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Past Ponderings

Friday, December 10, 2021

What Can We Learn From Thyatira? (Revelation 2:18-29)

VIDEO

What Can We Learn From Thyatira? (Revelation 2:18-29) 

GIST: Our faith should be more than kindness as we serve the gracious and powerful God who takes sin seriously.


This morning, we’re returning to our study through the book of Revelation, and we’re coming to the fourth of seven letters written by Jesus to these ancient congregations…which also have specific implications for us today. 

Thyatira wasn’t as influential a city as the others we’ve seen so far. However, like the others, it was deeply steeped in pagan worship. Its claim to fame was the size of its guilds (kind of like workers unions). Most of the people in these cities would have been connected in some way to one of the many guilds and all of the guilds were directly connected to the worship of a false god. Therefore, just maintaining a livelihood in this city would have brought you face to face with a choice: will I worship the one true God wholeheartedly, or am I going to pay lip service, at least, to these false gods as well to keep my face with my community?

Jesus writes more to this particular church than any of the others, so I think we can learn a lot from how they responded to their situation and what Jesus had to say. 


"18 "And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write: 'The words of the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and whose feet are like burnished bronze. 19 "'I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first. 20 But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. 21 I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality. 22 Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation, unless they repent of her works, 23 and I will strike her children dead. And all the churches will know that I am He who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works. 24 But to the rest of you in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching, who have not learned what some call the deep things of Satan, to you I say, I do not lay on you any other burden. 25 Only hold fast what you have until I come. 26 The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, 27 and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father. 28 And I will give him the morning star. 29 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.'"


Taking a slightly different direction this morning, we’re going to just walk through the passage, and then hit our “points” in our takeaways. To help guide what might seem like a bit of a chaotic walkthrough though, here’s our gist: Our faith should be more than kindness as we serve the gracious and powerful God who takes sin seriously.

Let’s walk through these verses.


Like every letter, Jesus starts with a description of Himself that foreshadows the tone and message of the words which follow.  Here, He says this: “18 "And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write: 'The words of the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and whose feet are like burnished bronze.” From the beginning, we see Jesus using language that makes it abundantly clear these words are coming from a place of authority. He emphasizes His divinity by referring to Himself as the Son of God. He then further points out His holiness & power with this description of His penetrating all seeing eyes and those bronze shoes, which are not Iron-man’s, but likely a picture of Him as purifying judge. With a start like that, it’s clear this church needs to remember who’s in charge. However, it’s not all bad. In fact, even though it only gets one verse at the beginning of the letter, they really do have something great going for them→ 


“19 I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first.”  They are growing in love, faith, service, and endurance. All of these are even better than they were at first. They love more, have more faith, serve more often, and endure in the midst of trials. These are great (and I want to come back to this in a bit). They were outwardly good. They were very kind. You’d probably like being around them. However, the bulk of this letter doesn’t focus on this at all. Why? Because there is a dominant and pervasive sin that is overshadowing this good→ 


“20 But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols.” They are tolerating sin being taught and practiced within the church. The reference here is to the Old Testament Queen Jezebel who married Ahab and led the nation of Israel into pagan worship (specifically the worship of Baal) and sexual immorality. Now, it's possible, maybe even likely, that there is an actual woman in Thyatira claiming to be a prophetess and leading people astray, or it could be symbolic of people aligning (marrying) themselves to Jezebel-like teachings. Either way, the result is the same.

Now, there is an important note to make here. They are not being rebuked for the city being sinful (see Smyrna). This is not to say Christians are not responsible for sharing the gospel with the lost around us. We have been sent by Jesus to share His life-changing good news. However, we are not punished for the sins of other people. If we are sinning in our lack of commitment, we are held accountable for that, but that is an entirely different situation than the one we see here. This church itself is putting up with, and some are partaking in, the sin of the city. They are not being reprimanded because the city they live in is sinful. They are being reprimanded because they are allowing this sin to infiltrate the church itself. Again, part of this could be tied to the pressure from the guilds. Nonetheless, like Pergamum, they are compromising. 

We hit this pretty hard two weeks ago, but I want to say it again now. Can we see any parallels in our lives? Is there sin in our lives (sexual garbage we watch without concern, anger and bitterness we harbor, dishonesty we promote) we’ve allowed to become “ok”? 

Honestly, we all need to take time to pray about this individually. Yet, there is something else here I don’t want us to skip over→ 


“21 I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality.” They are being reprimanded for tolerating sin. Nonetheless, right here we see this beautiful reminder of His grace. God is not waiting to pounce and smite. He has given opportunities to repent, and He continues to do so. Let’s never forget to praise Him for His patience with us. His grace is exactly what gives us a chance to be rescued in the first place! Yet, we shouldn’t take that grace for granted either. The next verses remind us we can’t just “sin freely” and grab some grace later when we feel like it.


“22 Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation, unless they repent of her works, 23 and I will strike her children dead. And all the churches will know that I am He who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works.” These are hard verses, and I don’t want to just gloss over them like they’re not a big deal. Let me make two big observations. First, this is a reminder of God’s wrath & the seriousness of sin. Often, we don’t like to talk about the wrath of God. It’s uncomfortable. A lot of times, for non-believers, it feels like a scare tactic. For believers, it feels like something we should avoid because we don’t want to make God seem mean. The wrath of God, however, is not like the wrath of man. My wrath is driven by my selfishness. His is driven by love. He hates sin… completely. He took on the cross and endured Hell to defeat it for you and is returning to destroy it once and for all...for you. Why? Because He loves you and hates what destroys you. Therefore, He takes sin seriously. If we’ve been changed by His love, we should too. That’s what this picture is showing us. The imagery is drastic. However, I think it is a faithful interpretation to say these “children” are those who have followed after this false teaching. 

Furthermore, notice that if they don’t repent, this punishment will be an example and warning to others. Other Christians will know that’s what’s happening. I don’t know about you, but I can think of thousands of things I’d rather be an example of.

Thankfully, that’s not where the letter ends→ 


“24 But to the rest of you in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching, who have not learned what some call the deep things of Satan, to you I say, I do not lay on you any other burden. 25 Only hold fast what you have until I come. 26 The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, 27 and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father. 28 And I will give him the morning star. 29 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

I know this is getting longer, so let me just make a couple more observations here. First, let’s talk about these deep things of Satan. Could we call them the deep compromises of Satan? This phrase might be a little play on words. Some speculate that the false teachers might have been calling their teachings the “deep things of God”, but Jesus took that and revealed it for what it really is: satanic. It’s likely that these “deep things” taught they were spiritually mature enough to handle the sinful practices of the world and still hold fast to their faith. That’s as appealing now as it was then, right? It’s also still a load of malarkey. You can’t serve two masters. 

Notice, however, not everyone in the church has given into this “sin-embracing”. They are give this promise of an unbreakable eternity with Jesus. If we endure, and we get the morning star— Jesus! The judge, the king, the one who puts all right. That’s who awaits us at the end of this broken mess. This idea of pots shattering and rods of iron seems to be pointing at least to this wonderful truth. Sin will not be tolerated in the final judgement but destroyed once and for all, and those of us who are in Christ will be there with Him when He does it! 

Remember, all the promises at the end of the letters address the same reward— salvation, Heaven. The imagery is customized for the recipients though. Look at how this one plays out.

     If you are tolerating sin, it is controlling you, but I will give you authority to rule over sin, to destroy it, to break it into pieces. Not because you will somehow become great, but you will be reigning alongside the true King, the powerful creator, the Son of God! Sin has covered your life in darkness. Be faithful, and you will have the morning star—bright, pure, true. 



TAKEAWAYS

  1. Remember His grace & power. Don’t take either for granted.

  2. Don't stagnate. Strive to grow closer to Him & increase in love, faith, service, and endurance. Strive also to grow in your understanding of His truth.

  3. Take sin seriously. In your life and in the world. Ignoring the danger of sin is never spreading the love of Jesus. 


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