"Are We Really Better Than the Early Church?"Chronological Snobbery – Part 3 - David Bercot

Lesson Transcript

Well, good morning, everyone. We have some really good news for you. This will be the last Sunday you have to look at this picture, so. When I started this, it was supposed to be one sermon, and then I thought, no, I better break this into two. It's going to be too long for one. And then when I was working—when I was working on the second part, and I realized, no, this is going to be too long. I better make it three, but I'm going to stick—stop with three. So the sermons have been about this tendency.

It's not just a tendency. It is almost universal that Christians today—and it doesn't matter what flavor, whether they're evangelical or Anabaptist or, you know, you name it, Pentecostal—they always think they know more than the Christians who lived close to the apostles. I mean, I've run into this ever since I started writing about the early Christians. I mean, to me, it was sort of an obvious thing. Okay. The ones who were close to the apostles, we certainly can learn from them.

How did they understand the New Testament? But no, it's always the further we get from the apostles, oh, we better understand what they said. And the people who were taught by them, well, they didn't understand them. You know, they didn't understand Greek, even though that was their native tongue. You know, we know everything today. So this is part three, and this is dealing with, are we superior to the New Testament Christians?

So not only did I run into this attitude that, well, we know more than those guys who lived, you know, 100 years after the apostles or even 50 years. I've repeatedly heard when I've been in discussions and, you know, try to encourage people to look at what the historic faith was, and they say, well, look at the New Testament Christians. They were already leaving the faith before the New Testament was over. I mean, you know, look at all the issues and problems they had. I mean, we couldn't even go by them.

I mean, in other words, you know, we today in the 21st century, we know more than the early Christians. We even know more than the New Testament Christians who lived under the apostles. You know, we don't need to learn from anyone else because we've got it all. I mean, this is snobbery. I mean, that's all I can say. So this is the claim that, yeah, the church was already departing from the faith before the century was even over with.

Now, the three examples that are typically pointed to are Corinth, the Galatians, and the seven churches of Revelation. Now, there might be others, but those are the three I hear the most. It's like, yeah, we'll look at Corinth, you know, and on and on and on. So let's look at these and see where these churches, the way they are presented today, or maybe it's we today who have the much more serious problems than they did. So we're going to start with Corinth.

Now, when we compare Corinth to our churches, I mean, I'm going to start off with, let's just start off with the Anabaptist church. But I've heard this same thing, whether people are evangelical or whether they are Anabaptist, it's the same thing. You know, we know more than they did. We know more than the New Testament Christians. But, and then they point to Corinth. I was just listening.

I don't even remember who it was and why I was listening to this particular podcast, but he mentioned Corinth and he said, yeah, the carnal church in Corinth. And that would be our general take today. Well, before we start feeling so superior, we should realize we are comparing apples and oranges. Okay. So the Anabaptist orange. So where are the orange? Where's Becky? She wanted to know what the Anabaptist orange meant. She saw this slide before. Oh, well. Downstairs stirring her soup. Okay. Well, sorry, Becky.

Anyway, you'll have to fill her in, but maybe she's hearing this through the speaker downstairs. So, yeah, we're comparing ourselves to Corinth. Well, we're the orange and they're the apple. So let's just take, you know, a typical Mennonite church. Sorry about the building. Sorry, it's not a very clear picture. Okay. So you take one of our churches, whether it's this one, we're a little unique here, but the typical Anabaptist church, and there's quite a few in our community.

So what you're going to find is that the church is composed almost entirely of Mennonites or Amish, or in this case, we've got some River Brethren visiting us today. And guess what? Their parents were Amish or Mennonite or River Brethren or German Baptist Brethren, you know, you name it. So, yeah, you have a church of people who were raised in Christian homes, not just Christian homes, but in churches that, you know, were very strict in teaching the gospel. Okay.

Then not only did they get raised in this Christian home, but their parents got raised in a Christian home. They had parents who were Amish or Mennonite or Brethren, you name it. Okay. So their parents also had a godly home. And as a result, they've got all these cousins, aunts, uncles, everybody, you know, tend to be Anabaptist. Well, their grandparents also were raised in homes of parents who were Mennonite or Amish or Brethren. This goes back 400, 500 years.

I mean, I went on a tour, an Anabaptist heritage tour when it was about 11 years ago. And, you know, it was a busload of Mennonites, Amish, and all that. And everybody, I mean, they were visiting the homes, the actual homes where their ancestors lived. Or we went to a church graveyard and, yeah, they, I mean, yeah, here is my ancestor, you know, here is so-and-so Hostet. There was a bregville there, you know, I mean, it was like, yeah, this goes on and on and on.

Well, okay, that's neat, you know, that we have, it's not neat that we don't have very many people from non-Anabaptist background. We're trying to do something different here in our church. But yeah, okay, so it's good. You've got this godly church. You've got this godly homes that go all the way back. The church in Corinth didn't have that. You're comparing an Anabaptist orange to the Corinthian apple. So what did you have in Corinth? Well, the church in Corinth was a new church plant.

These weren't people who had Christian parents. They weren't even, for the most part, people who had Jewish parents. They grew up pagan. And guess what? Their pagan parents also had parents who were pagan, and they had grandparents. Just like we can go back four or five hundred years, they could do the same thing with their pagan parents. All right. So you're comparing apples and oranges. And like I say, it was a new church plant. It had not only been there a few years.

Paul had gone there and started the church plant. He was there 18 months, but then he left. Okay. And Aquila and Priscilla joined him there. And then later when they left, Apollos came. That's why Paul says, I planted Apollos water. We don't know how long Apollos was there, maybe just a few months. And then they were on their own. Everyone was a new convert from the pagan world. They had no New Testament. They had no Christian literature. They had no bishops or deacons.

And when you read Corinthians, this is before they had set up the whole system of bishops and deacons. So you have prophets there. I've been in a church with people who claim to be prophets. I know how that can turn out. There wasn't a parent church. This wasn't a plant from a parent church, or they didn't have some conference or something like that. So, yeah, I mean, this is what they were dealing with. And when you read Corinthians, Paul has been gone three, maybe four years, and now he's writing.

And is it a surprise that they have some problems that he doesn't write a letter and say, well, I hear everything is going perfect. You have no issues there. Wow, how wonderful. Yeah, I mean, how realistic is that? Of course, they had problems. All right. So let's imagine if we were in that situation as an Anabaptist church. Instead of being Anabaptist oranges, we were Anabaptist apples. So let's say that we were trying to plant a church in Europe, something close to the pagan Corinth.

I did a Google search of what is the most wicked city in Europe. And well, sorry for the brothers in Netherlands. The hamster didn't come up. But we're not going to use that. We're not going to use that as the example. So number two was, oh my word. I can't believe it just, it just, in Germany. We'll say Berlin, but it was the other one. Hamburg. Okay. But Berlin was number three. Okay. So if you're from Hamburg, my apologies. So, okay. So let's say we're going to try to do what Paul did.

And of course, we don't have Paul's gifts and all that, but we're going to plant a church in Hamburg, Germany. And we sent over, since we're not a Paul, we sent over 10 Anabaptist families. Okay. And they worked there for 18 months. And, you know, yeah, I wonder how many converts we would make. I mean, Paul's got a whole church going. Okay. But we've got 10 whole families. All right. And let's say we get, you know, a church going in Hamburg. And then we'll, all 10 families come back to the United States.

There's no phone calls. There's no Zoom calls. You know, Paul didn't have anything like that to stay in touch with them. We send a single brother. He stays there a few months, the equivalent of Apollos. And then he leaves. Okay. So this church plant in Hamburg that we're so proud of, we didn't have any New Testaments. They don't have a New Testament. We gave them some Old Testaments. We don't have any literature to give them. We're not in touch with them. And we didn't appoint any bishops or deacons.

But they had some people there who said they're prophets. You know, I said, hey, okay, the prophets are in charge. You know, what do you think we would come back to, you know, three years later? I mean, do you think it'd be this church that, oh yeah, everything is just fine here? I mean, wow, it would be a church. It probably wouldn't even exist. I mean, let's be honest, you know, it probably wouldn't even still be there. If it was, it would be split. And who knows what kind of doctrines they would be teaching.

Okay. So we get on our high horses. Oh, look how good we are, our church. We're not like Corinth. Well, yeah, you've got 400 years of generations of Anabaptist forefathers. But yeah, try to plant a church in a wicked city. And Hamburg doesn't even resemble ancient Corinth, I doubt, in wickedness. And yeah, just leave it alone with no communication and see how it turns out. So yeah, we're just snobs. We're chronological snobs. All right. So what were the issues in Corinth?

I mean, that everyone thinks, oh, it's so terrible. Okay. There were divisions within unity. And the reason I say is within unity, they didn't split into a bunch of churches. They were still one church. He writes to the church in Corinth. There's one church, but there's divisions. What are they? Well, we'll talk about that in a minute. There is one case of sexual immorality that he mentions. What do you think would happen in our church in Hamburg? We left them alone for years.

How many cases of immorality do you think would come up? Oh, a brother sued another brother. We'd never see that in any churches around us, would we? The rich weren't sharing with the poor at the love feast. Okay. And then you get towards the end of Corinthians, you find that there were some there who were denying that there was a future resurrection. Of course, no one could go to the New Testament and say, well, look, it says they didn't have a New Testament. All right.

So let's just look at the divisions that we feel so superior. They were still part of a single church. Now, Corinth in Paul's day was a major city. And a good estimation would be about 200,000 people. So the church there was likely fairly large when you look at Paul's success in other places. We'll say 100 members. It could have been a lot larger. It may not have been that large, but I'm guessing that's we're pretty safe to say a minimum of that. Okay. What about our modern churches? We look down on Corinth.

Yeah, they had divisions. But like I say, the only divisions were one was saying, I'm of Paul. I'm of Apollos. I'm of Cephas. Be like in our congregation. So I'm saying, hey, I'm I like Kevin. You know, he's the guy. And someone else says, no, David, I think I think he's the guy that I want to throw in my chips. And then someone said, no, Daniel, I think I think he's the guy. I mean, okay, we wouldn't we wouldn't like that. But yeah, there's as long as you're still in the same church, we could live with it.

We would, you know, try to try to shut that down. But they stayed in the same church. Now, Paul couldn't possibly write to the church in Chambersburg. We're a town of 20,000 people. That was 200,000. I mean, the church in Chambersburg, Paul writes a letter. So you're the postman. Who do you deliver to? The church in Chambersburg. Well, who's that? I mean, we are so divided. I mean, we can't even meet together. I mean, you know, we don't even know each other. I mean, that's how divided we are. Okay.

And if we feel superior as Anabaptists, all right, let's just take out all of these evangelicals and the Catholics and the Orthodox and the liberal and all of that. Well, just the Anabaptists in the Chambersburg area. Oh, we're going to look good, aren't we? Well, guess how divided we are. And it's not a matter of people saying, well, I'm of Paul. I'm of Apollos. It's saying, I'm not even going to meet with you. And this other church says, well, I'm going to meet with either one of you.

And then another one says, I'm going to meet. I'm not going to meet with any of you guys. You know, that's how divided we are as Anabaptists. What are there like six Anabaptist churches in the Chambersburg area? Eight? We don't even know. I mean, yeah, I mean, you know, that's how divided we are. And then we look down on the Corinthians. They were one church. You know, we've had all this centuries of, you know, our parents and all these divisions.

You know, you could put them on a bus and go to Switzerland, and they would all find, oh, we all come from, yeah, here's our common ancestor. You all came from the same people. And look how split we are. Can't have communion together. When a conference is held, there's a bunch of churches say, we don't want our members going there. You know, I just a few, I mean, a month ago was speaking at the Anabaptist Identity Conference. Open to all Anabaptists. It's a pretty conservative presentation.

And oh, we learned there's a whole bunch of churches that their bishop says, we don't want any of our members going there. And it's like, I mean, what is this? We're just talking about Anabaptist beliefs. But no, one of the churches said, well, that would be a humanism if we all went. You know, it's like, huh? If all the Anabaptists meet together? Yeah. Don't criticize Corinth for its divisions when, as Jesus said, looking at the splendor in their eye when we have the log in our own eye. Okay. So sexual immorality.

How much sexual immorality does he mention? One case. One man in Corinth having a relation with his stepmother. Yeah. It was shocking. It was shameful. Well, why hadn't they kicked him out of the church? They didn't have any bishops to step in and say, okay, you know, we're going to have, you know, either repent or leave. They didn't have any deacons. They had a bunch of prophets, you know. And one guy was probably saying, well, God has told me that, you know. And I mean, yeah, I could see why nothing happened.

And Paul had to say, get the man out of the church. They did it. I mean, that's how obedient they were. In his next letter, he's saying, well, you might need to forgive this guy and bring him back in. Yeah, I want, you know, so I mean, they got right on it. As soon as they got some correction, they got on it. Okay. So what about all of our churches today? Now, as Anabaptists, we don't have a lot of immorality in our churches. We do have some.

We'd be kidding ourselves to say, oh, this doesn't ever happen with us because it does. But it's not rampant. But look at the churches, the evangelical churches who look down on Corinth, you know, that carnal church. Well, Jesus said, you know, if a man divorces his wife or he marries, he commits adultery. And if a woman divorces her husband, she's committing adultery. Okay. So, I mean, you look at the churches around, I mean, it is a hodgepodge of divorced and remarried people everywhere.

And do they get disciplined? No. A lot of the churches, you would just have couples living together. They don't get disciplined. They don't get put out of the church. But we sit here today and say, oh, we're so superior to Corinth because of that one case there. Going to court. Well, now this was a fairly new teaching. They didn't have the New Testament. I don't know if they even had a copy of the Sermon on the Mount. I don't know if Matthew had been written yet when Paul wrote Corinth.

We don't, we're not given that information. They may not have realized, oh, it's wrong to sue each other. Okay. So Paul tells them, so it stops. But what about the churches today? Now, as Anabaptists, we don't take one another to court. And so I'm glad to be able to say that. But I know how it is. You know, I spent 10 years as a member of an evangelical church. I mean, boy, people, well, I was in a town where I would say, without exaggerating, about half the town would have said, we are born again Christian.

I'm a born again Christian. And they're all suing each other. I mean, the town, I mean, I don't know how many attorneys, you know, I was just one of many. And, you know, no one said, oh, no, I can't sue him. He's a Christian. Yeah, I guess we better drop this. It didn't make any difference. It's to their brother, their sister, whatever. And they were talking about all of the divorces. Well, you don't get a divorce without going to court against one another.

So, I mean, so, you know, Corinth maybe was one person who did this too, something like that. I mean, our churches, it is rampant. Nobody obeys the teaching there. And yet they look down on Corinth. I mean, that's, again, as Anabaptists, at least we don't have that guilt. Okay. The rich, he says at the love feast weren't sharing their food with the poor. Okay. So this is the only place where most modern United States churches would surpass them. When we have love feasts or fellowship meals, yeah, we share a like.

Okay. Makes us really good. But we're not dealing with the situation they were dealing with. They were learning something new. This was a revolutionary teaching that the poor, they sit down and eat with the rich. They didn't do that in Roman society. I mean, when they had a banquet, and that was a very common thing for the Romans. Okay. That was their big thing, you know, evening banquets. And it was, of course, the rich doing this. They didn't invite the poor.

I mean, it's not a matter of not even sharing with them. The poor weren't even there. I mean, they invited people like themselves. I was reading one of the Roman writers. His name is Juvenil. And he wrote sat, he wrote a lot of satire. So he talks about these banquets. Now, he would get invited because he was a writer, but he wasn't rich. He didn't come from a noble family or anything like that. So, yeah, he was explaining what it was like. Yeah.

So, oh, you got invited because you're a writer and they wanted you to come and read one of your, you know, pieces of works or some of your poetry. Because, like I say, be the rich, but they would invite some poet or something like that to, you know, read and kind of entertain them. When you're through, yeah, you sit down there at the end of the table. Okay. The nobility and stuff, they're eating off of silverware and all that. You're getting tin, you know, that you eat off of. Okay.

They have cups with jewels on them. Yeah. You get a fairly unordained goblet. Or if there are jewels, he said, yeah, the slave is sitting there watching. And at the end of the meal, yeah, he takes your goblet and he's making sure there's no jewels missing off of it. So, I mean, that was the culture and the custom. So this was really radically new. We're going to eat together, the rich, rich and the poor. It was taking a little time to get used to it. But, you know, that's in 1 Corinthians 11.

Now, these same churches that look down on them and call them carnal, guess what? You know, Paul gives all this teaching about the head covering. Do any of the churches obey? No. They look down on Corinth and they're the ones who are disobeying. They don't even obey the order of headship in the home that's taught there. But, oh, they're somehow superior to the church in Corinth. And then finally, there was that wrong understanding of the resurrection. Okay. They had no New Testament.

Paul had been there and taught, but then you have all these prophets, you know, and they had people coming in all the time, wandering teachers, wandering prophets. Oh, yeah, I'm a buddy of Paul. Yeah, he asked me to come here. How do you vet that? How do you check it in those days? Yeah, now you get on, you know, the computer, you know, blah, blah, blah, so and so. Yeah, you had no way. I mean, oh, okay, you're with Paul. And yeah, you had false teachers come in.

And it's amazing that the only wrong doctrine that had come in was that the resurrection had already taken place. There was only some in the church who taught that and it got corrected. Yeah, let's look back at our church plant in Hamburg. You know, we plant this church. We don't leave them a Bible, no literature. You know, we teach them for 18 months. Okay, you guys, you're on your own. Yeah, the prophets there, I let them take over and they'll finish teaching you. Yeah, what do you think?

What kind of teachings would we find when we came back three or four years later? It would be a mess. Okay. So it's just snobbery to think we stand better than the Corinthians. Now, let's look at the Galatians. Kind of the same situation. A church where no one probably had Christian parents. Some of them had Jewish parents and most of them were pagans. Galatia was not a city. It was a Roman province or area. I don't know if you can see it there in the map in the middle.

So you would have, that's why he says to the churches in Galatia. So he's talking to a bunch of churches here, okay, in a geographical area in modern-day Turkey. And what was the problem? It was that Jewish Christians had pressured many of the Gentile Christians to be circumcised and to follow the Mosaic law. Now, the issue, they weren't introducing something new to Christianity, these Jewish Christians. Rather, they were holding on to the original teaching. And then God had introduced something new.

And so let me explain. So when Christianity started, it was all Jews or Gentiles who were Jewish proselytes living under the law. Jesus, he wouldn't, I mean, he did talk to Gentiles and heal them and all that, but I mean, he kept saying, I've only been sent to the lost house of Israel. Okay. So when they, when the church started, it started, you had to be a Jew. You had to live under the law. And that made sense. The law was given by God. Circumcision had been given back to Abraham. Okay. So you have all of that.

This is what everyone's used to. Then God changes the rules after we don't know how many years. I'd say three years, five years, whatever. He suddenly tells Peter, you know, eat this unclean food. And Peter says, no, I've never put something unclean in my mouth. Don't call unclean what I've called clean, you know. So this is a new teaching. And then he understands this means I can go to a Gentile house, you know, something Jews didn't do. And his own congregation are upset with him. But what in the world?

We hear that, you know, you went to Caesarea and went into the house of a Gentile. You know, he says, yeah, God told me. Okay. They heard it and, you know, they accepted it, some of them. But then you see it just went on and on and on that the Jews kept saying, look, you got to be a Jew to be a Christian. Certain men came down from Judea and taught the brethren, unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.

So it wasn't that the Jews were trying to introduce something new, it's that they couldn't let go of the way things had started. And I don't know why God started it that way. I guess he wanted to give the Jews a head start is the only thing I can figure out. But they didn't want to let go of the law. And they kept fighting all the churches on this. So there in Galatia, there were apparently quite a few Jews who had become Christians.

And yeah, they intimidated the Gentiles and told them, look, you got to live by the law. Now, when you just pull proof texts out of Galatians, it could sound like, oh, they had just totally left the faith. You know, he starts off, I'm astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

Well, then when you read the letter, yeah, yeah, it's not that they've abandoned the gospel or anything like that. Any of the Christian doctrines, they've just been pressured by the Jewish Christians to be circumcised and to live under the law like the Jews. I don't know how many of them succumb to that. And his whole letter, I mean, it's very clear he's talking about the Mosaic law.

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law so that in Christ Jesus, the blessings of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promised spirit through faith. So you don't, you no longer have to be circumcised or live by the law. And then at the end of his letter, he kind of helps us to see what was happening. It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ.

For even those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the law. Okay. So the Jews, they're getting a lot of pressure from their relatives and the Jewish community. You become a Christian, you know, this is terrible. They say, well, hey, yeah, but look at all these Gentiles we've brought in and they are living under the law. They've been circumcised. Look, I mean, wow, hey, don't get mad at us. We're making carvers from the Gentiles.

Paul is saying, yeah, they're just trying to protect themselves and they're forcing the law on you. So that was it. The problem got solved. When you get to the year 100, the Judaizers are gone. I mean, the apostles won, the Judaizers lost. I mean, they're out of it. Now, it's so funny that a church today then would look down on the church in Galatia because today so many churches don't understand the faith correctly, you know, 2000 years later.

Martin Luther took Paul's letter to the Galatians that, I mean, a teenager could pick that up and read it. And it's obvious that he's talking about the problem is Jewish Christians. I mean, he starts off talking about in Antioch with that the Jewish Christians when they came, then the Jews in Antioch, yeah, they didn't want to eat anymore with the Gentiles because they were going to come under this pressure. And then he goes on and talks about, you know, they're trying to bring you under the law.

They're trying to bring you under bondage and all of that. It's so clear he's talking about the law of Moses and he's talking about circumcision. And then Martin Luther takes the book of Galatians and says, no, what Paul is talking about are people who are saying you have to live by Jesus's teachings that you're not just saved by faith alone, that you have to actually obey Christ. And that has become now how people interpret Galatians. So, I mean, that is so twisted.

I mean, you're totally contradicting Jesus Christ. And then you're saying we're so much better than the Galatians who their only problem was they were pressured by the Jews to start keeping the law. You're saying we don't even have laws as Christians. We'll see on Judgment Day who who Jesus calls out for criticism. Okay. Finally, the seven churches in Revelation. I get that thrown in my face all the time. Again, remember the apples and oranges. It's always people who've grown up in a Christian home and all of that.

These were seven churches, new church plants, primarily pagans who were there. Okay. So the seven churches are all in what is modern-day Turkey. You can go, I've visited just about all of them. Most of them are just ruins today. Smyrna is a big city today in Turkey, but most of these, like Ephesus is the largest archaeological site in the world. I mean, it was a big city, maybe the fourth biggest city in the Roman Empire. And oh, I mean, the ruins just go on and on.

I mean, they've carved out the streets and the stores and then the library and the stadium where Paul is, you know, nearly got killed. That's still there. All of that is still there. And the ruins of these other places as well. Now, but when we look at Revelation, it is one of those puzzling things because the Jesus presented in the letters to the seven churches is not the popular Jesus of today. The people who want to sit back and criticize, they should turn the mirror on themselves.

You know, you are presenting a false Jesus. You're presenting this Jesus who, you know, wow, just believe in me and that's it. I don't require anything more of you. I want, I would like you to obey me, but it's not, it's not required. I mean, he's a Jesus. Jesus always loves you. He never gets mad at you. Jesus is always your friend and all of that. Jesus, he saves by faith alone. Just memorize John 3:16. I'm not criticizing the song, Jesus loves me.

This, I know I like the song, but yeah, that's kind of the picture of Jesus, you know, that, oh yeah, he's just so, you know, gentle. You know, you can do wickedness. He's already pre-forgiven you anyway. And on Judgment Day, all he wants you to be able to say is, I'm not counting on my own righteousness. I'm trusting on your righteousness being imputed to me. I dog, that's what I wanted to hear. Come and hear the kingdom, you know. That's the Jesus who's preached. The real Jesus that we see in Revelation.

I mean, reading those seven church, the letters to the churches, wow, instead of people sitting back and saying, look how good our church is, wow, they ought to be on their faces praying for forgiveness because this is the Jesus who insists on godly works from his people if they're going to inherit eternal life. This is a Jesus who makes it clear that he meant what he said when he talked about the narrow way. He said, enter by the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction.

And there are many who go in by it. But because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it. Yeah, it'd be nice instead of all these signs, John 3:16, how about Matthew 7:14 might be something that people ought to be focusing on. He said, it's a narrow way that is difficult. He told people, and this is from the Sermon on the Mount. I mean, right at the beginning of his ministry, he started off telling him, look, I'm not preaching you some easy way.

I'm telling you, this is going to be difficult and very few are going to find it. And you get to Revelation, you see that's exactly the Jesus that who preached the narrow way is the same Jesus you see in Revelation. He says, as many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore, be zealous and repent. This is not a Jesus who says, I don't care what you do, I'm going to love you no matter what. This is a Jesus who says, if I love you, I'm going to rebuke and chasten you, and you better repent.

And if you're not being chasten, that means I've already, you've already been cut off the vine probably. I've already given up on you. Because the ones I love, I'm going to be chastening and rebuking. So again, we want to compare apples and oranges to our nice little comfortable churches. And these were new church plants of pagans. And yet, despite that, none of the issues in the seven churches were theological. Nobody had departed from the faith.

Rather, in every case, the issue that Jesus brings up are their works. Your works are not where they need to be. And then the modern-day churches, they're saying, oh, you don't need any works. If you talk about works, they say, that's works righteousness. You know, I'm not sure if you're saved, brother. I'm concerned about you. You know, you're holding on to works righteousness. You know, maybe we need to pray. Have you ever invited Jesus in your heart? I mean, yeah, I mean, it's like, you better pay attention.

This is Jesus writing these letters. Listen to what he is saying. Our Bible is this snobbery. I think this is the Orthodox Study Bible. I got this out of listing the seven churches. You know, they could have just listed Ephesus, Smyrna, and all that, but they have to describe them. And this is what I hate about subheadings in Bibles because they already get your mind twisted in the wrong direction. So Ephesus, the loveless church. Smyrna, persecuted. Pergamus, compromising. Thyatira, corrupt. Sardis, dead.

Philadelphia's faithful. Laodicea, lukewarm. And that's because that's how evangelicals look at this. I mean, like, yeah, our churches, Jesus is writing a letter to us. Man, he'd have nothing but commendation. And we Anabaptists are no better. We think the same thing. So what did he say to the church in Ephesus? I mean, we've been listening to Bill way in the back. Yeah, I mean, he's been, you know, preaching from Ephesus for the last year or so. And we know it was a pretty remarkable church.

So that's what should be scary. Okay, a strong church like Ephesus that, you know, Paul has all this commendation and Jesus says, he starts off, I know your works. So yeah, Jesus has got his theology mixed up apparently because he doesn't want works, you know, but somehow, yeah, I don't know what happened, but he starts off, I know your works. Now listen to all this commendation, your labor, your endurance, and that you cannot bear those who are evil.

And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars. So they didn't get tricked by these traveling prophets and apostles. And you have persevered and have endurance and have labored for my namesake and have not become weary. Do you think he'd be able to say that about us? I mean, I hope so, but I mean, I don't know how we would stand up. I would not assume that if he was writing a letter to the church, to our church, that, yeah, it would be all commendation. I don't think so.

I don't think we would get this much commendation. Nevertheless, I have this against you that you have left your first love. How many churches can say, oh, no one in our church has left their first love. Everybody's got the same zeal they had at the beginning. I mean, that's almost every Christian, you know, could be accused of, you know, not having their first love. I mean, it's a constant battle. I mean, I still remember how excited I was when I first gave my life to Christ and was baptized.

And I don't think I've totally strayed from that, but I don't know if I have the same intense fire I had at the beginning. It's hard to keep that fire going throughout your whole life. Remember therefore from where you have fallen, repent and what? Quit worrying about works? No, do the first works or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent. Wow, if you don't have your first works, then yeah, you better repent or your lampstand's going to be removed.

This is the Jesus of Revelation. He says, with this, you have that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. So yeah, if this is what he's saying to a faithful church like Ephesus, boy, churches today, instead of being this chronological snob, I mean, wow, like I say, we should be on our knees and thinking, where do we stand? I mean, we're so divided. He could write to the church in Ephesus, and this is decades after it was founded, and he could still write to the church in Ephesus.

He can't write to the church in Chambersburg. He can't even write to the Anabaptist church in Chambersburg. We're so divided, and yet we think we're so superior. All right, Smyrna. Jesus had no criticism for the church in Smyrna. I mean, it's incredible because, I mean, this is an exacting Jesus. I mean, who really looks with the magnifying glass, not trying to find fault, but looking and seeing where the weaknesses are. And the church in Smyrna, no criticism.

This is where, I don't know if Polycarp was the bishop when this letter was written. He could have been. It's where Polycarp served as bishop from Smyrna. Nothing was wrong with their theology. Nothing was wrong with their works. So no, did the New Testament church, was it departing from the faith? No. Could you find any city today where Jesus would find no fault for the collected church in that city? Remember, don't do this apples and oranges. Well, our congregation, no, he's writing to a whole city.

So he'd be writing not just to us, but to the church in Chambersburg. I don't even know who that is. I don't know who the real Christians are in Chambersburg. I don't know who constitutes Christ's church. I mean, we are such a divided mess today. We can't even identify it. I mean, that's how far we are off the path. Pergamum. Pergamum is the Latin name. Pergamos is the Greek name. So you see it both ways. He starts off again. I mean, Jesus doesn't get that we're saved by faith alone. I know your works.

He keeps talking about works. And where you dwell, where Satan's throne is. He's not talking about their congregation. He's saying you're dwelling in a wicked city. A lot worse than Hamburg, okay? And yet you hold fast to my name and did not deny my faith even in the days in which Antipas was my faithful martyr who was killed among you where Satan dwells. So they're living in persecution and they have, you know, a faithful member of their church who was killed.

But I have a few things against you because you have there those who hold the doctrine of Balaam to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit sexual immorality. Thus, you also have those who hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which things I hate. And you keep hearing the Nicolaitans through the rest of the letter. So who were the Nicolaitans? This was a small group. You only read about them in Revelation. They came along, who knows? It looks like somewhere in the latter part of the first century.

Jesus rebukes them and rebukes the churches that are not kicking them out. You get to the second century, no mention of them. They're gone. I mean, these churches, if I got a letter like that, I think, yeah, we would be seeking out any Nicolaitans and showing them the door. I mean, and that's obviously what happened because they just disappear. You're not running into them again. All right, so somewhere he mentions the doctrines of the Nicolaitans. They didn't have any theology. Doctrines means teaching.

They had two false teachings. One, they taught it is permissible to eat meat sacrificed to idols. And number two, they practiced immorality, particularly wife swapping. Okay, so they were a bad bunch. All right, before we start looking down on them, terrible. They taught it's permissible to eat meat sacrificed to idols. Well, you know what? In our very church, not in this building, but in our very church, I've heard sermons where people have said, oh, it was permissible to eat meat sacrificed to idols.

Paul, yeah, that was a temporary thing in Acts 15, and Paul said it's okay to do it. So yeah, it was okay to eat meat sacrificed to idols. I've heard it preached here, not by any of our brothers, but by visiting speakers. I've heard it preached at Anabaptist conferences. I've heard it preached at other churches in our area over and over. That was a temporary command. God removed that. It's okay to eat meat sacrificed to idols.

But then you look down on the Nicolaitans and say, oh, those wicked people, they were teaching it's okay to eat meat sacrificed to idols. Well, hey man, that's what you're teaching. If people could get it, if there were stores of meat sacrificed to idols, yeah, I wouldn't be getting it. Hey, it's okay to eat meat sacrificed to idols. Who were Nicolaitans? We are no better, and yet we sit thinking we are. No, when the apostle said, you do not eat meat sacrificed to idols, that was a permanent commandment.

And maybe the ones in these churches read Paul's letters and misunderstood what Paul was saying and saying, no, it's okay. And Jesus comes back and says, no, it is not okay to eat meat sacrificed to idols. And these people need to be put out of your church. And like I say, and yet we're teaching it today. I've heard it so many times in Anabaptist sermons. And when I was in an evangelical church, I mean, you heard it all the time. I mean, it was just a given. Well, yeah, it was okay to eat meat sacrificed to idols.

It was just a little period of time when they weren't supposed to. And then we look and say, look how superior we are. We understand the Bible better than they do. Yeah, the Nicolaitans were wicked because they had the wife swapping. And certainly, I think in our churches, we're pretty free of that as Anabaptists. And I don't want to pat ourselves on the back or anything. But the typical churches out there, it's the Nicolaitans. Okay, you call it for the drink.

But so over here, you have a wife who's married to this other woman's husband. You have this man who's married to this, the wife of some other man. And I mean, it's, yeah, it's not wife swapping in the totally carnal sense, but it's wife swapping. Yeah, we get divorced, we remarry, and we've got all of this mixture of everybody's married to everybody else's spouse. It is the same situation as the Nicolaitans, but this is rampant in our churches.

I mean, everywhere you go outside the Anabaptist world, that is what you face. So, and yet those same people sit back and say, yeah, look how the church was, was, you know, losing it back then. Anyway, he starts off, I know your works, love, service, faith, and your patience. So even Thyatira, man, they've got all of this going for them. And as for your works, the last are more than the first. They're even getting stronger as a church.

Nevertheless, I have a few things against you, and it's the same problem because you allow that woman, Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce my servants to commit sexual immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols. The same thing our churches permit today, not the Anabaptists, but yeah, it's the same thing. Sardis. It starts off again. I know your works. I mean, what must Jesus be thinking of churches that say, hey, if you're talking about works, that's works righteousness.

And you know, you probably aren't even a Christian. You know, you're depending on your works. Well, no one's depending on their works to save them. We just know Jesus tells us to obey him. Why call me Lord, Lord, and not do what I said? That obeying Jesus is not an option. It's not, oh, well, I guess I'll decide to obey him. No, if you're going to be his follower, you are going to obey him. If you're not, you're like these churches, except your lampstand will be removed.

All seven of these churches were still around in the next century. None of them had their lampstand removed. I mean, they took this correction and they got rid of the Nicolaitans very quickly. I know your works that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead. He's talking about their works. Be watchful and strengthen the things which remain that are ready to die, for I have not found your works perfect before God. Would he find our works perfect before God? I don't know.

This is an exacting Jesus, not a Jesus that you just, hey, I've invited you in my heart. I should be okay with you. I mean, I say people reading these letters, I mean, it should wake up the modern church that there is something seriously wrong. Philadelphia, no criticism. A second church out of two out of seven. Nothing wrong with them. He says, because you have kept my command to persevere, I will also keep you from the hour of trial, which will come upon the whole world to test those who dwell on the earth.

Laodicea. Again, I know your works that you are neither cold nor hot. Now, most people, they think, yeah, they know, oh yeah, Laodicea, that was a church that was lukewarm. What was it that was lukewarm? It was their works, Jesus said, and that's what he's rebuking them for. So, yeah, do our churches really stand any different?

Again, we can sit with a church that, yeah, has everyone had Christian parents and they had Christian parents and all of that, and we can think we're so superior to a church plant straight from the pagan world and that they had problems that maybe or maybe not that we have. But we have not been able to do what Paul and the New Testament Christians did, and that was to go out in the pagan world and to plant churches, churches that would last. And somehow everyone overlooks all the commendation in the New Testament.

This will be very fast. Because I've heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you. This is what Paul says about the Ephesians. Verse Thessalonians, we give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. For we know, brothers, loved by God that he has chosen you.

That's what he says to the Thessalonians. I'm going to move to the Romans. I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you, for your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world. How many churches today that you know of that their faith, you can mention some church and, oh yeah, we've heard about their faith. I don't know of any. I don't think anyone talks about our church and, yeah, man, we've all heard about their faith.

I mean, we're trying to do our best to serve Christ faithfully, but I'm saying we don't, we're not at the level of the churches there in the New Testament. Philippians, I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, making my prayer with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. They're partners with Paul.

Colossians, we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints. So he hadn't been there, but the reputation preceded them. Yeah, I've heard about your faith and your love. First Peter. Now he's talking to a whole bunch of churches. He tells them, you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit and sincere love of the brethren. And finally, First John.

This was maybe written after Revelation. And John says, and he's writing again to the whole church, I have written to you, fathers, because you have known him who is from the beginning. I have written to you, young men, because you are strong and the word of God abides in you and you have overcome the wicked one. Now, why don't people point to this and say, wow, yeah, we don't match up to the New Testament church. Look at what kind of church they had.

No, they look for, oh, did any of the churches get criticized for anything? Oh, we're superior to them. Look at that. Yeah, you look at these words and say, would Jesus be able to say that about us today? So that's it.

Yeah, we can be chronological snobs and think we're superior not only to the second century Christians, but even to the New Testament Christians, which is so rampant, this spirit, or we can be humble and acknowledge, wow, yeah, our faith and our devotion does not match what they had back then, but we can set that as our goal of where we want to be as a church.