Revelation 2:18-29, “Confronting with the Authority of Christ”
Following Christ our Head • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Just because a church is following Jesus together doesn’t mean we will be free of conflict. We will often be faced with the need to correct someone, rebuke someone, expose sins, and reconcile offenses. God is a gracious Father. He doesn’t expect us all to grow up right away and get it all right. He does, however, want us to grow, and has given us a way to do that even as we deal with our problems.
We look to Jesus. In fact, confronting problems in the church can be a pathway to learning to follow Jesus if we actively make Him our head as we apply the gospel to our conflicts. Today’s passage will reveal a pathway to confronting problems in the church that let’s Jesus be Head of the church. We submit to His authority by using His word to define the problem, using the gifts He has given us, and then lead people to Jesus and let Him work.
Let the Word of Christ Define the Problem
Let the Word of Christ Define the Problem
One of the hardest things to do when problems and conflict arise is to define the problem itself. Someone is doing something I don’t like and I want them to stop. But why are they doing it? What is motivating them? What does one of us not understand?
When we read this letter to the church at Thyatira, we read the words of the One who sees all.
“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.
He sees all. His penetrating gaze can look into hearts and minds,
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.
He can judge us rightly because He sees most clearly what is going on in our hearts and minds. We see actions and judge according to whether we think someone did the right or wrong thing. But we all want to be judged by our motives. I might do the wrong thing, but if my motive was right, I want to be judged mercifully. Only Jesus sees both our actions and our motives. As we saw last week from Hebrews 4, His word will reveal both of those.
And His “feet like burnished bronze” (highly refined, glowing bronze) reveal His power and glory. But the image goes farther. Refined bronze has come through the fire. Jesus’ power and glory come from His obedience to God the Father in suffering tribulation. He knows the full power of sin, and has conquered it. No matter what sin you or I have committed, He has experienced its full power and can mark the place we gave in as He passed by on His way to overcoming it. He is a just judge. So, He has authority to judge us.
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.
Jesus can put His finger on the exact problem needing to be confronted in our church. In the case of the church of Thyatira, the problem He sees is that they have a false prophet who is deceiving people into immorality.
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.
This is similar to the problem in the church at Pergamum, the accommodation of pagan practices with their Christian faith. But in this church, the whole deception can be traced back to a specific person. This woman has declared herself a prophet. And probably using the pagan version of prophecy she had learned before coming into the church, which would have been familiar to people, she had gained a following. She drew people in by offering secret knowledge Christ alone would not give you. What he refers to as,
…this teaching, …what some call the deep things of Satan…
This temptation goes all the way back to Satan in the garden of Eden. “Did God really say…? Can He really be trusted? Maybe he’s keeping something from you. Let me tell you what that is.” I’ve heard people say, “the Bible is full of errors, it’s been rewritten by people over the centuries. Jesus was a failed messiah. The church knows all this and won’t tell you any of that.”
In the case at Thyatira, she was probably teaching something like, if you want to overcome Satan, go participate in all the pagan rituals with your heart given fully to Christ. That will show Satan he has no power over you. But she was leading people back into idolatry and immorality.
Confrontation is never easy. Especially when you think about the kind of person this church was dealing with. This woman is called Jezebel. Jezebel is the name of a princess from Phoenicia that married King Ahab of Israel. She was rich, powerful, ruthless, manipulative. Even the mighty prophet Elijah was afraid of her. The same guy that had confronted 850 prophets of Ba’al and overcame them, when it was time to confront Jezebel alone, he ran and hid. With people like Jezebel, we can doubt ourselves. I know there’s a problem here, but she seems so confident and she has a lot of people following her. Maybe I’m wrong? Do we see Jesus in all His power, glory, insight, and authority as bigger than the person we fear the most? Are His words sufficient to define the problem?
Jesus is telling the church that they cannot tolerate this woman any more. It is time to act. Whether or not you feel prepared, you can be obedient. Remember who Jesus is. He has the authority in the church. We confront not with our own authority, but when we are surrendered to His word, we confront with His.
Once we have made the choice to obey and confront heresy or immorality,
Use the Gifts Jesus Gives
Use the Gifts Jesus Gives
The church of Thyatira has some things going for them. Jesus begins by encouraging them. He lists five positive qualities still working in this church.
“ ‘I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first.
Right away Jesus models how we should confront others. He names five positive qualities in this church before He brings up the one big problem. If we confronted others this way more often, we might find others more receptive, knowing that we’re on their side.
These qualities are gifts Jesus gave to the church and they give us a pattern we can follow. These gifts are love, faith, service, patient endurance, and growing in our good works. These are our goals for confronting problems in the church.
Let’s start with love. All of our work, even the work of confronting problems in the church, is to be done in love.
Let all that you do be done in love.
When we confront in love, we are thinking less about ourselves than the good of others. Ask yourself, am I confronting because I’m irritated or because I am concerned for the welfare of the person who has done something wrong? How can I help this person draw closer and learn from Jesus?
Next comes faith. If I really believe Jesus is the head of the church, that He is sovereign over everything, that He is capable of working in the heart of the other person, it makes me a non-anxious presence in the conversation.
Then service. Am I serving Jesus, the church, and this person? Or am I being self-serving?
Patient endurance. Are we willing to walk with people over the long haul and trust that if we do the hard work of confronting problems as they arise, we will see fruit over time?
And we are seeking to grow in our good works as a church. This is key. Every church starts out with a passion for doing good work in their community, in the relationships God gives us. Over time, problems take us off track and distract us from the good works. If we tolerate problems too long, we miss opportunities to grow in the ministry God has given us.
So, Jesus has given us these gifts we can use to deal with the problems in His church. Love, faith, service, patient endurance, and growing in good works.
And if we truly love, ultimately all of our confrontations should lead people to Jesus. He can do work in them that we cannot do.
Use Confrontation to Lead People to Jesus
Use Confrontation to Lead People to Jesus
Am I trying to fix people, or am I trying to lead people to Jesus? Who loves your church more, you or Jesus? And who is better able to solve our problems?
Notice what is going on in the situation in this church. Jesus has already been at work.
I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality. 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, 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.
If Jesus calls us to confront others that need correction, we can trust that Jesus is already at work. In this case, He has decided to use suffering to discipline those that have joined the false prophetess. This isn’t the first time God used sickness and death to discipline people who used His name but were not living like His people. God will correct people in ways that we may not understand, but always accomplish the work He desires.
And in this case, Jesus has already confronted the false prophetess, but because she and her spiritual “children” will not repent, He is going to judge them to keep the problem from growing and destroying the church.
Jesus loves the church more than we ever could. If some people are afraid to confront and address problems, other people see problems everywhere and want to correct them all. Those folks need to take a breath and remember that Jesus sees all, He is just, and He knows how to correct people and protect the church in ways you cannot even imagine. He calls us to do our part, but never to take His place. We work with Him, but not for Him.
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. Only hold fast what you have until I come.
Our responsibility is to endure in obedience to what Jesus has spoken in His word. If we are confronting and rejecting false teaching, He will not lay any other burden than to hold fast to His words and promises until He comes. And when He comes, He will right every wrong that goes unsolved before then.
We hold fast His teaching, His words, but we also keep His works.
The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, 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. And I will give him the morning star.
We share in Jesus’ authority. He has given us authority to judge sin within the church. That’s heavy authority. But if we remember how Jesus received His authority, we see the pathway we follow.
[He] emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him…
Problems, conflict, and confrontation are an opportunity to learn the gospel together. Are we willing to walk the way of the cross and lay down our pride, our priorities, our plans for our church in order to confront problems in love, faith, and service?
The one who conquers and keeps my works until the end… I will give him the morning star.
The morning star is the Messiah of Israel, Jesus Himself. Once the darkness has ended, He will still be shining bright. Let Him lead.
When we rely on the word of God, we see how Jesus dealt with the big problem we all faced. He preached the message we should use, “The kingdom of God is available to you. Repent and believe the gospel.” Then He went to the cross to pay the price for our sins. When I confront someone, do I demand payment, or am I willing to bear the pain of lovingly leading them to Jesus who has mad payment for their sin?
Communion
Questions for Discussion
What are you seeing God do in the lives of others around you? What are some challenges you have right now?
How have you seen problems handled in the church? What went well and what didn’t?
How does our passage help us learn to confront others when we believe they are wrong?
When someone is in a position of teaching and leading in the church but has fallen into error, what makes confrontation hard?
What do we learn about Jesus Christ from our passage?
How does Jesus practice His authority in the church? In what ways does He share that with us? In what ways does He not?
What do we learn about ourselves?
How will you respond to this passage this week?
Who is someone you can share this passage with this week?
