Teaching Jesus Hates

I. Introduction
 A. We come to the 3rd epistle of Jesus. The title: Teaching Jesus Hates. The theme: False teaching.
 B. Review of the first two epistles of Jesus:
  1. Ephesus: false teaching wasn’t their problem. Far from it. In fact, they were commended for “how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false.” Rev.2:2. Then near the end of the letter Jesus commends them again because they “hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.” Rev.2:6. (This is where the “Teaching Jesus Hates” title comes from.) Tolerance of false teaching wasn’t their problem. Their problem was that they had lost the love for Jesus which they once had.
  2. Smyrna: false teaching wasn’t their problem either. In fact, apparently because they had stood firm on the truth of Christ, they were experiencing intense persecution and were about to experience even more – even to the point of martyrdom. Jesus only urges them not to be afraid, even unto death.
 C. Revelation 2:12–17 “And to the angel of the church in Pergamum write: ‘The words of him who has the sharp two-edged sword. 13 “ ‘I know where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is. Yet you hold fast my name, and you did not deny my faith even in the days of Antipas my faithful witness, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells. 14 But I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality. 15 So also you have some who hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans. 16 Therefore repent. If not, I will come to you soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth. 17 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.’
 D. This letter to Pergamum and the next one to Thyatira contain the theme of false teaching. We’ll talk about it in general today, then next week we’ll focus on the sexual immorality part of it. 
II. What’s going on here?
 A. I said last week that the three middle epistles are all a mixture of commendation and rebuke. And so Jesus begins this letter by commending the church of Pergamum for keeping the faith in a city so evil that He refers to it as the place where Satan’s throne is and the place where Satan dwells, and in a place where one of their own, a man named Antipas, who tradition says was their pastor, had already been martyred.
  1. ”I know where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is. Yet you hold fast my name, and you did not deny my faith even in the days of Antipas my faithful witness, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells.” (2:13)
  2. Here we have another church beset by persecution, much like the church in Smyrna.
  3. And, like Smyrna, they had refused to deny the faith in the face of pressure.
 B. So, what were they doing wrong?
  1. They were tolerating some people in the church who were teaching some bad stuff.
  2. 14-15 “But I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality. 15 So also you have some who hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans.”
 C. So what were these false teachings?
  1. The first thing to say is that we don’t know for sure, but we have a pretty good idea.
  2. The second thing to say is that most Bible scholars agree that the false teachings mentioned in letters 1, 3 & 4 are very similar to one another. They are all advocating some participation with idolatry and sexual immorality.
   a. Look at the letter which comes after Pergamum, the letter to Thyatira. Jesus rebukes that church for “tolerating that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality & eat food sacrificed to idols.” Rev.2:24. Same thing as
   b. Rev.2:14-15 “You have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality. 15 So also you have some who hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans.”
    (1) The Greek seems to be linking the Nicolaitan teaching with the teaching of Balaam.
  3. This has led scholars to suspect that these false teachings: the false teaching of the Nicolaitans, the Balaam group, and the followers of Jezebel were basically all the same false teaching.
  4. So, why are they distinguished from one another in these letters with different names?
   a. Some things the church believes are offensive to the society around it.
   b. This pressure sometimes tempts people in the church who live in the midst of that society to find ways to adjust that teaching – to avoid the disfavor and other negative consequences of offending non-believers.
   c. However, often there isn’t an obvious way to adjust the truth without looking outlandish.
   d. And so, you end up with different people or different groups coming up with different ways to justify the change.
   e. And so there are different approaches, but in the end they all accomplish basically the same thing.
   f. So that’s the kind of thing which could explain why several groups could all be teaching basically the same thing. Each name describes a group which teaches a way which justifies going along with the religious and social requirements of the pagan society in which they lived.
 D. So what these false teachings all about?
  1. Last week we talked about how this society was religious. These cities had a large number of trade guilds. Some of them had a guild for almost every trade, and most people involved in any economic activity belonged to one guild or another. And, since all the guilds had patron deities, Christian guild members would be expected to pay homage to pagan gods at official guild meetings, which were usually festive occasions often accompanied by ritual immorality. Nonparticipation would lead to economic ostracism or worse.
   a. So, there was tremendous pressure to go along, especially in evil Pergamum. That’s fact #1.
  2. Now fact #2. The pagan religion here involved two main activities at the idol temple or elsewhere.
   a. First of all, it involved participation in a feast, eating meat which had been sacrificed to the idol.
   b. The second activity involved sexual engagement with temple prostitutes as part of the worship.
   c. This is why Jesus sites the story of Balaam and Balak, who “put a stumbling block before God’s people, that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality.”                       
  3. If someone refused to engage in these activities, there were severe consequences. Probably the poverty & intense persecution of the believers of Smyrna resulted from their refusal to participate.
  4. And so it doesn’t surprise us to find out that Christians were  trying to come up with ways to rationalize sneaking down to the pagan temple to engage in these activities.
  5. (We know from 1Corinthians that in a similar culture 40 years earlier there was already a tendency for Christians to justify participation in these activities – 1Cor.6:15-17; 8:10; 10:14-22.)
 E. Now you may think it unbelievable that a Christian would convince himself that it would be OK to go down to the idol temple and commit these acts, but I would remind you that there are a lot of Christians today who believe and participate in some seemingly ridiculous things because they are conforming to a society which punishes people for not going along with their ideas and behaviors.
 F. Now, how did the false teachers of Pergamum justify these activities? There are a number of possibilities, but I will only mention one, for illustration: Perhaps they convinced themselves that involvement with idolatry in this fashion was OK as long as they weren’t really worshiping in their hearts and didn’t actually believe in these false gods while they did this.
  1. But whatever their justification, the point is that their false teaching was giving permission to people in the church to participate in pagan idol worship activities.
III. There are two things I really want us to take home from this. The first one is about the church.
 A. In v.16 the church of Pergamum is told to repent. What are they being asked to repent of?
  1. They are not being asked to repent of believing false teaching, nor promoting false teaching,
  2. They’re called to repent of tolerating those who taught falsely, of harboring false teachers.
 B. This shows us that we’re responsible for one another, accountable to one another & for one another.
  1. In 1Corinthians 5, Paul rebukes that church for tolerating a man who is committing sexual immorality. He is outraged at their attitude: “You are acting arrogant and boastful! Shouldn’t you be mourning instead? Remove this man from among you. Don’t you know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?”
  2. How many American Christians do you think feel that sense of responsibility for the things going on in their church? How many church people would say that’s not their business. “That’s the leaders’ business!”
  3. We can’t even get Christians to believe in church membership. But this is much more than that.
  4. It’s church ownership. You don’t just join the church, you own the church!
  5. Have you noticed that Jesus’ instructions in Matt.18:15-17 about confronting people don’t begin with the church leaders? They begin with one person going to another person one-on-one and confronting that person. And then if the one-on-one interactions proves ineffective, Jesus says to take one or two with you and approach the person. And then only if that proves ineffective does He instruct us to take it to the church. That’s the final step!
  6. You don’t just go to church, you are an integral part of a church, a member of the body: hand, eye.
IV. The second one is about false teaching.
 A. The Bible makes it clear that there are many kinds of false teachings.
  1. Taking something peripheral and making it central
  2. Throwing out a part of the truth (usually something unpopular, like hell)
  3. Forbidding something the Bible allows (e.g. 1Tim.4:1-5)
  4. This false teaching was allowing something the Bible forbids.
   a. These letters show us that often the false teaching which the church must combat is often a result of the pressure from the society to conform.
 B. But every false teaching – in one way or another – is a distortion of who Jesus is or what He did.
 C. These false teachers had painted a picture of a Jesus who winks at idolatry, a Jesus who winks at sexual immorality. That is not the true Jesus.
  1. Jesus is a very loving and gracious Savior, He is even called the Friend of sinners.
  2. However, He is never & in no way a friend of sin. And woe to anyone who portrays Him as such.
 D. And here I want to remind you of Rev.2:6. There is teaching Jesus hates.
  1. That’s pretty strong language, it’s true. Jesus Himself said it.
  2. And if Jesus hates it, we ought to hate it too. If we don’t, we don’t get it.
 E. Is Jesus the king of persnickety? Is He being a little picky making such an issue about these things?
  1. We might think that close is good enough. But a counterfeit dollar is close to the real thing.
  2. Satan is a deceiver and a counterfeiter.
  3. Jesus just wants us to have the real thing and not a counterfeit. He wants us to know Him, not an imposter. He wants us to know the real Lion, not a donkey disguised as a Lion (The Last Battle).
 F. What an arrogant thing to think we can improve on Jesus! What an insult to try to change Him!
  1. We’ve talked before about how God’s law is a description of Jesus, and how God’s commands are just Him telling us to be like Jesus.
  2. What if Moses had said on Mt. Sinai, “Thanks for the ten commandments, Lord. But I’d like to make just a couple of adjustments, to the second and seventh commandments.”? How do you think God would have responded? Do you think He would have been open-minded and taken Moses’ suggestions into consideration?
  3. Changing the law changes our picture of Jesus. And it’s impossible to improve on the true Jesus.
  4. The picture God gives us of Him in His word is so wonderful/beautiful/powerful that to tarnish it is scandalous.
 G. Now we all get things wrong. And we’re not saved by our correct doctrine.
  1. There’s a difference between a counterfeit dollar bill and a well-used dollar bill, which is faded and folded and maybe even torn or written on.
  2. I think it’s possible to humbly and sincerely study God’s word out of love for Him and a desire to listen to Him, and come to a wrong conclusion about what it teaches on a given subject.
 H. When Jesus began His ministry, there was an establishment in Judaism: he Pharisees. And there was an enormous amount of overlap between what they believed/promoted and what Jesus believed/promoted. Several times when asked, He said the Pharisees were right about this or that.
  1. And yet Jesus did not affirm them at all. He consistently rebuked them and told people they were in error. He condemned them as false teachers, saying: “In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.” And, “You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men. You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition!” – Mark 7:7–9
  2. He wasn’t impressed by the fact that their teaching on a lot of subjects was correct. He make it clear that He was against them because of their false teaching.
  3. And this is the same attitude toward false teaching we find all through the apostles’ epistles.
 I. There is a mind-boggling proliferation of false-teaching in the world today. And it’s important that we have the right attitude about it.
 J. You certainly find people who assume that everyone who doesn’t agree with me on everything is a false teacher. I’m not talking about that at all.
  1. But neither am I talking about assuming that everyone who says they believe in Jesus is necessarily a sincere teacher of the truth.
  2. A local pastor once said to me about another local pastor: “What he preaches on Sunday mornings is heresy straight from the pit of hell, but I’ve talked to him and I really think he loves the Lord.”
   a. Show me where the Bible treats false teachers that way. This letter certainly doesn’t.