Thyatira: Church of Idolatrous Compromise II
Dearly loved congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ,
This message to the church of Thyatira is another message from Jesus that is somewhat uncomfortable. Oh, he praises them for their good deeds, but he warns them that as a congregation, they face great temptation. The consequences for those who are bringing this temptation into the church are frighteningly severe. This message with its warning and promise is another reminder of the difficulty we face in keeping our eyes focussed on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.
· Christ-title
At the beginning of his message, the description of Jesus is imposing; somewhat frightening:
These are the words of the Son of God, whose eyes are like blazing fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze (18).
Most of the time, if someone’s eyes are blazing, you don’t want to mess with them. If their eyes are blazing holes through you, you’re in serious trouble. There is anger displayed in this word picture of Jesus.
The Lord is not impressed with the temptations facing the members of the church. There is dangerous stuff going on in the Asian Church and Jesus takes heresy and false-teaching very seriously.
He is “the Son of God . . . whose feet are like burnished bronze.” This might ring a bell in your memory, if you’ve read through the book of Daniel recently:
— It’s an allusion to Daniel’s vision of a man from heaven with “eyes like flaming torches” and “arms and legs like burnished bronze” (Dan. 10:6).
— This word-picture highlights Jesus’ role as judge, just as the heavenly man in Dan. 10 revealed God’s decree that Israel’s enemies would face judgment.
But there’s something else unusual about this Christ-title. This message (and the message to Laodicea) identify the author with a name or title. The previous three messages read,
Him who
o Holds the seven stars (Ephesus)
o Is the first and the last (Smyrna)
o Has the sharp, double-edged sword (Pergamum).
In the message for Thyatira, Jesus is identified as the Son of God – a title taken from Psalm 2.
I will proclaim the decree of the Lord:
He said to me, You are my Son
today I have become your Father.
Ask of me,
and I will make the nations your inheritance,
the ends of the earth your possession (Ps 2:7-8).
If you are looking for Jesus’ credentials to bring judgment and call people to repentance, then here they are: “He is the Son of God.”
But we don’t begin with judgment. We begin with his
· Commendation – praise for what’s going well.
o I know your deeds: your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first (19).
This is a congregation that is successful at doing good deeds. They do more now than they did before and it’s good stuff: love and faith, service and perseverance. If you like to be active, this is the church you’d like to be in.
Thyatira is a blue collar town. There’s isn’t room for fancy speeches and fancy philosophy. It’s about doing stuff.
But they are busy doing deeds and aren’t guarding the truth being taught among them. And that’s Jesus’
· Complaint – description of what not going well.
o I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols (20).
o Basic complaint – they are being misled into compromise with the local cults to worship idols.
o Misled by “Jezebel”
o Who was Jezebel?
Jezebel is the name of an OT queen: the wife of King Ahab. Their reign in Samaria is the time when Elijah did most of his work. Remember the 3 years of drought and the big showdown at Mt. Carmel?
All that took place in the days of Jezebel. She and her husband are not described in flattering terms.
o There was never a man like Ahab, who sold himself to do evil in the eyes of the Lord, urged on by Jezebel his wife. He behaved in the vilest manner by going after idols, like the Amorites the Lord drove out before Israel (I Kings 21:25-26).
o Jezebel’s name in the book of Revelation and later in the church is used as a “catch-all” reference to someone who leads people astray, particularly into sexual immorality.
o It is commonly thought that this warning refers to the guilds: the blacksmith’s guild, the cart-maker’s guild, the mason’s guild – they were kind of like lodges with required memberships and their own celebrations, festivals, and secret initiations.
o In a town like Thyatira, these rituals took place at a temple to a god or goddess. They included sacrifices and banquets, dancers and prostitution. All members of the guild were expected to participate. Resistance was futile.
o Such temptations – the combination of idolatry and sexual immorality – are mentioned often in NT:
o “You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality.” Acts 15:29.
o Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written: “The people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in pagan revelry.” We should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did—and in one day twenty-three thousand of them died (I Cor. 10:7-8).
o They did not stop worshiping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood—idols that cannot see or hear or walk. 21 Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality or their thefts (Rev. 9:20-10:1).
· Connection Point
o We face a similar temptation to idolatry and sexual immorality today.
o It might be a cliché to make TV, movies, and the internet into the whipping boy for all these temptations.
o But I find it ironic that in the 1950s and 60s when TV shows and movies were generally “nice” such media was prohibited in most Christian homes – at least, if you were CRC and you had a TV, you had to hide your antennae in the attic.
o But today we don’t give a second thought to watching TV in our spare time or renting movies. The regular exposure to lifestyles that are contrary to God’s will revealed in Scripture has an effect on us.
o It erodes our ability to critique our culture:
§ We get so used to gun-battles, blood & guts, and violence that it no longer bothers us.
§ We’ve gotten so used to heroes like James Bond rolling into bed with the leading lady, that objections to sex outside of marriage seems quaint and old-fashioned.
o It raises an age-old questions that we need to consider carefully:
§ How do we engage culture without being misled by culture?
§ How can Christians be involved in shaping our culture without being shaped by it?
§ Can we recognize a wolf when it’s wearing sheep’s clothing?
o Could Jesus raise the same criticism against us: “I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols.
Jezebel is a real danger for the church – both the church in Thyatira and the church today. Jezebel is such a danger, that Jesus speaks very harshly about her judgment. Listen to the
· Correction for Jezebel
o I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling (Rev. 2:21).
This is past-tense. She’s had her chance to repent, but she hasn’t. She must face the
· Consequences – for Jezebel
o [She is unwilling to repent] so I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. 23 I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds (Rev. 2:22-23).
The bed of sexual immorality becomes the bed of suffering. As always, the wages of sin is death.
o This is fulfilled in the prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases . . . and the frequency of abortion in Canada.
o There are other root causes, not every sexually immoral person will suffer from STDs nor do all children born out of wedlock necessarily die. But using broad strokes, suffering and death are the consequences for sin.
· Correction for Church
o Now I say to the rest of you in Thyatira, to you who do not hold to her teaching and have not learned Satan’s so-called deep secrets (I will not impose any other burden on you): 25 Only hold on to what you have until I come (Re 2:24-25).
The Son of God is still full of praise and encouragement for those who haven’t gone down Jezebel’s path. They are encouraged: hold on!
· Conquering Formula –NIKE
o To him who overcomes and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations—
‘He will rule them with an iron scepter;
he will dash them to pieces like pottery’—
just as I have received authority from my Father. 28 I will also give him the morning star. 29 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches (Re 2:26-29).
This is my final point, the note that I want to leave with you. Christians who overcome – Nike Christians – will live eternally. But it won’t be an eternity of strumming harps and singing in choirs. We’ll have a job to do. We’ve been redeemed to fulfill the task God created us to do in the first place.
Paul reminds us of this calling in II Timothy 2:
Here is a trustworthy saying:
If we died with him,
we will also live with him;
12 if we endure,
we will also reign with him.