1 Jul 2008
What if God wrote a letter specifically to Gladstone Christian Church? What would it say? How would we respond?
Well the New Testament does contain letters written to certain congregations. The Apostles Paul, Peter and John wrote to specific churches, as did early leaders James and Jude. Even the anonymously written Hebrews seems addressed to just one group of believers. However, even though these epistles were originally intended for one congregation, by God’s providence they have been preserved and shared with all Christians for 20 centuries. Yes, the letters from Paul to the Roman or Ephesian church weren’t addressed to us, yet as we read their mail across the span of 2000 years we realize the content of those first century documents does address us, our situation and need in the 21st century. God inspired the first witnesses to the resurrection to write in order to teach, rebuke, correct and train in righteousness (see 2 Timothy 3:16) to both a specific group of believers, but also to all disciples who will pick up these missives and read.
Hopefully you are familiar with the aforementioned letters and have both read them and been inspired by God’s message to you. However, are you aware that there is also another group of letters written to some first century congregations that came directly from our Lord Jesus Himself? You may have missed them because they are the letters written to seven churches found in the book of The Revelation of Jesus Christ…, sent by His angel to His servant John… and delivered …to the seven churches in the province of Asia (Revelation 1:1-4). These too are not written to us, but just like all the other NT letters of the first century, we are privileged to read them, learn from them and apply them to our lives. This is why God gave us the Bible!
I think these “letters to the churches” in Revelation 2 and 3 are too often overlooked either because we are intimidated by the book of The Revelation due to its fantastic imagery, or because we have misunderstood that this last book in the New Testament speaks only of future events. Yes the imagery is “wild” but God has given us this message in this way that we might “see” the spiritual warfare all around us that we would otherwise miss. And we must never forget that this book was given to the Christians at the end of the first century for their need and for their situation, not ours. Any benefit we receive is the same as with all other books of the Bible--we are reading what God said to them in order to hear God speak also to us.
During July and August we will look at each of these seven “letters” to “hear” what Jesus said to those first century Christians who were on the cutting edge of taking the message of the Gospel into a hostile world of pagan worship and practice. That’s why I’m calling this sermon series Letters to the Front. These seven letters are like memos from the Commander in Chief to His troops who were on the front lines of spreading the Gospel across the Roman Empire. They faced resistance, persecution, and even death for the sake of Christ. They truly were at the “front.” So the Lord gave them words of encouragement and corrective that they needed to hear. But in writing to them they also represent Christ’s Universal Church which includes us today.
So what can we learn from these Christians from strange sounding places like Smyrna, Pergamum and Thyatira? Again, as with the entire Bible, we study what God said to others that we may realize that He is also speaking to us. We too are to take the Gospel into “hostile” territory. We too are on the front lines as we present the message of Jesus to a world that doesn’t really want to hear His words. We too, through the first century church, have received our Letter to the Front from our Lord!
Denis Whittet
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