Sermon Tone Analysis

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 -

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 -

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 -

And what we are focused here on is the Father-Son language.

It picks up again in Psalm 2 -

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 -

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 -

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 -

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.

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 -

To Smyrna -

and to Pergamum -

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

but as we have moved on, Pergamum has those that hold to this teaching -

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.