Revelation and the Church

Last week we talked about the book of the Revelation of John. We are going to spend the next several weeks looking at the church and Jesus’ vision of what he wanted his church to be. So today, we are going to look at the church in general, and how these churches in Asia Minor came to be.
There is no concept of ‘church’ in the way we think of church in the Old Testament. God gathered his people and they worked and traveled and worshipped all as one people. After God’s people made it to the promised land, God did send priests to live out among his people, but worship took place exclusively in the Temple in Jerusalem. Eventually there were synagogues in different locations among the people which became a center for the people to gather for study and activities, but worship was still only in the temple in Jerusalem.
When Jesus came and began to teach the people, he began to teach this concept of ‘church’ was not a place of worship, but Jesus’ taught ‘church’ was the idea of God’s people working together to do the work God had asked them to do - In Matthew 25 Jesus says: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, "I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’” Jesus was concerned the idea of ‘proper worship’ and worrying about conducting worship ‘in the right way’ had taken precedence over doing the work God had called the church to do. For Jesus corporate worship was important, but he also wanted to make sure the church worked together to bring about God’s love and grace to the community.
Pretty familiar are Jesus’ words to the Apostle Peter, also in the book of Matthew, ‘to you I will give the ‘keys to the kingdom’; ‘the kingdom’ being God’s people whom Jesus envisioned to be gathered together in ‘churches’ - not buildings but in groups who gathered together to study, break bread (which was their term for what we call communion) and to do care for one another.
After Jesus’ ascension and the gospel message began to spread out from Jerusalem, people gathered together and they called the local congregations ‘church’ but there were no buildings, just groups of people who began to be called ‘Christians’. We have recorded several of the Apostles who left Jerusalem and began to travel various places, teach about Jesus and form those who became believers into groups. However the most prolific founder of churches was the Apostle Paul.
Paul was called by Jesus on the road to Damascus and given the responsibility of teaching Gentiles about Jesus. Paul was commissioned to do this work interestingly enough by the follower of Jesus in Antioch. The people in the church there decided the mission of their church would be to finance Paul’s mission to spread the gospel of Jesus to the people living in what we would call Greece and Turkey today - back then it was known as Asia Minor. So we have recorded in Acts the actual ‘sending’ of Paul to do this work God has called him to do.
But there was much resistance to this Gospel message both by the Romans and by the Jews.
Becoming a follower of Jesus in this territory called for Jesus’ followers to be very courageous and very brave. It would have been impossible to have a ‘church building’ because these followers had to work and worship in secret.
You’ve probably heard a lot about the persecution of these Christians and it is hard for us to even conceive of what it would have been like to made the decision to hear Paul teach the message of Jesus and then decide you are going to give you life to him and become a ‘Christian’. And then you had to hide it………
Except being a ‘Christian’ meant you were to then change your life and do the things Jesus taught you should do - you were to gather together with other believers and you were to care for those in society who were in need - and those who made the decision to follow Jesus took this calling very seriously. They were constantly putting their lives on the line to do what they were called to do…….. To gather and to care for the poor and the widows and the orphans and the prisoners and all in need.
Much of the mission of Paul as he traveled was to stop by the congregations he had formed and take up an offering that he then took to those who were in need. We have recorded how those within the church would sell their possessions to raise money to help others who were in need.
So Paul would travel, he would form ‘churches’ - which were groups of people who gathered in various locations, usually homes, and would study (altho remember there were no Bibles for them to read so they would recall and discuss the stories Paul had taught them), would share in communion and would work to help others. But people are people and whenever they would encounter a problem, cause groups of people, even ‘Christian people’, encounter problems, would contact Paul and he would write a letter to them to help them work through their issues. Some of these letters we have as most of the New Testament - Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, for example.
Then John, the Apostle, was sent to the Island of Patmos and Jesus himself decided he, himself, needed to address these seven churches in Asia Minor. So Jesus tells John to write down Jesus’ words as he addresses the issues that are going on these specific churches in Asia Minor. These churches were founded by the Apostle Paul and we don’t really know exactly why these particular churches were targeted by Jesus although many biblical scholars think it is mainly because of their closeness geographically and it would be easy for this circular letter to be distributed between them - and also because these churches and their good and bad practices could easily represent any and all churches and the issues that pop up as congregations throughout history struggle to work and worship as God’s people.
The biggest difference between our experience today and the experience of those in the seven churches of Revelation would be the society in which we live. These groups of Christians met in houses - although they had to be very discrete about it so that the members would not be arrested, tortured and killed. And as hard as they tried to keep themselves of the Roman and Jewish radar screen, people in the congregations were still discovered and taken by the Jewish leaders and by the Romans.
What we need to think about as we freely worship and work together, is to think about how difficult it is for us to try and live up to Christ’s call to the church, and imagine how hard it was to live up to the Christ’s expectations and be persecuted at the same time.
This letter of Revelation is Jesus’ words to these people, who are trying to remain faithful during this time of persecution. Jesus encourages them by reminding them why they part of Christ’s church and about the ‘great reward’ if they can remain faithful in the midst of the severe persecution they experienced and admonishes them them to remember they are still to ‘be God’s people’ - to usher God’s kingdom into the world where people worship God in spirit and truth and where God’s people spread God’s love as they care for those who are in need.
As we hear Jesus’ words to these churches through John’s writings in Revelation, we are to think about ourselves - where do we see ourselves in this church? What are we doing right and where does Jesus see room for improvement in our work and worship?

We are the people of God; we are gathered into congregations put together by God - blessed and loved and charged to be the arms and legs and feet of Jesus in this community.
Amen.