©1998 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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4/5/98
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He Who Overcomes...
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Last week we completed our study
of the last of the seven churches
to which Christ sent messages
in Revelation 2 and 3.
But before we leave these 2 remarkable chapters
and move on to the next major section
of the book of Revelation
that begins in Chapter 4,
I want us to take one final week
to look at 3 words
that are used repeatedly
throughout these 2 chapters,
3 words that I have almost completely ignored
in the 9 weeks we have spent
studying these two chapters,
but 3 words that are repeated 7 times
and form the central point of focus
for everything our Lord
is seeking to communicate to us
through these 7 churches.
It is the 3 words,
HE WHO OVERCOMES.
The Lord concluded His comments
to each of these seven churches
with specific promises
to "he who overcomes".
I want us to take this morning
to talk about the individuals He is addressing
and the promises He makes to them.
And to help get us into this study
I want to begin by reading
the 9 verses directed
to this special group of people.
Rev. 2:7 ' ...To him who overcomes, I will grant to eat of the tree of life which is in the Paradise of God.'
Rev. 2:11 ' ... He who overcomes will not be hurt by the second death.'
Rev. 2:17 ' ... To him who overcomes, to him I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, and a new name written on the stone which no one knows but he who receives it.'
Rev. 2:26 ' He who overcomes, and he who keeps My deeds until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations;
Rev. 2:27 and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, as the vessels of the potter are broken to pieces, as I also have received authority from My Father;
Rev. 2:28 and I will give him the morning star.
Rev. 3:5 ' He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.
Rev. 3:12 ' He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he will not go out from it anymore; and I will write on him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God, and My new name.
Rev. 3:21 ' He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.
OK, I want to begin
by making several general observations
about what I seen going on in these promises.
And the first thing I want to point out
is the way in which these promises
are addressed.
I don’t know if you noticed it,
but there is a major difference
between these seven statements
and the rest of the comments
made by Christ in
chapters 2 and 3.
And maybe I could explain it most simply
by saying that
whereas the letters are addressed
to the entire local church,
these promises
are addressed to specific, individual Christians within those churches.
You see,
though the letters are addressed to
The Church at Ephesus
and The Church at Philadelphia
and The Church at Laodicea,
these promises do not say,
"To the Church that overcomes..."
or even "To those who overcome..."
It is always addressed personally,
specifically to one individual Christian at a time, "to HIM who overcomes".
So what?
I believe Christ worded these promises
the way He did
because He wanted each of us to understand
that no other human being
can ever deprive us of the ability
to fulfill our calling as a child of God.
Even when our entire society
including much of our church world
is caught up in idolatry, immorality,
and the deep things of Satan,
we can still know true victory.
Even when the organized church
has reached a depth of corruption
so profound that Christ describes Himself
as standing on the outside
asking permission to enter,
it can never rob any individual believer
of access to deep personal intimacy
And victory with his God.
There is only one way God relates to His creation -
and that’s one person at a time.
The second general observation
I want to make concerning these "overcoming" statements
is what I see as the obvious point of focus God offers each of us.
Implied in this call to him who overcomes
I see our Lord saying,
"My child, stop looking at the person next to you!"
It doesn’t matter what they do
or don’t do.
It doesn’t matter what’s happened in their marriage,
or how they conduct their business.
It doesn’t matter what kind of immoral trash
your society peddles under the name of entertainment,
or what kind of filth
one click of the mouse
can bring up on the internet.
It doesn’t matter
how many women the President has slept with.
It doesn’t matter how corrupt the church is
or what pastor or teacher got caught
in what kind of immorality.
You are God’s child,
and your calling to moral purity and integrity
never has been
and never will be tied to what others have or have not done
or to what kind of moral sewage
your society happens to be floating in
at any given time.
We saw when we began this study
on these seven churches
that taken together these seven churches represent
every group of Christians
that has ever existed
for the past 2000 years,
in every society,
and every age.
Some were so corrupt that they were identified as being immersed
in the deep things of Satan.
Some were under intense persecution.
Some were drenched in affluence
and the false sense of success
and security that it brings with it.
But with every single one of them
Christ ended His words of encouragement
or His words of correction
with the same unqualified invitation
"...to him who overcomes".
I see it as His way of affirming
that no Christian need ever be a victim
of the culture
or the society in which he lives.
Then, the next general observation I’d like to point out
is the obvious assumption
that every one of us
have things we need to overcome.
In other words, the need to overcome
is assumed by our Lord.
He is not even remotely suggesting
that only the perfect people win.
Obviously there are no perfect people.
Every child of God carries baggage
into His relationship with the King,
a whole load of things that
apart from Christ’s active intervention
would dominate and destroy our lives.
In other words,
the battle is assumed.
It is a "given" in true Christian living.
And I need to prepare you for something here
just so it doesn’t throw you
when you see it in your own life.
Most of the enemies we will fight
in our Christian life,
and certainly the ones that have the greatest power to destroy us
are not external enemies,
they are internal enemies.
The fiercest battles we will ever face
are not the ones we fight with
governmental authorities
that seek to erode our religious liberties,
or the ones we fight with unreasonable or hostile authorities
that ridicule or attack our faith,
or with any other form of external attack
we may encounter.
The greatest battles any of us will ever face
are the ones we fight
with the moral character weaknesses inside us.
The danger, of course, is that they become so familiar to us
that we don’t recognize them as the enemies they are.
I’ve mentioned this before,
but it has often irritated me
that Satan has to be so blasted uncreative in his attacks against us.
The same old temptations seem to work just fine over and over and over again.
The problem, of course,
is that we cease to view them as the true battlefields they are.
There is a remarkable balance that exists
in the life of every truly healthy Christian.
It is the balance between, on one side
resting in the security of a grace-based relationship with Christ,
knowing that our God
has nailed our certificate of debt
to the cross of Christ
and forgiven us all our transgressions forever,
and on the other side living with an ever-present longing
to be more and more conformed
to the image of our Lord.
It is the balance that comes from being able to say to ourselves,
"Lord, I know your death for my sins
has freed me from the impossible burden of needing to be perfect
before I could know your love,
but at the same time
your life within me fills me with a longing
to be so much better than I am.
When our Lord talks about "he who overcomes"
He is telling us that
those inner battles we fight
are an assumed part of every Christian’s life
and they really do matter.
The 4th general observation I want to point out in these overcoming passages
is the Lord’s great rewards
for battles we often believe
are so insignificant that we don’t even think they matter much.
And in order to explain
what I’m trying to say right there,
I need to have you do something.
I want you to mentally select
what you consider to be
one of your most persistent
character growth battles.
It may be some inner warfare
that no one else knows about.
Or it may be something that
if we were to poll your family members
every one of them would instantly,
lovingly place at the top of your list for you.
Though I don’t want to discourage you here,
it is probably something that
in one form or another
you will wrestle with
for the rest of your life.
It is most likely some issue where
it is far better for you to think in terms of "Daily Success"
rather than "Ultimate Victory".
By that I mean
you can look at this area
and say to yourself,
"OK, I’m not totally healed here,
and I’ve certainly not achieved ultimate victory,
but I’m making more right choices now
than I did a year ago
or five years ago.
Now, I want you to think about that battle for a minute.
Very likely in your mind
that battle is of very little significance
when it comes to God’s great plan for the ages.
You may even have convinced yourself
that it is of very little significance
in your own life - it just really doesn’t matter that much.
Now, I want you to listen to what your Lord says to you
concerning that battle you’re thinking about right now.
He says, this is what will result
from your continued determination
to overcome in that battle:
"Because you overcome in that battle
that may seem so unimportant to you,
I will give you authority over the nations,
and you will sit by my side
and rule them with a rod of iron.
As I have received authority from God the Father,
so I will share that authority with you.
And I will confess your name
before my Father, and before all the angels.
I will establish you as a pillar in the temple of My God.
I will clothe you in white garments
and invite you to sit down with me on my throne.
I will grant you permission
to eat from the tree of life
in the Paradise of My God,
and feed you with the hidden manna
that will satisfy you
as nothing else has ever done before.
And I will give you a white stone
as a token of our comradeship
and a new name written on that stone,
a name of honor and victory."
Now I certainly would not pretend to know what all of that means.
But there are two things I understand
extremely well from our Lord’s comments to us about those who overcome.
1. I understand that there is no such thing
as an obscure or unimportant battle.
In these passages
our Lord is saying, "My child, I know the battles you fight,
and I want you to know
they matter more than you could ever imagine."
2. And I also understand from these passages
that it is our Lord’s heart desire
to honor those
who have honored Him,
and when God honors a person
He does it in a big way.
Now, two final questions need answers
before we quit.
#1. What does it mean to "overcome"?
The word itself is fascinating
because it implies an ongoing warfare
that we are actively involved in for our whole lives.
It is not a point at which we arrive,
but rather an attitude we bring
to our walk with God.
The literal meaning of the word
is "to prevail",
in other words,
to hang in there until the battle is over.
I believe it involves two things:
1. John uses the same word in I Jn. 5:4
when he says:
1 John 5:4 For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world-- our faith.
The first part of overcoming
is our continued affirmation
of our faith in the adequacy of Christ’s death as full payment for our sin.
When satan points at our failures
and demands to know
on what basis we have any hope
of standing before a righteous God
we overcome by affirming once again
that we stand before God
clothed in the righteousness
of Christ Himself.
2 Cor. 5:21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
#2. And the second part of overcoming
is stated for us in Rev. 2:26
where Christ says:
Rev. 2:26 ' He who overcomes, and he who keeps My deeds until the end, ...
The word that we have translated "to keep" means literally "to watch over or to guard".
It is talking about guarding the goals He has given us as a sacred trust.
Do you know what that is?
That is our saying to ourselves
and to our God,
"OK, I am not yet what I want to be,
and I am certainly not yet
what I will one day become,
but I will never reject the goal my God has given me.
I will keep His deeds as my high calling
no matter what."
In other words,
it is actively choosing to stay in the battle one day at a time.
I believe this fascinating word "overcome"
is the perfect expression
of the unity of faith and works.
It is founded solidly upon
our faith in the finished work of Christ,
while actively affirming
and reaffirming
our determination to fight for real, practical changes in our lives.
And the final question that has to be addressed is
what happens to people
who don’t overcome?
And the answer is, I don’t know
because God doesn’t tell us.
One of the many amazing things
about God’s words to us
is that He has obviously chosen
to talk to us in terms of Promises
rather than in terms of threats.
The clear intention of these overcoming passages
is to offer strong encouragement
to those who are fighting for right choices in their lives.
He wants us to know
that the battle is important
and more worth it all than we could even begin to imagine.
God has very effective tools
for dealing with those who resist His life and His leading.
But those tools do not include
emotion-based threats of judgement
and condemnation.
I understand the urge to want to amplify on what God has said
by assuming that, if those who overcome will not be blotted out of the book of life,
then those who don’t overcome will be,
but I don’t think we can do that.
The truth is
God has told all of us about the rewards
that will be bestowed upon those who overcome,
but His messages to those who do not overcome
are communicated to only one person at a time
in the context of His disciplinary relationship with them.