The Only Table That Satisfies

Automatically transcribed — lightly cleaned for readability. Wording is the preacher’s own.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you, Lord, for the gift of your word. And even when it's difficult, Lord, maybe when it's difficult to hear, maybe when it's difficult to understand,

Maybe when we're having a difficult time just understanding what you're doing in our heart, Lord, and in our life, Father, I pray that your Holy Spirit would speak to us in grace, the gentleness, Lord, of your whisper and to reveal to us truth. Lord, I pray that we would be transformed this morning, that we would not be the same people when we leave as we were when we arrived. In Jesus' name, amen.

Amen. Thank you, Pastor Cameron. So we are continuing in our sermon series in the beginning of the book of Revelation. At the beginning of Revelation, Jesus has sort of what we're calling seven letters or seven messages to seven churches, and we're walking through each of them. So I want to give you a little bit of context about this, and we're going to be in Revelation chapter two.

Verse, eight through 11. And so that's where we're going to, that's not eight through 11. It is 12 through 17, but that is the right church. So Pergamum, we're going to be at chapter two, starting in verse 12. So as you're turning there, I want to give you some context about this letter and this, when this was written. So let's go ahead and let's put a map up here on the screen. And this is just the general map of the area. And you've got Rome over to the, west, you've got Jerusalem to the east, and then you've got Patmos and Asia. And Asia or modern day Turkey or Asia Minor is where this kind of context of this letter happens. So if you go ahead and click on that map, it should move forward for us. So, these are the seven churches that this has been written to. Apostle John is in exile on that little island on Patmos. And each week we've been going through this. Ephesians, or through Ephesus, Smyrna, and then this week, Pergamum. And so, each week we're kind of following this kind of trail that's going on.

And if you kind of look at it, you'll start to see like, well, we're just going through the text, the order that they kind of appear, but it's kind of creating a little bit of a road. So the archaeologists and historians think that this actually represents sort of the sequence that they would have gotten this letter. So the Apostle John was writing this in exile, and when he gave it to somebody, they were going to travel on Roman roads, and these letters, it's written in the order that they would have received them. And so this week we've gotten to the third church, the third message to Pergamum. And this is, and this is kind of where we're at. Somebody was asking me this morning, why there are a bunch of lamps, on, on the stage. And this story, this, vision that John is having, he turns around after having kind of his quiet time with Jesus on Sunday morning, and he sees Jesus standing amongst seven lampstands. And Jesus is there walking amongst the lamp stands as he tells this revelation or this apocalypse to John.

And Jesus tells him, says, these seven lamps represent the seven churches that I'm going to give you messages to.

As we're reading the book of Revelation, the apocalypse of John or the revelation of John, we kind of have like this predisposition to see this letter and this type of content together, right? Because we've kind of seen this kind of like, I call it kind of like the Hollywood effect of the idea of Revelation. We think it is this like, you know, end of the world apocalypse. Like even when I say the word apocalypse, it means like cataclysm, right? At least in our English vernacular. But the real meaning of the word apocalypse just means revelation. It just means a revealing, something has been uncovered. And so even though revelation absolutely has to do with end times and Christ's return and judgment and all of those things are true, the baseline of the book is revealing something. It's wanting to reveal something that's already there that we've grown accustomed and we can no longer see. It's opening our eyes to something. I really enjoy art. I love going to museums. I like listening to people explain art to me and tell me about the history of it and how, oh, this line is pointing

Here and this type of brushstroke. And I like to pretend that sometimes I know more about art than I do. So I'm going to do that right now. So this right here, if you can kind of see, it's a little bit dark. This is a painting from Rembrandt. Rembrandt is one of the great artists. I have a print of his in my office. And this is kind of a, it's a painting. I can, if you can't see it, it's a group of military men and they're, they're, they're gathering together. They're getting themselves armed and ready. And this was kind of hanging on the wall. And this is what it looked like for many, many years. And everybody went and saw that and they're like, ah, it's like, it's the night watch. It's a group of military men going out at night because it's so dark and it's yellow. So that must be a candlelight that's lighting them, torches somewhere that's giving them light. And they're getting ready to go out on the night watch. And so that's what this painting became known as, the night watch, because it's obviously at night.

But then a art restoration person, I don't, they probably have a technical name that I don't know, but they were coming along and they were looking at this painting and they were like, I don't, I don't know that's supposed to look like that. They were noticing that there was this deep, thick layer of just dirt that accumulated on the painting after a long time. And at the painting had kind of been varnished, had been covered with a lacquer that over time yellowed the painting and made everything darker. And so they decided that the painting needs some restoration. So they restored it. Go ahead and put the next slide up. And that's what it's supposed to look like. And once they restored it, they were like, oh, the painting doesn't happen at night. We've been calling this painting the Night Watch for hundreds of years at this point, and it's a daylight painting, right? They were just like, oh, it's actually daylight, and there's shadows, and the sunlight's coming in, and they're just getting ready to go out in the middle of the day. It has nothing to do with night.

Something that had been hanging on a wall in a museum and people had seen for hundreds of years, over time, they began to no longer see it clearly, and they needed it to be revealed. They needed something to be uncovered so that they could see it clearly again. And that's our prayer as we're doing this study. And as we're going through these seven letters, as we're asking Jesus to reveal something to us about ourselves and the world around us, we're asking Jesus, can you reveal to us the reality of ourselves and the world around us? And so as we're doing that today, that's my prayer. That's our hope that we would learn to see the reality of ourselves more clearly. And just like when we get a letter from someone, when you get fun mail, when you get a letter from somebody, it's fun to read it, right? We like to read a personal letter that was written to us. And I don't know about you, but when it's a letter from someone I care about, I'll read it over and over again, right? I'll pay attention to the details, right?

If it's just ad junk mail, okay, rip, gone. But if it's from someone personal, I pay attention to it. I read it. And so that's how we're kind of approaching the text today. But just like a regular letter you get with, Dear John, and I hope this finds you well, sincerely, P.S., right? There's a structure to a letter. There's a structure to this letter. And so the structure that's in each of these letters, I say this again to kind of help us have a grasp on this text, is that there's an introduction. The introduction to each of these messages to the seven churches goes with, to the angel of, and it mentions the city or the church. And then these are the words of him speaking about Jesus and gives a name for himself. That's the intro. And then there's the message that Jesus has. I know, I know that you are in this situation. I see this, but I, I have this against you. This is something you need to correct. He has a message. And then we can see the closing by it says, he who has ears to hear,

Let him listen to the one who conquers and Jesus gives a final exhortation. So as we read Revelation chapter 2 verses 12 through 17, be listening and seeing if you can identify the different parts of the letter. See if you can see, okay, that's the intro, that's the message, and then that's the closing. Let's read this together intentionally.

Verse 12 says, and to the angel of the church in Pergamum, write the words of him who has the sharp two-edged sword. 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. 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, sacrifice to idols, and practice sexual immorality. So also you have some who hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans. Therefore repent. If not, I will come to you soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth. He who has an ear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches. Let the one who conquers and to the one I 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 for the one who receives it.

That's a weird passage. Amen? I'll be honest with you guys, as I was studying this week, this is one of the harder texts I've had to study in a long time. I have still questions about it, and I could probably spend another week doing research on it. But what I think is clear is clear, and that's what we're going to talk about today. So.

What is going on here? Let's start with the introduction, right? You guys should have seen it. It's that first verse, verse 12. And to the angel of Pergamum write, the words of him who has the sharp two-edged sword. Okay. So to the Pergamums, right? We know where we're at. To the words of. Of him who has the sharp two-edged sword. That's Jesus describing himself, saying, I'm the one with the sharp two-edged sword. I don't know about you, but when I think about Jesus, him carrying a big long sword is not the first picture that comes into my mind, right? I usually think of Jesus, you know, one of those like church paintings that's everywhere, like Jesus is sitting and he's got a small child on his lap and he's kind of teaching to people and there's a lamb walking around in the background and he looks very calm. Like that's the image that comes to my mind. And that's a true depiction, right? That's an accurate. We see Christ is absolutely humble and lowly and he tells the children to come to him and he was a kind teacher and all of that.

But we have to acknowledge that this is also him describing himself. So we see him saying he's got a two-edged sword. And if you're like me, I want to know what that sword looked like because you and I, right, when we think of swords, at least in my mind, I think of fantasy. I think of medieval England, knights in shining armor, King Arthur, the sword in the stone. We think of that kind of big, long, broad sword, or maybe a Roman sword, but that's not what at all this is probably talking about. From the word that is used to describe this is this is what historians think is likely the type of sword Jesus is carrying. Not one of those big, straight, broad swords, but a big, long, curved sword that you would have had to use with two hands. That was double-edged. And why this is significant is because this is a sword that didn't belong to the Romans. This was a sword that belonged to the enemies of the Romans. This is a sword that the Romans would have seen and they would have been afraid

Of because they knew how deadly it was. And so Jesus is saying, I'm holding a sword, a long two-edged sword. So he's describing himself and we got to ask ourselves, what does that mean about Jesus? What's he saying? What's it implying about who he is and how he's showing up in this moment. And for us, we don't, you know, at least I don't think any of us walk around with swords, right? Not like you don't have like a conceal and carry for your sword. So you're not walking around with one of these. So like, what does it mean if someone has a sword? Well, we're given a little bit of context in that fact that this particular city, the ruler of this city, had what was known as the authority of the sword or the power of the sword. To have the power of the sword and to be a ruler of a local region meant that you had the ability to make judgments of life and death, meant that you were the judge, jury, and executioner, to put it in kind of our language, someone who held absolute power in order to make legal decisions and

To say, not only are you guilty, but I'm going to have you executed. And so Jesus, as he's holding this sword, it's kind of, to say he was a judge doesn't really quite do the justice in our kind of minds because of what we believe and what we think of as a judge. But Jesus is here saying, he's like, I am the one. I'm the one who makes the decisions. I'm the final authority. I make the final judgment and I execute the punishment. So Jesus is making this. And so the question then we have to ask ourselves as we go into the next part, into the message, is what is Jesus's judgment? What does he say? What is the judgment he has to give to this church? So verse 13 picks that up. Jesus says, 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. All right, what does that mean, right? Where Satan dwells, right?

Where Satan's throne is, what is he talking about? Is the passage talking about a literal throne that Satan is sitting on, that this is where it's located? Maybe, but it seems to kind of be not so clear from the text. It seems to be that Jesus is making some sort of statement about the persecution that they're enduring. Lots of historians and people have a lot of speculation about what is Satan's throne? What does this mean? And some think that it's referring to certain temples that were in the area. There's one temple that was like an altar that looked like a throne. There was one deity that kind of had a name that sort of mocks Christianity a little bit. There was one deity that was associated with serpents and kind of Satan. And then there's also just the imperial cult. There was a temple just to the emperor. And at this time, the emperor in Rome was persecuting the church and Satan certainly was a part of that. So rather than kind of trying to figure out just exactly what the throne of Satan is or where it's at, what I think this passage

For sure means to communicate is that the people in this place in Pergamum were surrounded, by the kingdom of Satan, that they were surrounded by darkness. You can even see that in the way the sentence is structured. If you can put that Bible verse back up for a second, notice how it says, I know where you dwell, where again, Satan's throne is. So you've got where you are, where Satan's throne is. And then look how it ends at the verse, where Satan dwells. It combines the first two phrases of the beginning and puts them together. The verse is saying, you guys are surrounded by the kingdom of darkness. Yet you're remaining faithful, even faithful when my servant, the witness Antipas, he was a martyr. He refused to deny Christ and was killed for it. We don't know much about Antipas other than what's simply said here in the verse. We can speculate from church history and tradition. The tradition is that Antipas was put inside of a bronze bowl, a calf, and then he was cooked alive. And so that's how he was potentially persecuted and put to death.

And so they're experiencing extreme persecution. And Jesus is saying that they trust in the name of Jesus while being surrounded by the kingdom of Satan. See, the church here is being faithful. They're trusting in Jesus' name, despite the fact that they're surrounded by the powers of darkness. They're being faithful. And he sees that and he acknowledges that. And if that was the end of his message, it would just be an encouraging one, right? He says, I see that you're being faithful. I see that you're not cowering down, that even though you're surrounded by powers and authorities that are not mine, you're still staying faithful. Right? But there's a next verse, verse 14, where Jesus says, but I, but I have the few things against you. You have some 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, sacrifice to idols, and practice sexual immorality. So also you have some who hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans. Okay. So immediately we're brought into says, what are the things that Jesus has to correct them?

I have a few things against you and he's going to start naming them. He names that there are a few of you in the church there at Pergamum who hold the teaching of Balaam who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel. And we just might be like, who's Balaam and who's Balak, right? Are these two individuals members of their church that we just don't know much about? Or is this referring somewhere else? This is actually, if you maybe have been to enough Sunday school and you remember like a felt board at some point, you might remember the story of Balaam, but you probably don't remember Balaam as much as you remember his talking donkey. Anybody? Okay. Yeah. So Balaam and the talking donkey. The donkey tends to get a little bit more of our memory space than Balaam himself. John is referring to, he's saying, there's some people in the church at Pergamum, who were believing and teaching something similar to what Balaam taught in the Old Testament. Balaam was a false prophet. And as the people of Israel with Moses and Joshua

Were getting close to the promised land, they were getting to the land they were going to enter and conquer and have for themselves that God had promised them, the King Balak is freaking out. He's like, there's this incoming nation and they want my land. And so I'm going to hire Balaam. Balaam, I want you to go and I want you to curse the Israelites. And Balaam goes to does that. He encounters the counting, the talking donkey and the angel, but he gets up to eventually try and curse Israel. And what comes out of his mouth, but nothing, but blessings." Every time Balaam gets up to curse Israel, he can only say blessings on them. And that's kind of how the story ends a little bit, but in between the verses and in one small verse, it kind of tells the rest of the story. Balaam walks away and he says, Balak, I told you, I couldn't curse them. Like I can't, their God is too powerful. But there is a way that you could, you could, you know, weaken them. And that's if you could get them to turn away from their God.

And so he encourages Balak. He says, Balak, get your most attractive women and have them seduce the men to go worship your gods. And that's what Balak did. And it caused many Israelites to turn away from worshiping God and to worship a false idol. And they were punished because of it. And so that's the story that the apostle John is referencing. And he's saying, there's something going on in your church that's similar, right?

They were faithful, but they were compromising. They were staying kind of close to the truth, but they were beginning to compromise. They were beginning to say, is this really all that there was? Because you kind of get this sense when you read the old Testament and the journey through the wilderness over and over again, the Israelites complain. They're like getting manna. They're getting food from heaven, literally food from heaven. And they begin to complain about how it's not enough. They begin to say, we were better off when we were slaves. And then God punishes them. They begin to doubt. They begin to not trust that what God has for them is good enough. And so what we are going to see here is that they are asking, the church in Pergamum's asking the same question. They're asking the question, will what Jesus gives us satisfy us? Is what Jesus has for us truly enough? Or is there something else over here that we perhaps want for ourselves and we can go and take? And this is the question that they are facing. And so, The apostle John is saying, you guys, you're faithful, but you're compromising.

You're saying true to my name, but you're beginning to go over here and go away from and stray from Jesus and saying, is there something over here perhaps we want? Are we being tempted and led astray? And so what are those specific things John goes on to describe and Jesus goes on to describe? He says, specifically in the second half of verse 14, he says, so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality. Okay, so eating, food sacrificed to idols. Now, the question that we might ask is, well, doesn't the Bible talk about that elsewhere? Right? If you've read the Bible, maybe you've heard the Bible. There's a big chunk in the book of 1 Corinthians where Paul talks about food sacrifice to idols. And the gist of what Paul says is, it's just meat, just eat it. Right? Let's actually, let's read that verse. If you could go ahead and put that up for us. That's 1 Corinthians chapter 23 through 26. It says this, all things are lawful, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful, but not all things build up.

Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor. Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any questions on the ground of conscience. For the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. So this is kind of one of Paul's kind of summary sentences here. He's telling the church in Corinth, he's like, go out to the market and buy whatever meat you want. You don't have to ask if it was sacrificed to an idol. You can just buy it. Sometimes they would sell the meat that had been used in sacrifices to other gods and to idols and they would sell them at a discount, you know? And so they would go and they would buy the food and they, and he's just telling them, it's just meat, eat it. Don't ask any questions. And so why is it seem like that John here and Jesus is making a big deal about eating the meat sacrificed to idols. And the key is, is that there's different context. It's not about the meat. It's about the table that they're at when they're eating it.

So what do I mean by that? It's to say that in, when Paul is talking about that in Corinthians, he's saying, when you're going out and you're going to the store. Just buy the meat. Don't have to ask yourself, like, is this labeled by anything? Was this for sacrifice to an idol or not? Just buy it and eat it and serve it your own food. Or if you're at a house that someone invited you to, you don't have to ask them where they got the meat from, right? You just eat it and enjoy it. And then he does say, he's like, but if they tell you, maybe don't eat it because you don't want them to think that you're endorsing their worship of their God. But here, specifically when it's saying, don't eat meat sacrificed to idol, it's not talking about, buying your meat at the store, disconnected from the temple. It's talking about going to the temple, sitting down at the temple and having a meal at the temple. See, in ancient Rome and all that, they didn't have Chuck E. Cheese. So, and like, I'm not joking here. They literally have archeological evidence

Of people inviting each other to birthday parties at pagan temples, right? So you would get a invitation to go to so-and-so's birthday party. It's going to be at Zeus's temple, be there at six, right? And so they would have parties and birthdays and celebrations and sacrifices and whole meals at the temple of these idols. And so this passage is not talking about eating the meat disconnected in a market somewhere or someone's home. It's talking about going into a temple, sitting in front of the altar, sitting at a table with a bunch of people. There's the idol. It was just recently sacrificed and now you're eating it as part of the worship service. Do not be engaged in that. That's the distinction that's being made. It's not about the meat. It's about the table that the people are sitting at. And so this seems to be kind of a big contention is that the Christians were coming in Pergamum. They were coming to pagan temples, sitting down and participating in worship. They may have said, oh, but it's just a party. It's just someone's birthday party. Is it?

It's right in front of the altar. It's right in front of the idol. And it goes on, and now we kind of move on. The second thing that he has against them is that they're not only are they eating meat sacrifice to idols, but they're practicing sexual immorality. Now, this one is one that maybe resonates with us a little bit more as a culture today. We don't really go into Wegmans, and we don't really go and see, there's not like a green label that says like, not sacrifice to idols, right? Not like one of the things that we care about. But sexual immorality still to this day and for all of history has always been, a major issue, a major place of temptation, a major place where Satan has tried to attack and distort the good thing that God has given humanity. And so what do we see here about this? What can we say?

I don't have like a whole sermon to talk about sexual immorality or theology of sex as much as I would like to. But I want to say a few things that I think will be helpful to us because it is an important thing. It's something that we do face in our culture. The first is to say that the way that we think that this is perhaps like, why is it the meat and the sexual immorality? Why are these two connected here for the Apostle John? And it's likely because the sexual immorality was happening at the feast. In ancient Rome and things like that, it was not uncommon for sinful sexual acts to occur at feasts and meals. And so, they're gathering together and they're eating this meat sacrifice to idols and they're performing sexual immorality. And so. This is sort of probably what's happening. And sexuality is perhaps one of the biggest areas of temptation that we face in modern time. And the question is, is like, why? Why is it that like, we're all getting uncomfortable the more I talk about this, right? Why is it that this is such a difficult thing to wrestle with?

And the reason I think is because that sexuality touches parts of the core of who we are and our sense of self and our desires. It's a good gift that God gave us. God created sexuality and he gave it to us, but Satan loves to distort it. Satan loves to twist it and make it something that is full of shame and that is difficult. And what I want you to hear and what I want everyone to hear in this room is that all of us, all of us have a sexuality that's been touched by sin. None of us have a perfectly clean, untouched sexuality. It might be tempting for us to read a passage like this and say, well, I don't deal with gender identity issues, or I don't deal with or suffer from temptation for same-sex attraction, so I'm good. No, no, no, there's sexual brokenness in all of us to some degree. I'm not saying that you're all as sexually broken as everybody else. But I am saying that I know humanity and I know ourselves enough to know that none of us just kind of walk clean through this world without Satan trying to take a stab at that.

And that's something we all have to work at. And what I want you to hear, particularly if you're someone who does struggle with same-sex attraction or gender identity, I don't know of anyone specific necessarily I'm talking to today, but I know that we're in a room big enough, that's likely to be the story of some of you, is what I want you all to hear is that, is that the goal is not some sort of magic, sort of ideal way of our sexuality looking. It's saying, where are we at and what does it mean to have a holy sexuality? Sometimes we kind of make having sort of.

Having heterosexuality, being saying, well, if I was just heterosexual, then I would be holy. No, there's tons of people who have heterosexual tendencies and do not have a holy sexuality. God calls us to have a holy sexuality, one that honors people and honors God with our bodies. And now the thing is that I want you to also hear is that Jesus came not for the perfect, right? If I'm talking about this and you have some shame coming up or you're getting. Uncomfortable, I want you to hear that Jesus came and ate with people like us. Jesus wants to get to know you. He wants to be with you. He cares about you. Jesus didn't come for perfect people. And this church isn't for perfect people. It's for people who need Jesus. And so what I want you to know is that God has grace for you. He doesn't want you to have to fix yourself. You don't have to get your sexuality or your sexual history completely clean, completely perfect before you can come and know Jesus. Jesus' invitation is to always come, taste, and see that I am good.

And if you come to get know Jesus, then let's have a conversation about what Jesus's will is for your life and how he would have you flourish. These are important things. And so God does care about what we do with our bodies. He does care about our sexuality. It is important, but it is also just one of many sins. We can sin with our words. We can sin with our heart. We can sin with our actions and behaviors, our thoughts. Sexuality is just one of those. Sometimes we make it the untouchable one, the sin that we can't talk about. And so today I decided to talk about it quite a bit.

Because I think that we need to have an understanding that God has grace even for that. And if you're like, Luke, I don't know about all of that. Because I know I don't make the assumption that everyone here is Christian. I don't make the assumption that you're all following Jesus yet or that you've really figured all of these things out. I would just invite you just as Jesus does, come and see, come and know me, and let's figure that out together. Now, like I said, I don't have time to go into much more detail than that, but I'm not abandoning the topic here. As we continue in this passage, while I'm not going to continue to talk about sexuality explicitly, I'm continuing to talk about the things that do impact our desires. It's still part of our text. It's still something that is in part of the generalness of what I'm kind of talking about. So let's see as we kind of move forward. One of the reasons I think we have a hard time dealing with this topic and the one reason that sometimes we want to fight Jesus and we want to have an argument

About Jesus, you just don't understand modern sexuality. Trust me, he does. You just haven't read enough history to know what was in the past. But here's the fact is that what we're dealing with is a heart posture. And that posture is, is that we don't trust Jesus. We don't trust that God has something good for us in our sexuality. Our hearts don't want to trust that Jesus has something good for us in our sexuality, or in our finances or in our jobs or in our family or in our relationships. We begin to get into this place where just like these Christians in Pergamum, they're saying, we love you, Jesus, but like, there seems to be something good over here that I want. And I'm going to go over there and I'm going to try and get some of that. They're stepping away and saying, Jesus, like, I don't trust that what you have for me here is good enough. I want to see if I can find something else. And that can be applied to our sexuality, our money, you name it. We can run into this place of saying,

God, I don't trust your plan for me in this particular area of my life. We kind of run into this perpetual sort of FOMO, right? We fear of missing out. We fear that there's something over here that if we don't go over here and get we're going to miss out. The grass is greener on the other side. If only I could do this, or if only I could get this, or this was this way. I was thinking about where do we experience like FOMO the most? And you know what's the worst? It's like that hour and a half you spend trying to pick something on Netflix to watch. Right? You're just like, oh, we could watch that movie. But like, what if it stinks? Right? And then we go on and we say, oh, we could watch this movie. Right? What we're doing is we want to pick the perfect movie because we don't want to waste our time. And we end up spending so much time not wanting to waste our time. We do what? We waste our time. Right? So we have this like fear of missing out and we miss out on what is actually

There for us. We can live our lives in a place of fantasies. The question of like, what do I fantasize about? What are my daydreams about? What am I dreaming that I had or that I could go and get? These are the things that indicate where our heart is being led to. What is it that we're desiring? We need to be paying attention to this. This is, what it is, is it's not trusting. It's saying that, God, I'm sitting at your table, but I don't trust the food that you're putting in front of me. I know that you've got food here for me. I know that you've got a seat for me, but I don't trust that this table is going to have all that I want and need. And so I'm going to get up and I'm going to go to a different table. I'm going to sit at a different table that Jesus is not at because I think there's something over here that I can get.

And that's the temptation. It's the, at the core, it's the first temptation. It's the temptation in Genesis. Adam and Eve are in the garden. They're in paradise. They're in perfect communion with each other. They're in perfect harmony with nature, with the world that God had created. And they were in relationship with God. And then what is the serpent? What does Satan come along and say, did God, did God really say that you couldn't eat this fruit? He told you not to eat this. Why did he tell you not to eat this? Oh, it's because he's keeping something from you. If you eat this, you will become like God and he doesn't want you to have that. He's sowing the seed of doubt saying, don't trust God. God's keeping something from you and you should take that. The very first scene in the root of scene of sin is at the root of so much sin. It's where we don't trust the goodness of God and what God's put in front of us and saying, no, no, I want this. We distrust and we move away from God. And that's what the church in Pergamum

Is struggling with here. And so if we move down to Revelation 2, verse 16, we see this. Jesus'.

Command or his exhortation to them is this. Therefore, repent. If not, I will come to you soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth. That's really harsh. Jesus didn't just say, I will come and judge them. He says, I'm going to war, war against them. And then he's mentioning that sword that he's got, but this time it's emanating from his mouth. The words that he speaks are exercising judgment. And what I want us to hear here is that a truth that's echoed throughout scripture. In the book of James chapter four, it says that you cannot be friends with the world and friends with God. If you are friends with the world, you are enemies with God. In 1 Corinthians 10.

Verse 21. Go ahead and put that up here. This is Paul, one of the things that he says before the passage I showed you before. He says, you cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. You cannot be a Christian and go to the pagan temple and sit at that table, take and drink that food, participate in their practices, and then go to church on Sunday. You can't do the same thing. You have to make a choice. You have to be with Christ. You have to trust the table he's put in front of you. The words of Jesus should carry the most authority in our lives. Jesus is saying, I'm the one who's telling you what is good for you. And I've set the table in front of you on the judge. He says, my words ought to carry that authority. Not everyone in your life, right. Has the same authority to speak into your life, or at least they shouldn't. The random person on the, on the street, you know, tells me something like, okay.

But a close friend of mine, I listen. A very close friend of mine. I listen even more. If it's my wife, I listen, not because just she's my wife, but I know that she has the most important information for me. I trust her the most. And the question is, is Jesus, does his opinion about your life matter the most above all other opinions? Above your own opinion, above the opinion of your friends and family, above what the world tells you your life should look like? Are we asking Jesus, what ought my life look like?

And so Jesus ends his letter, this exhortation in verse 17. He says this, he says, He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers, I will give him 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. So this closing exhortation, Jesus gives us two obscure metaphors. He says, I'm going to give you some hidden manna. What does that mean? The manna we know is the miraculous food or bread that was given to the Israelites as they were in the wilderness. They were out in the middle of nowhere. They could not farm. They could not hunt. And so God, every single day, gave them miraculous food from the ground. And they would go out each day and they would gather up just as much as they needed for that day. Now, at the time, Moses and Joshua took some of that manna and they put it in a jar and they hid it away in the Ark of the Covenant.

And they put it there for a reminder for future generations so that they might be reminded of God's provision. And Jesus here is saying, I'm going to provide from you some of the secret manna. But I think even more of that, more than this hidden manna, I think Jesus is making a bigger statement. Can you put up the verse for us? John chapter 6, 31 through 35. This is Jesus saying, he's saying, our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness. As it is written, he gave them bread from heaven to eat. Jesus then said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven, but my father gives to you the true bread. He's saying there's something better than manna coming. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to this world. They said to him, sir, give us this bread always. If there's bread that's better than manna, can we have it? And Jesus said, I, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger.

Whoever believes in me shall never thirst. Jesus is the hidden manna. Jesus himself is what he's offering. And then he says, not only am I going to give you this hidden manna, I'm going to give you a white stone with a name on it. Now, there's a lot of debate about just what exactly this white stone means, but I think one of the likely things that this means, particularly because of the context of the passage, is that it's an invitation to a banquet. This was a way that people would be invited to a banquet where they would be given a bone or a rock and they would be given a name, their name written on it. It was like their invitation, proof that they were invited to the party. What I want you to hear is what Jesus is saying here at the back. He says, Jesus invites you to sit at his table where he meets our deepest desires by giving us himself. Jesus is inviting you to sit at his table where he's going to meet your needs, your desires, the desire for community, for connection, for meaning and belonging.

How? By giving us himself. Jesus is turning upside down the world when he says this. He says, you go to temples and you go to altars and you eat meat of animals, hoping it will fill you. You participate in these sacrifices. You participate in these rituals. You strive and you search and you hunt and you hunger, and you will always be hungry for more. But rather than giving you meat from animals that are sacrificed, I will give you my own flesh. I will give you myself. Is that not what we participate every month on the first week when we do communion together, we are participating in the body and the blood of Christ. He said, do this in remembrance of me of the new covenant. This is my body. This is my blood poured out for you. You can sit at the world's table and you might get what you ordered, but you will still be hungry afterwards. You can go and you can chase. I don't want to tell you that, oh yeah, you could probably go out there. You can get and achieve your goals.

You could get the relationships you want. You could get the money that you desire. But the question is, is will that actually fill the deep hunger that's inside of you. Pascal, a scientist who wrote some short writings about his theological and personal convictions, he described what he called kind of a God-shaped hole inside of humanity. Each and every single one of us long for something. We were all created for the longing of the divine. We all desire to have something. Augustine said it this way. He said, we are all restless until we find rest in thee. We are all longing and searching and hunting for something, hoping that this thing will satisfy us. But if you've lived life long enough, you will know that, yeah, after you get the thing that you wanted so badly, you will eventually actually want something more. And you can choose to try and pick another thing to fill that hole. Or you could come and you could sit down at the table that Jesus has saved you a seat at, and you could let him satisfy your deepest needs and longings and desires.

That's the best feeling, isn't it? Being saved a seat, knowing that somebody's thought about you and invited you and said, no, no, come sit here next to me, and I've got some food saved aside for you.

Can you imagine the fact that Jesus has done that for you? That he's set a meal for you. He has something good for you and for your life and for all of eternity. And he's saying, trust me, my table is good enough. You don't need to run over to those other tables. They do not have what you need. So I want to end with these two questions, these two questions for us to kind of wrestle with throughout this week. First question is this, do we trust that Jesus's table will satisfy? Do we actually have the faith to know that God is good and that his plan for my life, even though it doesn't make sense is still good and that it will satisfy me, that being here following Jesus is the place for flourishing.

And then the second question is this, Lord, it's more of a prayer to be honest, Lord, reveal the tables that we are tempted to sit at that are not yours, right? Remember what I said at the beginning of that revealing of that painting, seeing something that was always there that we had no longer seen clearly, what we're asking God to do in this series, reveal to us, the tables that we are tempted to sit at that are not yours. Is it a table of success? Is it a table of approval? Is it a table of sexuality? What is the table for you that draws our attention, that seeks us to leads us away from the table where Jesus would like to sit with us? With that, let's take some moment to pray as the worship team comes back up.

Heavenly Father, this morning, I pray that this word would have its desired effect in us. Lord, that we would hear this not as a condemnation, but as an invitation. Lord, you carry a stone that has each of our names on it. And you are inviting us to sit at your table. Lord, I pray that you would help us to remove any hindrance or obstacle that would keep us from saying yes to that invitation. Lord, you offered yourself for us. You died for our sins. You died for our brokenness. Lord, you have made a way for us to have newness of life in you and for forgiveness. Lord, you have dispelled shame from us. You have given us new names and called us your own. Lord, I pray that today we would say yes to that. Lord, that you would help to clear our visions to say, Lord, how can we be more faithful? Lord, are there things, are there tables that we are tempted to sit at that are not yours? Lord, help us to do that. Help us to sit at your table and to trust your goodness and your faithfulness.

Lord, I ask that you would do these things in our heart, that you would bind us to you. And Lord, that you would help us to see just how much you love us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.