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“…we ought to remember just how exalted Christ is now, and yet, even with His exaltation, He is bringing us up to be exalted with Him, so that we too may have a perfect relationship with God. The exalted Christ is not One who is far off, nor will He be brought near (as if He will have to lose His exalted status to come down to our base state), but we will be brought near to Him. There can be no greater honour that a human being can experience than what we have in Christ.”
“Jesus truly loves his churches, and so he lovingly rebuked, commanded, and exhorted them to obey Him with all their heart. He desires for them to remain with Him forever…Each of the seven church’s situation is unique, and has a broad range of application for us today. We have, for instance, a theologically-correct church that has forgotten its first love (Ephesus), the faithful persecuted church (Smyrna), the internally compromised church (Pergamum), the externally compromised church (Thyatira), the seemingly vibrant but actually near-dead church (Sardis), the small but divinely preserved and effective church (Philadelphia), and the double-allegiances church (Laodicea). I believe that if we are careful to heed these messages from Christ, we could avoid many of the pitfalls that came about on those churches.”
“…while the church in Laodicea did not forget the gospel or what God desires, they simply compromised with the world around them, all the while claiming and affirming the gospel of Christ and His Word. In some ways the church in Laodicea was worse than in Sardis, since they both knew the truth, but chose to reject it anyway through their hypocrisy. Laodicea was not ignorant of the truth, but sought to hold onto the benefits and privileges of both the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world.”
“…even though Christ promises to preserve those that are truly His, He still commands them to persevere and to be steadfast. Perseverance will mark those He preserves. May we not be self-deceived into thinking that God does not require any faithfulness, or self-discipline, or endurance in us. That Christ’s Name is attached to His own is not a point of chance, but is a testament to their perseverance. It is a reward for enduring. May we strive for this endurance with the grace that He supplies. If we are His own, then we will endure.”
“ In light of the corruption in the church in Sardis, we need to be diligent to test our desires, practices, and experiences by the Word of God. If God’s Word teaches anything contrary, then we must be willing to follow the Word over anything else. This may initially sound obvious or easy, but few often realize how much their own thinking and beliefs actually affect their faith. There are often so many untested assumptions in our beliefs that come to corrupt our faith and practice. Rather, in order to avoid becoming like the church in Sardis, we need to diligently test and affirm the truth with God’s Word, and reject all that is contrary, regardless of how precious those things may seem to us.”
“…Jesus commands us to be sober-minded and ready for His return—paying careful mind to our walk, that we may walk as Christ; that we may be good and faithful servants, diligently going about the Father’s business. That is how we are to long for Christ’s return. If we truly long for His return, then we will make the most of the short time that we have on earth to do God’s will, as He has revealed to us in Scripture. To truly long for the return of Christ is to be diligently, and with great sobriety, carrying out the desires of God both within our hearts and in the world. To pursue “sobriety” means that we are diligently seeking to distinguish truth from error (according to God’s Word), being carefully and always on guard against evil, both from within our hearts and in the world. It is as the wakefulness of a dutiful guard on the night watch, longing for the sun to rise…”
“It is not as simple as to think that we are on a free ride, and that we never come to actually do what Christ did in His humanity. Rather, all who come after Christ die to themselves, take up their cross, and follow Christ. They lose their lives that they may follow in Christ’s footsteps. This cannot be reduced to a trite or shallow phrase. Rather, it means all that it says, and in the very strength in which it is given. We die to ourselves, and live our present lives for Christ—even unto our deaths. All that we have in this world is to be counted as loss—as trash—so that we may attain to the true knowledge of Christ—living and dying as He has, that we may be resurrected as He has…”
“In Jesus’ first coming, Jesus’ goal was to inaugurate the New Covenant, which was a fulfillment and perfection of the Old Covenant. In the Old Covenant—also knows as the covenant of works—believers did not have the divine resources of a new heart and the Holy Spirit. They also only had shadows of the true things of Christ. All of their biblical rites, ceremonies, and feasts pointed to Christ, and have their culmination and completion in Him…”
“‘Advent’ refers to the coming of Christ. There are two advents: Jesus coming to earth as a child, and Jesus’ return to judge the living and the dead. Originally, the Jews were very much anticipating the first coming of the Messiah, who would usher them into a new age. Most (if not all) of them thought that the events of the first and the second coming were going to happen at once, which would include an overthrow of their Roman oppressors. Many Jews did not anticipate that the Messiah would die on their behalf, or that He would die for the sins of the world…”
“All sorts of perverse and wicked activities happened before idols, and some professing believers in Thyatira were regularly engaging in those things. Perhaps the worst part was that the elders and practicing members of this church were giving a blind eye to the life and conduct of some of its members. Sadly, many professing churches often do the same thing today. Rather than calling out the evil, and seeking for those practicing such evil to repent, many view the life and conduct of professing believers as their own business, which then allows evil to penetrate and invade the regular life of the church. Because the church in Thyatira was not willing to call out evil, the whole church bore the blame and responsibility for what they knowingly permitted.”
