07-15-12 He Who Overcomes

I had intended to move on this morning

to our King’s comments to the church at Philadelphia,

and what you’ll hear me share with you in the next few minutes

I had intended to share with you after we’d finished our study of all 7 churches.

But given the number of people

who went out of the way to talk with me

or e-mail me with questions about one phrase from the passage we looked at last week

I’ve decided it would be best to move things around a bit.

The phrase that caused so much interest and concern

is found In Revelation 3:5

where our King says to the church at Philadelphia,

He who overcomes... I will not erase his name from the book of life...

And, of course, the question that then came up

was, “So, does that mean that God does erase other names from the book of life?”

When, my wife, Sandee, read those notes before I taught

she told me that there was no way I was going to get away

with not commenting on that phrase.

I knew she was right,

but I thought maybe I could put it off for a few weeks

until we finished the churches

and we could spend a whole morning on this overcoming thing.

But I now think it would be better

to deal with it now.

So, we’re going to do two things this morning.

First, I’ll answer that specific question.

And then, I want to share some thoughts

about this whole area of overcoming -

what it means,

and why our Lord included it in His comments to all seven churches.

But lets start with the question

of whether or not Christians’ names

that have been written by God in the Book of Life

can then have their name erased from the book.

OK, some of the answer to that question will come

when we look more closely in a few minutes

at what it means for us to overcome.

But for right now

perhaps the easiest way I could answer it

is by asking another question - what is it that gets our names written into the book in the first place?

What is it

that brings us into the family of God in the first place?

And I’ll just let God Himself answer that for us.

He makes it real simple for us to understand.

Eph 2:4-5, 8-9 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

There’s only one thing that brings us into the family of God -

our choosing to believe He’s telling us the truth

when He tells us He has personally paid our sin debt in full forever

through His own death on the cross.

The only thing that gets us to Him

is that simple faith.

The great fear, of course,

with the question about His not erasing our name from the book of life

is whether there is something I can do

or fail to do

that will then cause God to rip me out of His family.

And the answer to that question is NO!!

Our actions, our performance didn’t get us into His family,

and our performance is not what keeps us in it.

Let me just read for us

a few other comments our God makes to us

about our relationship with Him as Christians.

Joh 5:24 "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.

Joh 6:37 "All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out.

Joh 6:38 "For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.

Joh 6:39 "This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day.

Joh 10:27 "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me;

Joh 10:28 and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand.

Joh 10:29 "My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand.

Your union with your God rests not upon your ability to perform at some certain level

that then somehow qualifies you to remain within the family of God.

Your union with God

rests upon two things - whether or not the death of Christ was adequate payment for sins,

and whether or not God is faithful to keep His promises to us.

And I can assure you with absolute certainty

that there is no more adequate foundation for anything

than those two things.

But it may help

if we broaden this whole discussion out a bit more

and look at what’s going on with all of these promises made to

HE WHO OVERCOMES.

The Lord concluded His comments

to each of these seven churches

with specific promises

to “he who overcomes”.

And to help get us into this

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 start

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 organization,

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’s 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 the religious world around us

is caught up in idolatry, immorality, and the deep things of Satan,

we can still know true victory.

Even when the organized religious group we are apart of

has reached a depth of corruption

so profound that (as we’ll see when we get to the 7^th church)

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 or her God.

You see, God’s redemption

is always, only just 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

what kind of immorality our nations leaders are immersed in.

It doesn’t matter how many religious leaders

use their positions as a cover for their 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 organized group seeking a place under the Christian banner

that has ever existed

for the past 2000 years,

in every society,

and every age.

Some of those groups 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 or she 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 or her 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 people

who 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 4^th 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’s 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 stay engaged in that warfare

and to, each new day, once again seek to overcome in that battle:

“Because you continue to fight what may seem to be so unimportant to the world around you,

the time will come when

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.

First, 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.”

And, second, 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.

First, 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:

John uses the same word in I Jn. 5:4

when he says:

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.

By far the most powerful description of how we overcome

is found in the 12^th chapter of the book we’re studying,

the book of Revelation.

In the 11^th verse of that chapter,

in a section of the book that gives a vivid description

of Satan’s efforts to destroy the people of God,

the same passage in which Satan is called “the accuser of the brethren”,

in verse 11 we are told that “they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony...”.

When he accused them

they overcame by pointing once again back to the blood of the Lamb,

the blood that forever cleansed them from all their sin.

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’m not yet what I want to be,

and I’m 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 we simply cannot 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.