Spiritual Realms and the Community
Series: To The Seven Churches
November 7, 2021 – Ryan Romeo
The very first section of Revelation. Revelation 1:1, it says:
The revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who testifies to everything he saw—that is, the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.
I feel a little bit like we're almost cheating because it says "Blessed are those who read this aloud.” I feel like I could just stand up here and just read the book of Revelation, and we would gain a blessing from it, you know? But the very first line of Revelation Chapter one is the thing that we need to to look through at the Book of Revelation. This is that the exclamation point at the end of the Bible. This is the final word on the written, canonized word of God. And it says, "The revelation of Jesus Christ.”
David, last week, he said, no matter what you're going through, what you need is more of Jesus. No matter what you are going through, you need more of Jesus. And the Book of Revelation, it says the Revelation of Jesus Christ. It’s revealing things through Jesus. So Jesus is coming to to us through John, through the angels.
And he's saying, "Hey, I have this revelation for you.” And he tells us things that are to pass, things that are good for us now, and a mixture of everything in between. So he is the vehicle of that revelation. But at the end of the day, Jesus Christ himself is the substance of the revelation. He's revealing himself to us in his fullness.
And David, last week, when he was saying John saw Jesus more alive in this vision of him in revelation than he saw him in the flesh. And that is true. We're seeing the true nature of who Jesus is, and that is the backdrop of the Book of Revelation. And it is the point that we need to look at. This is the revelation of Jesus by Jesus.
But as I was reading these different letters, you know, there's this thing that happens when you ruminate on the word of God, when you just kind of keep going over it and you keep chewing on it. I read the letter to the seven churches multiple times, and the first time you read it, you go, “OK, I don't want to be lukewarm,” like you want to be on fire for the Lord. You know, “I don't want to forget my first love of Jesus.” There's all these warnings in there. There's things that are like, “Hey, you're doing awesome in these things, but I have this against you,” and we're going to dive into all of those, for sure.
But as I was reading through the different letters, there was this thing that started coming out, and when you read the word of God over and over, there is like new meaning that starts to come out. You start to hear things you didn't hear before.
And as I was going through them, I started to realize that every message to each church — because it's one letter to seven different churches — each message to the church is bookended by the same exact thing. Though each church has different things that they're doing great, some things they’re doing awesome, some things they’re not doing so awesome. But there's this bookend that Jesus puts around each message to each church. And I think we need to pay attention to him.
So today we're going to go through those two things that Jesus says to each one of the churches. So let's dive into our our main scripture for the day. It’s Revelation chapter two, starting in verse eight (ESV). We talked a little bit about the church at Ephesus. And again, we're going to kind of go back through some of these. But today I want to read the message to the church in Smyrna, starting in verse eight.
And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write: “The words of the first and the last, who died and came to life.
“I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are rich) and the slander of those who say that they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.”
Yikes. Don't want to be a part of that synagogue.
“Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death.”
I could have picked any one of the messages to the seven churches to kind of illustrate this, because again, there's there's this bookending that's going on. But I do think there's something about the Church of Smear, not just for us as a as a side note, Jesus is saying, you know, “Hey, you're about to go through some tribulation, you're about to go through some hard times and you need to be faithful unto death.”
I think that's something for us, that is something for every single season of the church. I think it's something that's been going on for a long time and a lot of people are going, “Is this the end?” And they've been probably asking that for 2,000 years. They have been asking that for 2,000 years. And at the end of the day, what we have to do is we have to be able to look in the mirror and say, “Am I going to be faithful unto death for Jesus?” It's the question each one of us has to answer. which is a complete side note. It's not even in my notes. So you could just take that. I believe that for what it is.
But did you notice the very first section of that of that passage?
Let's read it one more time:
And to the angel of the church in Smyrna…
To the angel of the church in Smyrna. The more I read this, the more they started to stick out to me and I started to realize, Oh my goodness. Like, he's not writing this letter, he's not going “Hey, to the church leader … to the really important people in that church.” He's not writing the letter “Hey, to the richest people in that church … to the to the ones that get the best seats in the church.” He says, “To the angel of the Church in Smyrna.” And he says that in every single church.Yyou could go down the down the row, all seven churches. He says, "To the angel of…” that church.
And I started to think about that and I started to go, “Wow, OK, to the angel of that church.”Who's the angel of Living Streams? You know, I started to think, Who is that? What is that spiritual being that's over our church? And if we have an angel over Living Streams, what is the foe that is against that angel that is dedicated to Living Streams?
This is not something that you see alone in Revelation. In Daniel, there's a story when Daniel's been praying and fasting and he's been asking the Lord to come, and an angel shows up after a couple of weeks of him praying. And the angel shows up and says, “I'm so sorry I'm late, Daniel. I was stuck battling the Prince of Persia, but now I'm here to help you.”
And you read that and you go, What? The Prince of Persia? So obviously there is this demonic force that's over this city, over this country, or whatever, and the angel’s been battling that. And then he's like, “I'm so sorry, I was late, Daniel, here I am. I'm here. I'm ready to help,” you know.
Number one, the thing that we have to remember, the very first thing that that Jesus does when he bookends his messages to the church. The church impacts two realms simultaneously. The church impacts two realms simultaneously.
We are primarily a spiritual body, though, I know we're looking around and we're sitting on pews and we can feel the wood. You're hearing a message that I was working hard on and preparing in the flesh — all of that. There's a lot of things that happen in the in the realm of of what we can see and touch and smell.
But there is another realm that we are a part of and we cannot forget that. First and foremost, Jesus is saying, “Remember, you are part of a spiritual body.” There are things happening in this room. There are things happening right now. There’s things happening at home when you're sitting and watching church. There are things that are going on. There is a battle that is raging around us and we can't see it. We can't smell it, but we can sense it in the spirit of God when we're in tune to him. There is a battle going on, and we are primarily part of a spiritual body.
Back in 2002, I was drumming in a worship band, so I was super cool. I was in college. I was like, I love, I really love drumming. David one time talked about how he wished he was a drummer. I really, like, when I was a drummer. I was like, I love it. It was so fun. And we would travel around and we would do different events.
At the time, there's a really big event which is still happening called Passion. And it was really influential for me and a lot of us. We are seeing Passion and guys like Chris Tomlin and, you know, David Crowder and and Louie Giglio and these people, you're going, “Oh man, this is so cool,” you know? And I always wanted to be a part of something like that, like deep down in me, there's just always been this thing with me and doing worship events and and seeing people come together.
And this band that I was a part of, we started to dream about doing something like that, and it was the first time I had ever dove into that realm. And one day we were just sitting and dreaming and praying, and we were like, “What if we did like a Passion in Tucson”— which is where I'm from. Born and raised in Tucson. Go Wildcats!
So we started dreaming about doing an event in Tucson — which is not the Bible Belt. I mean, Tucson, Tucson is a little like Portland, Oregon. It's like another planet, more than another city.
But we just started to have this dream. Like, what if we did an event? What if we had worship? What if we brought people together? And so we went out, we found a venue, this outdoor venue that could stretch out to like 1,000 people because in our mind, we're going, “Well,
we need at least 1,000 people,” right, for it to be important. So we booked this venue and we got sponsors, and every weekend we'd go to a different church and we'd go, “Hey, does your youth group want to come to this event?”
We were working so hard. We were hitting the pavement for months and months and months, and we had built all these relationships. And so we had every hope of a huge, massive, like, Tucson-shifting event that would happen, you know? And the night before the event, we showed up and a lot of us are thinking about the logistics. And we had reached out to a worship leader that we really looked up to named Charlie Hall. He was a a part of the Passion movement in the beginning. And so Charlie came out. And so we were so excited. Like, we got Charlie Hall here. We got like local bands here. We got missionaries here. We had all this stuff that we were going to be talking about and praying through.
And so we went the night before and we were like, “OK, let's pray over the spot.” — because that's what we're supposed to do as Christians. We pray over the spot. So we showed up. And in the back of our stage, somebody had spray painted this like really kind of nasty thing. And then we saw this kind of note there, and it was basically something from the local Wickens in Tucson, and they had showed up and done a bunch of stuff to our stage because we were going to be doing an event the next day.
And we walked around and like on the ground, we found these like little bundles of like sticks and human hair that was like tied. And it was this moment . And we found them like in the shape of a pentagram around the stage, too. It was like, this is super on purpose. You know, you have those moments where you're like doing your day to day life and you're just living your life, going, “Man, we're going to do this event is going to be great.” And all of a sudden, the spiritual realm comes crashing into your reality.
And that was what was happening. We were going, “Oh my gosh, there are people, there are forces opposed to what we're doing. We've been so caught up in whether we should do it and how we could do it and how many people were going to be there. We forgot about the spiritual warfare.”
So we covered up the back of the stage and got rid of all the stuff. We prayed. We anointed it with oil. We did like all the stuff, you know, and we went to bed that night and we showed up the next day. And the next day we were like even more pumped. We were like, "If the enemy is attacking us, then how much more is God going to, do?”
And so we were getting ready, and this line of people starts lining up outside of the event. And we quickly realized there was probably about 20 or 30 people that were lined up for our event and it included a lot of our parents. And we were so bummed. We were like, “It's all day. Maybe people are going to be trickling in.” And so and people did trickle in, but we really never had any more than 50 people in front of us.
And when Charlie Hall was about to go on, we brought him in and we were like, “We're so sorry, Charlie. We don't know why. We worked so hard on it.” And he he turned to our team and he said, “You know, it doesn't matter how many people are here.” He said, “We are worshiping downtown in Tucson.” He's like, “Our worship is blasting holes in the wall of the enemy. Our worship is powerful. And even if there's just, you know, five or ten of us here, what we're doing is significant in the spiritual realm.”
And we can't discount that. And he finished and we were like, “Yeah, you know, it was like the opposite of the night before.” We realized there was an enemy that was against us. But the next day we realized there was a God that was for us.
And it was like, “Oh yeah.” And worship. I mean, I've said this before. I think I even said this last week, it's like worship is not just our music time for a Sunday morning. Yes, it's a time where we play some music, but there's something so significant that happens in the spiritual realm. We are powerful in the spiritual realm, and we have to know that we have the Spirit of the living God inside of us. And that's not a light thing. We carry a spiritual weapon that is poised and ready to take the enemy out. And so few of us remember that we are primarily part of a spiritual body.
A couple of years back, I was reading in the Book of Ephesians — and I'd read the Book of Ephesians a lot of times, and I love it. It's great. It's like that default. You're like, I don't know what to read today. Ephesians is a great place to just dove right in, you know?
And so I was reading Ephesians and I was in Chapter three and I was reading about the Church and the power of the Church and the power of the gospel and Paul is laying this foundation, saying, “The mystery of the gospel.” There's this thing that's been going on since the beginning of time. Paul's using all this literary language to build anticipation. And he says, “It’s Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
Paul is diving into this. This is the power of the gospel. But there was a verse in the middle of it that I had read over and over, and it just hadn't impacted me. And this day that I read it, I was like, “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. This is indicative of the power that we have as a Church.”
And so Ephesians Chapter three, verse ten, he's talking about the gospel, and he says:
so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.
I read that and I was, like, mind blown. Now, I don't know if you guys’ mind was as blown as mine was, so let's let's read it one more time. We'll break it out. But he said,
so that…
you know, all the mystery, the power of Jesus, all of this crazy language about the gospel,
so that the church that through the church, the manifold wisdom of God…
So through the church — you and I, physical people. The imperfect people that are sitting in the pews or on this platform, it doesn't really matter. Those of us in the church that through us…
the manifold wisdom of God…
Manifold is just a fancy word for multifaceted. Like, there's these endless ways to see the wisdom of God. There's so many different facets to who God is, you really can't fully get a grasp of him. You could learn something new about him every day and learn a new facet.
So the “multifaceted” wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.
Here's the Ryan Romeo translation:
The church is so powerful, so amazing that each one of us, when we're operating in our gifting, in the things that God has given us when we're doing it with passion and purpose, that we reflect a different part of the nature of God. And that teaches the angels about the character of God. The angels are looking at the Church and they are literally learning about the character of God when they see us.
Mind blowing. We are reflecting the nature of God. I love what Nick was saying. Like those of you that are walking into this room going, “Who am I? What am I doing?” You know, maybe there's wasted years. And with Jesus, there are no wasted years. You reflect the nature of God when you are operating in your giftings and you teach angels about God's character when deep down your heart is rooted in Jesus, rooted in the Holy Spirit. This is the power that we wield.
Angels are watching us right now. There is a heavenly realm that is operating right now. And whenever we talk about anything else in the church, we talk about, you know, any of the practical things, all of that stuff is beautiful, all that stuff is so, so good. But we have to know that primarily, first and foremost, we are spiritual beings. So when you choose sin, you affect the heavenly realm. When you fight that and you choose holiness, you affect the heavenly realm.
We don't talk about holiness so that we could just be a cleaned up club, that we all think the same things and have the same political persuasion. We're not the Lions Club. We’re not a group of people that just come and hang out so that we could feel good about ourselves. We don't try to clean ourselves up so that we look great to other people. That is not who we are. We're not a club. We are primarily the body of Christ. We are the representation of Jesus to a hurting world. We are part of the greatest movement in history.
“The Church is the single most dominant force for good the world has ever seen” is the thing that we teach in Explore. It is true. We are part of the greatest movement in the world, you and I. It's not a club. When we talk about things like church discipline — which the Bible talks about church discipline, and it's hard and it's difficult — but we don't do it so that we could feel good about ourselves and not have people in our group that are messing it up. That's not what it is. That is not what it is. We are first and foremost part of a spiritual body.
So when things are not going well and false teachers are going like, we have a responsibility to say, “No, that doesn't fit in this place," because we're not trying to clean up our club. We are representing Jesus to the world around us, and we have to know that, first and foremost, we are a spiritual body.
So you and I, what we do, what we choose to do when we wield that spiritual sword, we can affect a lot of things. And when we do it in unity, when we do it together in a room like this and we're singing worship songs, we’re wielding a really powerful sword — we really are. But if you and I can wield that sword, the question is: How do we know when to wield the sword? How do we know the things we need to go after?
Maybe you’re like, “Ryan, you know my my day to day, my nine-to-five takes up a lot of my energy. I don't really know. I'm not really sure.” The second thing that Jesus says to each one of the churches, that second bookend is the thing that gives us the instructions, so let's go back.
Revelation Chapter two. Oh, boy. I took my bookmark up. I should just use the digital. I should just like jump on the 21st century here. OK? The end of Revelation Chapter two, verse eleven. It says:
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
So we are part of a spiritual body. We can affect angels. We can affect demons. Angels are looking at us learning about the nature of God. That's amazing. That's beautiful. But what does that mean for us? What that means for us is that we need to be primarily, first and foremost, and this is number two, we need to first and foremost, be a listening church. The primary responsibility of the church is to listen to the Spirit.
If you are a parent in this room, this this verse makes a lot of sense. Our kids are getting a little bit older, they're still young enough that this really does matter. But when they were younger, my wife and I used to tell them, “You have two jobs. You only have two jobs. Like everybody else, all the grown-ups, we have to worry about paying the bills. We have to worry about all this other stuff. You don't have any of that worry at all as a young child, but you have two rules: you have to listen and obey. That's all. Like all, the law is summed up in these two things: listen and obey.
And why? Because we're control freaks? Well, sometimes. Sometimes we're control freaks. But if you love your kids and if you really care about them, the reason you're telling them to listen is because, if they listen in the small things, they're going to listen in the big things. So you say, “Hey, hey, don't run away from me while I'm here.” Well, when you're sitting in the church, that might not be anything more than an irritation. But when you're sitting by a parking lot and that kid runs out in front of a car, if you say, “Hey, stop!” and they listen to you, it saves their life, you know? And we, as parents, we know that. “If you just do one thing…” I mean, with my kids, I'm like, “Just listen to me. Of all the other rules, this is the big thing. Just listen to me.”
And as a good father, as a good heavenly Father, it's the same thing. Jesus is going, “Hey, listen to me. if I tell you that iron is hot and it's going to burn you, it’s not because I don't want you to have fun and play with that iron. It's because it's hot and it's going to burn you. If I tell you don't run out in the street, it's because I don't want you to get hit by a car.”
And when he says this, you know, he says this phrase all over the Bible: “He was ear to hear, let him hear it.” Is this deeper sense of listening that those of us here in the spiritual realm, as we're wielding these powerful swords and all of that, primarily what we needed to be doing, is listening to the Holy Spirit to know where and when we need to engage with the enemy. We need to hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.
And when you have other things in your life that are coming in and they're clouding it and you're not hearing from the Holy Spirit, you have to say no to those things, you have to cut them out. Because listening to the Lord is better. Hearing the wisdom of Jesus is better than anything else.
In Matthew, Chapter 13, Jesus talks about the parable of the sower and I love this story. I mean, he talks about, you know, spreading the seed of the word of God. And if you remember he talks about if you spread it and it goes on to the hard ground and it won't spring up, or if you throw it on the shallow soil, it'll spring up real quick, but it'll die.
And as he was explaining this, he was he was telling it to these people and again, he's giving these parables going, "Listen between the lines. Listen to what the Spirit says to the Church.” He's going, “Listen.”
Jesus talked in parables all the time. Why? Like he said some sermons sometimes, and I’m like, “Dang, Jesus. A little explanation would have really helped you out there.” He didn't care. He would let that out and he'd be like, “You sift through that.” And it's a trust in the Holy Spirit. It's a trust in God, sifting that out, especially as written scripture for us to be able to hear what the Spirit is saying. But he pulls his disciples aside a little bit later, and he explains what it is.
Let's dive in Matthew. Chapter 13, verse 19 (NIV). He says:
Listen then to what the parable of the sower means: When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This is the seed sown along the path. The seed falling on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful. But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.
We follow a God who speaks to us. And the question for us today is: Are we listening? Are we listening to the things of the Spirit and what he's saying to us? Here's my question for us as we dive in and I want to take a little bit of time. Give us a little bit of space to listen and to pray, and we're going to take communion here in a minute. But the question is: What is the condition of your hearing this morning? Are your ears hard and calloused, so hardened that the seed bounces off? Are your ears so open that everything germinates, but nothing really takes root? Are the seeds of God's word choked out because the weeds of this world are causing the garden of your mind to be chaos? Or are your ears a well-tended garden where the seed of the word can take root?
When we know we're a part of a spiritual body, a lot of us, maybe we know that in theory, maybe we come into this room and go, “Great. Awesome, let’s worship," or whatever. But at the end of the day, we have to have a posture of “Lord, what are you saying right now? Speak, Lord. Here I am. Your servant is here. I am listening.”
The words of God are powerful. He spoke creation into being. There's something so holy about just listening. So I want to take just a minute right there, wherever you're at, and if you could bow your heads with me.
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