Thyatira: Seduced by Sin

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We’re continuing on with our study of the seven churches in Revelation that I’ve called if Jesus came to church. If Jesus came to our church, what would He say? And as we look through these seven churches, we can realize very quickly that Jesus, perhaps not in a physical way, but Jesus was very definitely present with these seven churches, and He observed them and He critiqued them.

And these seven churches were seven literal churches. Jesus was speaking to and through John about literal problems and literal people and literal things being done in these real churches and addressing the needs. And as I said, he observed and he critiqued and he offered praise where it was due.

He offered criticism where it was due and always gave instruction and warning as well as a promise and identified who he was. And as we look at these seven real churches, no two of them are exactly alike. And we could look at each of these churches and say, well, this one has characteristics like our church.

I don’t see, as I read through this, I don’t see any of these churches looking exactly like ours. My guess is we could probably see characteristics of each of them in our church. And the question is, what would Jesus say if he were to come to our church?

We can look to these churches as a very real example of what Jesus would and did say to literal churches as he observed the issues going on. And we could see what was going on in that church is going on in ours. And Jesus found that praiseworthy and he would commend us.

Jesus critiqued this about that church and we see that here too. This is what he told them to do. And I believe we can learn from these churches about what Jesus would have us to do in our own.

This church at Thyatira is kind of an interesting church to look at. It’s the longest letter of all of the letters that he writes to his churches. And to think of what the church at Smyrna is like, I tried to think of a story to illustrate it for you.

And I remembered back to the first time Christian and I were going to buy a house when we bought a house over in Norman about a year before we came here. We were looking at houses, and we’d just started out, and went with our realtor, a wonderful Christian man. He’s one of the most respected people in my personal world.

But we went with him and also brought my mother along just because I said, we’ve never done this before and you have, so come on and offer whatever advice you can. Don’t promise we’ll take it, but come on and share your advice and your wisdom with us. And so the four of us, we’d drive around and look at houses, and I got very excited.

We were driving around Norman, and as you all know, it’s a college town, much like Fayetteville, but parts of it were built, even some of the buildings that are still there are still standing, some of the houses were built shortly after the land run in 1889. And so in the central part of town, you have some beautiful old Victorian houses. And I was surprised to find, you know, some of these were going for $300,000, $400,000.

Some of them, though, were in our price range at under $100,000. That should have tipped me off right there. But I thought, we’re going to go look because I’ve had two dreams. One was living out in the country, and one was living right there in downtown Norman.

We looked at some houses that were close around the Cleveland County Historical Society, beautiful area, very well maintained and close to the university. And it’s just my dream area of where we were going to live. And I was not going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a house.

Those of you that came and helped us move probably already know we didn’t end up buying any of those beautiful Victorian houses. But there was one we went and looked at and we were excited about it. It was beautiful in the pictures.

It had four or five bedrooms, I want to say. and it was within our price range, and we were just excited. We went to look at it, and we got out of the car, and it was an immaculately manicured lawn.

The house was gorgeous. I thought, this is the place. I’m excited about this.

Can we go ahead and put our offer in? Wisely, we decided to go ahead and look, and as we, it goes with the story, as we were walking up on the porch, and the realtor was using the combination, and apparently it’s a one-time combination box. You can use it after you set up the appointment.

As he’s doing that, Christian finds a cat on the porch. She was very excited. She loves cats, always has, and I’m allergic, so we can’t have them.

But she loves cats. So she picks up the cat, and we go in the house, and she carries the cat in with her. I mean, after all, it’s laying on the porch.

Why wouldn’t you think it lived there? We walk in, and immediately we realize there was something different about the inside of the house than the outside. Apparently, this is the house where every college student in the Western world had taken up residence.

There were laptops and paraphernalia spread all over the living room. There was laundry all over the living room. And I know some of you are thinking, that sounds like my house.

On some days when I’m doing laundry, that sounds like my house too. And you wouldn’t believe some of the things we saw looking at houses, the way people left their houses, knowing people were coming over. But this house took the cake.

There was laundry all over the place, and it looked like they had killed off an entire whiskey factory on the coffee table, just left bottles. I don’t know how long either they had had a whole bunch the night before or they had just been letting their bottles pile up forever. This is not good.

And Christian, we’re all walking through the house, and Steve, the realtor, and I were making jokes, and my mother’s just about to gag. We go two different directions. Steve and I go to the kitchen, and Mom and Christian go toward the bedrooms. And about the same time, you hear my mother say, I was in the kitchen saying, Because in the kitchen, there was food left out all over the counter.

And I’m not talking dirty dishes. I’m talking, looked like they had been cooking for weeks and hadn’t done a dish and hadn’t thrown away the leftovers. Just left it all over the counter.

And folks, I’m not telling you this story to be graphic. There’s a point to all of this. Well, Christian, I guess, puts the cat down because she’s looking in bedrooms and quickly regretting that she’d looked in there.

And the topper was when my mother said, we need to leave. I said, what’s wrong? She said, they have not flushed the toilets.

And I said, we’re out of here. I said, Steve, I don’t care how good the price is. We’re not dealing with this.

And so we quickly, you know, he and I are still joking about it, just anything to keep me from throwing up. And we leave the house, and he’s locking the door, and we go back to getting his car, and I said, Christian, where’s that cat? And she said, oh, I just left him inside.

I said, why would you do that? She said, well, he lived there, didn’t he? I said, that was a stray.

He, there was no cat food or cat anything. Believe me, if they had it, it would have been out. There was no cat anything in the house.

and the cat didn’t look like it was, I mean, it wasn’t starving, but it wasn’t well-fed either. I said, that was a stray cat. You just left in the house.

And keep in mind, I think this was a single-entry box, so we couldn’t get back in to do anything about the cat. And she got all upset. She said, you know, what if the cat hides in there and they don’t know it’s there and they don’t feed it or get it out?

She said it could die in there. And I said, well, honey, if the cat dies in their house, it could only improve the smell that’s in there. Now, I said all that to say this.

That house was awful inside. I would be, I’m assuming that it was for sale by owner, and they had renters inside who just didn’t care what it looked like when it sold. I hope that’s what was going on.

But that house was awful. I cannot imagine leaving a house like that. It was absolutely atrocious.

But the house was gorgeous on the outside. Had we been buying just the outside of the house, I would have put my down payment down right then and bought the house. But we got inside and found, well, something the EPA should have to come and deal with.

It was awful. And that story to me illustrates that something can look wonderful. Something can look spectacular on the outside and still be rotten on the inside.

Some of you may have gotten a hold of a piece of fruit before and bitten into it and it looks beautiful on the outside, but it’s just rotten to the core. Same thing with that house. And ladies and gentlemen, same thing with the church at Thyatira.

If the church at Thyatira was a house, it would be a beautiful, well-landscaped, well-cared-for Victorian house on the outside, and there would be dirty dishes and empty liquor bottles all over the inside, plus a cat running around somewhere. The church looked good on the outside, but it was rotten to the core. Revelation chapter 2 verse 18, and unto the angel of the church in Thyatira write, these things saith the Son of God, who hath his eyes like unto a flame of fire, and his feet are like fine brass.

Now from context, we’ll learn a little later on why he would have said these things. It appears that there’s almost universal agreement about what this means, that to say Jesus had eyes like fire, especially in context of what he deals with at the church of Thyatira. If we were to write this today, we might say Jesus has x-ray vision.

Jesus’ gaze is able to pierce, to burn through to the heart, to see what’s really going on. Jesus’ eyes like fire is able to burn away the mask, pierce through the mask of the good, spectacular, wonderful church, and see what’s really going on at the core. And the feet like brass at this time was one of the strongest materials they had in ready availability.

Now, we know brass is not a particularly strong material, but in times, even in the Old Testament, they made weapons out of brass. And so, you know, it may not compare to steel that we have today, but in that time, it was a durable, they thought of it as a durable material. So when it says that he has eyes like fire and feet like brass, I believe, and many scholars believe, that what it’s talking about is his ability to see into and perceive the heart and also his ability to trample in judgment that which he finds unworthy. And he identifies himself also, not just as having eyes like fire and feet like brass, but Jesus identifies himself as the Son of God.

That’s an easy point to miss. I missed that the first three or four times I read through this. I mean, I realize that it says he’s the Son of God, but I didn’t pick up on the fact that this is the only letter in which he identifies himself.

as the Son of God. Now why that’s important is because in a minute we’re going to see that there’s somebody in the church that claims to be speaking on God’s behalf and Jesus identifies himself as the Son of God who judges that person as if to say you want to know what God really says you need to ask me. These things saith the Son of God who hath his eyes like unto a flame of fire and his feet are like fine grass.

He says in verse 19 what he’s told all the other churches so far I know thy works. Again if you’re the church at Smyrna and facing extreme persecution and thinking, does God even care? Here we are feeling like we’re left alone and the Roman Empire is just about to crush us.

And Jesus says, I know your works. That can be a comforting thought. Jesus sees everything we’re doing.

Jesus knows everything we’re going through. If you’re a different kind of church, or we as individuals, depending on what we’re involved in, to hear Jesus say, I know thy works, can go from being a comforting thought to a fearful one. Say, I know thy works.

In this case, though, speaking to a remnant of godly people in Thyatira, he says, I know thy works and charity and service and faith and thy patience and thy works. He says works twice. I don’t believe it’s because Jesus forgot when he was making the list and, oh, did I say works already?

I don’t believe that happened. I believe it’s there for emphasis. And the last to be more than the first. Jesus tells the church at Thyatira, he tells the faithful in the church at Thyatira anyway, I know your works.

I know what you’ve done. I know the good things that you’ve done on my behalf. He says, I know your charity.

And that means love. And not just love like we think of as a warm, fuzzy feeling, but love that’s evidenced in actions. That’s why they use the word charity so many times in the Bible for love.

He says, I know thy works and thy charity. He says, I know your faith, your service and your faith. That what they had done in charity to other people was also driven out of service to God.

It was driven out of faith in Christ and by patience and thy works. Things were not perfect, even for the faithful at Thyatira. I’m sure they had suffered some persecution.

I’m sure they had faced some opposition, and yet they were patient, and they persevered in the faith, and they kept going. And Jesus says, I’ve taken notice of this. I see what’s going on in your world, and don’t think I’m going to forget what you’ve done and the way you’ve held to my name, my patience and my works.

And he says, and the last to be more than the first. What a wonderful thing to be able to say about a church, about any group of Christian people, that I know your good works, and I know them to be more at the last than at the first. He says, I know that as you’ve struggled, and as you’ve grown, and as you’ve grown in faith, and as you’ve served me, and you’ve grown in love, and you’ve done all these things, I know that what I see now is more than what you had before. Folks, this stands in contrast to the church at Ephesus, where he told them that they had lost their first love. They had done so many wonderful things, and yet their love had grown cold.

Well, all of the good things that Jesus names about this church, he says, it’s not just that they’re there, but they’re less than they used to be. They’re there, and you’re growing in these things. More at the last than at the first. Wouldn’t you love to stand before Jesus and have him recognize that you grew, and that your love for him, your service toward him, your faith in him were much stronger at the end than they were at the beginning?

Folks, that’s the direction we need to be striving to head. That’s the direction we need to strive to go. If we’re not actively growing, we will actively shrink, I believe.

And he says this church, the faithful in this church, were headed in the right direction. Now, I’ve told you about this church being rotten to the core. That does not mean that there were not good, faithful, godly Christian people still in this church.

But the church overall had become corrupted. He says in verse 20, notwithstanding. That’s a fancy word for but.

But, I have something against you. Folks, in any of these letters, when Jesus is complimenting the church on a job well done and then says but or however or notwithstanding. Those are not the words you want to hear at that point.

It says but there is a problem here in the church. Now if you’ll remember last week we talked about the church at Pergamos and the church at Pergamos had people within it who were teaching and held to the doctrine of Balaam and the doctrine of the Nicolaitans and basically that people could serve sin and still be all right with God. That as Christians they were set free in Christ to go and fulfill whatever desires that they had.

And what we talked about at the church at Pergamos is that it seems that the majority of the church was faithful, but you still had this sizable minority within the church. And Jesus tells the church at Pergamos, deal with it, or I will. We see Thyatira as a church that’s a little further down the road of this immoral teaching and lifestyle than was the church at Pergamos.

If the church at Pergamos did not deal with the sin, he said, I will come and fight against them. Not the church as a whole, but against the false teachers. I will come and fight against them with the words of my mouth, the sword of my mouth.

They were given an ultimatum to deal with it, because if not, he would come and deal with it. The church at Thyatira is what the church at Pergamos would be if they had ignored Christ’s warning. The church at Thyatira had far past the time when Jesus would have said, deal with it, or I will.

At this point, Jesus has not just threatened, don’t make me come back there, don’t make me pull this car over. At this point, the church at Thyatira is to the point where they’ve ignored that warning, and Jesus has pulled the car over, and judgment’s coming. He says, notwithstanding, I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants, to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.

He says, I have a few things against you, because you’ve suffered this woman Jezebel. You’ve allowed her, you’ve put up with it, for her to come in and teach these things. Now, this was not the same Jezebel.

This woman was not a reincarnate Jezebel from the Old Testament, and it’s doubtful whether her name was Jezebel. It’s more likely he’s identifying her character here, that she was just like that wicked queen Jezebel. And they had put up with her coming into the church and teaching these things.

You’ve put up with that woman Jezebel, and some of the earliest translations of the book of Revelation, where they went through and took the Greek and they translated it into the Syriac language and Persian language and some of those other languages, indicate that this said thy wife Jezebel. And so a lot of scholars believe that he’s speaking here to the messenger, to the bishop of the church of Thyatira, and speaking specifically saying, you and your church have suffered. You’ve allowed your wife, Jezebel, to come in and teach these things.

And if that’s the case, then what this would mean is that these things were being taught and being overlooked because it was the pastor’s wife doing the teaching. Now, can I say that for sure? No, but the argument makes sense to me because I’ve known many a pastor who would not tolerate, unfortunately, well, fortunately, would not tolerate false teaching to creep into their church through other people, but unfortunately, would let their wives say and do anything that they wanted without regard to what’s right.

So am I absolutely sure that it’s his wife, the bishop’s wife, the pastor’s wife? I’m not absolutely sure, but it makes sense. In either case, there’s this woman Jezebel in the church who’s teaching these things.

Now, the church already had a problem. I said a minute ago, he identifies himself as the son of God. That’s important because this woman, and we don’t know her real name, but this Jezebel, that’s a phrase we don’t hear quite as often as we used to.

But y’all will understand the metaphor. People used to be, you know, if there was a loose woman, people used to call her Jezebel. Don’t so much do that anymore.

But that’s essentially what he’s saying, that Jezebel. When this woman came in and was teaching these things, she called herself a prophetess, which meant she claimed to speak on behalf of God. And it’s no different than some teachers today who say, oh, I know the Bible says that, but I’ve got this special revelation from God.

I was reading an article this week about a pastor here in our own community who his sermons deal with the fact that I got this special revelation from God. You know, read the Bible, learn from it, yeah, but what’s important is that God speaks to me, and they hold this out to be a Christian congregation. It’s a dangerous territory to enter, and she was saying this.

I get special messages from God. Folks, there were a couple problems with this. First of all, when God does speak through his prophets, it’s always It’s always consistent with what He has said before through His prophets.

Another problem is that in instructions given, in instructions given in the New Testament, the churches are told that if anybody speaks, they had the prophetic gifts where sometimes in these churches before they had the New Testament, before they had the closed canon written out, that people would receive special revelation from God and they would pass that along to the churches. But they were told to test those things. And they were told if any man speaks, let it be as the oracles of God.

In other words, if anybody has a word to offer that they say from God, let it be consistent with what the Bible says, with what God has already said. And what she was teaching and preaching as a supposed prophetess was not in line with what God said. And the other problem is that they were listening to her in the first place.

And she’s claiming to be a prophetess and teaching the whole church. When the Bible had made it clear, especially because of some women like this, that the Bible says that women are not to teach and exercise authority over men. That doesn’t mean, I don’t believe that means women can’t teach in the church.

I believe it means women can’t teach the whole church. Women are not supposed to teach men. I’m sorry if that, I apologize if I make that sound sexist, but that’s what the Bible says.

And it doesn’t mean that women are any less valuable to the church than men, just means we have different roles. By the way, the Bible also tells men that not all of them should desire to be teachers either. I just thought of that.

I hadn’t heard that point brought up before in the discussion about men and women teachers. The Bible doesn’t even tell all men that they should desire to be teachers because ours is the greater condemnation. We’re responsible for the things that we teach.

But this church had so many warning signs about why they should not have listened to what she said. First of all, she was in violation of the commandment for women not to teach men. She was in violation of the commandment to speak as the oracles of God.

Even if it was a man teaching this, it still would have been wrong. there still would have been red flags there because what she was saying was not consistent with what God’s word already had said. And yet she claimed to speak on God’s behalf.

And that, I believe, is why Jesus Christ identifies him. We already know he’s the son of God, but he makes sure the church at Thyatira knows it because this person claims to speak on God’s behalf. Well, just listen to what I’ve got to say.

And the church’s problem was that they allowed her to teach these things. She had taught these things and they said nothing. Now, it says that she teaches, They suffer her to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.

Again, there’s debate here over what this means. We’re pretty clear on what it means to eat meat sacrificed to idols. And is that necessarily a problem?

Well, they were told not to do it. And the reason for that being in the pagan culture that they came from, eating meat sacrificed to idols was tantamount to admitting the power of those idols. was essentially taking part in the, or at least affirming, the ritual sacrifice of these animals to the idols.

And on top of that, it was offensive to the, even if there wasn’t for the pagans, it would be essentially going back to their old way of living. It would be essentially going back to their old religion. And on top of it, for the Jewish believers, it would have been very offensive.

And so, both for the sense of the spiritual protection of the Gentile believers, and to prevent offense and division in the church between the Jewish and Gentile believers, They had been told, don’t eat the meat sacrifice to idols. And she came along and said, it doesn’t matter. Go ahead and do it.

Then there’s this matter of fornication. Now, did she teach them literal fornication? Again, there’s debate over that.

Did she teach them literal fornication? It’s almost inconceivable to me that somebody in the church would teach people to go outside and have sex outside of marriage. I know there are churches that look the other way when that happens, but the idea that that would actually be told from the pulpit, you need to go and do this, it’s fine.

is inconceivable to me, and yet I’m sure there are churches that are that way too. Or could it also have been talking about spiritual fornication? Because there are times when God to the people of Israel compared their spiritual wanderings to infidelity and said that when they.

. . I believe there’s a passage.

It’s either a passage from the Bible or a sermon I’ve heard on the subject that talks about them going whoring after other gods. So is she telling them to go and commit literal fornication? Folks, I hope not.

Not that spiritual fornication is any better, but spiritual fornication is a little more subtle. And just for the sake of the church there that was allowing these things to go on, I would hope if she was teaching literal fornication that the red flags would have shot up in somebody’s mind and they would have said, wait a minute, this is totally perverse. In either case, whether it’s spiritual or whether it’s literal, she was teaching them to do things that God had said don’t do it.

And what you’ve got to know about Thyatira, It was not as big as the other cities that we’re talking about. It’s the smallest of the cities that these seven churches are located in. It was kind of a mid-sized city, but it was an important trade center.

And from everything I’ve read from historians, the city of Thyatira was controlled by the historians today call them unions, but they bear no resemblance to our modern-day labor unions. They were basically these trade guilds where people got together to learn their crafts and their trades and to be able to pass those things on and to take care of their business and that sort of thing. But in Thyatira, these trade guilds controlled the entire town.

If you wanted to make a living in the city of Thyatira, you had to be a part of one of these guilds or unions. But when you’d go to these meetings, because the city was so enveloped in paganism, you’d go to these meetings and they would have sacrifices to the idols. They would eat the meat.

They would worship these idols. You could see why it would be a problem for a Christian to say, well, I’m going to go there, but it’s just business. And yet we’re willing to make that compromise on a regular basis to compartmentalize our lives and say, this is my church life over here.

And there are things over here that I’ll stand for and I’ll be firm on. But life over here, well, that’s business. Everybody does that.

Everybody’s okay with that. You know, you’ve got to make a living. Or in family life, well, everybody does that.

And folks, we’re willing to make compromises and we’re willing to do things that God said don’t do it as long as things look good and wholesome over here in our church life. And many of these Christian believers in this church were probably dealing with the pressure of how do I make a living and still be faithful to Christ? And along comes this teacher who says, doesn’t matter.

It’s all right. God understands. He didn’t mean that.

Almost like Satan’s first lie in the garden when he questioned God’s word to Eve. Did God really say that? Did God really mean that?

He’ll not surely die. Such was her deception to them. It’s okay.

Go to the meetings. Eat the meat sacrificed to the idols. Join in with the worship of the idols for that matter.

It’s all right. God will understand. And she’s taught them to compromise and compartmentalize their lives to where they come together in the church and they pretend to be holy, but their lives on a personal level are in a wreck.

Because folks, we can try to compartmentalize our lives, but that sin will spill over the tops of the compartments. And we can say it’s just my business life. Eventually that sin will spill into our family life.

It’ll spill into our social life. And eventually the mask is going to come off of what the church life looks like on the outside. and that sin will be there as well.

And this sin that she had promoted, probably just for business, just for pragmatic purposes, had infected the church and it had spread. And whereas Pergamos was a church with a faithful majority and a few over here that needed to be dealt with, Thyatira is the next logical step where the church that was infected throughout with sin, it was rotten to the core and had a few faithful members. The balance of power, the majority in the church had shifted.

In verse 21, he says, I gave her space to repent of her fornication, and she repented not. Apparently, Jesus had dealt with this woman already. Apparently, this issue had been dealt with already.

Did Jesus write a previous letter to this one? I don’t know. Did he give a word to somebody to confront what she’d said?

Maybe. In some way or another, Jesus had already made it clear to this woman that she needed to repent and change from what she was teaching. The Bible said she repented not.

She was hard-headed and hard-hearted, why would she repent at this point? At this point, Jesus had already, or she had already decided it did not matter what God said. When she began to teach these things, she already made her decision that it did not matter what God said.

So it’s not surprising that she wouldn’t repent. You know, we oftentimes hear people say things that if people could just see such and such, if there was just proof that Jesus was real, there was just proof that this or that, that maybe people would be converted, that people would repent. The story with Lazarus and the rich man, the rich man begs for somebody to be allowed to go back and as he’s being tormented after death, begs for somebody to be able to go back and share with his brothers a message from him.

And he’s told at this point they’ve already decided not to believe. Nothing else is going to be there to convince them. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s no wonder.

I’m not saying she couldn’t repent, but it’s no wonder she didn’t. Even if Jesus appeared to her in physical form and gave her a word, she’d already decided that it didn’t matter what Jesus said or thought when she began to teach