The 7 Churches of Revelation: Pergamum

Sunday Morning | June 7, 2026 | John C. Majors | Louisville, KY

In this message from the 7 Churches of Revelation series, Pastor John examined Jesus’ letter to the church in Pergamum, a city known for its political power, religious influence, and academic achievement, yet also described as the place “where Satan’s throne is.” From Revelation 2:12-17, he shared five ways believers can resist the pressure to conform to the surrounding culture: first, understand the circumstances in which we live without being surprised by spiritual opposition; second, recognize that difficult circumstances never require compromise, as demonstrated by the faithful witness of Antipas; third, walk humbly in times of success, remembering that wealth, influence, and human wisdom can become opportunities for spiritual corruption when compromise replaces conviction; fourth, respond quickly to sin with repentance, allowing God’s Word to correct and transform us; and finally, hold tightly to Christ’s promise of eternal life, symbolized by the hidden manna reserved for those who remain faithful. The message challenged Christians to stand firm in truth, resist cultural compromise, and trust in the lasting rewards found in Christ.

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Transcript

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Amen. Thank you Isaac. Thank you. Worship team. Appreciate you guys serving us this morning. And it's great to be with you today as we gear up for a week of VBS. How many of you are helping this week in some way or another? Great. That's a lot. It's like half the church. Awesome. Yes, it's going to be a big week, so be praying for kids this week. This can be a very spiritually significant moment in the life of our children. I know it was for me. I mentioned to someone earlier today that'll go unnamed that, yes, I even attended here as a kid, and they said, we've been doing VBS that long? I said, I said, yeah, and longer, even if that's imaginable. But it's a great program. People from all over this area come and know that it's going to be done well, and that Christ is going to be at the center of everything we do. And I'm so grateful for the leadership and so many who pour in time to that. Today we're going to continue looking at the seven churches of Revelation. We're working our way through these seven churches that are listed. We've looked at Ephesus, we've looked at Smyrna. This week we'll look at Pergamum, and there's this study that has occurred in a number of different settings that I think helped set up the theme of this message. There's different spins on it. The one that came to mind for me was it's presented as, hey, we want to gather a group of people to do some market research. We want to get your response to various things and see what you think. And so people come, they gather in a room and we'll ask you a series of questions. If you agree, stand up. If you disagree, just stay seated. And so they'll ask questions that are obviously right one way or the other. There's no gray area. It's super obvious. But here's what one person in the room doesn't know that everybody else in there is in on it. You know, they pose it as we want to do market research, but really we want to see how one person will react when everyone else acts different than you think they would. How will they react? Will they go along with what they know to be right, or will they go along with what everyone else is saying? And so they'll ask a question like the sky is green. If you agree, stand up if you don't stay seated. And of course, because they're all in on it, everybody in the room will stand up. And then the one person who's not in on it wonders what is going on. And in fact, you might. I've read studies like this, and when I first started reading them, I thought I wouldn't be me. I'd never go along with that. I would be the first to say, Y'all are crazy. What do you think you would do in that situation? They want to see what would people do. And a lot of people find themselves going, okay, always thought it was blue, but everybody else thinks it's green. Have I missed something? And in the study I read in particular, every single person stood up with everyone else who said the sky's clearly green. The social pressure to conform can be so overwhelming that even when you think, man, I know this has always been true, but everybody else is saying the opposite is true. You go, I guess I gotta I guess I'm the crazy one. I guess I've got to go along with what they're saying. How do you resist the pressure to conform to the culture? Because the pressure is enormous. It's gigantic, whether you realize it or not. It is all around you. And we're going to see in Pergamum five ways that they resisted the pressure or handled the pressure to conform. So if you have a Bible, turn to Revelation chapter two, and we're going to read verses 12 through 17. And as I read those, if you would stand with me just as of a respect for God's Word, as I read, starting at verse 12, Revelations at the end of your Bible, if you don't have a Bible, we have those out in the lobby. You're welcome to grab one Revelation, chapter two, verse 12. And to the angel of the church in Pergamum, write the words of him who has the sharp two edged sword. I know where you dwell, where Satan's throne is. Yet you hold fast my name. And you did not deny my faith. Even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, who was killed among you where Satan dwells. But I have a few things against you. You have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practiced sexual immorality. So also you have some who hold the teachings of the Nicolaitans. Therefore repent. If not, I will come to you soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth. He who has an ear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches, to the one who conquers. I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it. You can be seated. Pergamum. As we've looked at these various cities, Pergamum is in the same region which is now modern Turkey. Western Asia would have been considered at the time. And Pergamum has a context. Every city has a context. And I've written in your notes a couple of those we want to look at. There's a political context. Pergamum was the Roman capital for the region. Of course, Rome went through and conquered a lot of areas and set up their own capitals in certain areas. And so even though Ephesus was probably the larger, more influential port city, we talked about it a few weeks ago. Pergamum was the political capital, maybe kind of like the difference between Louisville and Frankfort. So you've got the big influential city, but you also have the political capital as well. You also had the religious context, the cultural context. So we already looked at Ephesus and how it had, of course, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the temple to Diana. Of course, it was hugely influential in the religious context, but so was Pergamum. In fact, one thing that happened interesting with Pergamum, with Smyrna, with Ephesus. And if you want to bring the map up and just highlight this reality, these three cities were on the basically on the western coast, and they often vied for the most Roman attention, maybe kind of like whenever the NBA expansion happened many years ago now and a team was up in cities reviewing, can we get an NBA team here? You know, Louisville and Memphis kind of came down to two of the finalists. And of course, obviously we didn't end up with a pro team, but Memphis did. That's because we're similar sized cities. Similar interests were revived for the same thing. And so in the religious context, many times the emperor would say, we want to put a new temple in a city and the cities would fight over who's going to get it, who's most important, who's going to get the honor of putting up another temple, and usually Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum. These three cities were usually in the front leading ranks of who's going to end up with this temple, who's going to be the most important. And Pergamum often was the one who received that highest honor. So they had a bit of pride about themselves, were important. Politically. We're the capital. We're important spiritually. We get the important new fancy temple here. They also had an academic context. This shaped the culture as well. They had what was the second largest library in all of the ancient world at the time. The largest would have been in Alexandria. They had something like 200,000 volumes, which is a lot of books. That may not sound like a lot for a library. I mean, our southwest library has like 120,000 books, you know, but how many of those are kids books with a few pages and and just a few pictures? It's a whole different era. All those books were handwritten to. So to have that many books, I mean, most everyone never even owned a book in their home. You couldn't have afford it. They were so expensive. So they had that as their context as well. In fact, this really helped shape the city in significant ways. So just a little bit of book history, which I know everyone has been praying, would happen this morning, but just hang with me for a second. The main writing material at the time would have been papyrus, which was just reeds from Egypt that were sliced and layered together and glued together. But what happened was Egypt said, we're not going to keep shipping these out to everyone else. I don't know exactly why they did that. I'm guessing it was a power play control play. Imagine if someone who had control of all the silicon chips said, yeah, no, not for everyone else anymore. Just just me. We all have to scramble and figure out what are we going to do? How are we going to power our computers, laptops, whatever? Well, Pergamum was in this quandary, of course. We've got the biggest library. We're trying to create more books now. We don't have access to the main writing material we've used. What do we do? They were the first to really develop the art of crafting what we call parchment, which was just animal skin. They would use animal skin. And of course, here's what often happens that ended up becoming a much better product. It lasts a lot longer. I mean, leather lasts longer than grass, so you can imagine they came out better through it. The interesting thing is the name Pergamum is actually the Latin word for parchment. So their city is really named after a writing material, again highlighting their academic prowess, their academic ability, their commitment to knowledge, to education. And so this city had you could say there was a lot of levels of pride within this city. There was a lot for them to take pride in, and there was a lot that would influence the culture around them. And we have to wonder, how would a church hold up in the midst of that culture, because you also have the Emperor cult. Of course, we know that various temples were put there, but also emperors were put up, held up as god, so a lot was crashing down on them. How do they respond to all this? Let's look back at verse 13 and see how Jesus responds to where the situation in is and what the culture is like there. Look at verse 13. He says, I know where you dwell, where Satan's throne is. This is how Jesus describes Pergamum. This is the place where Satan's throne is. And here's the first point in the outline for you to be aware of. How do you stand up to the pressure to conform to the culture? First, know your situation. Know your circumstances. Be aware of where you're rooted and seated. Don't be naive to all the pressures that are around you. And if you grow up in a certain culture, you can come to think that's how it is everywhere, without realizing the things that are right or wrong about the culture. You want to be like the men of our first Chronicles. We want to be aware of the times. Understand the times. You want to be a student of the culture around you so that you're not naive and you're aware of what's going on. And so this city has a nickname because of the culture around it. And a lot of cities have nicknames, right? I'll mention a few. You tell me if you know what the city is. Hopefully the first one is pretty obvious. There's the Derby city. Louisville, right. Good job. You got that one. What about the Windy City? Chicago, the Big Apple, New York? Good. Y'all have left Louisville. This is encouraging to see. Let's see. What about the gateway to the West Saint Louis. Good I heard a little more mumbling there like I don't did I take geography or not? What. Okay. Here's one. This is in Kentucky. This is a city in Kentucky. I'll be surprised if anybody knows this, but this is legitimate. This is the city known as the barbecued mutton capital of the world. Oh my gosh, half of y'all yelled out Owensboro! That's amazing. Okay, maybe y'all have a little too much fascination with barbecue. I'm guessing there's some of that going on. Here's another one. Toad suck. You heard of that nickname? That's actually the name of a city in Arkansas. Someone just said that's actually the name of the city. That's not a nickname. That's the actual name of the city. And they have a whole festival around it. That explains a lot about Arkansas right there. I live there for a while, so it's okay. What about this one Sin City? And how telling is that that so many new right away, a city called Sin City. We went through there one time. I won't ask for a show of hands for who's been there. We went through once we were driving from Louisville to California. We were going to do a mission summer mission trip in Santa Cruz, and I thought, hey, we're going through. Let's at least stop. And we walk through one of the casinos. And I just thought, how depressing. I mean, everyone was zoned out, totally focused on their machine or whatever. And they looked all of them looked miserable and sad, you know, they they portray it as this amazing place to go and find happiness and joy. And everybody looked miserable. And I'd heard the food supposed to be great. So I thought, let's at least get something to eat before we get out of here. The food was terrible. I guess when you feel miserable, you can be convinced that anything's good. We left there, and I'm never coming. Never coming back here. I mean, apart from a mission trip or something. But it did made me think, man, how big of a challenge do the churches have here to reach this culture? All the mega churches are in Dallas, in Houston, but Vegas, I mean, that's a whole much harder place to reach people. And Jesus says to a place that is called Satan's throne, he says to them, I know where you are. I know where you are. I'm aware of what you're facing. I know it's not easy. I know you have a lot stacked against you. I'm not going to leave you alone. Be aware of your circumstances. Understand your circumstances. Be ready to stand up against what the culture is throwing against you. Now, why does he use the phrase Satan's throne? Why would he use that? In particular, I already mentioned the religious context, and so there were a number of significant temples there, all who point back to this idea. One of the first ones would be they had a large altar. They called it because it was open, built, open, even though it was huge. It was probably as big as our sanctuary and altered. A Zeus, who was probably the main Greek god. And Zeus was known for being able to transform into a serpent when needed to hide or deceive people. It was part of his trick of what he could do. Also, the second probably most prominent temple there was to a guy named Asclepius. And you know who he is, even if you don't know, Asclepius was the Greek god of healing. And so his temple was what was probably one of the first versions of an early hospital. People would come there to get healed. In fact, they would even use the word, they would come there to be saved. But look at the picture of Asclepius here. This is a picture of a statue of Asclepius. And you could see he's got a step. But can you tell what's climbing up the staff there? A serpent, in fact, this is what the symbol that you'll see. Put up that next image in many of our modern medical symbols, this image of healing. But of course. And by the way, I'm not saying that anyone, if you're in the medical profession and have this patch on you, I'm not saying you're worship and Satan, okay. By the way, not saying that at all. But in this context, at that time, in that culture, it's an interesting coincidence that he calls them, you live at Satan's throne. You're in the place where, at the end of the day, Satan has control over the cultural and religious environment. There was an emperor cult as well where people would worship the emperor. The emperor would even describe himself as God and Savior use the same words. So that's the context in which that's a tough place to be. All the pressure around you is saying, these are who we worship. Satan's throne. Now, how did the church respond to that? Look at the second part of verse 13 here. He says, I know where you dwell, where Satan's throne is, yet you hold fast my name. You did not deny my faith. Even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness who was killed among you where Satan dwells. So first point, be aware of your cultural context. But second, you don't have to give in your circumstances. Don't demand to compromise, right? Just because you live in Vegas or wherever, where the circumstances all around you and the pressure is to conform, you're not required to give in. You don't have to give in, even though it feels like everyone around you is saying give in change. Go with the norm. Conform to the culture. You don't have to. And Jesus here commends them. They stayed steadfast. They stayed committed to Christ's name. Even in the midst of all that pressure to conform, even in the midst of one of their own being executed for the faith. Antipas. His name means against all. He stood up, against all pressures, against his faith. He stood firm. We don't know who he is. It's the only mention of him. He stood firm. He set the example and they stayed firm. You don't have to submit to the culture to conform. I had a friend who shared a story when he went to college. He joined a fraternity, and he went through all the stuff that you do to be a part of the fraternity. And the very last step and by the way, none of them knew this, the very last step before they finally say, okay, you're official, you're in is. They lined them all up and they started with the first guy. They handed him a bottle of champagne, and you said, you got to chug the whole bottle. And so of course the first guy does it, the second guy does it, the third guy does it, and some of them are send it right back up. You know, it's a lot to take on fourth guy. And finally it gets to him and they hand him the bottle and he holds it up and he shouts with excitement. And then he just pours it out. And of course half of them are cheering. Half of them are booing. Why are you ruining our a moment our event. And he didn't know what that would mean, by the way. He was excited to be a part of this fraternity. He had two good friends who were down the line from him. He didn't know. Maybe they're not going to let me in. I don't know, but I know I can't be a part of this. This isn't right. Well, it keeps going down the line. Couple more guys, they go ahead, they get the party going again, they follow along, they conform. It gets to his two friends who are with him and they do the same as him. They hold up the bottle and pour it out. And they said, and I've heard them say, you know, I don't know if I would have done that if not for him going first. I thought I had to conform, but when I saw his courage, when I saw him take a stand, and of course they end up letting all three of them in the fraternity still. And he ended up having a significant ministry influence in that area. But here's the here's the thing. You don't have to conform to the culture around you, even though everything around you says you better or you're out. You know, it might seem like the end of the world if I don't get into that club or if I don't get that job or whatever, you don't have to conform. God will work it out. And so he commends them. But now look what happens real quick. Right from that he gives them a warning. Yes. You stood firm. Yes. But here's a warning. Look at verse 14. But I have a few things against you. You have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality. So also you have some who hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans. Here's the third point in terms of how we stand up to the pressure of the culture to conform. Number three walk humbly in the midst of success. Walk humbly in the midst of success. They have had success. God is praising Jesus, praising them for standing firm. And yet also they've let some other areas slip. It's easy to feel like I've got it all figured out. I'm doing great. And then you find yourself slipping in other areas. Don't break your arm trying to pat yourself on the back for how great you're doing. Oftentimes, Colby, our student pastor who often helps preach up here as well. He's preaching at a camp this week for students before they have their student camp coming up. But many times we'll hear a story. You'll see him in the news to some well-known pastor or ministry leader, will make poor decisions and have to step away from ministry. We'll hear the story, and inevitably, we'll end up in his office or my office talking about it, lamenting. Sorry about the situation, sad for the situation, but there's always a moment where we pause and go. Some variation of except for the grace of God, there go I. I'm no better than that guy. I'm not somehow more holy and spiritual. I'm not above that kind of sin unless God goes before me, protects me. We try to, in the midst of seeing public sin and being aware of it, walk in humility. And what happened here with the church in Pergamum? For whatever reason, they let it slide in a couple of areas, and specifically it mentions Balaam. This is going to take a second to unpack. You might remember this story. Balaam is the one who was on the donkey, and the donkey talk to him. We talked about that. If one of your animals talks to you and you talk back, that should be a huge red flag, right? You should realize something wrong is going on here. But he just kept going with the conversation. But the setting there was that Balak. Israel had come into his country, and he didn't like that Israel was on their way to populate in the Promised Land. This was after in the midst of the Exodus, and Balaam was kind of a prophet for hire. You could hire him and he'd come in and curse whoever you wanted. Are you paying him enough? You're like a politician, right? You pay me enough. I'll say what you want me to say. I'll curse whoever you want. Call up Balaam. Get him in here. We got a curse, the Israelites. Balaam comes and he says, let me tell you, for whatever reason, usually I'm all for hire. I'm all about the cursing. Not this time I've been constrained. I can't curse the people of God. Balak didn't like that. Tried to convince him. Ultimately he doesn't. As far as we know, he doesn't curse the people on behalf of Balak. But however, here's what happened. Look back at the passage of what it says. Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols, practice sexual immorality. And so the inference here, we got to infer a little bit, because when you look back at the story in Numbers, you see how it ends up. But the inference here is Balaam said, I can't outright condemn them. But let me give you an idea how to mess them up. Let me give you an idea how to set them off course. And in numbers, chapter 25, it talks about how the people began to whore with the daughters of Moab, and they began to sacrifice to their idols as well. Let me just here's how you can do it. In fact, there's a quote here in your notes from David Jeremiah. It says it this way when Satan couldn't crush the church, he can corrupt it through compromise. A lot of times it's it's easier to stand up against an outright attack to your faith, against an obvious temptation to sin. That's a lot easier. Many times. Not always, but a lot of times it's so obvious. You go, hey, that's not for me. But the subtle little compromises. Dennis Rainey said. Life is full of temptations disguised as small choices. It's those subtle little compromises, and they don't seem that big a deal. And we take a step and you just take another small one, and then there's just another small one. And before you've taken so many, before you know it, you don't even know what the core of your faith is anymore. It's chipped it away. And so with Balaam, he mentions two in particular that they are struggling with. Right.

You see them here: 25:31

eating food sacrificed to idols and practicing sexual immorality, there's two specific areas where they had allowed things to slip. And I think a question we have to ask here before we get to those two things. Is there any area where you are causing a stumbling block to someone else? Sometimes in the church we find ourselves, maybe we're not getting our way or in relationships or friendships. So I'm going to find a workaround to get them to do the thing I want, or to get them to stumble or to set them off course. This is a good moment to do a little self-reflection and ask God, is there any way I am acting like a Balaam? Instead? As church members, we need to be building one another up. And if we have differences going to one another and seeing, how can that draw us closer together and cause unity? And I think this church, for the most part, does a great job of that. I've seen it over and over again, where people who are at odds through that difference drew closer together. Jesus gives them one action point here. What do you do? How do you continue to fight the temptation to conform to the culture? Look in the next verse, verse 16, therefore one word repent, repent. If not, I will come to you soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth. The simple command is just to repent. In fact, that word showed up in Ephesus as well. I know your deeds. Repent. Repent just means simply turn around, which is real important. It's not just stop, of course stop. But if you're walking towards the edge of a cliff, yes, you need to stop. But we also want you to turn around and back up far away from it. Don't just stay on the edge of temptation. Repent. Turn around. Go the right direction. Stop going the wrong direction. And so I think this is an important point to also ask in what ways have you allowed compromise in the areas of sexual immorality and idolatry? The very things that the church in Pergamum was wrestling with, that they had allowed to creep in even though they were standing firm? We won't worship Asclepius, we won't worship Zeus, we won't worship the inverse. But in their practices, they didn't look all that different than some who did. You got to ask yourself, how do I look? Just the same as everyone else around me who doesn't claim Christ? Will people look at my life and see a difference? That's a hard question. That's even as I'm saying that I don't really like hearing it myself. What ways have you allowed sexual immorality to creep into your life? Is it in a relationship? Is it someone at work that you spend just a little bit longer talking to than you should? Is it something you're looking at online? And maybe it's not outright evil, but it's on the line and you've convinced yourself it's okay. It's not that bad. Or what about idolatry? That's a harder one for us. What are you worshiping? What have you put before Christ in your life? If about anything you say, if I don't have that, I don't have life. You've put that before Christ. It could be a family member, a relationship, a job. It could be money, status. You know, probably know what it is. Repent. Let this be the day where you repent of those we say no longer. Do whatever it takes. Do whatever it takes. And then lastly, we have the fifth way that you stand firm in the midst of the pressure to conform, the overwhelming pressure to conform. Look at verse 17. He who has an ear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches, to the one who conquers. I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it. Here's the last way you stand up to the pressure to conform. Hold on to the promise of life. Hold tightly to the promise of life. Because it can feel like in the midst of that pressure to conform, it can feel like when you're pouring out the bottle or whatever it means for you, it can feel like life is now over. This is the end for me. I thought I would find hope and joy in this thing and now it's over. But there is the promise of life. He mentions two things here in particular. He says the hidden manna. And that's a reference back to Exodus chapter 15, which is in unit 16, in your notes. What happened is when they brought the Ark of the covenant into the temple, at first they also put a few items in it so that they would be remember what God had done on their behalf. One of them was a jar full of manna. Hide the manna in the ark. We will always have it with us as a remembrance of God's provision. And of course, we know at the feeding of the 5000, I am the bread of life, a direct contrast to the bread Moses provided temporary passing here for a day gone. Jesus says, I am the bread of life. I am where you will find real life. And so don't eat the meat sacrificed to idols, which means you go hungry. But ultimately you're going to find full satisfaction in me. Also, he mentions the white stone. I will give him a white stone with a new name written on the stone. So at this time, whenever there was an election per se, when you entered into the arena where the election would partake, this didn't happen everywhere, but many times it was this custom. When you walked in, you would be given. In fact, the word translated here as stone most often was translated as pebble or vote, and you would often be given a small white pebble. This was your entrance ticket. This signified you're a citizen, you belong. You can place a vote. And then when it came time to place a vote, you would drop that pebble. And if you were for it, if not, you would retain it. You would hold on to it. And so the imagery here is that Jesus, and this may sound maybe two reductionist, but Jesus has called you in as a citizen and says, you are a part and you are mine. In fact, on that stone, it's not just a generic one I give to whoever I put a new name on there. Oftentimes when people maybe like the pope or historically kings, when they enter into that role, they say, I'm taking on a new name because I'm going, I'm setting up myself as this is a whole new life that I'm establishing. I had a friend, I remember him sharing this story with me. He had come to Christ and he had lived a life, a crazy life, drugs, fighting. And he was in the courtyard on campus and watching a friend of his preach. And a guy came up and just started yelling at him. And he said to the guy, hey, man, you know, what's the deal? Settle down. And this guy started into my friend, and my friend said, let me tell you a week earlier, I would have ripped this guy's head off, but Christ had changed me. He had given me a new name, and I knew I can't act that way anymore. And by the way, I don't have to. I don't have to react. I can pray, I wanted to, but I don't have to because my name is in Christ and my name is Christian. I follow Jesus. And so he turned to that guy and said, hey man, it's going to be all right. It's going to be okay. And just deescalate it. If you know Christ, you have that new name. You know that you act different than you used to. Even when you want to revert, you still know I can't. I'm new in Christ. He's changed you. How many of you have experienced that change like we've seen this morning? The baptisms. Man, praise the Lord. You don't have to live in your own ways anymore. Thank you Jesus for the way that you have changed our lives. Thank you for these ten people who were baptized today. I pray they would walk in the newness of that. The joy of that, the power, the victory, the new citizenship in heaven. And I pray this week when these children, we have over 200 kids already signed up. Man, God, would you work in their lives this week? Would we see them come to know you at a young age and walk faithfully with you for a lifetime to avoid so many of the harms of sin that many have had to experience. Would you stir this week? Would we see many more baptisms in the coming weeks? Thank you Jesus for this church. Help us to stand firm in the midst of this culture to fight for faithfulness. We love you. Amen.