TEXT: Revelation 2:18-29

SUBJECT: The Seven Churches #4: Thyatira

Some time in the late First Century, a man was arrested by the Roman authorities and banished to the Isle of Patmos, off the western coast of Asia Minor. While serving his time on that lonely rock, the man received a vision from heaven. The Glorified Lord came with him with an assignment; he was to write things which were, which are, and which are to come. The words were rolled up into a scroll and named for the first word on page one. You know the name—Revelation.

Revelation was written for all of God’s People, in every place, and was meant to be read until the end of time. But long before it reached ‘all of us’, it came to seven churches in Asia. Did John make seven copies and send one to each assembly? He might have. But if you open a map alongside of your Bible, the thought occurs to you: only one copy was sent, and it was passed from church to church. It may have been read on one Sunday in Ephesus, the next Sunday in Smyrna, the third Sunday in Pergamos, and so on. In any event, all seven churches read all Seven Letters.

This is important. Because there’s something in each letter for every church--including our church. If we’re more like some of the churches than others, we’re enough like all of them to learn from each of the Seven Letters.

The Letters are identical in form, but differ a great deal in content. Two of them are entirely positive, one is wholly negative, and the others are mixed. The one we’ll look at today is mixed—with more bad than good. Before we get to the evaluation, however, let’s start where the Lord does.

Scholars do not agree on the meaning of this word, ‘angel’, but this is no great loss to us because—though he is named in the address, the Letter is meant for the church.

Thyatira was a nowhere town. The commentator, Colin J. Hemer calls it, ‘the least known, least important, and least remarkable of the cities’.

If we compare of the seven cities on the west coast of Asia Minor with seven cities on our West Coast, we’d have something like this: Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, San Diego, and…Turlock! The other cities were either big or rich or cultured or powerful or in some other way important. But not Thyatira. It was a hick town full of hick people with a hick church in it.

But Jesus Christ has His eye on the hick church. To Him, the decisions made in Livermore or Lathrop are as important as the ones made in Washington or New York. A church of five hillbillies is as important to Christ as a church of five thousand professionals!

Francis Schaeffer wrote more books than most people have read. But he never wrote anything more important than a small sermon called No Little People, No Little Places. The point of his sermon is that Everything Matters, what the little girl does in Union City means as much to Christ as what the President does in the nation’s capital.

This is both a comforting truth—and a disturbing one—The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good (Proverbs 15:3).

The Lord has His eyes on Thyatira.

And what eyes they are!

Our Lord calls Himself The Son of God. We normally take this to mean The Second Person in the Trinity. And that is one way of taking it—and a good way, for our Lord is the Son of God in that way. But I don’t think this is what John means. John was a Jew with a Jewish mind and way of saying things. To most Jews at the time, ‘Son of God’ meant the Messiah or the King of Israel. They got their way of thinking right out of the Bible. In Psalm 2, for example, God says to David (directly) and to Christ (prophetically),

When did He say this to David? Not the day he was conceived, of course, or the day he was born again, for that matter. Read the Psalm, and you’ll see it was spoken to him when his kingdom was established and his enemies undone. Though the nations were raging and the peoples were imagining vain things, God was up in heaven laughing His head off because David’s kingdom could not be overthrown.

This interpretation agrees with the rest of the Letter, which gives Christ the authority to judge (which kings had in Israel) and offers a place on the bench alongside of Him.

By The Son of God, Jesus Christ means, The Judge, not one judge among many, but the Judge past whom there is no one to appeal. The church stands before the Judgment Seat of Christ.

Do you think this might sober them up?

If it doesn’t the next words will—

Some commentators take the fiery eyes for anger, and I don’t rule that out. But the big idea, I think, is something else. In a world lit only by fire, flaming eyes means eyes that see through you! In other words, He sees what we really are, and not what we pretend to be in public.

This all-knowing vision is no new thing to Christ. Didn’t He constantly expose the Pharisees who were so well thought of by everyone else? While others listened to their long prayers, He saw them plotting to swindle old ladies! Others saw them as shining monuments to God’s grace, but He saw them as whitewashed tombs full of rotting flesh!

If our Lord can ‘see through’ the Pharisees, He can also see through the church—the church in Thyatira, and other churches too.

To match His flaming eyes, He has feet like fine brass. Now, what do you suppose metal boots are made for? Comfort? I don’t think so. They’re made for trampling things! If they church doesn’t repent, He’s going to trample them.

The Judge has come to Thyatira, and He’s going over their case with a fine-toothed comb. If this scared the devil out of them—good! It was meant to.

The church has some good points, and our Lord does not miss them—

The believers in that town serve each other in love; their witness to the world is solid, and they’re willing to suffer for Christ’s sake. These are not the last flickers of a dying fire, but the flame of their service is growing hotter every day.

Jesus Christ takes note of their service, and praises them for it. If the church is now breathing a sigh of relief, the next thing He says makes them catch their breath.

A woman is teaching in the church. I don’t think she is a pastor or a public teacher, but she wields great influence over a big part of the church, perhaps the young men in particular.

The Lord calls her Jezebel, but I don’t think that’s the name on her birth certificate. Jezebel was the queen of Israel for a long time, and a symbol for idolatry and fornication. The queen controlled her husband, King Ahab, her royal sons, and the whole nation. The influence she had over them all was a kind of witchcraft (cf. II Kings 9:22). But she was thrown off the balcony by her servants and run over by Jehu’s furious chariot and horses. That Jezebel was dead—and good riddance!

But a woman of like nature was now living in Thyatira and persuading the Lord’s People to worship idols and use their bodies in immoral ways.

The phrase, teaches my servants, is significant. The church is Smyrna had sort of stumbled into idolatry and immorality. You understand why: everyone was doing them, they themselves had always done them, and it’s hard to change your ways and go against the current of society. But the believers in Thyatira were not stumbling into these sins, but marching into them on purpose and with a clear conscience! That’s hard to understand. How could a Christian church openly teach idolatry and fornication?

The twenty-fourth verse offers a clue: Some knew the depths of Satan as they call them. Who are they? Jezebel and her friends. What were they saying? Maybe something like this: To beat the devil, you’ve got to know his ways, and you find out his ways by trying them. Or, perhaps it went like this: To know the heights of God, you’ve got to know the depths of Satan, and you plumb those depths by attending idolatrous orgies.

However they said it, it amounted to this: Jesus Christ is okay with your sin. To put a Calvinist spin on it: Since all things work together for good, why not do all things, sit back, and watch the Sovereign Lord turn them to your good and to His glory!

The only word I can come up with for this kind of teaching is blasphemy. To make our Judge a partner in our crime is an unspeakable slander on His incorruptible character. ‘Jesus Christ is okay with your sin’.

No He isn’t. He will forgive it; He died to forgive it. But He will never overlook it; He will never approve of it. He is

How could anyone think our Lord could wink at our sins? Jezebel had an answer to that one, and if you don’t think about it for long, it makes sense: We’ve been at it a long time now, and He hasn’t done anything about it, and so He won’t.

This is the customary argument to justify sin and ignore its punishment--

This seems to carry some weight. If the Lord was really against their sin, why didn’t He do something about it? The twentieth verse tells us why—

The reason He wasn’t lowering the boom on Jezebel and her friends is because He wanted them to repent. Because—in the words of Ezekiel—He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked but [prefers] the wicked to turn and be saved.

What a stupid thing sin is! God throws us a lifeline and we hang ourselves with it!

If the Lord gave them a space to repent, it was not an unlimited space. He’s put up with Jezebel and her people long enough, now He’s going to strike with appalling justice—

You can see what he’s doing here, can’t you? He’s mocking her. She loves the bed so well, He’ll give her a bed—a sickbed! When her lovers join her on it, they’ll find—not the pleasure they came for—but tribulation. And the children born to their dirty love will die in infancy.

The punishment is hard, but it is not unfair. Christ is not an Man out of control, but a Judge passing a just sentence—giving each one of [them] according to their works.

If the punishment falls on Thyatira alone, its warning goes out to all churches—All the churches shall know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts. Will we take the warning? Or must the gavel of Divine Justice fall here too? It may, but it doesn’t have to.

For as sure and awful as these punishments must be, a ray of hope remains—Unless they repent of their deeds. Even Jezebel can be saved. If she repents.

Don’t let a bad conscience keep you from Christ! Don’t let a horrible crime keep you from salvation! If you can’t forgive yourself, come to Christ and He will.

Not everyone in Thyatira is in cahoots with Jezebel. Some are horrified by her teaching and the effect it’s having on the church. The Lord gives them no extra duty, but tells them to hold on to what they have. Stay firm against Jezebel and her partners in crime. In the end, they cannot win, for Christ knows how to rescue His friends and to destroy His enemies.

THE REWARDS, VV.26-28

It was not easy being true to Christ in Thyatira. Because of Jezebel, even the church was not a safe place to be. But those who kept themselves pure from her wicked teaching and ways would be more than repaid for their troubles. Two rewards are promised—

The promise looks back to our Lord’s identity, the one He gave at the start of this letter. He is the King and the Judge, and if we are faithful to Him, we will put on the throne alongside of Him and have some part in the judgment of the world.

I’m not sure what all this means, but it sure means, honor! Whoever honors Him, will be honored.

The second reward is really another way of saying the same thing—

Back in his great vision, Balaam saw a King rising out of Judah. But he didn’t call him ‘a king’, but two other things—a Scepter, and a Star. The Star would be the emblem of His Kingdom, and that King is Christ. And, faithful to Him, we wear the same Star.

It must have been hard to preach on this passage 200 years ago in England or America. It’s not that some people weren’t immoral back then—of course some were—but most immorality was covered up, more or less.

Not any more. We have a media, a school system, and a culture that is immersed in immorality, and that means, sunk in idolatry. The pressure to conform is strong and constant.

Some in the Church will find excuses if not reasons to go along with the culture. They will abuse good things, like tolerance, and turn it into acceptance. They will quote verses, like Judge not, lest you be judged, and rob us of all discernment. They will lift up the grace of God and say our sins don’t matter. They will glory in Christian liberty and make it a license to sin. Jezebel did all these things way back then. And her children are still at it.

Let us, therefore, recognize her voice when it’s heard from the pulpit, the radio, the television, and in private conversation, or when it’s read in books, magazines, and online.

When tempted to continue in sin that grace may abound, let us say with Paul, God forbid!

One last word. Pray for me and others who teach the Word of God. If good preaching can save the lost and build up the saints, then bad preaching can do what Jezebel did—hurt the church and put souls in danger of eternal fire.

And the difference between ‘good preaching’ and ‘bad’ is God’s grace. Which He gives when we ask Him for it.