King Jesus Versus Jezebel - Revelation 2:18-29
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Good Morning Harmony!
Welcome to the House of the Lord! He is the God that stays, the God that is good, and He’s not dead, Amen?
We’ve been in Revelation 2 for the past few weeks now looking at the seven letters to the churches of Asia, which represent all of the churches ever. As we’ve seen, these letters are written in the order one would come to them naturally as they were going town to town. We began in Ephesus, who lost their first love, then went to Smyrna, those faithful unto death. From there we travelled to Pergamum, who have some idol and immorality issues going on, and today we come 30 miles west to the town of Thyatira.
Thyatira was the smallest town of the seven, yet it gets the longest letter here in Revelation 2:18-29 -
“Write to the angel of the church in Thyatira: Thus says the Son of God, the one whose eyes are like a fiery flame and whose feet are like fine bronze:
I know your works—your love, faithfulness, service, and endurance. I know that your last works are greater than the first.
But I have this against you: You tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and teaches and deceives my servants to commit sexual immorality and to eat meat sacrificed to idols.
I gave her time to repent, but she does not want to repent of her sexual immorality.
Look, I will throw her into a sickbed and those who commit adultery with her into great affliction. Unless they repent of her works,
I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am the one who examines minds and hearts, and I will give to each of you according to your works.
I say to the rest of you in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching, who haven’t known “the so-called secrets of Satan”—as they say—I am not putting any other burden on you.
Only hold on to what you have until I come.
The one who conquers and who keeps my works to the end: I will give him authority over the nations—
and he will rule them with an iron scepter; he will shatter them like pottery—
just as I have received this from my Father. I will also give him the morning star.
“Let anyone who has ears to hear listen to what the Spirit says to the churches.
Thyatira is a small, defenseless town - it didn’t have a fortress wall, and its military protection likely came from Pergamum, that thirty miles due east.
Religion was connected to their stuff and how they participated in trade. Religion had actually been kind of replaced with how much stuff one had - their religion was related to their materials, the latest, most luxurious fashion, the richest person was worshipped far more than Caesar.
Thus they were a small town, with local stars, that felt that the richest or most powerful or best person in the town was worthy of worship.
And the Christians there are seeing this every day. And its tempting - to be able to fit in, to be able to be a part of that society and be accepted. And some of them are trying to interweave the two together, their society and their Christianity.
I think all too often Christians today can be doing the same thing -
After all, its just a little compromise, its just a little sin - God won’t mind. Did God really say that was a sin? God would want us all to get along…and before we know it, we’re the church here in Thyatira.
Today we need to understand that God calls us to be a people that do what God has called us to do. We need to do what God has called us to do, not what the richest or most powerful or most successful person wants us to do. We need to open God’s Word, see what’s right and what’s wrong, and let that guide us.
And so our main point for today is this:
MAIN POINT:
WE NEED TO EXCLUDE THE JEZEBEL FROM OUR DAILY LIVES.
We need to be removing those people or things from our daily lives. We need to cast out those toxic people that are a cancer to our spiritual lives and our churches.
We’re talking about those people or those things that are in a position of some kind of authority over us, teachers within the church or within our lives that we look to for our spiritual strength.
So we aren’t talking visitors, and we aren’t saying not to have outside friends. We’re talking those that are having an impact on your spiritual walk with Jesus. Things like trying to convince you that something is not a sin, when it is clearly identified in the Word as a sin. Things like trying to tell you that all paths lead to the same God - no they don’t.
Like last week, I don’t think we’re talking about Harmony here, but maybe this message is for someone here today. Maybe they’ve been watching some messages online or on TV, or have been listening to podcasts where this person doesn’t treat sin as seriously as they should, and so they are leading people astray.
Maybe someone here is in a small group outside of Harmony, and they have someone there teaching non-biblical principles, or are advocating for something that isn’t found in Scripture.
Whatever it is, these letters are to all of the churches, and so we must understand them and be watchful when it comes to the negative aspects of these letters.
And so what we’re going to start of with is why we need to do this, why we need to exclude the teaching of these people - and the first thing we see is that
1. JESUS IS THE SEARCHING AND PURE KING. v.18
Jesus here introduces himself similar to the previous letters -
“Write to the angel of the church in Thyatira: Thus says the Son of God, the one whose eyes are like a fiery flame and whose feet are like fine bronze:
and here we see the ties back to chapter one verses 14 and 15, but this also has a touch of 2 Samuel 7 in it, where God is speaking to King David about Solomon -
When your time comes and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up after you your descendant, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.
He is the one who will build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.
I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will discipline him with a rod of men and blows from mortals.
And what we are focused here on is the Father-Son language. It picks up again in Psalm 2 -
I will declare the Lord’s decree. He said to me, “You are my Son; today I have become your Father.
And while we already know Jesus as the Son of God, and all that that means - but again, to the Hebrews the specific mattered. Jesus is not only identifying Himself as the Son of God, He’s doing it in a way that makes sure that the reader of these letters also ties Him to the Davidic kingship line.
Next we see Jesus continue to describe Himself as the one whose eyes are like a fiery flame and whose feet are like fine bronze. It’s a throwback to Daniel in the Old Testament -
His body was like beryl, his face like the brilliance of lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and feet like the gleam of polished bronze, and the sound of his words like the sound of a multitude.
And these eyes like a fiery flame seems to point to Jesus’ searching gaze as we will see in a moment, and feet like fine bronze seems to point to Jesus’ absolute purity.
Jesus is the King that sees all. Jesus is pure and holy. He alone is worthy of our worship.
And Jesus uses that description to lead into number 2,
2. THE CHURCH THAT NEEDS TO EXCLUDE JEZEBEL. vv.19-25
And the first thing we see in the description of this church is Jesus’
a. Commendation of the church. v.19
Jesus starts off on that positive note - verse 19 -
I know your works—your love, faithfulness, service, and endurance. I know that your last works are greater than the first.
Its like we saw in the letter to Ephesus - Jesus lists five things, their works, love, faithfulness, service, endurance - and He says you’re doing them well - in fact you are growing in these areas.
This is a church that serves. This is a welcoming church. This is a church that is faithful, and its enduring through all of what is going on around them. In fact if we just stopped there, this would be a great church, one to model after - the church at Thyatira is being the hands and feet of Jesus, they’re serving others, they have an almost stubborn endurance as we see here.
But...
Houston, we have a problem. And that problem is
b. Jezebel and her children. vv.20-23
Jesus says you’re doing great at these things - but...
You are everything you are supposed to be, but...
verses 20-21 -
But I have this against you: You tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and teaches and deceives my servants to commit sexual immorality and to eat meat sacrificed to idols.
I gave her time to repent, but she does not want to repent of her sexual immorality.
Jesus says I have this against you.
Now what are the elements here in this piece of our scripture for today -
1, tolerance, 2, Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and three she’s teaching something contrary to God’s Word.
Last week we talked about the problem Pergamum had, that there were some among themselves that held to the teaching of Balaam and the Nicolaitans, here in Thyatira they’ve taken it a step farther.
Here there is someone that has been given a leadership position that doesn’t belong there.
They’ve tolerated her to the point where they’ve raised her up to a position she shouldn’t have -
Why is it always the woman? Now I’m not trying to play any kind of blame game, because I don’t think it was just Eve’s fault, but it just seems like it is always female terms that are associated with the bad things. Here throughout Revelation we are going to see Jezebel a few times, but it just seems that Israel went a whoring and Jezebel this and Jezebel that…
Here it’s Jezebel has called herself a prophetess, and I don’t know if that’s meant to mean she’s acting as a pastor or some other leadership role in the church, but the bottom line is that she is leading some astray.
And it would appear that she has been called out on this sin, they started the church discipline process we discussed last week, but they aren’t following through.
If he doesn’t pay attention to them, tell the church. If he doesn’t pay attention even to the church, let him be like a Gentile and a tax collector to you.
The church there seems to have stalled in between the not paying attention to the church and the separating from the church.
As we saw culturally, maybe she’s one that is up there on the social scale. Maybe she’s the good tither. Maybe she’s the way they are able to fund their mission projects.
Whatever the reason, they haven’t taken that step of removing her from the church, and she’s still teaching and influencing people to do things that are immoral and idolatry and that are ultimately taking up residence where God should be.
Again, happens today. People using their leadership role to influence others into either an immoral relationship that shouldn’t ever happen or to a situation where something else is trying to sit on the throne.
There are way too many stories out there about church leaders and sexual immorality, and way too many church leaders involved in clubs or groups that should have nothing to do with a mature believer’s life, but here we are.
We have to take hard steps to protect one another from this, and sometimes that means sending the person who is the great giver, or that great leader with sin in their life away to sit on the sideline for a bit.
Jesus addresses the problem of these imposters or ones that have unrepentant sin in their lives a few times now in these letters - to Ephesus -
I know your works, your labor, and your endurance, and that you cannot tolerate evil people. You have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and you have found them to be liars.
To Smyrna -
I know your affliction and poverty, but you are rich. I know the slander of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.
and to Pergamum -
In the same way, you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans.
In each letter there is someone that needs that church discipline. Looking at the church at Ephesus it would appear that they were doing good at recognizing false teaching, as in verse 6 we saw
Yet you do have this: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
but as we have moved on, Pergamum has those that hold to this teaching -
But I have a few things against you. You have some there who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to place a stumbling block in front of the Israelites: to eat meat sacrificed to idols and to commit sexual immorality.
And they haven’t done any church discipline it would appear, and now we can see what that leads to here in the church in Thyatira - a woman who is now teaching these things as acceptable.
For the church at Thyatira it was a woman, but that doesn’t mean that today’s churches don’t have men that do these things - we absolutely do.
And I’m not going to get into the where women can or can’t serve debate - this is a Southern Baptist Church, I believe what the SBC Faith and Mission of 2020 says on the topic is biblical, and so I would encourage you to read that and then if you have any questions then we can get together and discuss that, but that isn’t what this passage is trying to discern as some might perceive.
Very simply put, this is a person, who has at least a perceived leadership position, who has been called out on their sin, has chosen not to repent, and has not been removed from the body.
Those who belong to Jesus repent of sin. When we hear of a holy God, who calls people to account for their sin, where the punishment for sin is death and eternal separation from God, but Jesus took that punishment for us when He died on that cross - When we hear that, that Jesus paid it all, and we believe and confess and repent of our sin, we know what we must do -
For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
This Jezebel wasn’t going to do that. By refusing to repent she was willingly declaring that she didn’t belong to the people of God. We have to remove those from the body that aren’t willing to repent.
They’ll hurt the image of the church, they’ll go out and say bad things if we do that, they’ll turn people away -
What’s worse, someone who outside the church is telling people bad stories, or people inside the church spreading sin?
When a person has an illness, be it the common cold, COVID, or cancer, they want to get rid of that disease if they can, right?
Why?
Because we can’t be healthy with that disease. We aren’t holding onto that disease and saying it’ll get better - if it’s a cold, we’re taking cold meds, if it’s cancer we’re seeing doctors and specialists - we’re doing whatever it takes to get rid of that disease before it kills us.
Sin is an illness, and it’s an illness that if it isn’t dealt with it will kill a church. Its far worse to have that sin on the inside spreading than it is to have it removed and trying to spread from the outside.
Look at the next two verses -
Look, I will throw her into a sickbed and those who commit adultery with her into great affliction. Unless they repent of her works,
I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am the one who examines minds and hearts, and I will give to each of you according to your works.
Jesus calls on those that are following her to repent - because she’s causing illness within the church.
Again, those who belong to Jesus will repent, those who do not belong to Jesus will not - and those who do not will face that judgement unless they repent. They’re choosing to follow the false teaching all the way to the grave.
Jeremy that’s so harsh, why do you have to say those kind of things, why can’t you just see the good in people -
Good based on who’s viewpoint? Yours or God’s? Folks I’m just reading it how it is, and God’s version of good is not relative truth. I’m just the messenger.
The book of Revelation is about knowing God in His glorious justice and mercy and living worshipfully by faith - and here we see that a big part of that is understanding that His justice and mercy are holy - there can be no compromise.
These children of Jezebel are her followers, and they are going to face great affliction, of which many believe to be the great tribulation of Matthew and Revelation -
For at that time there will be great distress, the kind that hasn’t taken place from the beginning of the world until now and never will again.
and
I said to him, “Sir, you know.” Then he told me: These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
Jesus is going to bring His own to repentance through these trials.
The overall takeaway from this is that Jesus knows our hearts and minds, and He must judge justly based on the absolute truth.
and then Jesus turns to those that are not following Jezebel and tells them to
c. Hold what you have. vv.24-25
He says hold on to that sound teaching and that faith it provides. Verses 24 and 25 -
I say to the rest of you in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching, who haven’t known “the so-called secrets of Satan”—as they say—I am not putting any other burden on you.
Only hold on to what you have until I come.
Hold tight, I’m not adding anything to your burden. This group has nothing to do with Jezebel. He’s not adding to the burden He gave them back in verse 20, that they are tolerating her. He’s holding that against them, they need to exclude her in order to protect the flock.
But what they have is the Gospel, and they now need to follow through. he’s encouraging them to do the right thing.
And Jesus doesn’t sugar coat it. Its the so-called secrets of Satan that this Jezebel is promoting.
Worshipping anything or allowing anything to take the place of Jesus in our lives is straight up evil. Jesus is essentially saying that its choosing Satan over God.
We need to call sin what it is, and we need to call each other to repent of their sin.
Now that doesn’t mean we do that in a way that is negative or that is purposefully embarrassing, we do it in love because we care for the person. If you can’t be loving and encouraging when doing it, stop and pray about it and ask for God to give you the ability to be gentle with it.
Finally Jesus closes telling them to
3. HEAR THE PROMISES. vv.26-29
Hold on to what you have and hear the promises. Verses 26 - 29
The one who conquers and who keeps my works to the end: I will give him authority over the nations—
and he will rule them with an iron scepter; he will shatter them like pottery—
just as I have received this from my Father. I will also give him the morning star.
“Let anyone who has ears to hear listen to what the Spirit says to the churches.
Again we see the one who conquers, but the set up is a bit different. The structure is different - let anyone who has ears to hear is at the end of the statement rather than at the beginning.
So it seems there is still this message even here to stay away from and exclude the teaching of Jezebel or false teachers.
The one who keeps my works to the end - talking both about His universal or every believer works as we see in Matthew 28 -
Jesus came near and said to them, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.
Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Followed by those promises that ring back to Psalm chapter 2 -
Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance and the ends of the earth your possession.
You will break them with an iron scepter; you will shatter them like pottery.”
which reflects the authority given by the Father to the Son in verses 6 and 7, as we saw earlier.
and then in verse 28 he promises the morning star, which seems to point back to Numbers 24:17, part of Balaam’s blessing on the Nation Israel.
I see him, but not now; I perceive him, but not near. A star will come from Jacob, and a scepter will arise from Israel. He will smash the forehead of Moab and strike down all the Shethites.
And Luke 1:78, which uses terms of the sunrise -
Because of our God’s merciful compassion, the dawn from on high will visit us
The ESV says sunrise, NIV says rising sun, KJV says day spring - it all reflects that the language here is sunrise, the morning star.
Its a promise that the overcomers or the conquerors will be identified with Jesus and share in His rule.
Jesus is King. He is searching heart and soul, and He is holy and pure, absolute truth. He is opposed to the teaching of Jezebel, who like the Jezebel of the Old Testament seduces God’s people and leads them to immorality and idolatry. Jesus calls His own to repent, and He will do what it takes to lead people to repentance.
WE NEED TO EXCLUDE THE JEZEBEL FROM OUR DAILY LIVES.
Jezebel refused to repent, and those that claim to be Christian but refuse to repent do not belong to Christ. Jesus forgives His own, who repent, and He spares them from the affliction.
The church is to be pure and Holy, because He is holy
for it is written, Be holy, because I am holy.
We cannot tolerate false teaching. We cannot tolerate the Jezebels of this world.
Those who overcome will reign with Jesus.