THE CHURCH AT THYATIRA Part 1

Seven Keys

Living Life in Uncertain Times

RF, February 4, 2018

The Corrupt Church: Thyatira

The Key of Integrity

CONNECT Alpine slide...

TENSION What do we do when we are sliding away from what we know is right?

SOLUTION We must act with integrity to avoid drifting away from truth.

INSTRUCTION; TEXT

Revelation 2:18 (NKJV) And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write, ‘These things says the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and His feet like fine brass:

Jesus is speaking to His church.  It is always good to hear what Jesus is speaking.

John 6:63 (NKJV) It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.

Look at His description: flaming eyes, shining brass feet. This is the same description that Daniel saw and the disciples saw at the Mount of Transfiguration. 

Revelation 2:19 (NKJV) I know your works, love, service, faith, and your patience; and as for your works, the last are more than the first.

Wow! This is a great church! This church had many good things and they are increasing.  Jesus heaps praise on this church.  They were doing a lot of things right: good works, love, service, faith, and patience.  They are increasing both in number and magnitude.

Revelation 2:20 (NKJV) Nevertheless I have a few things against you, because you allow that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce My servants to commit sexual immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols.

There was one essential error. What a warning! Although we may be doing many things right in the Kingdom of God, one error can short-circuit what good we are accomplishing!

What was the error that threatened all the good things the church was doing? A teacher named Jezebel. We don’t know if this is a real person or a metaphor for the Jezebel whose story is in the Old Testament books of 1st and 2nd Kings.

She was the wife of Ahab, King of Israel. She was not a Hebrew but a Sidonian. She soon led Ahab into worship of Baal and Asherah, pagan gods of the surrounding peoples.

She hated preachers, especially prophets and had them massacred, except for a few that had been hidden by Obadiah. Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal and Asherah to a battle on Mt. Carmel. The God who answered by fire would win. Elijah won and slaughtered the pagan preachers. Jezebel swore she would kill Elijah!

She also would do anything to get what she wanted. One of the strangest stories in the Bible is the story of Naboth. Ahab wanted his vineyard and Jezebel had him executed to obtain it.

God pronounced the death sentence on her. Not only that, she would not be buried or honored, but would be eaten by dogs. This is exactly what happened!

What was Jezebel in Thyatira doing? She was leading the church into error. She was teaching that sexual immorality and eating things sacrificed to idols were OK!

Now I know you may be thinking: I can see the problem with immorality, but what’s the big deal about eating a steak that had been a sacrifice to an idol? I mean, it’s just a piece of rock or wood, and besides, it’s cheaper!

But there is more. Thyatira was a manufacturing center and the home of many trade guilds and unions. To work you had to be in the guild. They did not just get together on Monday nights to talk shop, these guilds were often centers of worship. They had bizarre rituals as inductions and worship involved pagan feasts and orgies.

Jezebel was teaching that this was OK. You have to make a living! You may have been in situations where if you don’t participate in certain ungodly activities, you won’t get a job or that promotion. What do you do? Jezebel said it was OK! Do what you have to do. We can’t expect others to accept our morality. Not only that, we may not be right. Maybe we have misunderstood what the Bible says, or we need to change what the Bible says in order to relate to our culture. After all, Paul ’become all things to all men so that he could win some to Christ’?

This is something we need to guard against in our own lives and in our church life.  There is a always the temptation to accept the morays of the present culture as normative in the church.  Many will say that the church needs to be progressive in its outlook and re-interpret the sayings of the Bible in the light of this present age.  In fact, in this post-modern culture there is the belief that the original meanings of the authors of the sacred script are not as important as what we feel when we read it.  This is dangerous. Scripture may have many applications, but only one interpretation.

2 Peter 1:19-21 (NKJV) And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts; knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.

INVITATION

HASHTAG #integrity