To The Angel of the Church of Thyatira

If you have a Bible, turn with me, please. We'll look today at Revelation 2:18-29

The church in Thyatira. We're looking at these seven different letters from God himself to these individual churches scattered around Asia Minor, modern day Turkey, and the

messages that were given there are clearly for us as well as individuals and as believers.

Revelation 2:18 “And to the Angel of the church in Thyatira write, The words of the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire and his feet are like burnished bronze, says this. (19)I know your deeds and your love and faith and service and perseverance, and that your deeds of late are greater than at first. (20) But I have this against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel who calls herself a prophetess. And she teaches and leads many bondservants astray, so that they commit acts of immorality. And eat things sacrificed to idols. (21) I gave her time to repent, and she would not. She did not want to repent of her immorality. (22)Behold, I will throw her on a bed of sickness and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of her deeds. (23) And I will kill her children with pestilence. And all the churches will know that I am he who searches the minds and hearts. And I will give to each one of them according to their deeds. (24) But I say to you, the rest of you who are in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching. Who have not known the deep things of Satan, as they call them. I place no other burden on you. (25)Nevertheless what you have, hold fast until I come. (26) He who overcomes, He who keeps my deeds until the end. To him I will give authority over the nations, (27) and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, as the vessels of the Potter are broken to pieces. I have received authority from my father.(28) And I will give him. The Morning Star and he was an ear. (29) Let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

Father, we want to hear what your Spirit says to our church today, to us as a corporate body and to us as individuals. A prayer. Our hearts will be open to you. I pray your Spirit will teach us. I pray in your generosity Father, that you would motivate us.

To adjust our lives empowered by your spirit. We ask your help in Christ's name, Amen.

When I was pastoring in Idaho Falls, we had a junior high student there who was quite a good runner and He invited me to watch him run one day. So I went to the track meet, got there a few events before he ran, and the event just before him was the girls 800 meter race and there were probably 15 girls running at it. So I'm sitting in the stands watching this. The gun goes off, the girls leave the finish line, the start

line and one girl just. Sprints out ahead. I mean, she was screaming and she got so far ahead of the pack, like maybe 100 yards. And when she came around to start the second lap, she's leading by 100 yards. And I'm saying, man, this girl's in a league of her own. It's amazing. And then she started to slow down. She started to get tired. And then she slowed down more and the girl started catching her. Then she slowed down more. And by about the far side of the track on the second lap, she was walking.

She was so exhausted and every girl passed her and she walked into the finish line dead last. She started amazingly. And finished poorly.

There's a huge part of this passage that talks about the question of how are we going to finish? How are we as a corporate body going to finish, and how are we as individuals going to finish? Friends, it's wonderful to start fast. But it's far more important to finish well. Some of us didn't start fast. We didn't come to faith that we're 2030405060. We didn't get out of the blocks real quick. But the key issue is, am I going to finish well? It's far more important to finish well.

I have a number of friends in Dallas. I got a text from one of them this week. It was the story of a pastor who, at the age of 73, had confessed to an immoral relationship with another woman. I don't know his name. He's relatively famous in some circles. Huge church, 73 years old, very well known guy in the Dallas Fort Worth area. Finished horribly. Now, obviously his life's not over. Obviously everything can be redeemed. But we don't want to be people who are running well now but don't have a plan for finishing well, finishing to the end of the world well or to the end of our

lives well.

Friends, how many of you would bet the world is going to end before Dave Gibson dies? Two OK, three. Thank you, Jarvis. Friends, I'm putting my money on I'm going to die before the world ends. But in either case, I need to finish well and we all need to finish well.

To: The Angel of the Church in Thyatira

This is a passage about that question. Verse 18, To the Angel of the church in Thyatira. This church is located about 45 miles southeast of Pergamum. So Pergamum was up at the top right about at the. Almost on the Aegean Sea, maybe 15 miles off, and if you go 45 miles to the southeast, you come to Pergamum. Very vibrant church. Got the longest letter of any church in this situation. I'm not sure you want the longest letter, but they got it and there's a lot to say in here. Commercial industrial center, very famous for their textiles, very famous for purple dye. Lydia, the seller of Purple, was there. A big number of trade guilds and they had trade guilds for wool, fabric dyeing, leather, weaving, bronze and pottery. It's a major center of commerce, but it was also a major center like all these other cities we've looked at of paganism.

There were temples, there were ruins that have been found today. And their most famous god was a god named Tyrimnos. Tyrimnos was the god who was called the son

of the gods. So here's what Jesus says about himself in verse 18. “He says I am the son of God”. Tyrimnos, a son of the gods, small g. Jesus, the son of the eternal God, capital G and that speaks to his power, to the fact that his Messiah, that he's eternal, that he has perfect authority. He is an amazing being, someone that you have someone like no one you've ever seen. Tyrimnos is a figment of Satan's imagination. He's not a real being. But on the coin of Thyatira they had a picture of this god Tyrimnos, and he was riding on a horse and he had a double edged battle ax and he was a fierce being in their minds.

From: Jesus, the Son of God

But this is saying to us, Jesus is the Son of God. There's nobody who matches him, there's no god, Small g, whoever stood up to him. Do you remember the name Dagon? This little idol of the Philistines, and you can read about that in First Samuel 5, but the Philistines captured the ark of the covenant of God, and they put it in the temple of their god, Dagon. And in the morning, Dagon was on his face. He had fallen down, and so they propped him up again. Let me give peace advice, friends. Never worship a being that you personally need to prop up, all right?

Just a side note. So they prop him up and the next day they came in, he had fallen down again. And this time it broke off his head and his hands, and verse 4 says both the head and the hands of Dagon were broken off, and only his stump was left to him.

Dagon, Tyrimnos, wealth, accomplishment, none of this stuff stands up before Jesus. It falls down, breaks off its head and its hands. He is the Son of God

He has eyes like a flame of fire. The concept here is that his eyes are penetrating, they are blazing, they see everything, and they are capable and have authority to judge what those eyes see. And so his eyes are just looking into everything and it's all clear to him, perfectly clear.

My heart, my motives, my actions, my thoughts, the stuff I did, the stuff I didn't do, it's all perfectly clear to him. His vision is 2020. He looks right into it. My brother was a lifelong contractor. He had a partner that was quite a bit younger than him. And they built one house a year, That's all they did. One house a year, fish three months, one house a year, fish three months. And a great lifestyle for him. His wife had an actual job, but anyway, it's a great lifestyle for him and one day I was helping him build a house. And his partner was there and my brother was there, and we're standing looking at the plans. And his partner said, well, Alan, here's the next piece we need to do. And Alan said, yeah, we're not going to do it that way. And his partner, who was much less experienced, said, what do you mean it's in the plans? We have to do it this way. And my brother said, no, there's a much stronger way to build that that's much faster and much cheaper. We're not going to do it this way. We'll have the same product, but we're not going to do it this way. My brother's eyes looked at the plans and said there's a better way to do this. He looked through it. I could stare at those plans for 15 years, friends, just, I don't know. It doesn't make any sense.

The eyes of God looks into our lives and says there's a better way to do this. There's a better way to go about this. His eyes are piercing. His feet are like burnished  bronze, meaning they're protected, they're stable, and they're fast. They're like a warrior's feet. He's got the right footwear to fight.

You know what, friends? I think I could outrun Usain Bolt if he were wearing snow shoes. Maybe not, but I think I could. I mean, he's fast, he's blazing fast, but if he doesn't have the right shoes on, he's not going to be that good. I think. I think I could beat Mike Tyson in boxing if he were wearing 5 inch stiletto heels.

Your footwear matters, and Jesus has the kind of footwear that's stable, fast, powerful, and it allows them to do what he can do. And so the bottom line is Jesus is the most amazing being who could exist, the most compelling man who walked on the earth. He's the Son of God. We don't know anyone like him. Our own motto at FCBC, satisfied in Jesus. He's what we need. We don't need anything beyond him. As I said, my friend John Maisel, go deep with Jesus personally, walk with Jesus privately, make much of Jesus publicly. Every letter says here's who he is. He's this remarkable being verse 19.

Re: What I, Jesus know about you and commend you for:

Here's what Jesus knows about you and what I commend you for. Now he's going to give specific things he knows about them, but let me say quickly, he knows everything about them as we read last week.

I know everything, actually. Hebrews 4:12. Our lives are open and laid bare. To the eyes of him with whom we have to do an ancient Latin phrase called Coram Deo. It means before the face of God. I live my life before the face of God. I have an audience of one. There's one being whom I am living before, and I primarily want to honor him in my public life. That's what all of you know. In my private life, that's what Kathy and my kids know. And in my secret life, which is what I. And God no, in all my lives I'm living before. The face of God, he sees all of it. He says to them, I see your deeds. It comes from the word Aragon, like where we get our word energy, and it means I see where the energy of your life is going. I have become so convinced that the energy of my life says so much about the state of my heart. If the energy of my life is going toward Christ, toward the love of people both lost and saved, I'm in a great place.

But if the energy of my life is directed towards something else, as Matt was talking

about, toward pornography or toward guns, or toward achievement, or toward gathering stuff, making myself look good, the list goes on and on, where is the energy of my life going? And he says, I know your good deeds in verse 19. I know the stuff you're doing that amounts to the proper investment of your energy.

Ephesians 2:10 Where his workmanship. It's a word that means we're God's masterpiece. You are the best thing God ever made. We are God's workmanship, His masterpiece created in Christ Jesus. For good works that he prepared ahead of time

that we would walk in them. Every one of us has good works in our life that God sets in our path to obey and and our responsibility is to pay attention. What is it? It might be as small as holding a door open for a person or painting a house for a person or donating a kidney to a person. I mean, it's got all sizes to it.

But am I paying attention to what God might be calling me to do? Is the energy of

my life directed toward the good of other people? Here's the chain of events. Spiritually, I trust Christ. I understand my sin. I understand it separates me from God. I understand Jesus paid for it. I understand I'd be forgiven by trust in Christ. I invest my trust in Christ. I put all my hope in him. That's the first thing. And once that

has happened to me, then the indwelling. Spirit comes in and enables me to obey, and then God puts a good work in my path and I do the good work, empowered by the Spirit in a response of gratitude to God for what He did to me. I'm not working anything off with God. Having trusted Christ, I have nothing to work off. It's all paid

for the righteousness of Christ. It's all on my account. I'm home free. But I am responding in gratitude and obedience, empowered by the Spirit to do these good things that God created for me to do.

He says to them, I know your love. It's the famous Greek word agape. It's the love of choice, the love of decision, the love of acting, the love of sacrifice. It's not the love of oh, you're beautiful and I feel great about you. It's the love that says I love you because I decided to and there's nothing you can do about it. It's a beautiful kind of love. I wish every young person at the altar was saying I love you because I decided to and there's nothing you can do about it. If we can say that we're honoring Christ and we're living in a kind of love, why did God love me? Because he decided to. I'm not a lovable being. I didn't have any merit when he tracked me down. My friend said Christian love is out of great concern for the well-being of another person? To love someone is to know, want and do what is in their best interest. To know, want and do what is in their best interests has nothing to do with how I feel about you at this very moment. He said to him, in addition, I know your service. I know the things you're doing in obedience to God and a powerless spirit. I know you're meeting the needs of other people. You're serving people around you, Jesus said, I see that.

When I was pretty new in ministry, we had a minivan that was purely hammered and then the motor went out of it and we had next to no money. A guy in our church who had used to be a mechanic no longer heard about it and said, Dave, if you could buy a motor, a rebuilt motor, I'll change it out for you. So I bought a rebuilt motor and it was shipped to my driveway and he came over on a Saturday and took the old motor out of the minivan and put a new motor in and hooked up 800,000. Wires and tubes started it and the car worked fine until I sold it. It was a massive act of service to me.

It was a very, very big gift to me. And I'm saying that we need to ask God, Lord, I can't change out a person's motor, but what could I do? What, what, what is there you will put in front of me that I should do and God makes it clear. He always answers that prayer. Put stuff in our path that we can do.

He said. I know you're perseverance, you're on the path of obedience and you're stuck to it. The word is pronounced hupo-meno, to remain under pressure. I know that you're being pressured to abandon your faith and to abandon your walk, but you're not abandoning that. It's the idea of a wet watermelon seed on the table and you put pressure on it and it squirts out. It doesn't remain under pressure.

And he said, I know that your people who remain under the pressure that's pressuring you in this Pagan world, I commend you. And then he says, I know you're increasing your deeds. You're doing even more than you used to to honor me. And as we get older, we get more capable, we get more wise, we get more resources, we get more

connections, we get more experience, we get more ability. And so as we get older, we

should be increasing in our deeds, not decreasing, not coming to a place where I say, hey. Kind of done my time, let the young people do it. And so I'm going to G5 days a week, not going to golf Saturday and Sunday because there's too many people out there.

But five days a week I'll be out there. Friends, God is calling us to increasing deeds. We have a couple in our church whose name I won't mention who are in their early 80s and are impressive for their service of God. Involved in missions, involved in a life group, involved in inviting people over who are struggling and having conversations with them, involved in prayer, still involved in working with Wickliffe. I mean, they're,

just persevering in the deeds that God set before him. And he says, hey, I know that you're persevering. Your deeds are increasing.

Re: What I, Jesus, have against you

But verse 20, “Here’s what I have against you. You tolerate Jezebel the false prophetess. Now this was a local woman who was leading people into sin by saying to them it's OK to eat meat from idols and be involved in the temple of prostitutes and leading people teaching them that this stuff was OK. We've seen about 3 or 4 times in these letters. It's the issue of license. Do what you want because Grace will cover it.

Now her name was probably not Jezebel. Old Testament Queen Jezebel, who led King Ahab and the Israelites into the worship of the Canaanite God Bail, the God of fertility. She led them all into this same kind of sin, and you can read about it in First Kings 18 to 21. This woman, exactly like Jezebel, was leading God's people into sin. She teaches and leads people astray. She teaches beliefs and beliefs result in bad actions. Same spiritual chain of events. What I believe leads to how I act and feel, and that leads to consequences. They weren't being formed by God's book. They were being formed by Jezebel's opinion.

What is forming your life and thoughts? Is it God's book or is it TikTok? Sorry to get so specific. Is it God's book or is it our culture? What is it that's forming me? Am I being formed by this Jezebel person? The result was there was great immorality. They were

committing sexual immorality. They were eating things, offered idols. One of the massive questions in the new church was in the New Testament church was this if a gentile converts to Christianity. Must they be circumcised?

A whole bunch of Jewish Christians were saying yes, and Paul and others were saying no. So Paul went to Jerusalem, a famous meeting called the Jerusalem Council, and they asked the question and they all hashed it over. And the conclusion to the Jerusalem Council is found in Acts 15. Acts 15:20. But we write to them that they abstain from things contaminated by idols and from fornication, from what is strangled in front, from blood. You don't have to be circumcised, but these are 4 things you do have to do. And he says again in verse 28, “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon them no greater burden than these essentials, that you abstain from things sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled and from fornication. If you keep yourselves free from such things, you will do very well. And

then he says farewell to them. These are the things that you need to avoid. These are the things that God says. No, you don't have to be circumcised, but stay away from food offered, idols and from fornication. And these were the very issues that they were failing to do in Thyatira.

This is a council that happened 30 or 40 years earlier. And now they had strayed from what the apostle said. Verse 21, She was given time to repent, but she wouldn't do it. She was given time to change her mind at a heart level. And she said, no, I  don't want to do that. Second Peter 3:9, “The Lord is not slow about his promises as some count slowness, but he's patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance.”

And so he aches for us to repent. And he gives us time to repent and his patience, his long-suffering, but it's not eternal. It's not eternal. At some point he says that's enough. And if I am hiding from God, quote hiding from God and just presuming on his patience, at some point he will say that's enough.

I have a three-year old granddaughter who likes to hide from grandpa when I come home. Her favorite hiding places behind a quilt that's hanging on her wall. She stands behind the quilt. There's a big bump in the quilt. There's a set of knees and shins and

feet coming out underneath the quilt. The quilt is shaking and giggling.

I kind of know where she is. I mean, she's hiding, but I'm looking right at her and I can be hiding, but at the same time God is looking right at me and saying, Dave, I'm giving you time to turn away from this verse. The next statement, she will be judged severely. There will be more severe judgment for Queen Jezebel and for this woman Jezebel because they had time to repent and they knew the right thing and they turned away from it.

Here what happened to you, verse 22. “I'll throw you on a bed of sickness.”

This woman is going to experience horrible physical sickness. Here's the second thing that will happen. Those who committed adultery with her, I will throw you into a great tribulation. Not the Great Tribulation, it's not happened yet, but they will have great personal tribulation. Verse 23 I will kill her children with pestilence and all the churches will know that I am he who searches the minds and hearts and I will give to each according to their deeds. Probably a plague will come through like a plague came through in the Old Testament. People are going to know that I am God.

Why? Because of their unhealthy tolerance of a woman who was teaching. That you could do evil stuff and God was fine with it. The problem with Thyatira was not outside the church. Was inside the church. The problem with Thyatira is that there was a woman there teaching godless things. Galatians 6-7 “Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. Whatever a person shows this, he will also reap no exceptions. Whatever I'm sowing, I'm also going to reap that and so he says repent.

Re: What I, Jesus, further moment commend and command

Now here's verse 24, “I Jesus further commend you for and further command of you”. Here's the commendation. “Some of you didn't fall for this deception. Some of you saw through her teaching. You saw through what she was saying. You saw it didn't match up with my word. I commend you for that.” You saw the counterfeit, the famous illustration.

When they teach bank tellers how to see a counterfeit, they don't show them 85 different counterfeits. They teach them to know what an actual bill looks like. And as the teller is sitting there sorting bills, they go, whoa, whoa, whoa. Something's wrong here. They look at 1:00 and they go. It's not like the rest of these. They saw it was counterfeit when we were immersed in the book. We look at teaching, we say, wait, it doesn't sound right. We're alerted to it because we're so familiar with this book that we understand it wasn't true. Jesus said to them, Those of you who haven't fallen for it, I'm not going to lay any more burden on you. The same word is used for cast. I

will cast Jezebel on a bed of sickness. But I will cast no further burden on you, because you have been people who have done what I commanded you.

Verse 25. But here's what I do command. “Hold fast to what you have until the end.“ The word means to cease, to grip tightly, to keep faithfully, and to keep it carefully. Keep a strong and unrelenting grip on what you have. What you have spiritually, relationally, emotionally, what you have in your family, keep a strong unrelenting

grip.

My boy, in his generosity, took me and Kathy to Italy this summer and we were

walking these massive crowds in Rome, huge crowds, I mean, almost gridlocked. And I had my 3 year old granddaughter by the hand and I was holding her so tightly that it didn't hurt her. But I was close. It was very close to that because I knew that a

a three-year-old who stands 2 feet tall, nothing would be lost in this.

Crowd in five seconds and I had a hold of this precious girl and I wouldn't, I wouldn't lose her. You'd have to take my arm off my shoulder before you'd get her away from me. And that's the idea here. Keep a tight grip on what you have so far. Hold on to it. I put a hand out, an extra hand out in your bulletin today, which is a worksheet for sometime this week.

A spiritual exercise to say. What do I currently have and how do I hold onto it and finish? Well, I wish you'd look at that this week and work through it as I myself will. So Jesus says, I promise you who overcome and keep the deeds to the end. If you're an overcomer, here's what the Word means. Carry off a victory in your spiritual life by holding fast to your faith and your path of worship, obedience and service, persevering in the truth and the life of Jesus. Delivered to you.

Persevere, overcome, carry off a spiritual victory if you keep your deeds to the very end of life, prayer and service and worship and sacrifice and helping other people to keep these to the end, he said. I, Jesus, will give you authority over the nations.

In eternity we will have some sort of authority over nations. We will rule with Christ.

We will be people who have the ability to exercise authority and work for him. I'm going to give that to you as overcomers. I will give you the morning star, Revelation 22:16. Jesus himself is the morning star. We will have a relationship with him. The morning star is the planet Venus that can be seen very brightly just just before dawn. It looks like a star and Famous in Rome in Rome and Babylon, it was a symbol of sovereignty and a victory. And he says to us, we're going to have Jesus, the Morning Star. Listen, Thyatira, to what I, the Spirit of God, says to the churches. Listen up.

Have you ever had a time, friends, when you woke up in the night to a sound in your house? I mean, one of those sort of thumps and you get up and you're standing by your bed and your heart's going 800 miles an hour and your ears are straining.

What was that? Is somebody downstairs? You're listening for footprints or for somebody to bump into something.

I mean, your ears are straining. If your spouse wakes up and says what's going on, you say listen, listen. I think somebody's in here.

FCBC “listen” to what the Spirit says to the churches. Here's what he says to us. We finished our personal race. By holding fast to what we have, by running through the tape. By not giving up and not letting up.

Finish well in your personal race. May 6th, 1954, Oxford, England. A medical student by the name of Roger Bannister ran the first ever 4 minute mile. You can watch it on YouTube. Amazingly enough the whole video is there. Roger Bannister, for the first time, ran the mile in less than 4 minutes.

A guy paced him for two laps and that guy was a short distance guy and he got tired and dropped out and another guy paced him for the next lap and part way through the 4th lap, Roger sprinted past him and he ran all the way to the tape. Do we have that picture, Lindsey or not? He ran all the way to the tape. He was just, he was just leaning forward in exhaustion. In fact, when he got through the tape he collapsed and people grabbed him before he hit the cinder track. He ran. Through the tape.

Listen to what the Spirit says to the

churches. We must run through the tape. Let's pray.

Lord are grateful for the letter that you wrote to these people 2000 years ago.

That you wrote to us today. I pray for myself, for each one of us. We would listen to

what the Holy Spirit says to us. We entrust ourselves and our lives to you. We're grateful for your compassion and your grace. We pray

in Christ's name. Amen.