Revelation 2:18-29

Well, good morning, everyone.

Thank you, Katie, for reading uh for us.

Thank you, Sarah, for your prayers, Peter, for your welcome.

It is the uh it's the 74th of uh of April, uh week 497 uh of lockdown, and you join us again uh for our uh uh online stream.

Uh we're continuing our series in the book of uh revelation, uh going through the uh the seven letters to the uh seven churchits, and today we're looking at the letter to Thyartara.

So maybe you would keep that open in front of you.

I'm going uh old-fashioned because I don't need to unmute this.

I've got a book.

Uh maybe you might grab that or indeed uh flick it up on your Bible app so that you are able to see that what I'm saying is coming from uh from the text of scripture.

Okay, let's pray as we come to it.

Father, we do pray for uh your help.

Uh now as we consider your word, uh Father, would your spirit uh teach us, guide us, mold us, and change us uh from one degree of glory to another?

Uh may he continue to conform us to the image of the uh of uh the Lord Jesus until we see him face to face.

Maybe may we be those who overcome.

We pray these things in his name.

Amen.

Now, one of the questions that uh all of us have to face, all of us have to wrestle with, is the question of how we interact with the world around us.

Now, obviously, uh things are rather different at the minute, but uh when there is quote unquote normal time, uh those issues come to the fore.

The questions of uh how much we adapt to the city that we find ourselves in.

Do we uh adopt a defensive posture as a Christian community and uh and talk about all the things that we are against in the city?

Or do we uh adopt a more accepting and affirming posture?

Do we care about the values of the city, or do we want to separate ourselves from them?

Historically, churches have have pendulum swung uh between one of those two extremes, between the first extreme of underadapting to the culture around us, to the city that we find ourselves in, that is, that withdrawal, that pulling up the drawbridge, that defensiveness.

Uh, we saw that in the first letter with at the church in Ephesus, defending against the uh the onslaught, as they see it, of the oncoming culture.

The issue with doing that, and part of the issue in the church of Ephesus is that it is that you lose your ability to witness into the city.

So Jesus says, I'm going to come remove your lampstand, that symbol of witness.

You become so withdrawn that you lose sight of the need for others to actually come and join, that that missionary zeal, that go and make disciples.

The other extreme, though, is that you overadapt, that you allow all of the values of the surrounding culture to permeate the church, that you are open to and affirm everything, because you want to be seen as just supremely loving, right?

The issue here is that we uh lose any sort of distinctive quality.

And again, that damages our witness because there's no there's no impetus to the call to come join us, there's no evangelistic incentive.

Why would somebody join the church if the church is just like everything else?

If it's just like every other community, every other subgroup.

There are things that every Christian uh can look at in the world and say, I accept those.

We're our city, we're our leaders, where our society advocates for the values of generosity and compassion and goodness.

We want to say yes, amen, to those things.

We want to wholeheartedly affirm them.

And yet there are things that we want to say, no.

No, that is too far.

We do not accept that, we reject that.

Another way to look at this, another way to ask the uh the question is to say, well, what are the limits to our tolerance?

Are there limits to what we should tolerate?

Now, when we say tolerance, the Bible demands that we tolerate people.

People are image bearers of God, deserving of dignity, right?

They're valuable.

And so we we don't engage in any sort of harming of those with whom we disagree.

We don't engage in vigilante justice, for example, against those with whom we have a differing opinion.

We are to tolerate all people because all people are image bearers of God.

But what about ideas?

Should we tolerate all ideas?

Especially since tolerance today actually it's changed its meaning from tolerating people to say, well, what you should say is uh all people are equally right, and if you disagree with someone, you're being intolerant.

What about in the context of the church?

Should we be a church that tolerates, that is, that affirms and accepts everything?

What about false teaching?

What about open immorality?

The answer from the Lord Jesus this morning is that no, you shouldn't tolerate those things.

It is possible to overadapt, to tolerate and affirm the things as a church that Jesus says we shouldn't.

If you want to think about this really simply, living as a follower of Jesus, being a disciple of Jesus, calling him Lord means both affirming what he affirms, loving what he loves, and rejecting what he rejects.

Isn't that what Paul talks about when having our uh our mind conformed to the mind of Christ?

We want to think like him, we want to think his sorts of thoughts.

That means affirming what he affirms and rejecting what he rejects.

That's what it means to follow Jesus.

Now, some of you watching this this morning, particularly if you've never been to City Church, might think, gosh, that's terribly intolerant, narrow-minded.

But what I would like to point out at that point is that these sorts of boundary lines are saying, this is acceptable, this is not acceptable, those sorts of boundary lines are crucial in order to form and protect a community, to keep a community a community rather than just some sort of amorphous, nondescript blob of people.

If we said anything goes, we believe everything.

If you say we believe everything, you really what you're saying is we believe nothing.

Because there's nothing that we're willing to defend over and against something else, then that means that the boundary lines that distinguish us as a community disintegrate, and so the community disintegrates.

What's more, we'd want to say that certain there are certain things, certain practices that we do not tolerate.

Why?

Because they harm people.

If the church in Ephesus had become defensive and cold and unloving, Thyratyra had become too open, too affirming, and it was damaging their witness, and it was damaging people within the church.

And Jesus writes this letter to apprehend them, to call them to stop, to stop tolerating evil.

So, what is the sin in Tharatara?

That's the first question that we're going to ask.

What is the sin?

What's the issue that's going on in this city?

Then we'll look at why does it matter?

Why is it so serious that the risen Lord Jesus would write this letter?

And then thirdly, what is the promise?

We see uh at the end of every letter, Jesus gives this promise to the one who overcomes.

And what is the promise?

That'll be the third thing that we look at.

We don't normally do three points, and uh inevitably uh points will have some points.

So uh let's uh jump into the first one.

Let's think about the sin.

What is the sin in Thyratire?

Well, Jesus introduces himself.

So we're in verse 18 of uh Revelation chapter two, uh, to the angel of the church of the church in Thyratar write, the words of the Son of God who has eyes like a flame of fire, and whose feet are like burnished bronze.

Again, Jesus is picking up an image uh from chapter one, from how John described his vision of the Lord Jesus.

In each of the letters, uh, Jesus picks up one of the images and it uh has a particular reference to the church, to the city.

First, he's the one who has the eyes like the flame of fire.

That is, you don't need to think about it too hard.

He searches you.

Jesus comes to this church with holy perception, with divine sight.

But God sees the heart.

God looks on the inside of a person, and Jesus comes with this uh this this holy perception.

He knows our deepest thoughts, our secrets, our desires, our hidden actions.

He is also the one who has feet like burnished bronze.

Thyartara uh was not a major religious center like the other uh churches so far, normally I've been telling you about temples and gods.

Thyartara had its temples for sure, but it wasn't renowned for that.

What Thyartara was renowned for, it was for its metalworks, uh, for its uh its copper and its bronze and its brass, right?

And Jesus says, I'm the one who has uh feet like burnished bronze.

And that phrase is a uh is a is an interesting one because it doesn't appear anywhere else in the uh in the Bible.

Uh the those words that is, and what Jesus might be uh might be picking up is uh is a kind of a slogan from Tharatara of the the best brass.

We make the best brass here.

And Jesus says, No, no, I'm the one who's coming to you with the best brass.

There's also an illusion there in the back of some of your minds you might be picking up on it from the book of Daniel.

Lots of uh revelation draws on the uh on the prophecies of Daniel and on the visions of Daniel, and Daniel sees this uh uh this statue with feet of bronze, the idea that he's come to crush his enemies underfoot.

But before he gets into the problem that he has, he first speaks this word of commendation.

Do you see verse 19?

I know your works, your love, your faith, and service, and patience and endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first.

Jesus speaks this word of encouragement, and it is genuine encouragement.

It's not that the church was so air-headed that that anything went, it's that they actually loved people, that they served and patiently endured, and that their works now were better than before.

And isn't that in contrast to uh to Ephesus, where Jesus says at the start of chapter two, you've forsaken your first love, do the works you did at first.

Tara Tara, we're we're getting better and better in terms of their works and their service and their love of others.

Maybe you've been to a church like that.

Maybe you've been to a church like this.

The pastoral team are great, they're passionate about serving the Lord, really loving.

But actually, what you suspect, and here's the problem, actually, what you suspect is that they perhaps lack a little bit of courage.

There's stuff going on in the church that everyone knows about, that you know they know about, and they're unwilling to address it, they're turning a blind eye to it.

See, the problem in Thyatara is that they were tolerating this false teacher, verse 20.

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.

Jesus calls this woman Jezebel.

It's unlikely that that was her name.

We'll look at that in just a second.

She was this self-styled prophetess, she calls herself a prophetess, she claims to be speaking for God.

Jesus calls her Jezebel, and again, that's an Old Testament illusion uh from the from the book of Kings.

It's supposed to deliberately evoke the idea of what sort of woman she is.

Because Jezebel in the Old Testament was a uh was a a pagan queen.

That is, she didn't come from the the people of God, she was uh the daughter of the uh the king of uh of Sidon, and she married into the royal house in Israel.

She married King Ahab, who again didn't have very much courage at all.

Uh, you often find himself curled up in the corner weeping because he didn't get his own way.

She was murderous, she was a wicked ruler, and she seduced the uh the people of God into false worship, into the worship of idols.

Perhaps you might remember the uh the great showdown between Elijah uh and the prophets of Baal.

Well, the prophets of Baal were uh were the prophets of the god that Jezebel worshipped, and Jezebel had all the other prophets killed and wanted to uh to slay Elijah as well.

The prophetess in Thyratara was doing a similar sort of thing to her namesake, that is, she was diverting the people of God, diverting the church in Tharatara away from worship of the true God and to worship of false gods, to pagan gods, and into immorality, sexual immorality, because so often worship in the ancient world was bound up with uh with immoral sexual practices that is to sin in Tharatara.

So, why does it matter?

Why do we need to look at it now, for example?

It can sound quite foreign to our ears.

So, why does it matter?

The first reason why it matters is because it is so deadly serious.

Look at the language that uh that Jesus uses.

Uh, reading from verse 21, I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality.

First of all, look at the patience of Jesus.

I give her time, but she is unwilling.

Verse 22 Behold, I will throw her onto a sick bed, 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.

First of all, Jesus uses the language of adultery.

Now, this uh may well have been literal adultery with her, sexual immoral, immoral practice with her, the prophetess herself.

And yet again, we could be also picking up an old testament illusion, right?

Because in the Old Testament, the worship of false gods, it's not just known as idolatry.

Idolatry can be a uh you can think of it in quite we can cold philosophical terms, right?

I worship something else, I worship my money, my career, I worship sex.

Yeah, I give lots of my time to that, really.

But who cares?

What does it matter?

But actually, the old testament language that is used to describe idolatry is that of adultery.

You see, in the old testament, to love something more than God is like committing adultery against your spouse, it's committing spiritual adultery against him.

That is how it is most often described.

Read the book of Hosea.

A prostitute, and she continues to commit adultery against him over and over and over again.

And this happens so that the prophet might be able to articulate something of how it feels, how it feels for God to be betrayed again and again and again, and still to take his people back.

As Isaiah continues to love Gomer, his wife.

Don't dialogue with her, get rid of her, eject her from the church because she is causing you to commit adultery against the God who loved you and who saved you.

It's very striking.

It's the language is the language is purple, right?

Verse 23, I will strike her children dead.

This is most likely, uh, I think probably a metaphor, a metaphor for those who follow her.

I will strike them dead.

Nonetheless, the language is strong.

It is stark.

The worship of something other than God is not something to be trifled with.

To say to yourself, I love Jesus, but I need this.

I love Jesus, but I really I really need to prioritize that more than him right now.

That it's not something to be dabbled in.

This scene is serious.

It's really easy uh to slip into this sort of thinking.

Again, like most of the cities that we've looked at up till now.

Thyatara was one where your social life, your job, your economic prospects, uh that all of that was wrapped up, your standing in society, all of that was wrapped up in the worship of pagan gods.

You didn't get a job if you didn't offer sacrifice to the god that was the patron of that particular career.

You didn't get a position in society, in politics, in uh in administration, if you didn't pay homage to uh to the emperor or the governor or or or a god or goddess that was patron over that.

You find Said you go to dinner with your boss.

He wants to talk about your advancing role in the company and your prospects in the business.

When the food arrives, he says, let's propose a toast, let's propose a toast to uh to the great god Zeus, to the king of the gods, or to Dionysus, or to or to Bacchus as you as you drink your wine.

He's there to talk about your promotion.

What do you do?

Do you say no?

Or do you go along with it?

You see, Jezebel, this Jezebel, like the Nicolaitans, was about she was about making Christianity just a little bit easier.

She was about making Christianity a bit less costly, a bit less counter-cultural.

How tempting it is to have a Christianity that's like that.

It would be wonderful, wouldn't it?

To have a Christianity that doesn't ask much of us?

To follow Jesus who asks very little of your life.

Maybe that's the kind of Jesus that you follow.

The kind of Jesus who doesn't ask you to give up too much, who doesn't ask that you sacrifice much, that you uh that you lose much.

Perhaps following that sort of Jesus is easy.

But that's not the Jesus of the Bible.

Sadly, that describes much of modern Christianity.

Uh, the the Christian uh sociologist uh Richard Nieber talked about the modern gospel, the gospel and the gospel that modern people believe, people like us believe.

So that we believe that a God without wrath brought a man without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministry of Christ without a cross.

Easy, easy Christianity.

No wrath, no sin, no judgment, no cross.

Is that the kind of Jesus that we want?

Due-yed, always affirming, never criticizing, cuddling little lambs.

If we do, we do not want the Jesus of the Bible.

Now, do not mistake me.

The Jesus of the Bible is more loving and more compassionate and more gracious than you could possibly imagine.

And as a consequence of that love, he rightly stands in opposition to wickedness and to idolatry.

It's so easy to bend and to flex in your commitments to Jesus in order to advance or to prioritize your own comfort or desires.

If we have never had to lay something precious aside, or to go against our hearts' desires, or to ever act contrary to the world around us.

If we profess Christ but have suffered no loss, do we really know what it is to follow Him at all?

It's so easy.

It's so easy to fall into the practice of easy Christianity, cost-free Christianity.

That's what this Jezebel was inviting people to.

The third reason why it matters is because it is so subtle.

You can slip into it and not even realize that you're doing it.

It's so subtle.

Destructive teaching very rarely advertises itself as such, and it didn't hear in Thyratara.

Jesus says that some of the church were calling uh the teaching uh deep things, deep secrets.

Down there in verse uh 24.

It's quite possible that even the prophetess herself uh was offering people uh these deep secrets about God, and Jesus called it out for what it really is.

He says, No, no, it's the deep things of Satan.

Again, like some of the other churches, these uh deep things, these deep teachings were persuading people falsely, persuading people that what you did in the body doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter what you ate or or who you slept with, what your religious practices uh were, what you got involved with.

It was all very attractive and it was all very plausible.

And still in the church today, we're not immune from things that divert ourselves, divert our attention away from the gospel, or people who want to claim that there's an inside track to following God.

Starts talking in terms uh like you engage with this and you'll have the inside track.

You'll become, you'll be super spiritual.

It's so beguiling, it's so appealing.

But one of the wonderful things about Christianity, about the Christian belief system, is that it doesn't have in hidden secrets, it doesn't have inside tracks, it is laid bare for all to see, and it's laid bare for all to see in the Bible.

As a result, therefore, we need to be wary about teachings and teachers that would encourage us to go beyond the scriptures, teaching and teachers that would encourage us to go beyond the Bible, particularly if they say things, or even if they see say things like, are they I love the Bible, I refer in the Bible, you know, the Bible is great, but actually, what they're really excited about is about something else.

When you're trying to discern whether a teaching or a teacher is biblical, you must think about what is it that really excites them?

What is it that they talk most about?

Again, this can be so subtle.

This temptation to move beyond the Bible, to move beyond the scriptures, can happen so subtly.

And so, so that you're aware, let me give you three ways in which this can happen.

First, there are those who can emphasize tradition over the Bible, those who emphasize tradition over the Bible, tradition and traditional practices is what they really get excited or uptight about.

Now, again, don't mishear me.

Our traditions are good, the traditions of the church, the the creeds and councils of the church, they are a good and wise guide for godly faith and practice.

And yet, and yet there are times when people cite the traditions of the church as more important than adhering to the Bible.

In fact, there would be some traditions that go beyond the teaching of the Bible.

This is primarily exemplified, uh, I think probably in Roman Catholicism.

An example of that might be praying to the saints, a tradition that has had that has arisen within that church that goes against, goes beyond what the Bible teaches.

We must be wary not to go beyond what the Bible teaches into practices that are outside of its scope.

Second, there are those who would elevate their reason over the Bible, what their minds are able to rationally think through.

Now again, God has given us our minds.

Our minds are not bad things, He has given us rational faculties and wants us to use our brains in order to search the scriptures.

And yet, our reason, our rational faculties, are not themselves a flawless guide.

The fall, the entrance of sin into the world, affects every part of this world and affects every part of us.

It affects our physiology, our psychology, our emotional life.

It also affects our ability to reason.

We don't reason rightly.

So it's not a flawless guide.

It can lead us into thinking wrong thoughts about God.

And so the parts of the Bible that describe the miraculous should be rejected.

Perhaps even the resurrection.

Again, at that point, you have gone beyond what the Bible teaches into error.

Third, there are those who emphasize their experience over the Bible.

Tradition, reason, experience.

Now, and again, let me say it positively: God wants us to feel deeply.

God wants us to feel and emote rightly about him and about others and about the circumstances that we find ourselves in.

And he gives us the Bible as a guide for how best to do that.

He is not against the physical world.

The physical world declares his goodness and his glory.

It teaches us about him.

And yet, so often people look at the world, look at what they experience to be right, or what they experience to be good, and include that therefore it must be right, that God must be okay with it.

How could it be wrong if it just, if it feel, if it feels so right, if it feels so natural, or others make their own private spiritual experience more authoritative than God's revealed word in the Bible.

Now again, I'm not dismissing the goodness and personal utility of private spiritual experiences.

But when they become a guide for your life that is more authoritative, more necessary to you than what God has revealed to you in the scriptures, then I would caution you that you are on a dangerous path.

The Christians in Tharatara were being led beyond the Bible.

It is so subtle.

We are to not go beyond what God has revealed.

Traditions bring alive and celebrate the truths of the Bible.

Our reason is to evermore be brought in line with God's thoughts when we read in the Bible.

Our emotions and our experiences are to be in are to be stirred, our affections are to be stirred by the Jesus of the scriptures, and our emotions are to be informed first and foremost by the Bible.

To stray beyond the scriptures is to stray into idolatry, to turn a blind eye to immorality, because it feels right.

This is bad both because it dishonors God, but it harms people also.

That is the problem with going beyond the Bible, with going beyond into idolatry and immorality, is that people get hurt.

Even if they do not recognize it at the time.

Kiss the sun, lest he be angry with you, and you perish in the way.

But blessed are all who take refuge in him.

Jesus is the ruling, reigning King.

And the promise here is that you, Christian, brother, sister, will rule and reign with him on that final day.

If you hold fast to the risen Christ, you will receive the morning star.

And Venus is the goddess of victory.

And Jesus is saying here that if you hold fast, that he is the true sign of God's ultimate victory.

Because he applies this language of the morning star to himself at the very end of the book of Revelation in Revelation chapter 22.

Revelation 22 · chapter mention

Jesus is saying that he is the true sign of God's ultimate day of victory, and that it is dawning, and that you, Christian, will get him.

What is the greatest gift of salvation?

It is that you get God.

Not forgiveness, not redemption, not eternal life.

It's that Christ Himself is yours and you are his forevermore.

What a spur that is, what a spur that should be.

So that we might endure to the end.

Not swerving, not swaying until we receive Christ in all of his fullness.

And so some questions to reflect on as we conclude.

What are you tolerating that you know you shouldn't?

What are you tolerating that you know you shouldn't, either in your own life?

Or in the life of somebody that you see around you?

Doesn't mean that you need to uh to to go to them uh like uh like some sort of fundamentalist idiot.

But you can go to them and say, look, I've I've noticed this pattern, it concerns me.

I'm not here to judge, I want to help.

I think that following Jesus looks like this.

Are you okay?

Can I walk alongside you?

That's how you have that sort of conversation.

Of the three things of tradition, reason, or experience, which are you tempted to elevate above the word of God?

Which of those three is most tempting to take you beyond what God says?

Perhaps you might think, ask yourself the question: Am I an over-adapter or an under-adapter?

Do I meet the world with this defensive, loveless, Ephesian sort of demeanor?

Or do I just hate to ruffle any feathers and want to uh just love and affirm uh everything and everyone that that comes along?

Whichever one you are, work on the other.

We shouldn't be so open-minded that our brains fall out.

C.S.

Lewis said that an open mind is like an open mouth.

You open it so that you might shut it again on something solid and nutritious.

And pray for us, would you?

Pray that we wouldn't be like the leadership that I described at the very start.

Warn us if we are.

If he consistently goes beyond the Bible, then fire him too, and find somebody else who's going to offer you the scriptures and the scriptures alone.

You need nothing more than Christ, the Christ of the Scriptures.

And so I would encourage you, therefore, not to go beyond them, to pray for us as we seek to remain faithful to the scriptures, and so that we might all stand together as those who have overcome and who rule and who reign with our glorious Lord Jesus.

Let us pray together.

Father, I'm conscious that in many ways that it may have been a difficult word to hear at various points.

There are things that your spirit have brought to light, brought again to our attention that need to be repented of, that need to be worked through.

Father, would you assure those people of the grace and readiness and fullness of your forgiveness?

Would you give them the courage as a son or daughter of God to walk in the light and to reach out to a brother, a sister, pastor, a leader in order to do that more and more?

Father, may we follow Jesus, even when he asks costly things of us, knowing that knowing that in the end we will reign with him victorious.

Father, guard us, we pray.

Preserve us, keep us in your love, as we continually seek you, even in this season of lockdown.

We pray it all in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Amen, everybody.

Thank you.