“Pergamum” – Revelation 2:12-17

It is October 27^th and that means that the holidays are right on top of us. What are y’all planning to do? Does anybody have plans to be with extended family during Thanksgiving or Christmas? Do you get along with your family? In some families you know better than to bring up certain subjects around certain family members. You don’t go looking to get people upset most of the time. You know better than to wear your red MAGA hat around your flaming liberal cousin, right? It’s not worth the hassle of arguing all through dinner.

Politics can bring out the worst in people, can’t it? I heard the joke about a guy who was on his deathbed and suddenly announced that he was switching from Republican to Democrat. “I can’t believe you’re doing this.” said his friend. “For your entire life you’re been a staunch Republican. Why would you want to become a Democrat now?” “Because I’d rather it was one of them that dies than one of us.”

But when it is your family, especially family that you rarely see, it’s usually best to not bring up topics like that, topics that are going to cause unnecessary trouble. And if something does come up that is likely to be divisive, in a family setting like this it is usually best to just keep your mouth shut. Now…if we could just do that!

Now, in a church family we are going to have disagreements as well. Not everybody is going to think exactly alike about everything because we are all different and come from different backgrounds but God gives us unity about the things that really matter. And for the things that don’t really matter, we show grace and love and move on.

The problem comes when somebody comes into the church with different spinal beliefs. I say “spinal beliefs” because I’ve heard Ben make a good comparison between beliefs that are spine beliefs and rib beliefs. We don’t compromise our spinal beliefs. They hold us upright and strong. Those beliefs include things like the virgin birth, the life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, Jesus is God, Jesus is the only way to Heaven and we are saved by grace and through faith. Those are spine issues that we will never waiver on.

Some rib issues may be whether we should sing hymns or modern songs, (I think we do a good job of doing both around here, by the way) what time the service starts and what color the carpet should be. Those don’t matter near as much as the spine issues. We may compromise on rib issues and while I may feel strongly that the carpet needs to be Pepto Bismal Pink, I’m not going to leave if it doesn’t get changed.

But, do you know what? This world is highly offended by our spinal beliefs. They think it is narrow-minded of us to think that Jesus is the only way to Heaven. It is mean and harsh of us to think that just because somebody doesn’t believe like we do, that God would allow good people to go to Hell. When we stand up for our beliefs; beliefs that are written plainly in the Word of God, we are called haters, sexist, bigots, homophobes and more. I have heard it said that the truth sounds like hate to those that hate the truth and so we can just expect to be called names as we stand up and refuse to compromise on our core biblical beliefs.

We can expect in the near future for the world to do more than just call us names. We can expect for the future to bring more and more pressure to conform and compromise and fit in to what the world thinks. We can expect that because Satan is behind it all and he always has been. Satan hates the church and Satan is the prince of this world so we can expect the world to hate us. Don’t be surprised when it happens.

We already see it in other parts of the world. Just last week I saw this headline: “Christian church DESTROYED as Chinese police drag worshippers into street and beat them” If the police and military came to Christ Fellowship today and said we had to renounce Jesus as the only way to Heaven or we would have this building destroyed and all be beaten, what would you do? We would all like to think we would stand strong but that would be hard.

Hopefully it won’t be in our lifetime but what about our kids and grandkids? It is going to get harder and harder for them. At some point, they may have to make that decision. But for us today, we are still tempted to compromise on things but it comes in different forms than direct outside attacks. So many times, it comes from within and that is something the church in Pergamum was having to deal with.

Turn to Revelation chapter 2 again. We are continuing our series on the seven churches of Revelation. These seven churches were real churches not unlike this one and Jesus told John to write them letters on His behalf. Can you imagine getting a letter from Jesus? What do you think our letter would say? I think Jesus would say, “Dear Christ Fellowship, you hoodlums crack me up!” But that’s just my opinion.

The church at Ephesus got a letter that said they had lost their first love, the love for Jesus and others. The next church, Smyrna, got a letter saying that Jesus saw their suffering and poverty. Today we read the letter to Pergamum. Pergamum is also in modern day Turkey like the others about twenty miles north of Smyrna. It is land-locked but still pretty country but is known even today for its temples and statues to almost every false god or deity of any kind. It was THE place to go for idol worship and they were proud of it.

Let’s read Revelation 2:12-17 and see what Jesus said to this church that was surrounded by all this ungodliness. “To the angel of the church in Pergamum write: These are the words of him who has the sharp, double-edged sword. 13I know where you live-where Satan has his throne. Yet you remain true to my name. You did not renounce your faith in me, not even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, who was put to death in your city-where Satan lives. 14Nevertheless, I have a few things against you: There are some among you who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin so that they ate food sacrificed to idols and committed sexual immorality. 15Likewise, you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans. 16Repent therefore! Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. 17Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it.”

Now, don’t worry. If you got anything at all out of that in your first read, you are doing good. I read that the first time and thought, “What in the world does any of that mean?” Thank goodness we have books written by much smarter men than me to help us learn what is being said to the church in Pergamum.

In this, Jesus goes back to the “sandwich method” of giving bad news. He starts with something good, then goes to the bad news and ends with more good news, like a bad news sandwich. He starts by commending them for not renouncing Jesus and for staying true to Him even though they are surrounded by so much idol worship that Jesus calls the city Satan’s throne. Evidently a man named Antipas had been martyred there for not renouncing Jesus so that was proof that it had to have been hard to be a Christian at that time in Pergamum.

But that church had remained true. They had not given in and that is a big deal. Just like at Smyrna at this time, Pergamum was under Roman rule and if you didn’t burn incense to the emperor then you could get in trouble. And that’s about all you had to do and you only had to do it once a year. Do that and everything would be fine.

Don’t you know that had to be tempting? Don’t you know that people in that church were considering just going and burning a little incense? What’s it going to hurt? All we have to do is go through the motions. We don’t have to really believe it. We don’t even have to really worship the emperor. All we have to do is burn some incense in his name. No big deal, right?

I heard a guy say one time that he was trying to figure out what to get his young son for Christmas. He was torn between a toy or a pet so he bought him a rattlesnake. That’s what compromise is good for sometimes. But we all compromise on things every day. We want to eat tasty food but we don’t want the calories so we compromise…sometimes. We want a big, powerful pickup but we can’t afford the gas, so we compromise and get a Kia Sorento. A friend of mine said “my wife wanted to paint our house blue and I wanted to paint our house red. So as a compromise, we decided to paint our house blue.” Some of you guys know about that kind of compromise.

But a little bit of compromise when it comes to Who we worship is not a small deal. Have you seen those bumper stickers that say, “Coexist” with the letters made from different religious symbols? They have a Christian cross, a crescent moon representing Islam and the Star of David for Judaism and some other stuff. That looks nice and in a perfect world we wouldn’t have to deal with it but coexist is all we can do with other religions. We don’t hate them and we sure don’t hate the people that believe in them but there is no compromise with them either.

We are never going to have an all-religions worship service. We don’t go to worship services for other religions, even for a minute or for a special occasion. We don’t participate in their prayer times. Some of you may not agree but I think we need to leave public prayer OUT of the schools. It used to be that I was for it but now, what is to keep a Muslim or a Wiccan from saying a public prayer before school or at a football game? Leave it out entirely so we don’t have to compromise our beliefs. Kids can and should pray silently all day long. Parents should teach them that but public prayer in school is going to teach our kids the wrong thing sooner or later.

That’s what was happening in Pergamum - compromise. Jesus told them He saw how they did not renounce their faith in Him but then He goes on to say in verses 14-15 that they had some people in their church who held the beliefs of Balaam and the Nicolaitans. Now, without going into a long history of what Balaam and the Nicolaitans believed, just know that Balaam was in the Old Testament and the Nics were in the New Testament and both took the truth and just twisted it a little bit.

Satan loves this method. You know, Satan doesn’t tempt most people by coming out and saying, “Worship me!” Oh, he would love to be worshipped but he knows that doesn’t work very well. A better way is for Satan to take what is God’s truth and just twist it a little bit so that it sounds good. It sounds true. It sounds right. It’s not awful. It’s not drastic. It’s just a little twist. But it’s the first step on a slippery slope.

Balaam tried to curse the nation of Israel but couldn’t. In fact, God turned it around to be a blessing but Balaam was able to get the Israelites to marry foreign women. Now, is it wrong to get married? Of course not. Is it wrong to marry a foreigner? Nope. But it is wrong to marry an unbeliever. 2 Corinthians 6:14 says, “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common?”

God doesn’t want us to marry an unbeliever because you start to compromise. You say you want to go to church Sunday morning and they say they want to “worship God’s creation at the lake.” You say you want to pray to God. They say they are praying to their higher power. Pretty soon you think you are praying and worshiping God but really…you’re at the lake fishing. You’re just fishing.

Do you know what a Trojan horse is? It is originally from the Trojan War in which the Greeks supposedly built this huge wooden horse and hid a bunch of men inside while the rest of the army pretended to sail away. When the Trojans saw them leave, they pulled the huge horse into the city gates. That night, the warriors came out of the horse, opened the gates and let their men in to win the war.

Satan loves that story. He loves to do just the same thing. I’ve heard it said that no outside enemy will ever defeat the United States but our downfall will come from within. I believe that. We are seeing it happen every day on the news. It’s the same with our church. Satan has attacked us nine ways to Sunday and we have always stood strong, with God’s protection and provision. If Satan ever wants to take this church down, his best bet is to take us down from the inside instead of a frontal attack.

That’s what he was doing in Pergamum. The church had allowed some people to become members of the church who were not like-minded believers and while the church had never renounced the name of Jesus, they had been compromising their beliefs to include some people who were misleading the other church members.

So, while we like to say that this church doesn’t have any rules, we do have a Constitution and Bylaws Manual and a Policies and Procedures Manual. Do you know what that means? It means we actually do have rules. I hate to break it to you. When we say we don’t have any rules, we mean we don’t care what you wear or what you drive or how you worship. None of that matters to us. Tattoos and motorcycles? Come on! You have been divorced. You are dirt poor. You’ve been to prison. Come on! You’ll fit right in. We don’t have any rules about any of that because we don’t read in scripture where we should have a problem with that.

But when it comes to Who we worship and what we believe there is no compromise. I bet some of you didn’t even know we are a Southern Baptist Church and I like the fact that some people don’t know because we don’t put a lot of stock in being Baptists. I wouldn’t even say that we align ourselves with Baptists. I would say that Baptists align with us on what we read in scripture and how we interpret that. Baptists are the closest to exactly what we believe and we are proud to be Baptists because Baptists do good work all over the world but it doesn’t define us. Scripture defines us.

But as our constitution says in Article 2, Section 1, “this church historically subscribes to the doctrinal statement adopted by the body at the time of its original incorporation in December 2012, namely the Baptist Faith and Message.” This is the Baptist Faith and Message. It is basically a written description of what we believe about scripture and God and church and how to be saved. I know this is the first time a lot of you have even heard of this and I encourage you to read it. If you are a Christian but don’t believe everything the way this lays it out, you are still welcome to come here but you may not be comfortable. If you are a non-Christian, you are still welcome to come here but you can’t be a member unless you are a Christian.

We don’t allow Muslims or Buddhists or Witches or Hindus to be members. It’s not because we hate them or even dislike them. It’s not about that. It’s about not compromising our faith. We believe what we read in the Bible and there is no room for other religions. That’s never really been a problem and I don’t expect it to be.

But here is how something might become a problem. It was probably something like this that led to Pergamum getting a condemning letter from Jesus. Let’s say I went to the Leadership Team one day and mentioned that I thought we needed to ease up on our stance about homosexuality because there is a gay couple in our community and they are pretty wealthy and I think they might start coming to our church but I don’t want to offend them by preaching against that kind of thing. What would you think?

If I came to you privately and asked you not to be so vocal about Jesus being God because some visitors complained and said they were offended by such narrow-minded talk, what would you do? If I went to the children’s teachers with some curriculum written by Oprah that said Jesus was just one of many ways to get to Heaven, would that bother you?

I tell you what, when that day comes, you need to quietly, lovingly and prayerfully get me in a corner and tell me to REPENT! Because that is exactly what Jesus told the church at Pergamum to do in verse 16. They had compromised. They had been attacked from the inside and they were not grounded in the truth of scripture to realize that if they kept on, it would cause them to be taken out of this world as a church.

In fact, that is what every one of us should do if we see a church family member struggling with sin. We should hold each other accountable and when God puts it on your heart to say something, you get prayed up and go in love and with your Bible open and lovingly bring that dear one back into right relationship with God.

In love you tell them that in Romans 1, God calls homosexuality shameful, unnatural and a perversion. That’s not our words. That is God’s Word.

In love you tell them that Ephesians 5:18 says do not get drunk.

In love you tell them that Hebrews 10:25 says that we all need to be in church.

I love it when we have the Gideons here. They raise money for Bibles and we completely support that, of course, but I love their stories. I love to hear how somebody tried to get rid of a Bible while they were riding in a plane and threw it out the window and some farmer found it down below and came to know Jesus because of it. I want to hear about the guy who got mad and threw his little Gideon Bible on his roof and the roofer found it in the rain gutter, read it and had his life changed.

Those are great stories but they show the power of the holy scriptures. We rest in, rely on and love the Word of God and we will never compromise on what it says. I want the world to know that we don’t hate them. I want the homosexual, the drunk, the deadbeat, the liar, the cheat, the murderer, the gossip and the glutton to know that we love them and will do anything to lead them to have a life-changing relationship with God through His Son Jesus. And we do that by reading, knowing and sharing what the Bible says because there is power in these holy scriptures.

These are fun times at Christ Fellowship. It’s fun, not because we have game night or eat brownies during Bible study. It’s fun because we are seeing people become new creations, marriages saved, families healed and eternities changed. And we know that the Bible is true because it works. It has never failed us and with God’s protection and provision we will never fail it.

We are far from perfect people in this church. We have some folks that have been serious hypocrites, liars, thieves, drunks, gluttons and overall ne’er-do-wells in this church – okay, that’s just me. But our lives have been changed – my life has been changed - by what we have read in the Bible and they continue to change by what we are reading in the Bible and we want others to have what we have. We have a relationship with God through His Son Jesus and because of that relationship we can have peace and joy in this life even in the difficult times. Plus, we have the assurance of eternity in Heaven in the next life.

This life is hard for Christians and non-Christians alike. I don’t know how people do it without that relationship with God but also a relationship with a church. And this church has proven in the past that we will not renounce our faith nor will we compromise our beliefs with God’s help.

If you would like to be a member of this church, I would love to talk with you and pray with you right now. If you need that relationship with God that we have been talking about, I would love to pray with you right now. All you have to do is ask God for forgiveness of your sins, repent – turn away from those sins and ask Jesus to be Lord of your life, believing in Him to be the Way, the Truth and the Life and the only way to Heaven. Do that right now as the music plays.

“Smyrna” – Revelation 2:8-11

My cousin, Graham Moncure, was born March 4, 1974. At the age of four he was diagnosed with Leukemia. My aunt and uncle were not wealthy people but they managed to provide Graham with every possible chance to survive. They got him to the best doctors at the best hospitals anywhere but more than that, they prayed and they believed.

Graham was born into a Christian home and was saved and baptized at, I believe, the age of six. As he continued to go through chemo and radiation and bone marrow transplants, the whole family prayed. Churches from all over prayed for Graham. People all over the world prayed fervently for Graham’s recovery and healing.

As things got worse, his parents fasted and prayed, laid hands on him and symbolically anointed him with oil. His condition continued to worsen but his parents had great faith. They knew that if their faith was strong enough and if they continued to ask for healing in the name of Jesus that it would be done. They prayed back to God scriptures that encourage us that if we pray in the Spirit and in the name of Jesus that God would hear and they knew he would be healed and so they had faith in that and they thanked God in advance for what He was about to do.

They did everything right but on July 28, 1981, at the tender age of seven years old, Graham died. His parents’ faith was so strong and their belief in Graham’s healing was so sure that they then assumed that Graham would be raised from the dead. It had to be. They couldn’t imagine that God would allow their baby boy to be taken from them. But it wasn’t meant to be.

As you can imagine, they were completely mentally, physically and even spiritually exhausted. They were beyond sad. They were devastated. It affected them physically. It affected their marriage. It affected their relationship with the Lord. And in some ways, they never recovered. They were in some ways disillusioned with Christianity and the Bible. They now had doubts where faith used to be and so many questions they had have never been answered.

How about you? Do you ever doubt? Do you ever wonder if Christianity is the real thing; if the Bible is really true; if God really is in control and He loves you? If you say you never have doubts, you are either not being truthful or your faith has never really been tested. You have never been tested and tried to your core. You have never been afflicted and persecuted and made to suffer.

But if you have suffered severely, you have to ask the question that has been asked for thousands of years. How can a good and loving God allow such bad things to happen to people? Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? I get asked that question sometimes and I have a few answers. I can come up with some biblical answers but, I’ll be honest, none of them are truly satisfying. None of those answers will bring back a dead child or make you okay with them being gone. That’s for sure.

But I have come to realize something about those questions and it affects everything about this life and how we live it. I have come to realize that “Why does God allow bad things?” is not a good question. It’s not a good question because there are no satisfactory answers, for one thing. Also, the question gives the assumption that this life should be good and that we deserve for it to be good and if it’s not good, then God is to blame.

We just finished a sermon series on finding Jesus in the Old Testament and do you remember how we found that all through the Old Testament, the people are left wanting more? The Law of Moses and the 10 Commandments showed the people they were sinful but it didn’t pay for those sins and that left people needing and wanting a Savior. The sacrificial system, where sins were covered over by the blood of animals, helped people be right with God but they still lacked a Mediator between them and God. Then Jesus showed up in the New Testament and fulfilled those needs and that was great but even with that, something is just not right. Something is still missing. This world is still so messed up and painful to live in. We are still looking forward to something else! What could the answer be?

Let’s turn to the last book of the Bible and I want you to see that, once again, Jesus is the answer. Just like how Jesus was the answer for the people that lived in the Old Testament times, Jesus was the answer for the New Testament and He is the answer for us today. We just haven’t been asking the right question.

Turn to Revelation 2:8-11. This is the second letter that Jesus told the Apostle John to write. In it, Jesus tells the church at Smyrna some of the scariest comforting news ever. Yes, you heard me. Scary-comforting, like only Jesus can. And it should be scary-comforting to you as well.

In my reading this week about the church in Smyrna, I found that the city of Smyrna was a beautiful city set between the mountains and the Aegean Sea. Today it is the city of Izmir, Turkey and it is absolutely beautiful. It’s very much like the south of France, in that it is where all the rich and famous go to vacation. They have the nicest hotels and the kings and middle eastern sheiks park their multi-million dollar yachts in the bay as they go shopping in the hoity-toity shops on land.

It was probably very much the same way two thousand years ago or so when this letter was written which surprised me because Jesus mentions the afflictions and poverty of the church. The difference was that the government had made it a law that you had to worship the emperor and you had to be loyal to Rome and if you didn’t then you couldn’t buy or sell anything. So, for the Christians there in Smyrna, that meant they either had to reject the one, true God and live in plenty or reject the emperor and live in squalor. So, believe it when you read they had afflictions and poverty.

Let’s read it now – finally. Let’s read Revelation 2:8-11 and see what Jesus had to say to this poor church. “To the angel of the church in Smyrna write: These are the words of him who is the First and the Last, who died and came to life again. 9I know your afflictions and your poverty-yet you are rich! I know about the slander of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. 10Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you life as your victor's crown. 11Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who is victorious will not be hurt at all by the second death.”

If your family member is having surgery and if I, like a good pastor, came up to the hospital and told you not to worry, everything was going to be okay, your loved one is going to be just fine, what would you think? You might think that it was nice of me to come up there and it was nice of me to say those comforting things, but you might also think, “How in the world do YOU know?” Right?

But if the surgeon came out and told you those very same words, you wouldn’t question him. Would you? Why? Because he would know. He wasn’t just trying to be nice and supportive. He would be telling the truth. It’s his business to know. That’s what he does so what he says is believable. The guy in charge is believable.

Jesus tells John to write down what He is about to say and tell them who it is that is writing these things. It would be nice if John wrote Smyrna himself and told them that he knew the poverty they were in. It’s another thing altogether to have Jesus, who is God, tell them that He knows. So, when Jesus says, “These are the words of him who is the First and the Last, who died and came to life again” Jesus is giving just a taste of His credentials. He is saying that He was here before all this started and will be here long after it’s gone. He is the Man with the plan. He is large and in charge. He is in control. He defeated death so this other stuff is under His control as well. That in itself might be scary and it might be comforting, depending on your relationship with Him.

But Jesus goes on to say, “I know your afflictions and your poverty-yet you are rich!” Again, it’s one thing if I come to you when the doctor diagnoses you with cancer and I give my sympathies. It’s altogether another thing when Lois, who has gone through cancer and came through on the other side healed by the grace and power of God comes to you and sympathizes with you. Right?

How comforting for the church in Smyrna to get a letter from the risen Christ who was beaten, bruised, crucified and killed; for the One who was so badly afflicted to write and say, “I see your affliction. I see it. I recognize it. I feel for you and I hate that affliction because I love you so much!”

But if that is true; if Jesus sees their affliction; if He loves them and hates their affliction…then why doesn’t He do something about it?! There can only be a few answers. Obviously, He is lying and He doesn’t really see just how bad they are suffering. Yea, I bet that’s it. Jesus is a liar. You think? Of course not.

Okay then, He must not love them very much or surely He would change the situation they were in. This church, part of His beloved bride, was literally starving and dying. He must not love them very much. What do you think of that answer? No?

If He sees them and He loves them then obviously He is unable to help them. This so-called sovereign Lord doesn’t have the power to change their circumstance. He is not all-powerful and He just can’t help them. Do you think that is it? Of course not. We know better than that.

But that only leaves one answer. If Jesus sees them, loves them and is able to change the circumstance but doesn’t then obviously He wants them to be there. He wants them to go through the afflictions and poverty. But why? Why would He want that for them? Why would He want that for His bride back then? Why does He want that for His bride now? An even better question for you may be, why does He want YOU to go through affliction and poverty?

The Apostle Paul might be a good person to ask that question. Paul knew something about suffering. In fact, he’s kind of the poster boy for suffering. God said in Acts 9, “I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.” But the suffering wasn’t wasted on Paul. He understood it. He knew that God was in control and he knew that God loved him and yet allowed him to suffer.

He starts his second letter to the Corinthians by saying in verse3-6, “Praise be to the God and Father of our LORD Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. 5For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. 6If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer.”

He says there that suffering allows us to comfort others that suffer and that produces endurance in us. But that may not make you feel too much better so Paul tells us in verses 8-9, “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. 9Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.”

Paul says that suffering causes us to depend on God, not on ourselves. Yea, I hear you. Some of you still aren’t convinced so Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 4, “15All this is for your benefit (all this suffering), so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.”

He is saying that our suffering actually helps spread the Gospel. That’s huge! But I understand that still doesn’t make it worth it for some of you.  Some of you have suffered way more than your fair share. I get it. How about this? In 2 Corinthians 12:7 Paul says that he was given a thorn in his flesh to torment him to keep him from becoming conceited. Maybe that is at least partly why we suffer sometimes. It brings us down a notch. Does that make you feel any better? No? Hmm.

Hang on just a second. Paul said something in 2 Corinthians 4 that might help. In verse 16 he says, “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. So, that’s good. They are being renewed. But wait just a second. Look at the rest of this! 17For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

“Our light and momentary troubles”? He just said he was about to die from the pressure but now he is calling that light and momentary. Paul, the same guy that has been beaten, stoned, shipwrecked, shot, stabbed, run over by a Mack truck, left for dead, and beaten by a biker gang (well, practically) says that his suffering is giving him an eternal glory that far outweighs all that stuff.

You know what? Maybe that is why Jesus said in our text in Revelation 2:9, “I know your afflictions and your poverty-yet you are rich!” Jesus allows us to suffer afflictions and poverty so that we will be rich in the next life for all eternity. He says in verse 10, “Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you life as your victor's crown.” I don’t know about you but I want to be rich. Not rich like the ignorant world thinks of rich but rich like Jesus says is rich. I want to be rich, not for a few years with stuff that wears out, gets old and goes out of style but rich for all of eternity with what Jesus calls “great rewards.”

In Matthew 5:10-12 Jesus said, “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11"Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven.”

Jesus says that when we suffer – and everybody suffers – if we are faithful to Him, making Him look good in our suffering that our reward in Heaven will be great. So, maybe the question of why God allows bad things is not a good question. Maybe we ought to be asking another question.

Let’s pretend for just a minute. Let’s pretend that you and your spouse or you and your best friend have just won an all-expenses paid trip to Paris. You go online and research and see that you are going to be staying for two weeks at literally the nicest hotel in the world. You will stay in a suite and have everything you need plus complimentary tickets to the opera and the Louvre and all kinds of cool French stuff.

Finally, the day arrives for you to go the airport and fly first class to Paris. Your husband says, “C’mon honey. Time to go. Don’t want to be late for the flight.” And you say, “Okay, let me just run to the bathroom real quick.” So you go to the bathroom and you realize that it’s just too warm in there so you turn the thermostat down. The air kicks on and you go back. Now it’s too cold. So, you gotta go get it just right.

Then you see that the toilet needs to be cleaned up a little bit. That’s not good. It’ll just take a second. You like to use a nice bathroom. Probably ought to hit that tub with some cleaner while you’re at it, right? Then the sink needs to be touched up after you wash your hands.

“Honey! Come on! We’re going to be late!”

Now…you know what would be really nice? Some new paint would really do this bathroom wonders. I’m thinking Billowy Cloud Blue for this wall and Soft Breeze White over here, maybe paint the trim an accent col…

“HONEY! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? We don’t have time for this!”

“But I really like to have a nice bathroom! Is it wrong to have a pretty bathroom? It’s just not fair! The Wilson’s have such a nice bathroom. All the fixtures match and…”

What’s wrong with that story? That person is focused on the wrong thing. They are about to go stay in the presidential suite with hot and cold running butlers. They are about to have access to the best French fires, French toast and French dip in the world and they are wondering which paint to use on the east wall of their bathroom. It’s a ridiculous scenario, right?

It’s not wrong to want a nice bathroom. I’m sure Billowy Cloud Blue will be nice. But that is not the point. They are focused on the wrong thing just like we all focus on living our best life now; wondering why we have to suffer and why the neighbors, who don’t even go to church, have better stuff than we do. Who cares?

You focus on making God look good in the middle of your struggle. You focus on being faithful to Him, being obedient to Him and living a life that is holy and honoring to Him. For your light and momentary troubles are achieving for you an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So fix your eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Let’s bow our heads and close our eyes for just a minute and I want us all to go to the Lord in prayer and ask Him what we need to focus on in our lives. What part of your life is not holy, separate and different from the world? Is it your attitude? Your mouth? Your entertainment habits? Is there unforgiveness or bitterness toward somebody else? Do you not have the patience you need or the self-control that is expected of you? Take that to the Lord right now. Those are the questions we should be asking right now.

Ask forgiveness of your sin and repent of it. Turn away from that lifestyle with God’s help and allow Him to change your life. I would love to pray about it with you right now as the music plays.

“Ephesus” – Revelation 2:1-7

There is a story that has been going around social media for years and when it comes around, a lot of well-meaning people forward it on to everybody they know and it drives me crazy. The story is that a pastor of a large church dressed up like a homeless man and waited at the church one Sunday morning for people to show up.

He was dressed in worn out clothes and had a fake beard and a dirty hat and when people saw him, the story says that only three of the 10,000 people greeted him, nobody helped him and when he went inside and sat down, the ushers came and asked him to go sit in the back. The problem I have with this story is that it is completely made up. Nothing about it is true. Somebody just came up with this story for the sole purpose of making the church look bad and lots of church members perpetuate the story thinking it will motivate the church to do better or something.

What is ironic is that in my search for this story online, I found a similar story that is true where a pastor dressed up as a homeless person in the Chicago area and he said that he just cried the whole time because so many people helped him and gave him money, and prayed with him over and over again until it was just too much and he couldn’t keep it up any longer. But that story never made the rounds like the untrue story did.

I think I know the answer to this, but what would this church do in that situation? I say I know the answer because we have seen that very thing happen here more than once. Our favorite story happened six or seven years ago when Eddie “the Angel” walked in right back there and asked for help and the service actually stopped until we could get him something to eat and drink and some clothes to wear and some gas for his van. Some of y’all remember that. We call him Eddie the Angel because after we helped him, he disappeared and we never saw him again and we all wondered if that wasn’t what Hebrews 13:2 meant when it said, “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.”

Our church has proven over and over again that we have a love for people and a love for Jesus but let me ask you a question. Can you do all the right things and still be wrong? Can you feed the hungry and give clothes to the poor and help widows and orphans and still not be right in God’s eyes? Yes, you can.

Is it because God is never satisfied and is such a harsh task master? No, it’s because God sees the heart. He knows our motivation for what we do and motivation is everything. A couple of weeks ago, Terri Perry called me up to the grocery store where she works to get some food for the food pantry and when I got there, she said that when the manager of the store found out what she was doing, the manager insisted on paying for it. I told Squirt that in God’s eyes, they both paid for it because God saw her heart and knew she had intended to pay for it. Jeremiah 17:10 says, "I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways.”

Let me ask you a question. How would you feel if we got a letter from God, addressed to Christ Fellowship at 1301 North Main and the very first sentence said, “Dear Christ Fellowship, I know what you did.”? What would you think? Would you think we were in trouble or would you think He was pleased?

I ask that because there was a church that got a letter like that one time. In fact, there were seven churches that got letters like that in the Book of Revelation. Turn to the last book of the Bible and put a bookmark in there because we are going to camp out here for a while. The churches that are mentioned in the second and third chapters of Revelation were actual churches not too unlike this one. I doubt if they had dogs walking around during the worship time but I don’t know. We aren’t told anything about their canine situation.

But we are told of their spiritual situations and some of them were okay spiritually and some were not so much.  But all seven got letters, written by John, who is the author of the Book of Revelation but the letters and the whole book were all inspired by God. John was exiled to the island of Patmos for preaching the truth of Jesus Christ and while he was there, God revealed Himself to John in an incredible way and told John to write down what he saw and what he heard.

He was told to write seven letters to seven different churches. The first letter was written to the church in Ephesus. This church was planted by the Apostle Paul and he visited them a couple of times and loved the people there. Timothy (1 Timothy 1:3-4), Acquila and Priscilla (Acts 18:25), and Apollos had all spent time preaching and teaching there and in its day it was a wonderful church.

Let’s go to the last book of the Bible and read Revelation 2:1-7 and see what Jesus thought of this church.

"To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: Now, hang on right there for just a second. The word “angel” means “messenger” and this letter was written, not to an angel like we think of with wings and a halo, but the angels of these churches are the pastors or leaders of the church who were the messengers of God’s word. I bring that up just thinking that maybe that should be my new title. What do you think? The Angel Todd of Christ Fellowship. Huh? No? He also calls them “stars” that He holds in His right hand but that doesn’t fit me very well either. Oh well. Let’s continue.

These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands. (He’s referring to Jesus among the churches here.)  ²I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. ³You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.

Let’s stop right there. I bet the church at Ephesus wishes the letter stopped right there because Jesus gives them great commendation for their works in this part of the letter. The seven golden lampstands are the seven churches and Jesus knows what is going on in these churches. The church is His bride and Jesus is well aware of everything going on with His bride.

He tells them how proud He is of them for their good deeds. They have worked hard. Paul and the others would be proud of what they have done and what they have stood up against. Jesus first commends them for their hard work. The Greek word is “kopos” which describes an all-out effort.

The father of this church, Paul, said in Philippians 3:14, “But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize of God’s heavenly calling in Christ Jesus. The Ephesian church was doing just that. They were straining toward what is ahead and pressing on toward the goal of leading people to have a life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ. It’s hard work and they were doing that hard work and continuing to persevere in it.

Every week I see a bunch of people work in and around and through this church, not just in this building and not just me but it takes a lot of people and a lot of effort to do what this church does every week. It takes a lot of time and effort to get the music and slides together for the screen. It takes a lot of time and effort to be ready for the little kids’ worship, count and deposit the offering, keep the books, mow the lawn, pay the bills, teach Bible study, lead the music, straighten the food pantry, clean and everything else that is needed. And I see y’all do it over and over, week in and week out and I see you do it with a smile on your face because you see how God has blessed this church.

But you know what happens when the church is obedient. God blesses it. And you also know what happens when God blesses something. Satan attacks, right? And Satan has attacked this church over and over again. We have had sickness and trials, attacks on out unity and attacks on our finances. Yes, we may have seen angels walk in and disrupt our service but we have also see the cops walk in and disrupt our service. We have had stuff stolen and vandalized. We have drunks and druggies test us at times. Satan tries all the time to discourage us with what we have or don’t have but through it all, God has protected us and this church, this small group of like-minded individuals continues to persevere. So, I think we have some idea of how the church at Ephesus persevered.

But, I go back to my earlier question. Can a church do everything right and still be wrong? Can you do all kinds of good things and still not be right in God’s eyes? I’ll let the Lord answer that question as we continue in Revelation 2, verse 4. He has just told them how He sees all the good things they are doing but there is a problem.

4Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. 5Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. 6But you have this in your favor: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. 7Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.

You have forsaken the love you had at first. Some translations say, “You have forgotten your first love.” That’s so ironic because Paul wrote them quite a few years before in Ephesians 1:15 and commended them for their great love. He said, “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the LORD Jesus and your love for all God's people, 16I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.” So, what happened?

Last year in the fall I went up to Colorado and New Mexico with the dogs on vacation. On our way back I stopped on Sunday morning for church at a First Baptist of whatever city I was in. I left the dogs in the car and, as you can imagine, they did not understand why. But when I got in, I had several people greet me including the pastor who was very friendly. The building was nice and clean and pretty. The music was well done. Everybody did their part just right and on cue. The pastor preached a fine message. I even said, “Amen” a few times. It was real nice and then we all waddled out just like we had waddled in.

The problem was they had gotten this “church” thing down. It was slick and nice and pleasant and didn’t take too long. Nobody said anything uncomfortable. It all went off without a hitch, like a well-oiled machine. They mentioned in their announcements and in the bulletin all the good things they were doing in the community and I’m sure they were. But there was no passion for Jesus; no passion for other people. Nobody was desperate for God to change them. Nobody had been blessed and was dying to give God glory even if they weren’t well-spoken or well-dressed. It was an efficient church but not an effective church. I think that is a lot like the church at Ephesus and it is easy to fall into that trap.

That’s one of the ways that Satan attacks. He gets you busy with good things and you forget the best things. It’s easy to be so focused on your job or what you are supposed to be doing even at church. It happens to pastors all the time. Jesus said to the church at Ephesus, “Consider how far you have fallen!” He means to remember, literally keep on remembering where this relationship has been.

Do you remember when you first fell in love with your spouse? Do you remember when you were away from them how much you missed them? You would be at work and find yourself doodling their name on a piece of paper. When you got to be with them you just wanted to make them smile. You wanted them to be happy, not because you were supposed to; not because it was your job. You did nice things for them just because you loved them and wanted them to have the best.

Maybe in your relationship with your spouse, you need to consider how far you have fallen but Jesus is warning all of us that we need to remember our first love of Jesus and what our relationship with Him used to be. In our relationships with each other, our love matures and we don’t expect our loved ones to treat us like they used to. But we do expect them to love us just because of who we are and we expect to not be taken for granted. God feels the same way about our relationship with Him.

In Luke chapter seven there is a story about a woman who quietly went to Jesus while He was eating dinner at a man’s house and the woman started crying as she lovingly put perfume on Jesus’ feet. She cried and cried and wiped her tears from the feet of Jesus with her own hair and she poured a whole bottle of perfume on His feet and never said a word. She didn’t want attention. She didn’t want anything from Jesus. She just wanted to show Him how much she appreciated Him and loved Him and all she could do was what she did. She loved Jesus and just wanted to be with Him and just wanted Him to know it.

Do you think when that woman died and went to Heaven that she looked back on that event with any regret? Do you think she got to Heaven and thought, “Yea, these rewards are incredible but I probably should have used just half of that bottle and sold the rest”? I mean that would have been more efficient, wouldn’t it? Using the whole bottle to anoint His feet was just wasteful. What a shame, right?

Oh, don’t you know she wishes she would have had ten bottles to pour on His precious feet. Yes, let it be wasteful! Let your sacrifice be wasteful. Let your time, talent and treasure be wasted on the glory of God. If God tells you to give, give big. I’m not talking about giving money to the church necessarily. If God calls you to give to the church give big, yes. But what about giving love to your neighbor that bugs you? What about giving big to the food pantry to help people you may never meet? What about giving big forgiveness to somebody that has done you wrong and would never forgive you? Waste your forgiveness on them. If God tells you to do something, go big or go home. Who cares about efficient? Jesus wants us to be effective.

I think it boils down to faith. Do you truly believe; do you truly have faith that God is able to do more than we could ever ask or imagine as Paul encouraged this very church in Ephesians 3:20? Do you truly believe that God is faithful? If He asks you to give your money or your time or your talent to something that the church is doing, do you think His reward will be worth it? Do you love Him enough to do something big for His name even if you aren’t rewarded; even if you get no glory or recognition; even if you go broke doing it?

I don’t care what the preacher on TV says, your reward for being an effective disciple of Jesus may NOT be health or wealth. You may lose all you have. You may not get well. If that is why you serve God, then you need to “Consider how far you have fallen!” and repent.  Remember your first love and how He loves you and what He has done, is doing and is going to do for you and serve Him big just because you love Him.

D.L. Moody wrote in his book Moody’s Anecdotes (pp. 71-72) these words. Show me a church where there is love, and I will show you a church that is a power in the community. In Chicago a few years ago a little boy attended a Sunday school I know of. When his parents moved to another part of the city the little fellow still attended the same Sunday school, although it meant a long, tiresome walk each way. A friend asked him why he went so far, and told him that there were plenty of others just as good nearer his home.

"They may be as good for others, but not for me," was his reply.

"Why not?" she asked.

"Because they love a fellow over there," he replied.

If only we could make the world believe that we loved them there would be fewer empty churches, and a smaller proportion of our population who never darken a church door. Let love replace duty in our church relations, and the world will soon be evangelized.

Our church website says we have a passion for Jesus and a passion for others. I believe that. I see that and I want to encourage you to continue in that. Be big with your love. Be wasteful with it. When people talk about the members of Christ Fellowship they ought to say, “They love big over there!”

But we only do it by God’s grace and for His glory. We have a loving relationship with God through His Son Jesus and you can too. Ask God to forgive your sins. Repent of those sins and allow Him to change your life today. Do it right now as the music plays.

“Christophanies” – Genesis 32

I learned a new word this week. I had a meeting with some other Baptist preachers and one of them came in wearing a t-shirt that showed some praying hands and the word “Yeet.” I started not to ask because I didn’t want to look foolish, especially if it was some sacred, Hebrew word from scripture that I ought to know. But, thankfully, when I did ask, the guy said he wasn’t really sure but somebody in his youth group gave him the shirt and he was basically wearing it to be cool in front of them.

He said he thought it meant just an exclamation and so we all had to look it up (you know, research it) and we found out it was now being used as an exclamation by young people when you doing something good like when you score a goal or something and you say it real loud. Yeet! So, of course, we used it all through the meeting to make ourselves feel young again.

I’m not going to get used to saying it though, because, like so many other slang words that young people come up with, it’s probably not going to last. I doubt if the next generation will continue to say “yeet” and that’s okay with me. Some things are meant to last and some aren’t. It’ll be just groovy with me if I never hear “yeet” again.

But, while some things don’t last and that’s okay, some things do last and it is regrettable. Anger, unforgiveness, bitterness and hostility are all things that we often wish would go away but don’t. Sometimes we experience it coming from others and sometimes we know we have it inside us and we wish it would go away.

Have you ever done something wrong to somebody and twenty years later you see them and it’s obvious they still hold it against you? You know where I see this the most? In families. A brother hurts another brother and they go twenty years without seeing each other and then at mom’s funeral, they can’t even be in the same room. All the rest of the family is wondering why they can’t just let it go and it’s embarrassing to everybody but pride ruins everything.

There is a story in the Bible where this just may be the case. Jacob is worried sick that this is the situation he is in and he should be concerned. You remember the story of how Jacob tricked Esau out of his birthright and his blessing? You can find those stories in Genesis 25 and 27. Esau has every right to be mad at Jacob. He has been tricked and deceived by Jacob since they were boys growing up as brothers and now, twenty years later, Jacob is going home and he knows he is going to have to face his brother, Esau, and it is eating him up. The last he heard from Esau, he had vowed to kill him.

So, let’s read what happens in this wild story. I want to start with just one verse in Genesis chapter 31 and then we will go to chapter 32 and read some more. As we read, be looking for all the ways that God shows up; all the miracles and incredible things that happen that show that God loves Jacob and is in control of the situation. Start with Genesis 31:3. It says, “Then the LORD said to Jacob, "Go back to the land of your fathers and to your relatives, and I will be with you." Now, skip over all kinds of drama and craziness to chapter 32, verse 3 and we will go through verse 11. Jacob sent messengers ahead of him to his brother Esau in the land of Seir, the country of Edom. 4He instructed them: "This is what you are to say to my LORD Esau: 'Your servant Jacob says, I have been staying with Laban and have remained there till now. 5I have cattle and donkeys, sheep and goats, male and female servants. Now I am sending this message to my LORD, that I may find favor in your eyes.'" 6When the messengers returned to Jacob, they said, "We went to your brother Esau, and now he is coming to meet you, and four hundred men are with him." 7In great fear and distress Jacob divided the people who were with him into two groups, and the flocks and herds and camels as well. 8He thought, "If Esau comes and attacks one group, the group that is left may escape." 9Then Jacob prayed, "O God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, LORD, you who said to me, 'Go back to your country and your relatives, and I will make you prosper,' 10I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant. I had only my staff when I crossed this Jordan, but now I have become two camps. 11Save me, I pray, from the hand of my brother Esau, for I am afraid he will come and attack me, and also the mothers with their children.

Stop there for a second. Do you see what’s happening? Jacob is going back to his homeland but his brother Esau is still there. He did Esau wrong twenty years ago and now he is afraid Esau is going to make good on his promise to kill him, so Jacob tries to bribe him, essentially giving him back the blessing he stole from him all those years ago.

Now, let’s read the good part. Go to verses 22-31. “That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. 24So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 25When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. 26Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak." But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." 27The man asked him, "What is your name?" "Jacob," he answered. 28Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome." 29Jacob said, "Please tell me your name." But he replied, "Why do you ask my name?" Then he blessed him there. 30So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, "It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared." 31The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip.”

I remember reading this as a kid and wondering what in the world was going on. Then I read it again lately and I asked myself, “What in the world is going on?” It’s funny, I told my mother I was going to preach on this and she said, “I have always wondered what in the world was going on in that story.” Maybe you are thinking the same thing. Well, I’ll be honest. I still have some questions about this passage. I read every commentary and several other sermons and none of them explained this very well. Thankfully, we don’t have to understand everything about this to glean some wisdom from it.

Over the last few weeks, we have seen Jesus show up in the Old Testament one way or the other. We have seen picture of Him and types of Him. We have read prophecies that only He has fulfilled and we have recognized that the Old Testament is filled with Jesus and is written to make people want Jesus.

Can you imagine having to sacrifice an animal to cover over your sins and be right with God? Can you imagine not fully understanding God or what He wants or what He is like? Can you imagine having to follow a bunch of Laws that regulate every aspect of your life? That would be hard, especially for a church like us that doesn’t have any rules.

But Jesus came and changed all that. We are not under the Old Testament Law anymore and He is our model for who God is and what God wants and best of all, Jesus is the perfect sacrifice for our sins and all we have to do is believe in Him. But that word “belief” will mean a life-change and we see that in this passage because I believe that Jesus is in this passage in flesh and blood and I want you to see how He changed the life of Jacob. This is called a Christophany when Jesus shows up in person.

No, it does not say that the man in this story is Jesus. Jacob never uses that name. He never heard that name his whole life, but I guarantee you when Jacob got to Heaven and saw Jesus, he said, “Hey, I know you. You’re the guy I wrestled with that night. My hip still hurts because of you! Every time I walk, I think of you.” And I bet Jesus said, “Exactly!”

There are several times when Jesus showed up in the flesh in the Old Testament. Some of them are more obvious than others but one thing to notice and one thing that differentiates Jesus from any other heavenly being or angel is that when He comes, people are saved and changed, one way or another. They might be saved from the fire like the Hebrew boys in the book of Daniel or changed like Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 18 who thought they were too old to have kids. For Jacob here in Genesis 32, he was saved and changed and you will be too if you ever have a real encounter with Jesus Christ.

Do you remember when you fell in love and got married (hopefully to the same person)? Do you remember thinking how much you loved that person and how perfect they were…except for that one little thing? But you knew you would be able to change that person. It shouldn’t be too hard, right? It was just a small thing. Well, how did that work out for ya?

One of the hardest things to overcome in a marriage is thinking you are going to change that other person into who you think they ought to be. A happy marriage is accepting the fact that your partner is flawed and choosing to love them anyway. Going into a marriage expecting the other person to change is just asking for trouble.

But God’s relationship with us is not like this. All through scripture the church is referred to as the Bride of Christ but Jesus loves us too much to leave us as we are. I know that is how some people think about their spouses but it just doesn’t work for us. With God, it doesn’t work any other way. If you claim to be a Christian, a disciple of Jesus, part of Christ’s bride, then you will be changed - constantly and forever.

Look at this story of Jacob. He is worried sick. He has good reason to believe that his brother is going to come and kill him and probably kill his whole family for revenge. That’s why he split his family up, just hoping that when Esau attacked, at least some might get out alive. I can appreciate Jacob wanting to spend the night alone, away from anybody else so he could spend some time in prayer out in the middle of nowhere. There is nothing better when you wrestle with God.

Have you ever wrestled with God? Well, let me ask you something. What do you desire most? What is the one thing you want more than anything? If it is something physical, let me advise you to rethink it. Stuff breaks. Things wear out. Even people don’t last very long. What God wants most for you is change. So that ought to be what we want most. We should want what God wants even if it makes us uncomfortable or even brings pain because it is change that makes us most like Jesus.

Well, sometimes we have to wrestle with God to get the change we want. If you want to overcome addiction, it will require wrestling with God in prayer. If you want to save your marriage, it will require wrestling with God in prayer. If you want to see your loved ones come to have a relationship with Jesus, it will require wrestling with God in prayer. If you want anything big, know this, that Satan does not want that change in your life and he will fight you so we first have to wrestle with God in prayer.

It’s not that God is trying to be difficult. He’s just asking, “How bad do you really want it?” Jacob really wanted to live and not have Esau and his 400 men cut him into ribbons so he started praying. I want you to see that the first thing God did for Jacob and what He will do for you is to change your mind. He changed Jacob’s mind by putting him in this position and God often does similar things to us.

In verse 9, before the wrestling match, it says, “Then Jacob prayed.” God allowed him to be in this position, maybe even caused him to be in this position to change his mind and cause him to realize that he can’t get through this life on his own. Literally since Jacob was born, he was trying to get something over on somebody else. He was a trickster and a fraud. His very name means, “supplanter” or “heel-grabber” which is trying to get something that is not his. And so far, it was working out okay but God changed his mind by allowing him to be in a position that he couldn’t handle on his own.

I hear well-meaning people say all the time that God will never give you more than you can handle. That sounds good and sweet and nice but it is not true. God often times gives us more than we can handle just to show us that He can handle it. That is the very meaning of Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ Who gives me strength.” Without God there is not much that we can handle. I don’t want to try to get out of bed and make it downstairs without God’s protection, provision and grace, much less face this world and the prince of this world, Satan. I can’t handle that and I have proven it by all the mistakes I’ve made.

But it’s when I make those mistakes that God changes my mind and makes me understand that He is in control and He loves me. I don’t have to handle it. I don’t have to be strong enough or smart enough. Good grief, thank you, Lord! Sometimes I think I can handle what’s going on but, just like He did for Jacob, God changes my mind and oftentimes it takes allowing me to be in a position of helplessness like it was for Jacob.

So, God first changed Jacob’s mind but the next thing He did was change Jacob’s name. Did you see that in verse 28? "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel.” If you’re ever on the island of Anglesey, Wales, be sure and visit a town with one of the longest names in the English language. It’s the quaint little village named Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. No joke. (The short form is Llanfairpwllgwyngyll). The name means: “The Church of St. Mary in a hollow of white hazel, near to the rapid whirlpool, and to St. Tisilio Church, near to a red cave.” It’s a long name but it is very descriptive.

In Revelation 2:17 and 3:12, it says that when we get to Heaven we will get new, more descriptive names. But, when you come to have a relationship with God through His Son Jesus, we are given a new name right then. We are now Children of the One, True King and do you know what Children of the One, True King do? THEY ACT LIKE IT! They act like their lives have been changed because they have been changed.

Children of the One, True King don’t act like the rest of the world. They look different. They talk different. They don’t go to the same places. They don’t watch the same movies or listen to the same music. You don’t have to be a snob like royalty and look down on the rest of the peasants. You act like your Father acts. You act like Jesus acts. When people see you, they should see love and wisdom and purity because we come from a family that is loving, wise and pure.

Children of the One, True King don’t worry. What is there to worry about when your Father is the sovereign King, in control of everything and in love with you? Children of the One, True King don’t use coarse language. That would make the Father look bad and shame the Bride of Christ. But, Children of the One, True King are forgiving when other people do that because we have been forgiven much more.

Jacob was completely different after his wrestling match with Jesus. He thought different because his mind had been changed. He acted different because his name had been changed and he walked different because…his future had been changed.

I told you I don’t understand everything about this passage. I don’t know why Jesus wrestled with Jacob or why Jesus couldn’t take him down sooner. Jacob was nearly a hundred years old. That would be about like wrestling Troy so I don’t understand why they had to wrestle until daybreak. But in this wrestling match, Jesus evidently popped Jacob’s thigh out of joint or something equally as painful and it made Jacob limp.

The commentaries are full of ideas about why it happened just like it did but I think Jesus wanted to give Jacob a reminder that his future had changed. He no longer had to worry about Esau. He no longer had to try to do everything himself. He no longer had to be tough enough or strong enough or clever enough because he wasn’t any of those things and Jesus wanted to remind him of that and now, every time he stood up, sat down or walked there was a constant reminder.

I don’t know how people do it that don’t have a relationship with God through His Son Jesus. How do you go through life without the Holy Spirit of God living inside you giving you wisdom? How do you get by without a church family to support you? That’s how Jacob had been all of his life and now Jesus has changed his mind, his name and his future and Jesus wants him to remember that he has this new source of power and peace and so Jesus gives him a permanent reminder.

From 2010 to 2012, I wondered every day how much longer this church was going to last. We were in a huge beautiful building in Runaway Bay that we couldn’t afford and every month we were getting closer and closer to running out of money. Between the electric bill and the rent, it was considerably more than the 10-20 members could afford and on top of the finances, this church was full of what my dad calls Brother Thundermuffins.

You know the kind: old, grouchy, complaining and looking for somebody to boss around. Yea, this church had more than its share and I was just waiting for the money to run out so I could get out of here. But, to make a long story short, God provided this place for us to move into and provided another church to move in over there and pay all the bills. So, to honor that and to remember what happened, I got some gravel from that old parking lot and did sort of what the Israelites did when they crossed the Jordan in Joshua chapter 4. I put those pebbles in this little container.

Again, making a long story short, that situation lasted one year and we were back to having to pay for that building that we weren’t even using now but God provided a way we could just give it to the bank and be rid of that responsibility forever. It was just God providing for our finances and He even allowed all the Thundermuffins to go someplace else and so I got another little container and put another twelve pebbles in it as a reminder.

Ask me about it later and I will give you more details about all the miracles God did but as a reminder to me and everybody else, we have these two little containers to remind us of how God took us from across the Hwy 380 Jordan and brought us over into the land where we are called to be; where we minister by His grace and for His glory to the poor, the addicted and the incarcerated and we do it because that is what God wants.

God wanted Jacob to have a constant reminder that his future had been changed and so He made Jacob limp. He wants us to have a constant reminder that our future has been changed and so we keep these silly little rocks to remind us. He wants you to remember that your future has been changed too because Satan loves to attack us by making us question what really happened.

He did it to Eve in the garden when he asked, “Did God really say that?” and he has been using that method of attack ever since. He loves to say, “Hey, come on. Let’s go do that thing we like to do.” And when you resist, Satan says, “Did God really say it was wrong?” So, you have to know what scripture says.

He loves to make you think you have never been saved so you need to write the date and time and place down in your Bible so that when Satan comes at you with that lie, you have a permanent reminder. The other way that Satan attacks is by making you think that you are a Christian when you really aren’t. I hear people say all the time, “I’ve just always been a Christian” and immediately a red flag goes up for me.

Your testimony ought to include a definite time in your life when you submitted your will to God like Jacob did. You might not know the exact time and place but that decision ought to be concrete in your mind. Was there ever a time in your life when you were like Jacob and felt scared and alone and then one day Jesus came along and changed your mind, changed your name and changed your future?

If you don’t know for sure that your future includes Heaven for eternity, I need to pray with you right now. Ask God to forgive you of your sins. Repent of that lifestyle and allow God to change you today and every day to come to be more like Him. This relationship with God through His Son Jesus will not solve all your problems or remove the consequences from your bad decisions but your future will be changed and it includes peace and joy in this life and Heaven in the next life. Make that decision right now as the music plays.