We used to live in a world that was totally literal. You had literal friends and literal experiences. But today we live in a virtual world. You can have virtual friends and you can have virtual experiences. Some people today are looking for a virtual church experience but the writer of Hebrews stresses that we need to have a literal experience of gathering with other believers.
I not only believe in the security of the believer, but I believe in the insecurity of the unbeliever. There might be people whose names are on a church roll but they haven’t darkened the doors of a church in decades. If they are hiding behind a “once saved always saved” belief, they are deceiving themselves.
Here’s the challenge all of us face in the years to come. Will we hold onto our Biblical faith, or will we let go and grab hold of the popular, shifting values of anything-goes-as-long-as-I’m-not-hurting-you morality? Are you willing to grip firmly and to hold onto the truth of the faith we profess? We live in a culture that will try to rip that belief out of your hands and heart, so hold on firmly!
Three of the most valuable Christian virtues are faith, hope, and love. You can see all three here in this passage. Faith reaches upward to God in response to His grace; Love reaches outward to others in response to God’s grace; Hope reaches forward into the future to trust God regardless of the circumstances. Perseverance is another word for spiritual stamina. Stamina is the ability to keep on going even when you’re tired.
Are you tempted to give up and quit? Maybe God has given you a dream or a vision and it hasn’t happened yet. You want to give up—but don’t. Hang in there. Maybe you’ve been praying for something to happen for a long time and God hasn’t answered your prayer—don’t give up. Keep on praying. Keep on trusting. You may be in a bad situation, and you don’t know how you’re going to make it. Hang in there and hang on. Don’t give up!
You may be struggling and hurting right now because of all the personal pain you’re having to endure. You may be pressured, but you WON’T be crushed; you may be perplexed, but you WON’T be left in despair; you may be attacked and persecuted, but you WON’T be abandoned by God; you might even be knocked down, but you WON’T be knocked out!
Of all of the seven churches in Revelation, this is the only church of the seven that does not receive a rebuke from the Lord. This is what you might call a church that is really blessed. Philadelphia means “the place where the brothers love one another a place of brotherly love.” This was a very small, insignificant community in Asia Minor and it was not nearly as important as Ephesus or Sardis or some of these other places, but this is the location of a group of believers although they only had a little bit of strength, God was blessing them and he was using them. If we want to be a certain kind of church of all of these seven churches, we as members of Green Acres Baptist Church we want to be like the church at Philadelphia.
Thyatira was a literal church in Asia Minor. This was a place well-known for the color purple, because they had a profitable business of dying cloth into the royal color of purple. Lydia, who became a Christian in the book of Acts, was from the city of Thyatira and she was known as a seller of purple garments. We don’t know much about the church. Of all these seven churches, this is the most obscure and unknown of all of them. I want us to learn three lessons from this church and apply them to our own lives.
Smyrna was the center of emperor worship for the Roman Empire. If Romans had believed in Jesus, they would have put him up on a shelf in the Pantheon with all of their other gods: Jupiter, Zeus, Mercury, Mars, etc. But when Christians refused to name any other God than the one God of heaven they were called atheists and many of them were put to death. That’s the kind of setting in which they lived and that’s why Jesus said, “I know what you are going through.”
