibly Iran. 

 

Now, let us return to our study in Revelation 2 - the seven churches.  We noticed that the first church, Ephesus, was admonished by God to return to its first love.  The second church, Smyrna, was commended by God because of its perseverance in the midst of persecution.  Now, in verses 12-17 we encounter the third church, Pergamum, a church that was guilty of compromise.  I am reminded of the old Latin proverb that states, "He who lies down with dogs will rise up with fleas."  Certainly the church at Pergamum had more than its share of fleas. 

 

 

    A.  Physical description

 

        1.  Pergamum was located twelve miles north of Smyrna

        2.  It was a very rich city and a town where the arts and sciences were greatly respected

        3.  It was famous for its parchment or paper, which was developed because the Egyptians would not allow the export of papyrus

        4.  The city possessed a library numbering 250,000 volumes, but by this time that library had been removed to Egypt as a gift to Cleopatra from Anthony

       5.  Pergamum was often called a "Cathedral City" because of its idolatry" shrines to Athena, Dionysius, Zeus, and Asclepius

 

    B.  Spiritual description

 

         1.  Pergamum was bankrupt spiritually

         2.  It was a center of Roman worship with a temple to the goddess Roma located here.  She had been declared to be divine by Caesar Augustus

         3.  There was a temple to Asclepius, a snake cult.  People who were sick visited this temple to seek healing by the snakes kept there.  The most important snake was called "Savior"

 

 

    A.  God knew their situation

 

         1.  God was aware of their surroundings

         2.  God knows our difficult situations

         3.  As the believers in Pergamum lived surrounded by evil, we, too, need to be aware that we are surrounded by the forces of sin.  We need to be alert to the ever-present dangers around us; we need to have the full armor of God on (Ephesians 6:10-13); we cannot drop our guard

 

    B.  They held fast to the name of Jesus

 

         1.  The verb means "to hold onto desperately with all one's power"

         2.  This indicates the strong pressures from without seeking to destroy the Church - it wasn't easy being a Christian in Pergamum

 

 

         1.  Here was a church that stood resolutely for Christ.

         2.  They even had some martyred for their stand for Christ; they could have backed down or softened their stand on issues, but they didn't; doctrinally - they were very solid

 

 

    A.  Here was a congregation that tried to mix good and evil; truth and a lie.

    B.  They had compromised their spiritual convictions.

 

         - "If you can't beat them...join them"

        - "There's nothing wrong with keeping up with the times.  After all, we need to be contemporary."

 

        - These people had softened their stand on the principles of God's Word.   (I would encourage you to read Numbers 25:1-9 and Numbers 31:1-18 of Balaam and how he persuaded the Moabite king to get Israel to compromise morally and spiritually)

 

    C.  Let me ask this question: Have we begun to collapse inwardly?

 

        - How about the music we listen to?  The common themes today are violence, sex, drugs, and Satan worship.

        - How about the television programs we watch?  It seems that the successful ingredients in the great majority of programs today are sexual permissiveness, rebellion against all authority, and the idiocracy of Christianity.  It is getting increasingly more difficult to find good wholesome family television programming.

          - How about the movies we attend?  Our children are growing up desensitized to violence and sexual immorality.

 

    D.  What is wrong with us?

 

          - We can sit and watch a two-hour movie on television and think nothing of it.  But to spend two hours in a discipleship group to study God's Word is like asking for the impossible.  Why?

          - We memorize easily the lyrics to an immoral song, but find it hard to memorize one verse of Scripture.  Why?
          - We think nothing of going to the late show and not getting home until after midnight, but just let church run late and we get upset.  Why?

 

        Our orthodoxy may be fine, but our orthopraxy is certainly out of whack!  We have developed the idea - "You are saved, now do as you please...anything goes!"

 

        What did David say in Psalm 139:21-22 - Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord, and abhor those who rise up against you?  I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies.  David was aware of the pressures of inward collapse due to compromise.  His response - being repulsed by the evils around him.

 

        Friends, if the inward walls begin to collapse, it is not long until the pressures from the outside will collapse the whole house.  A proverb that the people of Pergamum needed to hear: "Rivers become crooked by following the line of least resistance.  So do men."

 

      The great British philosopher G. K. Chesterton perhaps said it best: "We do not want, as the newspapers say, a church that will move with the world.  We want a church that will move the world."

 

Thoughts to Ponder: Pergamum was a church in perilous straits.  Although it had remained faithful in the midst of persecution, even seeing the martyrdom of one of its faithful leaders, it had grown to tolerate those who harbored sinful practices.  We are not told that these people actively promoted their sinful practices, as did those at Thyatira, but the church leaders certainly did not censure them or even discipline them.  The effectiveness of the witness of the church was diminished because of the presence of sin in the camp.  God's challenge to them was for their repentance, otherwise disaster would strike.  As long as a church tolerates the presence of known sin its testimony is tarnished and the church becomes ineffective.  How the church today needs leaders who have spiritual wisdom and courage to confront known sin and to purge it from the church.

 

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK: Danger feared is folly; danger faced is freedom. (V. Raymond Edman)