Revelation 2: Thyatira - The Tolerant Church

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, hello, everybody.

[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to First Free Church.

[SPEAKER_00]: So glad that you are here.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you're new here today, my name is Adam.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm one of the pastors.

[SPEAKER_00]: Really glad you decided, join us today for a church.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was great to hear everybody worshiping together.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we're just going to keep that going by worshiping, by studying God's Word.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because that is also an act of worship.

[SPEAKER_00]: We show how worthy he is of our time of our attention.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I want to ask that you open up your Bibles right now to Revelation chapter 2, we are in this study on Revelation, we're going to break it up into three different parts right now we're talking about the seven churches but we're going to cover all of Revelation going into the next year and today you're going to want to follow along on Revelation chapter 2, you're going to want to be able to reference it and look at it as we talk about it together.

Revelation 2 · chapter mention Revelation 2 · chapter mention

[SPEAKER_00]: A year ago,

[SPEAKER_00]: an invader came into my neighbor's property and I had no idea and I didn't know it was happened for a while I don't think they knew either it was an invader that looked like this how many of you are familiar with this plant go ahead and put that up on the screen guys anybody know what that is?

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, boo, I know, crabgrass.

[SPEAKER_00]: So this is such a horrible thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: It invades your lawn.

[SPEAKER_00]: It takes over.

[SPEAKER_00]: It kills off the normal grass.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not nice to walk on.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not nice to look at.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it just spreads like crazy.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so this thing gradually took over my neighbor's lawn.

[SPEAKER_00]: And before I realized it was at the property at our lawn as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I noticed it at first just a couple of plants here and there, but I thought, hey, at least it's green.

[SPEAKER_00]: First of all, so it's not that noticeable and you know what I'll deal with it later.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've got more stuff to do I'm too busy right now.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'll take care of it later and about a week past I look and I'll allow there's more of those It's spread a little bit But I can't deal with it right now.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know what yeah, it is okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'll deal with it later.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've got time.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's okay

[SPEAKER_00]: Another week and a half pasts, and this thing has just spread across the entire lawn.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so now I have only one option, which is I have to order the chemicals, wait for them to arrive, spray the lawn, and deal with what has become a massive problem that I didn't expect at first, and it looked like scorch earth on my front yard, because over half the lawn was just covered in this crabgrass that killed everything else.

[SPEAKER_00]: And by the time, I finally decided to act, it was a mess.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, fast forward one year to this week.

[SPEAKER_00]: I finally got my lawn back to a place of mostly healthy, detached, put down top soil and fertilizer and overseeded and watered, and did all the things to try to get back to where today, it kind of looks more like this, and I'm thinking, OK, this is good, this is healthy, we can live with this, and literally just a few days ago, I'm walking along my driveway when I spot this.

[SPEAKER_00]: There you go, it's back, it's back.

[SPEAKER_00]: But this time I have a choice.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can look at it and tolerate it for a while and just see what happens, or I can go ahead and deal with it and treat it now and keep it from spreading across the entire yard.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, if you had to guess, what do you think we're gonna talk about today in the message?

[SPEAKER_00]: Throw it out there, what do you think we're gonna talk about?

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm here and all sorts of versions of sin and your right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sin spreads like crab grass.

[SPEAKER_00]: It starts small, but when we tolerate it gets bigger and bigger and it grows and it can consume our lives in ways to where we look back and go, how did I get here?

[SPEAKER_00]: But there was a path that it took to get there and it started small and we tolerate it and we allowed it to grow and the church that we're going to talk about today is dealing with that exact issue.

[SPEAKER_00]: When we allow sin to grow in our lives, by the time we realize how toxic it's becoming, how much it has taken over, it's not too late, but the process of repairing and recovering and rooting out the damage and getting healthy again is long, and it's painful.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you let it go too long.

[SPEAKER_00]: The church we're going to look at today is a church called Thia Tyra.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Thia Tyra, the original pronunciation would have been the Ahtira, but we're not going to do that.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're just going to call it Thia Tyra, because that's what we're all familiar with.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is a church that Jesus is sending a letter to to correct their problems with tolerating sin before he is going to take

[SPEAKER_00]: drastic action now so far in our studying revelation we've looked at the cities of Ephesus and Smurna and Purgumum and these were all beautiful, wealthy, proud cities, prominent cities.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thyatirah is a prominent city in a way although it's the least of the seven cities that the letters are written to Revelation, but thyatirah is a blue collar city.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a city of merchandise and manufacturing and export.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not the beautiful city of these other places are.

[SPEAKER_00]: They specialized in textiles and pottery and bronze smithing and leather work and most famously for their legendary purple dye.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, when the Apostle Paul led a woman named Lydia to the Lord back in the book of Acts, acts tells us that she was a seller of purple cloth from Fiatira.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now most of the ancient purple dye was from sea snail shells, which made it incredibly hard to produce and rare and, of course,

[SPEAKER_00]: expensive, but the makers of dye and dye attire had learned how to do this using a different science.

[SPEAKER_00]: They figured out how to make a brilliant purple and red dye from plants and minerals.

[SPEAKER_00]: Simmered for weeks and tannic acid from oak trees, alem from volcanic rock, and the root powder of the matter plants, matter vines.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they combined all these things together and then added the unique chemistry of their local

[SPEAKER_00]: content.

[SPEAKER_00]: And because of that, they were able to produce a purple and red dye that was color fast.

[SPEAKER_00]: It wouldn't fade over time.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was much cheaper.

[SPEAKER_00]: So all of the purple cloths eventually came from thia tyrant.

[SPEAKER_00]: But doing business in thia tyrant, whether you were into leather or bronze working or whatever industry you're in, cloths, all of that, involved being part of a trade guild.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is well documented in history.

[SPEAKER_00]: All the different industries.

[SPEAKER_00]: had their trade guilds and these trade guilds were kind of like a labor union but with an interesting twist because they were also pagan religious groups.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was intertwined.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was all combined together.

[SPEAKER_00]: Every guild had a patron deity that they worshipped as a guild.

[SPEAKER_00]: Usually it was a polo or artimus.

[SPEAKER_00]: Guild meetings took place in the pagan temples and they revolved around

[SPEAKER_00]: Can you imagine if a mandatory professional work conference for you had an element of idol worship included?

[SPEAKER_00]: Can you imagine if you showed up to a networking event for your job and there was a feast and an idol and they offered the food to the idol and then you sat down and you ate that food together?

[SPEAKER_00]: Even worse, part of this included the act of temple prostitution, and so there were all sorts of activities that you were expected to be involved in as a part of this trade guild, and here's the thing, these were not optional.

[SPEAKER_00]: These were mandatory.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you did not submit yourself to the worship of these gods, it meant you didn't care about the success and the good fortune of your entire industry.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was thought that by what you were doing, you were appeasing the God, you were earning favor for the kind of work that you were doing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so your success and the success of your coworkers and the success of all the people around you in your industry was dependent on whether you worship these gods.

[SPEAKER_00]: So what happened if you suddenly followed Jesus?

[SPEAKER_00]: And you said, I can't do that anymore.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're out of the guilt.

[SPEAKER_00]: you lose your livelihood.

[SPEAKER_00]: Other businesses won't work with you.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you're an employee, your owner fires you.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so becoming a Christian means it is now much harder to have integrity about your faith, not follow idolism, not follow false gods, and still provide for your family financially.

[SPEAKER_00]: Can you feel the kind of pressure and the stress that the Christians and the entire world under?

[SPEAKER_00]: This was a big deal to them, and you have to understand this context in order to understand what Jesus is going to say to them, because as these Christians are finding themselves in this context, where the culture and the world and even the political climate, because this is all government in twine too, is all telling them you have to worship these gods, you have to be involved in these rituals, you have to be involved in this paganism, and

[SPEAKER_00]: And yet now they're following Jesus who makes such a difference in their life and they're excited about him.

[SPEAKER_00]: But they kind of have this two dual relationship where they want to be able to do both.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they start to rationalize a little bit.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, maybe if, maybe if my heart's not in it, it's okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I've got to feed my family.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've got to feed my kids.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know it's technically wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it's for a good purpose, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: God wants me to provide.

[SPEAKER_00]: God wants me to be successful.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so just like crabgrass.

[SPEAKER_00]: This little tolerance of paganism and idol worship and sexual sin grows and grows and grows and becomes a blight on the Christian community and thia tyra.

[SPEAKER_00]: For them, it is the very definition of a necessary evil.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's with that high-staked, high-pressure background that we have to approach this letter from Jesus to this church, look at verse 18 of Revelation 2.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here is what Jesus says.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right this letter to the angel of the church in Fiatira.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is the message from the Son of God whose eyes are like flames of fire.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whose feet are like polished bronze.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now the eyes of fire communicate to these sees, everything, the value, it's everything.

[SPEAKER_00]: Fire is often used as symbolism for evaluating and judging things, testing through fire, like a test metal through fire.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he's saying that my eyes see everything, they evaluate everything, they judge everything, they see right through your rationalizations for what you're doing.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can see everything you're doing, that will be a recurring theme through this letter, even the dark corners of the temples that you think God's not looking at.

[SPEAKER_00]: Where you do stuff that you compartmentalize and say, well, that's over here, I got to do that for my job, but then I have my faith over here.

[SPEAKER_00]: Don't we do that all the time?

[SPEAKER_00]: We compartmentalize our faith so that we worship God on Sunday and we do something else the rest of the week.

[SPEAKER_00]: Or there are times where we just say, well, God can't see that.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like Jonah when he's running away from God and somehow he thought God couldn't see him in that other country.

[SPEAKER_00]: So he runs the other way.

[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't work that way.

[SPEAKER_00]: But Jonah, the prophet of God ran from God, thinking he could hide from God.

[SPEAKER_00]: It didn't work and it's not going to work for these people either.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so they have this idea that, well, I can keep these or other things kind of private and hidden over here in Jesus as I see everything.

[SPEAKER_00]: I see all that you do, I evaluate all that you do.

[SPEAKER_00]: He says, I've got feet of polished bronze.

[SPEAKER_00]: To the bronze workers in that community, they knew what that meant.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you're building the statue out of bronze, you've got feet of polished bronze.

[SPEAKER_00]: That means that it is immovable, it is heavy, it is solid.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus is saying through this, I see everything, I evaluate everything, and I'm uncompromising.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm immovable.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have told you these things are wrong, and that hasn't changed.

[SPEAKER_00]: and we'll see that someone has told them it has changed, and that's the problem.

[SPEAKER_00]: So he says, in verse 19, I know all the things you do, and he says some good stuff, I've seen your love.

[SPEAKER_00]: Your faith, your service, and your patience, endurance, and get this, I can see your constant improvement in all these things.

[SPEAKER_00]: Man, that's a positive message, isn't it?

[SPEAKER_00]: That's a wonderful thing to hear.

[SPEAKER_00]: If we were looking at the Thyatyrot church scorecard, would go down the list like GoodWorks, check, love, check, faith, check, service, check, patience, and doors, check, and continual improvement over time.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the church in Ephesus was told, you've abandoned your first love, you need to go back and do the works you did at first.

[SPEAKER_00]: Remember that?

[SPEAKER_00]: And now Jesus says something totally different to the church in the fire tire.

[SPEAKER_00]: He says, you're getting better at this thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're doing better good works.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're doing better service, better faith, better love.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're getting better over time.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were active.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were loving.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were on mission.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were growing.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then look what he says next.

[SPEAKER_00]: Verse 20.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I have this complaint against you.

[SPEAKER_00]: You are permitting that woman, that Jezebel, who calls herself the prophet to lead my servants a stray.

[SPEAKER_00]: She teaches them to commit sexual sin and to eat food offered to idols.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, just a quick note on that because we've talked about this as a church before multiple times.

[SPEAKER_00]: The issue was not eating the food offered to idols as if it had been then sold in a marketplace and was just offered for food in the marketplace.

[SPEAKER_00]: Paul said that was fine.

[SPEAKER_00]: The issue here, you have to understand the history to know this, is that they were eating the food in the temple at the feast that was to honor the God.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was a part of a firming the idle worship.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus is telling this church that despite all of your wonderful programs and your great VBS and your awesome mission trips and all of that wonderful soup kitchen that you've sponsored for years, all the good stuff that you do, despite all of that, I've got this problem

[SPEAKER_00]: Some of you are thinking that you can serve me and serve a Paulus and serve Artemis.

[SPEAKER_00]: And these people have succumbed to the pressure.

[SPEAKER_00]: Evidently led by this one particular woman who has come in and claimed to be a prophet, who's telling them it's perfectly fine to live a dual life of worship.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's perfectly fine to serve Jesus on Sunday and Apollo on Monday.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus says, no, I've already made my rules of ownership completely clear.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he did.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Matthew chapter six, he says, no one can serve two masters.

[SPEAKER_00]: for you will hate one and love the other.

[SPEAKER_00]: You will be devoted to one and despise the other.

[SPEAKER_00]: You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money.

[SPEAKER_00]: And on the surface, this may seem like, well, this is about God and false gods, but it's also about God and money.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because when you understand the historical context of Thayatira, you know, there was a mint pressure in order to keep your job and keep your business and make it profitable and successful to follow these other gods as well as Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the challenges that we struggle with today is sometimes reading stories like this in the Bible and going, yeah, but I don't have a big problem with Apollo in my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: No one is asking me to go pay homage to Artemis tomorrow at my job, but aren't there a ways in which we are constantly putting things above Jesus in our lives?

[SPEAKER_00]: Aren't there ways in which our priorities show that we have idols that take ownership over God in our lives?

[SPEAKER_00]: They may have different names, they may look a little bit different, but we deal with exact same struggles that they have.

[SPEAKER_00]: We value money and wealth more than God sometimes.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you look at your priorities, you look at your to-do list, you look at your calendar, you look at your bank account.

[SPEAKER_00]: Who's at the top of your list?

[SPEAKER_00]: Where do you show allegiance?

[SPEAKER_00]: Is it God or is it more other things in life?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because Jesus says there's only room for one.

[SPEAKER_00]: And everything else flows from that one.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we do serve our families.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we do give of our resources.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we do build God's kingdom.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we do serve in the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: We don't do those things just to do those things.

[SPEAKER_00]: We do those things because we follow and serve God, or at least we should.

[SPEAKER_00]: Even the Bible says, work hard at whatever you do as for working with the Lord and not for people, but it's not so that you can gain a huge nest egg, it's so that you can be more generous Paul says that multiple times.

[SPEAKER_00]: The goal of working hard in accumulating money for a Christian is not just to be wealthy, although there's nothing technically wrong with being wealthy in God's word.

[SPEAKER_00]: The goal of that is, how can I better serve God with this?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because he is the one at the top of my list and really he should be the only one on the list.

[SPEAKER_00]: and everything else is just a subset of him.

[SPEAKER_00]: The believers in Fiatira some of them had succumbed to this pressure and allowed themselves to be part of the paganism and the trade guilds, and they let their guilds win, and they let their bank accounts win.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so the scorecard really needs an update on the habitual and accepted lifestyle of sin, not such a great score.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not the worst, but not a fantastic score.

[SPEAKER_00]: But then again, it's not like this letter is written primarily to the people who are following this woman and who are engaged in all of this simple stuff.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's not who's addressed in the letter.

[SPEAKER_00]: The review is actually to the leadership of the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: What's his accusation against the leaders?

[SPEAKER_00]: He says, you are permitting.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not that the leaders are engaged in it, not that they're involved in it, but they are allowing it to happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some versions say tolerate.

[SPEAKER_00]: You are tolerating this woman who's doing this, and so the score card needs another update because the issue is now tolerating sin.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just sin, but it's tolerating sin.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now what's so bad about tolerating?

[SPEAKER_00]: After all, isn't tolerance a virtue, isn't that something that we're supposed to do?

[SPEAKER_00]: Aren't we supposed to tolerate everyone no matter what they do, or what they say?

[SPEAKER_00]: And wouldn't Jesus want us to tolerate everyone?

[SPEAKER_00]: Isn't that part of being loving a lot of churches say that?

[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of media personality say that.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's all about love and it's all about acceptance.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if you want to be like Jesus, then you have to tolerate everything in everybody.

[SPEAKER_00]: But what does that really mean?

[SPEAKER_00]: When a lot of people talk today about tolerance, they meet it in the same way that the Bible uses it here.

[SPEAKER_00]: Permitting, affirming.

[SPEAKER_00]: allowing in a capacity of something where you don't technically have to.

[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't just mean getting along with, it means permitting it in your life and your family in your church.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus is not telling this church, notice this.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's not telling this in his church to take the culture and the politics into their own hands and force their neighbors to stop practicing paganism.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's not what he's rebuking them for.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's not rebuking them for not going into the pagan temples and turning over the tables.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus did that in the Jewish temple because the Jewish temple was meant for worship of God and they were abusing it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But Jesus did not tell him you need to go pick it outside the pagan temples and protest.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's not what he's getting after them for.

[SPEAKER_00]: The issue is the church leaders watched.

[SPEAKER_00]: As this woman whoever she was came into the church,

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus calls her Jezebel, which we'll talk about in a minute.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she promoted the same teaching that the Nicoletians promoted.

[SPEAKER_00]: We talked about that over the last few weeks.

[SPEAKER_00]: They allowed her to teach people that you don't have to just follow Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to give up your idolatry.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can do both.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can participate in the sexual sins and the pagan rituals and all of the immorality and still call yourself a Christian and it's no big deal.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they allowed this teaching in the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: The leaders of the church did not do their God-given responsibility, which is to protect the flock against false teaching, and they should have stood up much earlier and caught the weeds before it grew.

[SPEAKER_00]: And notice the signs of, hey, this is not quite right, we need to address this now.

[SPEAKER_00]: With you personally, this false prophet, with the people that have started following her before this grows anymore, we need to deal with this and address this in our church, and they didn't do it, and Jesus revoke them for.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because there's a responsibility.

[SPEAKER_00]: of the church and the leaders of each church to protect the flock from false teaching.

[SPEAKER_00]: By the way, this teaching fits perfectly in with our undivided series from a few weeks ago.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you haven't watched that, you can go back and watch it online.

[SPEAKER_00]: But we have to understand this in the context of those four buckets of beliefs.

[SPEAKER_00]: Our dogma, our doctrine, our conviction, and our preference.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because these issues are not preference or conviction issues.

[SPEAKER_00]: Immorality and pagan rituals and idolatry are not preference or conviction issues.

[SPEAKER_00]: These are dogma and doctrine issues.

[SPEAKER_00]: idolatry is a dogma issue.

[SPEAKER_00]: Immorality is a doctrine issue.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so these are serious issues that the church needs to take seriously.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they have allowed them to go on for part two long and said nothing about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's why this is an issue.

[SPEAKER_00]: by the way that name Jezebel, that's probably not her real name.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not a lot of people get named Jezebel, even in the New Testament.

[SPEAKER_00]: So not a common name, probably not her name.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus is using this as a codename because he wants to remind them of the story of Jezebel.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because the real Jezebel, the one from the Old Testament,

[SPEAKER_00]: is a really interesting character.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's the daughter of the King of Sidon, Sidon is part of Finicia, which is modern day Lebanon, and the King of Israel, the northern kingdom of Israel, Ahab wants to have a partnership with the kingdom of Sidon, and so he marries the King's daughter, because that was the best way to form a partnership between these two nations.

[SPEAKER_00]: The problem with that, and this is why he was condemned for this by the process.

[SPEAKER_00]: The problem that is Jezebel is a very, very passionate agent.

[SPEAKER_00]: She follows Bale, she follows Ashura, and so she wants to bring those with her and A have has a choice.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can either accommodate that and tolerate that paganism, even though that's not the way we do things here.

[SPEAKER_00]: Or I can say, nope, if you're coming here part of this agreement is you don't worship false gods here, you don't bring the false worship here.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's really interesting the way first King talks about this because it gives a progression.

[SPEAKER_00]: First,

[SPEAKER_00]: He just built her a temple, one temple, then he built an altar, temple to bail, altar to bail.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then the Bible says, he set up an asher of pole where she could worship asher.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then he let her establish bail and asher of worship throughout the nation.

[SPEAKER_00]: Started small and it grew and it grew and it grew.

[SPEAKER_00]: To the point where ultimately there were 450 prophets throughout their kingdom of Israel, all working to bring the people away from worshiping the one true God Yahweh

[SPEAKER_00]: And so it spread and it spread because they did not deal with the weed when they could have.

[SPEAKER_00]: And just like that, it spread all over the place.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's start a small, but it grew and grew.

[SPEAKER_00]: And ultimately required devastating action in Israel to deal with that problem.

[SPEAKER_00]: The biblical prophets referred to this time and this person, Jezebel, and what Israel did as spiritual adultery.

[SPEAKER_00]: because they were breaking their covenant with God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this is the idea that Jesus wants to give to the church and fire tyrant.

[SPEAKER_00]: He wants to communicate this idea of Jezebel leading to adultery because this woman in fire tyrant, whoever she is, he doesn't name her, he just gives this codename.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whoever she is, she is encouraging both physical and spiritual adultery.

[SPEAKER_00]: And just like King Ahab and the leaders in Israel did long before, the leaders of this church have tolerated it.

[SPEAKER_00]: and they've allowed it to go and grow and grow until it's a big, big problem.

[SPEAKER_00]: So how do we do this as a church today?

[SPEAKER_00]: We probably do it in more ways than you might even realize.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because every now and then something pops up and we get wind of it and we sit down we have a conversation and we might deal with a problem before it ever becomes a big thing in the church because that's what we try to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I am not here to tell you we'd always do it perfectly.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not at all, we are broken, sinful, imperfect people.

[SPEAKER_00]: But that is our objective, that is our goal, as pastors, as elders, as leaders in the church, we want to identify the weeds early and speak into them quickly before they have a chance to grow.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes it does reach this place.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes there are things we talk about in a bigger way.

[SPEAKER_00]: For example, a few years ago, there was an unbiblical philosophy about the concept of justice that was spreading in our culture.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as we watch that, we saw how there were certain elements of very unbiblical teaching involved there, that even Christians were starting to get deceived by, and even pastors were starting to teach in ways that were unbiblical, and we said, okay, we've got to talk about this.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we did that series Justice in the Bible, which is on our website if you ever want to go and watch it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not long after that, we saw as our culture moves further and further away from a biblical sexual ethic and a biblical understanding of gender and human relationships in bigger ways than we had seen before.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we saw how it was affecting Christians.

[SPEAKER_00]: We saw how it was even affecting people within our community and we said, okay, this is our responsibility.

[SPEAKER_00]: We need to speak into this and we did the series called created to connect, to anchor us in God's truth about relationships and sexuality and gender in those things.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was just a few years ago when we learned that a number of people in our church had the wrong idea because of some propaganda that was really targeted at Christians to try to make them believe something that was not true about sanctity of life and about the pro-life movement and about amendment three.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so we spoke out about that as a church, not because we like talking about political things, but here's the thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: when an issue in our culture or our politics directly violates God's word and we're talking especially about the dogma and the doctrine of here then we don't just have a right we have an obligation to speak into it.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is no longer a cultural or a political issue.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, there are some churches that speak to a lot of political issues.

[SPEAKER_00]: And here's the thing, that's not us.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because many issues out there that touch on politics and touch on culture, they're so convoluted, so complex and so nuanced.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then in order for us to really talk about all of those things, we would have to take a lot of time away from ministry to talk about politics and there are people that do that full time.

[SPEAKER_00]: They all have YouTube channels you can go watch them.

[SPEAKER_00]: But that's not what we're here for.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are here to preach the Word of God, but here's the thing, sometimes what's going on in the culture and what's going on in politics, directly contradicts the Word of God, and that is where it is not a cultural political issue anymore.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is a spiritual issue, and we feel a heavy burden as elders and pastors of the church, in part because of what Jesus tells us church and fire tires, say, hey, if the believers are being misled and taken down a road that is clearly contrary to God's Word, we need to speak to that.

[SPEAKER_00]: We need to talk about that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And again, we don't always do it perfectly, but that's why we do what we do.

[SPEAKER_00]: If we don't do that, when an issue is so clear like it, and by the way, for every one time we talk about something, there's 10 people to say, you should talk about this, you should talk about this, you should talk about this.

[SPEAKER_00]: And usually those other nine issues or 10 issues are not clear things where we can say, oh, this is one where we can definitely talk about this in a worship service.

[SPEAKER_00]: But there are times where we need to, and we should.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there's nothing I'm talking to you about right now, which is the perfect time to have this conversation.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now is the time to say, hey, as a church, when those things pop up, we are going to talk about those things, and we should, and we need to.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a new amendment three on the ballot this fall, by the way, and I hope that the old amendment three gets repealed.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's something that I have no problem saying as a church, because it's a biblical position that we take.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a matter of doctrine for us, it really is.

[SPEAKER_00]: But if we are not willing to speak to those things, when there is a clear violation of biblical principles, and when Christians are being misled in our flock, then we deserve the same letter that Jesus sent to the church in Thytower.

[SPEAKER_00]: We deserve the letter that says, the one with the eyes of blazing fire, sees what you're doing, sees what you're not doing.

[SPEAKER_00]: The one with feet of polished bronze, he hasn't moved.

[SPEAKER_00]: He hasn't compromised, but you are tolerating false teaching in your church.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you need to get that fixed.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if you don't get that fixed, bad stuff is going to happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: We haven't gotten to that part yet.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's next in the letter.

[SPEAKER_00]: Look at the next verse.

[SPEAKER_00]: Look at verse.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, where am I even?

[SPEAKER_00]: Verse 21 says, I gave her time to repent.

[SPEAKER_00]: But she does not want to turn away from her immorality.

[SPEAKER_00]: So first, he's got something for the false prophet.

[SPEAKER_00]: He says, therefore, I will throw her on a bed of suffering.

[SPEAKER_00]: And those who committed adultery with her will suffer greatly, unless they repent and turn away from her evil deeds.

[SPEAKER_00]: I will strike her children dead.

[SPEAKER_00]: That sounds super harsh.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to explain that in a minute.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a reason.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then all the churches will know that I am the one who searches out the thoughts and intentions of every person

[SPEAKER_00]: deserves.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's two things I really want you to take away from this section.

[SPEAKER_00]: Two things we need to remember, the first one is that God is loving, but God is also just.

[SPEAKER_00]: God is loving, but He's also just.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is holy, he has standards.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if we violate those standards, he has to punish that or else he's not just if someone violates your standards, if someone steals from you, if someone hurts someone you love, if someone kills someone you love, you want justice for that person, because they have violated standards and there needs to be a punishment that reserves to be a punishment.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so God has just his justice demands punishment if there's no repentance.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the phrase bed of suffering here is a play on words because this woman has invited people into a bed of adultery spiritually and a bed of adultery physically.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's a play on words to say, you've brought people into that bed of sin.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now you're going to have a bed of suffering and those who participate with her are going to not only suffer but they're going to die.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when he talks about her children that he will strike dead, he's talking about the people that have followed her into this and are passing on those teachings.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then, if you look at the universe 23, for the third time, he reminds them, I see everything.

[SPEAKER_00]: Even the thoughts, even the intentions.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I judge it and I will give every person what they deserve.

[SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, if that scares you a little bit, good.

[SPEAKER_00]: It should.

[SPEAKER_00]: We don't use the phrase fear of the Lord for no reason.

[SPEAKER_00]: There is a healthy fear of the Lord.

[SPEAKER_00]: There is an awestruck awesomeness fear that we should have toward God.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just, oh, he's love, and he's rainbows and fluffy and wonderful.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's also he's holy and he's just he is loving but he is just he's awesome.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's powerfully is the creator.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's the sustainer but he's holy and we learned last year in our study on Genesis that God designed this world to work a certain way.

[SPEAKER_00]: He established boundaries and laws that we are to follow.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when we follow those, and embrace those, it actually gives us freedom in our lives, and it gives us healthy boundaries that help us flourish and thrive, and when we avoid those and step outside those, it makes awful music, if you remember the illustration from last year, and it leads to chaos and misery.

[SPEAKER_00]: If we do not follow the guidance that God has given us, and so when we don't do that, it is just for him to punish when we sin against him.

[SPEAKER_00]: But here's the second thing I want you to remember.

[SPEAKER_00]: Number two, God is just, but God is also loving.

[SPEAKER_00]: and even if this warning may seem so harsh and even if this rebuked may seem so critical, there is love all over this thing because there is an action that Jesus has required of not only the people who have been led astray, but even this woman who has contributed to it, what is the action that he mentions for both of them?

[SPEAKER_00]: Do you see it there?

[SPEAKER_00]: Somebody shout it out.

[SPEAKER_00]: Repent?

[SPEAKER_00]: Repent, the justice that's coming for this false prophet is only coming to her because she didn't repent.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do you see that in there?

[SPEAKER_00]: He says, I gave her time to repent.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now think about that.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is a person who is coming and caused all kinds of problem in the church and created a network of sinfulness that permits and allows and even promote sinfulness and idol worship in the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yet Jesus says, I've given her time to repent.

[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't too late for her.

[SPEAKER_00]: She could still turn away from her sin.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the love of God on display.

[SPEAKER_00]: Even with everything she did, God was still willing to accept her.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if she had repented, this is according to Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: If she had repented, this stuff would not have happened to her, which means her slate would have been wiped clean.

[SPEAKER_00]: It would have been just as if she never did those things in God's eyes and Jesus payment for her sin that he made on the cross would have applied to her account with God and the righteousness of Jesus his perfection would apply to her life and she could actually thrive and grow in that church and become an incredible testimony of God's grace.

[SPEAKER_00]: How awesome would that have been?

[SPEAKER_00]: But he gave her time to repent and she refused and she was solidified in her position

[SPEAKER_00]: but then to those others that followed her.

[SPEAKER_00]: This letter is the final warning to them.

[SPEAKER_00]: She just doesn't say it's too late for them.

[SPEAKER_00]: He says, this is the justice that is coming for you if you don't repent.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so God is loving, and He's waiting for that repentance, and that confession to lead to forgiveness.

[SPEAKER_00]: When we repent, repent is a word that literally means a change of mind about what we were doing.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it's a very strong word that means our life was headed this way.

[SPEAKER_00]: We had a lifestyle of sinfulness, and when we repent, it means I give that up.

[SPEAKER_00]: I reject that whole way of life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I turn 180 degrees to follow God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Repentance is not the act of doing good things.

[SPEAKER_00]: Repentance is the commitment of the heart away from the bad things toward the good things to say, I want to follow God for the rest of my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to do it perfectly.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm no longer going to pursue those things.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to pursue God and his righteousness in my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what he is asking for.

[SPEAKER_00]: And for these people, he's saying, if you will do that, you will not face the consequences of this.

[SPEAKER_00]: There is still time to repent.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's a loving God.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's the exact same message

[SPEAKER_00]: All of us need to inspect our spiritual wants to look for the weeds.

[SPEAKER_00]: Look for the things that maybe they're just on the corners, maybe they're just a little weed over there, a little weed over there.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we kind of allowed it to sit there for a while.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've dealt with it.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've tolerated it because it's just a little thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody sees it.

[SPEAKER_00]: If anybody did say it would be kind of embarrassed by it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if you let it sit there, it's going to grow and grow and spread and become a bigger part of your life, a bigger part of your priorities, until eventually that's your master instead of God and Jesus messages turn back now.

[SPEAKER_00]: Deal with the weed before it takes over your life, address the small sins, the little things, the compromises, the things that you tolerate before they become big ones.

[SPEAKER_00]: The road to a life of dishonesty starts small.

[SPEAKER_00]: It starts with little lies to our boss, to our co-workers, to our spouse, to ourselves.

[SPEAKER_00]: Padding the time clock or our billable hours or lying to the server to get a free meal or just little things that chip away at our integrity.

[SPEAKER_00]: and it becomes easier and easier and easier to live a lifestyle of dishonesty.

[SPEAKER_00]: The road to a lifestyle of sexual immorality is start small, little compromises, the things that you look at, the conversations that you have, the stuff that you send in text, the time that you spend with someone that you're attracted to, even though you're already marrying small things can lead to big disasters.

[SPEAKER_00]: The road to division and bitterness it starts with little compromises, little bits of gossip or slander, little comments that may seem harmless in the moment or may even seem like they have a good purpose behind them, but they can create deep wounds in a community if they grow and are left unchecked.

[SPEAKER_00]: The road to idolatry starts with small decisions about time and about money and what you focus on and before you know it, you're serving those things instead of serving God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the good news about this letter to Fiatire is that no matter how far you've gone down that road, Jesus invites you to repent.

[SPEAKER_00]: He invites you, I know that's a biblical word.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a Christian-ease word, but it means a turn away from that sinfulness that you've allowed to just sit there on your lawn and say, I'm gonna pull that out and I'm gonna follow God from now on.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus invites you no matter where you're at on that process, whether it's a few weeds or whether it's taken over half your yard to repent and follow him and he will transform your life for good.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some of you may be wondering.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I know this because I get questions all the time about this stuff.

[SPEAKER_00]: What if I'm like the false prophet?

[SPEAKER_00]: What if it's too late for me?

[SPEAKER_00]: And God already gave me time to repent.

[SPEAKER_00]: And now I can't do anymore.

[SPEAKER_00]: And here's what I would say to you.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you have not yet received a letter from Jesus telling you it's too late, it's not too late.

[SPEAKER_00]: So until you receive that letter, that says, I gave you time to repent, you're good.

[SPEAKER_00]: but you need to turn from your sin now.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not too late for you, Jesus invites you to not reap the consequences for your sinfulness, but to turn and pursue and follow Him.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe some of you need to do that for the first time today.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe some of you need to have never trusted in Jesus and accept it as payment for your sins.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you need to seek one of us out after this service could be our prayer team up front.

[SPEAKER_00]: It could be somebody wearing a lanyard somewhere around the church, one of our pastors, but you need to talk about what it's like to follow Jesus and have a relationship with.

[SPEAKER_00]: Him.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, of course, there were many people in this church that had not followed this false teaching.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus has a message for them, too.

[SPEAKER_00]: He says in verse 24, but I also have a message for the rest of you in Fiatira who have not followed this false teaching, deeper truths as they call them depths of Satan actually.

[SPEAKER_00]: I will ask nothing more of you, except that you hold tightly to what you have until I come.

[SPEAKER_00]: To all who are victorious, who obey me to the very end, to them I will give authority over all the nations.

[SPEAKER_00]: They will rule the nations with an iron rod and smash them like clay pots.

[SPEAKER_00]: They will have the same authority I received from my father, and I will also give them the morning star, anyone with ears to hear, must listen to the spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches.

[SPEAKER_00]: We need to watch out for anyone who tries to come into our church with deeper hidden secret truths.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is nothing, I'm not aware of anything like this from our church today, which is again the perfect time to talk about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I have been in churches in the past and I have experienced multiple times where someone comes in and starts teaching something that's a little bit off and a little bit of false doctrine, a little bit of false dogma just kind of leaves the wrong way and if you are not careful, it's easy to think well, maybe that is true, maybe there is something hidden that God wants for us, a secret message, a secret code, a secret way of looking at things.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we just have to be very, very careful about anything that someone calls a deeper truth that your pastor doesn't want you to know.

[SPEAKER_00]: that I'm going to tell you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I've seen those things grow in churches and so we have to be mindful about that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus says those actually come from sin.

[SPEAKER_00]: But for those who stand firmly on the doctrine and who stay strong and who do not fall into those traps, Jesus gives some promises, some rewards.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so for a lot of you, this is what you need to hear today.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus says that He's going to give those who are faithful authority over the nations.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you may remember from our study of Genesis last year how God actually divided up the nations and assigned them territories and assigned them sons of God, members of His heavenly counsel to watch over them.

[SPEAKER_00]: They did not do a good job, led them away from God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so that is why when Satan tempts Jesus, He says, all the kingdoms are mine to command I can give them to you.

[SPEAKER_00]: But God's mission throughout scripture, you can see this throughout all through the Bible, God is going to bring the nations back to Himself, and He is giving authority over that to Jesus, which is why Jesus says here, authority over the nations has been given to me, and I will delegate it to you.

[SPEAKER_00]: There is some major, missional significance to this promise of Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: That somehow, some day, and I don't know what this is gonna look like exactly, I really don't, but,

[SPEAKER_00]: Those who are faithful in God's church are gonna have authority over the nations.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Jim Hibbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjb

[SPEAKER_00]: The morning star back then referred to Venus, because it looked like a star.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a planet that shows up on the brightest or on the darkest night.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's the first thing that shows up.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so you see that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the morning star, what they saw is really Venus, was became a symbol for hope.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like saying a new day is coming.

[SPEAKER_00]: Something good is coming.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus refers to himself, later on in Revelation, as the morning star, Zion the morning star.

[SPEAKER_00]: And here he says, I'm gonna give you the morning star.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so this has a dual meaning.

[SPEAKER_00]: Number one, you'll have Jesus with you.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's reward enough.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it's also a way of saying, hope is on the horizon.

[SPEAKER_00]: A new day is coming.

[SPEAKER_00]: Something good is coming.

[SPEAKER_00]: Don't give up.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you can imagine now the pressure and the stress that these believers and thiaatia were under, you can imagine the relief after that, starting good, then very negative scorecard to hear, oh good, it's not gonna be like this forever.

[SPEAKER_00]: For all the Christians that didn't participate in the idolatry, this has been tough.

[SPEAKER_00]: To feed our families, to have enough money to survive, we've been relying on each other.

[SPEAKER_00]: And boy, it sure looks like the ones who compromised are living better than we are.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus says, don't look at them.

[SPEAKER_00]: Stand firm.

[SPEAKER_00]: Don't give into the temptation.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know what?

[SPEAKER_00]: The culture around us is going to constantly try to lure you away from making God your number one priority.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to constantly lure you away.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we, as Christians, have to be like the ones who stand firm.

[SPEAKER_00]: And say, I'm going to be in the world, but I'm not going to be of the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to live on mission for God.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to do all the good works, but I'm also not going to tolerate sin in my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we're not going to tolerate sin in our church.

[SPEAKER_00]: And for some of you, you need to inspect your lawn today.

[SPEAKER_00]: You need to look at the weeds that you've allowed to grow.

[SPEAKER_00]: But for some of you, you might be like the second group where you're going, well, my lawn's not perfect

[SPEAKER_00]: But it's okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: And every time I find a way, I'm popping out, I'm doing my best.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying, I'm doing this over here.

[SPEAKER_00]: God has helped with me, so what can you do?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you can kind of help look at your neighbors long, too.

[SPEAKER_00]: As a Christian community, we need to look after each other.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why weren't more people in this church and fire tire us saying, hey, folks, this is a problem over here.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is going against our dogmen, our doctrine.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is not a conviction issue.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is not a preference issue.

[SPEAKER_00]: We need to have that kind of care and love for each other that we look out for each other in the church and watch out for false teaching that can lead us to straight.

[SPEAKER_00]: But of course, we always do a Galatian six as always to it with gentleness and love.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wonder if you buy your heads with me right now.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's pray about this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus, we are unbelievably grateful for what you've done in our lives by pain for our sin.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I cannot even grasp the insult that it is.

[SPEAKER_00]: for us to then allow that sin to hang around and have strongholds in our lives when you have already technically dealt with it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But this is the struggle that we have and you've said in your word that if anyone says he has no sin, he's a liar, the truth is not in him and so we all deal with sin God.

[SPEAKER_00]: We all have weeds that pop up in our lives.

[SPEAKER_00]: I pray that today you would help us to just do that inspection.

[SPEAKER_00]: to find those areas that we need to root out and treat and deal and maybe for some of us, we need to go scorched earth.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe for some of us, we need to get off social media.

[SPEAKER_00]: We need to stop watching the news.

[SPEAKER_00]: We need to not hang out with the people that we were hanging out with.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe we need to change jobs even.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever it is, we need to do to get away to run to flee from that temptation, gotta pray to you, to help us to do it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I pray that you would help us to be a church that looks after each other.

[SPEAKER_00]: And cares well for each other.

[SPEAKER_00]: to make sure that everything we do is it's all about you God.

[SPEAKER_00]: We want to make room for what you're going to do in our lives today in this week.

[SPEAKER_00]: We want to turn everything we have over to you.

[SPEAKER_00]: We want you to be at the top of the lists.

[SPEAKER_00]: So God, as we sing one more song and then leave this place, I pray that what you're doing in our hearts right now would not end here but it would continue that we wouldn't just be Christian on Sunday.

[SPEAKER_00]: Monday through Saturday would represent you and everywhere we go everything we do and the things we choose not to do God We pray this in Jesus name in man