This is the Truth Network. When Jesus was speaking to the churches of Asia about their correction issues, it was an important matter. He wasn't just passing the time. If they obey, there would be wonderful rewards. If they did not, there were serious consequences.
Stay with us, listen, and learn. You're listening to "Until He Comes," a blend of prophetic and practical biblical studies with Dr. Greg Hinnant, author of "The Second Coming of Christ," his appearing, his return, our preparation, and now author and teacher Greg Hinnant. Welcome to the program today, my friend. We're going to continue our look at Jesus in judgment mode.
We see this in Revelation two and three.
Now, why is it important for us to understand Jesus in judgment mode?
Well, simply because the next time you and I see Jesus, we will see him in the role of judge.
So, we need to understand the basis of his judgment. His demeanor, his purpose, his decisions. Because if you want to know a judge, study his opinions, his legal decisions.
So we're following that line of simple rationale here, in our studies of Jesus in judgment mode, and we're looking at the record of this sovereign, supreme, divine judge's opinions. We see seven of them in the book. Of Revelation chapter two and three, and we're looking at them in detail.
Now today we're going to pick up where we left off in the last podcast, which was we were discussing that Jesus sovereignly charged five of the seven churches to repent.
Now think about that: two did not need any correction, and he spoke only commendations to them. But five, seventy-one percent. Needed at least something to be corrected, so in our last lesson we talked about what those corrections were in Ephesus, Pergamus, and Thyatira. In Ephesus, Jesus ordered the Ephesian Christians to return to their first love and. Then he warned them if they didn't, he would remove their lampstand.
Oh my goodness, that meant that church would have had no influence. That was the mother church of Asia, the church from which the gospel sprang throughout the whole province.
So it was a serious warning to have their light removed, their witness. And then, Pragmas, we studied there and learned that because they were walking in sin. Specifically, that were walking in idolatry and immorality, caused by false teaching, heretical teaching that, in effect, told them this was okay, and all this was based upon Greek philosophy, which told them that what they did in the body, did not matter, but it did not affect their soul. Jesus thought otherwise, and he plainly said so.
So, there he promised that if they did not correct the issue. Then he would bring his sword of correction. This meant capital punishment. He would take them home early. Oh my goodness!
And we said that Paul said the same thing in First Corinthians eleven, twenty-eight to thirty, when he warned those in Corinth who were not taking the Lord's supper properly, but were disrespecting the holiness of that by not taking it in the right attitude and spirit. And then also by taking it with sin that was unjudged in their hearts.
So now we want to move forward today and talk about his message to the church in Sardis. There we will read that in the Revelation three, and let you see for yourself how Jesus was so. Obvious in his statements, it was very clear that he wanted to correct the church so that it would be different. It would be as he intended it to be.
So, if you look with me at Revelation three, we will read that together. And to the angel of the church in Sardis, write: These things saith he that hath the seven spirits of God and the seven stars.
Now the seven spirits of God are the sevenfold spirit. And one of those, according to Isaiah, is wisdom.
So Jesus is speaking with wisdom or good judgment. I would add, divinely good judgment. He knows exactly what he's talking about, and his opinion is perfect. He said, "I know your works, and that you have a name or reputation that you live, but you are dead." So everyone in the region said, "Wow, you ought to go to the Sardis church. It's great." It's a wonderful church, Jesus though said, "I find you dead." Oh my goodness, what a statement!
A church should be a spiritually living entity in connection with the living God.
So to say it is dead means it's been cut off. Oh, what cuts off a church from God?
Well, first and obviously sin. Sin, sin in the leadership, particularly, but sin when the leadership allows sin to grow in the congregation. You see, it's a double sin. When the congregation indulges in sin and the leadership knows about it, if the leadership takes action, correction occurs, and the church maintains its holiness, and is truly the bride of Christ, because the bride of Christ is holy. If the leaders do not address it, then it's a double sin because there is sin in the congregation and sin in the leadership.
This was the case in both, Pergamos and Thyatira. Jesus was really rebuking the leaders for allowing, this woman. Whom he called Jezebel to teach false doctrine and to encourage his people to indulge in the sins of that day, which was simply the immorality and idolatry of the temple worship in their cities in that region and throughout the world at that time.
So sin will cut off the presence of God and the flow of the river God from a church and leave it dead. We can have meetings. We can have music. We can have preaching. We can have teaching.
We can have scholars. We can have debates. We can have parties. We can have socials. We can have a lot.
There's a tremendous amount of religious or religious-related experiences, activities we can indulge in, and call ourselves a church.
Some people say, "Yeah, but they're not really a church." Well, friend, if at one time they came to Christ humbly and asked Him to save their souls, they were Christians. And you say, "Well, they shouldn't behave that way," and I would agree. And but whatever it was that they did, they had a point at which they could turn, and they did not.
Now this was one of those huge turning points when Christ addressed this church in Sardis. It was their opportunity to change. He said, "You're dead." Now I would want to let me just. Characterize this a little differently. Spiritual death in a church can be just because of non-seeking, just because you are content with religion, correct doctrine, and acceptable worship services, acceptable in our terms, but yet dead because God is not there.
It can be because of pride. If we take great pride in our church, our group of churches, our denomination. The spirit of God won't dwell there because God hates pride. Pride is the spirit of Satan. He drove Satan out of heaven, Lucifer, originally, because of pride.
So he's not going to come to a church that's full of pride. That church will be dead, or it's a church that is rejecting its calling. God has told that church or told those leaders clearly, repeatedly. To be active in missions, and they will not do it. They want to hold their money in reserve, or some other issue.
He's told them to have a Bible school in their in their in their campus, and they just won't do it. They don't want to get into all that trouble of having a school. Of course, that the other side of that is that a Bible school. In the in the church campus or accessible to the members, linked to the church, will educate them in the Word of God, and raise them up, and make them better church members, more able to fulfill our three general commissions: to witness, to evangelize, to be witnesses, to evangelize, and to disciple others.
So, for whatever reason, this church was dead. And what an opinion this was, and would be today, if you walked into your church or mine and said, "I'm sorry, things seem to be in order, but there's no life here." I want to say this too; that has, in part, to do with, I believe, the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
Now, churches can be baptized in the Holy Spirit, individuals can teach us doctrine, and still be dead if they disobey God. That's a fact.
So let's make that point clear at the get go. But friends, if you will study the Baptists with the Holy Spirit, beginning with the teachings of the visionary prophet John, then what Jesus said about it in John four, and then what Peter said about it on Pentecost day, and what Paul says about the things of the Spirit in one Corinthians twelve and fourteen and thirteen as well, because all of it flows together. And then read about his experience in the Book of Acts when Paul prayed for people to be saved. The next thing he did was let's have you baptized for the Spirit. It's very clear in his experience.
I think the clearest example is in Acts nineteen. And so, study that. Let me encourage you to study it. Just don't turn me off because I say that a church can be dead for no other reason than that is non acceptance of the second work of grace. Does that mean again that all churches that embrace this second work of grace, the baptism of the Spirit, are lively?
Absolutely not. They can have all kinds of sound teaching and life flowing, or they can have unsound teaching, strange doctrine, and they too can be dead, though very active religiously. I think it's clear that if the leadership of a church. Is living in humble obedience to God and seeking God, and every day they seek His will, they seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Because you know, friends, the last time I checked, in John's Gospel, in chapters fourteen through sixteen, Jesus—and I think we should pay attention to Him—left the care of His church, the leadership of His church, to the Holy Spirit.
Now Christ is the head, but He administers His mind, His will, His choices to His body through the Holy Spirit.
So a church that's a lively church is one that's seeking the mind of the Holy Spirit for that church. Saying what Samuel said long ago, "Lord, speak; Thy servant listens," or what Paul said when he first met Christ on the Damascus road, "Lord, speak; Thy servant listens." This kind of leadership. Is going to be following the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit then will be flowing with maximum capacity into and through that church body. And there is no way under heaven that Jesus would ever call such a church dead. And the way to keep that life flowing is simple: trust and obey.
For there is no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey. I will spare you the singing. But you know the song; it's a great hymn, theologically perfect, I would say. If we trust the Lord and obey Him, oh my goodness, that's the key. If we obey Him, the Holy Spirit continues to flow.
So whatever was wrong with the Scottish Church. It involved disobedience, and it cut off the flow of the Spirit. And Jesus said, "You have still got your reputation, but you don't have revival life flowing through you." You know, it's wonderful, friends. Every day we can have the Holy Spirit more and more and more in our lives as we seek the Lord, as we talk to Jesus of the day, as we learn to pray in the Spirit. As Paul instructs in Ephesians six eighteen, and as we learn to obey God in everything, everything, especially at those points where, oh my goodness, He asks you to do something or to stop doing something, and it goes so against your will.
These are the times when you show Christ that you're an overcomer, because you're overcoming your flesh, you're overcoming your will. And you're showing him that you truly honor him. He will show you by blessing you more and more.
Now back to Sardis, verse two of chapter three in Revelation. Jesus went on to say, "Be watchful and strengthen the things which you remain." Watchfulness is a key word here. This is something we know they were not doing. Be watchful and strengthen those things which remain. That are ready to die, for I have not found your works perfect before God, so their works were not perfect or mature.
And he said, "If you shall not watch, I will come on thee as a thief." And you will not know what hour I will come.
Now, here is a clear reference to His teaching about His return. Jesus told His disciples that He would go, but He would come again and receive us unto Himself. And this is an allusion to the Jewish wedding custom of the day, where a bridegroom, once he had established his wedding covenant with the bride and her father, and had sealed it with a cup of wine, would then begin the betrothal period, and he would go back to his father's home to build a house for his bride, a hoopah. This is where the marriage would be consummated. This is where they would live for some time after their.
Marriage, and then when he completed that, sometime after that, usually within a year, the father would release him to return to his bride's home, and he would go with his friends, and they would all be rejoicing, probably tooting the shofar as I do. I blow my shofar. I have a shofar I brought back from Israel. I enjoy playing it. I just played it for a church and explained some of the history behind it just this past Saturday.
And they would be singing and rejoicing and dancing as they came to the bride's home with the bridegroom. And one of them would shout, "Behold, the bridegroom comes! Come out to meet him." And but if the people were not awake, if the bride and her bridesmaids were not awake, oh, it would not be good. It would be shameful.
So here, Christ, the bridegroom. He's telling us the church to be awake, and he was telling the sardest Christians to be awake, to be watching for him. And he said, "If you don't watch, I'm going to come on you as a thief in the night." So this phrase "thief in the night" referred to the Jewish bridegroom because often they came at midnight or very late at night. And so he's saying, "Look, if you don't wake up and come back to life spiritually, you're going to miss the rapture." That's what he's saying here. This is one of five references or allusions that Jesus made in Revelation two and three, messages to the church then, and they are messages today to us by the Holy Spirit.
They have an application to us.
So this is one of five different references or allusions that Jesus made in these two chapters to his appearing, or. To the tribulation period, which follows it.
Okay, it would refer to one of these two things. Here, he's clearly referring to the rapture. When he comes as a thief in the night, he was telling the earliest Christians if they remain dead, they would not go in the rapture. That is exactly what he was saying to them, and we can project that twenty centuries down to today. This is why it's in our Bible.
These messages were not just for them; they were for us as well, and they are respoken to us in our generation as we fit the specific conditions described in the seven churches. We can fit them personally, or we can fit them as local churches, or even as churches in a nation in a given generation. For instance, I'm convinced that we are living in the Laodicean generation. And we will see the Lord's coming clearly in our lifetime, and I believe very closely we'll see that very soon.
So these five references are Revelation two, twenty two, and if you will turn with me there, you will see what he said to the church in Thyatira. He said, "Behold, I will cast her into a bed, referring to Jezebel, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of their deeds." Now here he was being caustic with his sarcastic remarks. First of all, he called this false prophetess Jezebel, that wasn't a real name. And then he said, "I'm going to throw him into a bed." He didn't mean literally into a bed, but he was referring to the bed of adultery that they had been in because the result of her teaching. Again, she taught that it did not matter how they lived in the body.
It did, and it does today.
So he said, "I've got a new bed for you guys. I'm going to throw you into a bed of tribulation." And he said, "Great tribulation." So clearly, they were going to go into the tribulation period. This is our first reference to Thyatira, and then in the same message, verses twenty-five to twenty-seven, he spoke to the overcomers in this church. Listen to what he says here. But that which you have already, in that text, I will begin a little earlier.
I will begin reading with verse twenty. For, but unto unto you I say, unto the rest in Thyatira, that is the remnant, the other part of the church, which was trusting and obedient, as many as have not this doctrine, that they did not follow the doctrine, the heresy of this false prophet. And which have not known the depths of Satan, as they say, referring to their doctrine. She taught obviously that her teaching was "quote unquote" deep, deep.
So she thought she was de profundis, the great depths. No, she wasn't. She was as shallow as as a baby pool. And so this was just a false front put up by Satan. And he says, "I will put none other things, no other burden upon you." Oh, so this shows that this sinfulness of the of these false, rather these carnal Christians, deceived Christians, was burdening the true Christians there.
And he said, "I'm not going to put any other burden upon you than that you already have." But that verse 25. But that which you have already, hold fast till I come. Notice till. I come. What is that?
That's a reference to his coming, plain as day. Till I come, he goes on to say, and he that overcomes.
So now he's speaking to the Nikaios, the overcomers, the victors, the champions, those who overcome the flesh and the devil and the world. Those who, even when they're defeated in a in a trial, go back and readdress it. And trust and obey their way through that trial, and ultimately end up as victors. He that overcomes, he said, and keeps my word unto the end, to him I will give power over the nations. Notice, he said, unto the end.
The end in this context was clearly the coming of Christ.
So he says to them, I will give power over. The nations, and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, as with vessels, as and as the vessels of a potter shall he shall they be broken to shivers, even as I received of my father. What is Jesus saying here? Said these overcomers, I'm going to give them authority to rule the nations with me. They will share my rod of iron authority.
And alongside me, break to pieces those who defy me.
So we have two messages within this one message to the church at Thyatira, to those who were living in sin. He said, "I'm going to throw you into bed of tribulation." To those who are overcoming, he said, "I'm going to reward you with authority over the nations." You know, you often hear it said, "We shall rule." We're going to rule with Jesus. We're going to rule and reign with Christ.
Well, I would say yes, and then I would say but. Yes, if you're an overcomer, you know you're going to rule with Christ. But if you're not, no, you're not. You're not going to rule. Many Christians will be shocked.
They're not going to rule because they're not obedient in a consistent way. They're not seeking the Lord daily, spending time with Him, being intimate with Him. And so we need to understand that. You know, Paul said, if we we will if we suffer with Him. Will reign with him, Second Timothy two.
Well, what if we don't? He said, if we deny him, he will, what, deny us? What does that mean? We'll go to hell? No.
If you fail in the test and crucible of suffering for Christ, you don't go to hell, because you haven't suffered well, or maybe because you, you opted out. You tried. You took the easy way out. Peter did that once. But it means that God's not going to reward you.
He's not; he cannot reward unfaithfulness, and he will not.
So we need to understand this.
So he's rewarding these because they have been faithful in Thyatira, and I'm sure they suffered rejection for this, but they were faithful.
So to this church in Sardis, Jesus warned them that if they did not wake up. They would not be taken.
Now, this is the third reference here in Revelation three, verse three, that we read earlier. He said, "If you shall not watch, I will come unto thee as a thief, and you will not know what hour I will come upon thee." So they won't be prepared for the rapture, won't be ready, won't be found watching, worthy, wise, faithful, knowing Him, as Jesus taught.
So that is your third reference, chapter three, verse three. The fourth is in chapter three, verse four. Again, we see in the same church, two factions: one faithful, one unfaithful. What does he say here in verse four? Thou hast a few names, even in Sardis, even in this dead church.
You've got a few that have not. Defiled their garments; that is, they've not defiled their garments with consistently sinful living, and they shall walk with me in white. The white being the overcomer's robe, because they are worthy. They are worthy. Jesus found them worthy.
If Jesus says you are worthy, He's referring to your manner of living. Living, then you are. You are living a worthy life.
So this is another reference. He's saying this. Part of the church will be taken in the rapture, and they'll walk with me in white. This is reference to his victory parade, either in heaven or when we return to earth. I believe it probably will be when we return to earth and his earthly kingdom is established.
His temple, his throne. He will be in glory. We will be in glorified bodies, and I think we'll have a great triumph, and that—that is a great parade of victory. And they will walk with me in white. He says.
The last reference is chapter three, verse ten. This one you should know. I believe he said to the church in Philadelphia. Because you have kept the word of my patience, that is, you patiently endured your trials, I will also keep you from the hour of temptation.
Now, notice what he says about this hour or period of temptation. It's going to come upon all the world, not Asia Minor. The people he spoke to were in Asia Minor. But he said, "This is coming upon all the world to do what? To try them that dwell on the earth, to test those who are surviving." So he said, "I'm going to keep you from." And that is original.
That is accurate to the original language. The Greek fully supports the supports the word from. Anyone tells you different, they're incorrect.
So this is a reference to being delivered in the rapture and not going through the tribulation period. There we have it. Five references to either the rapture or the tribulation period, and this is so important that we understand this. And pay attention to what Jesus is saying. There are wonderful rewards for us as we live as overcomers, trusting and obeying God.
But there are consequences if we ignore these issues and even defy His correction.
So, friend, today heed this message. Prepare yourself to meet Christ in judgment mode now. If this message has blessed you, tell your friends, and please consider helping us stay on the air by sending your tax-deductible donation to Greg Hennett Ministries. Also, remember you may download the "Until He Comes" podcast from your preferred podcast app. May you walk closely with Christ and trust and obey Him in your daily tests of faith and patience until He comes.
This is the Truth Network.
