Once again, the book of Revelation, and we'll be looking at chapter 2, verses 18 through the end of chapter 2, verse 29. We've looked already at the first chapter, the introduction to the book of Revelation and this glorious vision of Christ that John is given while he's shipwrecked and imprisoned on the island of Patmos. the vision that teaches us so much about Jesus' character, about His holiness and His purity and His omniscience, about His priestly nature, His kingly nature, and also His nature as a prophet, fulfilling all of those important offices of the Old Testament religion. And now as Jesus speaks to these churches, He is revealing His will to them, and He is confronting them where they are in error, and He is commending them for where they have lived faithfully and been faithful to him and proclaimed his word and not gone astray. But he has many things to say in terms of challenging them in repentance. So tonight we're going to be looking at the letter or the message that Jesus sends to the church in Thyatira. remembering that all of these letters were written to churches that were in historical places. They were historical congregations in actual cities filled with actual Christian people who were struggling with the very things that Jesus talks about here. But Jesus highlights these cities and these churches, these congregations and the things that they struggle with and the things that they are faithful in, because when you put them all together, there is sort of a synopsis of the issues of the world that the church struggles with while being in the world. And so there is relevance for the church throughout the ages and throughout the world in understanding Christ's admonitions here in these letters. So tonight, the message to the fourth church mentioned, the church in Thyatira, begins in chapter 2 and verse 18. Let's follow along as I read it. 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 whose feet are like burnished bronze. I know your works your love and faith and service and patient endurance and that your latter works exceed the first. 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. I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality. Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed, 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. And all of the churches will know that I am He who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you as your works deserve. But to the rest of you in Thyatira who do not hold this teaching, who have not learned what some call the deep things of Satan, To you I say, I do not lay on you any other burden. Only hold fast what you have until I come. And the one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations and he will rule them with a rod of iron as when earth and pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father. And I will give him the morning star. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. This message to Thyatira is the longest of the seven messages, the longest of the messages to the seven churches, and it's found directly in the middle of all of these letters. It's number four, flanked on either side by three other letters. And that's kind of an interesting position, central for it to be, and it's interesting that it's the longest letter, the most detailed letter, Because in many respects, the city of Thyatira was the least significant of the seven cities in earthly terms, in terms of its status, its prestige as a city. Many of the other cities already, as we've seen with Ephesus and Smyrna and Pergamum, enjoyed great political and commercial importance and stature and status. but not in Thyatira. It was this inconsequential, sort of insignificant, almost irrelevant little town, kind of maybe like Felton. Nobody's going to bomb Felton. Felton's not going to make much on the news, in other words, if anything happens here. Thyatira was kind of like that. little town on the Hermus River in the middle of this big, broad valley. And through this valley, marauding armies used to frequently pass on their ways to other places of more significance. And Thyatira kind of came to be known for its sort of accidental place in history. Thyatira was a stopping place oftentimes for these armies as they were marching to other places in the world to do battle. And of course, as a marauding army might be apt to do, They simply would knock Thyatira over and sack it and take the food, take the wealth, take the women, take whatever they wanted and run the city and control the city for themselves while they were encamped there until they moved on. And the city would change hands over and over again. So it's not a city that's known for its culture. It's not a city that's known for its wealth. But again, almost an accidental role in military history. It's sort of like Gettysburg. not a city that has any consequence in and of itself. It's really famous for a great battle that was fought inside of its borders, but in and of itself, it really didn't possess any strategic significance. Thyatira is kind of like that. Yeah? I don't know how that plays into the military presence that would always be there other than, as I said, the armies that would march through and take control of the city would also take control of the city's assets financially and commercially. And so, yes, anything that the city produced or that the guilds in the city, and the guilds play an important role in understanding Christ's admonitions here. But anything that the guilds produced, like copper or bronze, if they were advantageous to that army, I imagine they would avail themselves of the spoils there and the loot there. So … We'll talk about that. That's the aspect of Christ that's highlighted here. You remember in each of these letters, there's a throwback to that vision in chapter one of Jesus, where he's described as having the white hair and the flaming eyes and the feet of bronze dressed in priestly clothes, the sword coming from his mouth, so on and so on. One or more of those aspects is taken and used as a header in each of these letters. in order to remind the Christians in the city and proclaim to them something about the nature and the character of Christ that corresponds to the problems that they're dealing with or the ways in which they've been either faithless or faithful. Here, Christ's holiness is being put on display and his omniscience. And we'll see how all of that plays in. But because Thyatira wasn't this great port city like Smyrna was or like Ephesus, a place where commerce and travel was central and where the city became prominent and rich and wealthy and well-known and of a great reputation and population. What did thrive in Smyrna were these local industries. John was mentioning the Bronze Guild and there was other kinds of sort of local industries and also a localized economy. painters, artisans, tanners, potters, coppersmiths, bronze smiths, metalsmiths of different kinds, bankers, on and on and on. The city was full of these localized industries that were confined to its borders. For example, we remember from the book of Acts, the story about a woman named Lydia who was a trader of purple cloth. She was in the cloth dyeing business. This was her city. And that was a major industry within the city, sort of cottage industry within the city, cloth dyeing and selling. One of the realities playing now on what John was talking about, one of the realities of that kind of an economy was the existence of local trade guilds that formed to support and to further these cottage industries. So belonging to a trade meant belonging to the guild that was associated with that trade, kind of like a modern day labor union, right? The local whatever, 454, right? Or whatever the electrician's union is, or whatever the, who knows, all the different kinds of unions. That was what was going on with these guilds in cities like Thyatira. So belonging to a trade meant belonging to the guild. Bakers didn't bake, and painters didn't paint, and coppersmiths didn't smith. copper unless they belonged to the local guild and that's how their income and their business was regulated and protected and promoted. And what's interesting about these ancient guilds that's not so much explicitly at least a part of the local equivalent in our economy the labor union what's interesting about the ancient guilds is that they were often associated with pagan idolatrous rituals and pagan idolatrous worship. So that belonging to a guild often meant participating in pagan feasts and festivals and temple rituals, even temple prostitution and fertility rites. Why would that be the case? Why would there be this connection between the commercial life of the city and these guilds and the religious life in terms of the paganism in the city? Any idea? That's part of it. You've got to make the idol out of something, right? Right, right. Yeah, that may have been part of it. Yeah. Well, for pagan gods, in a sense, kind of human society is a bit large, and so you'd be associated with, say, Metal Smith was the god. Right, the patron deity of whatever that institution was or industry was. And so the idea, yeah, was that paying homage to that deity, at least in the thoughts of the people who were doing that, guaranteed the success of the industry. That God would smile upon your industry and your efforts and your work. if you paid homage to the God and offered whatever sacrifices and whatever rituals and whatever service that was attendant with the worship of that false God. They thought that they could invoke the blessing of the false God upon their labors and upon their industry. And so that's what was going on. The problem then for Christians obviously in Thyatira was that life in the city of Thyatira involved a very serious temptation to compromise. as you can imagine, because conducting business in the local economy almost invariably meant participating in the idolatry that was connected to that economy. So if you were a Christian who had the skills of a coppersmith, in order to get work, you had to join the local coppersmith guild, and joining the local coppersmith guild meant being pressured and required oftentimes to pay homage to the deity that was associated with that guild in order to invoke the blessing from the deity, right? Guild meetings were often, for example, held in the temples that were devoted to the deities and there were these rituals and feasts. There was ritual prostitution that went on. And so all of the members of the guild were encouraged, if not required to participate in all kinds of ungodly behavior. And in Thyatira, there were, Christians in the church who were engaging in this kind of behavior and there were many Christians who saw that just as a necessary way of life and who didn't see that there was anything necessarily wrong with that sort of thing because That's how you make a living. That's how you put bread on the table. That's how you put money in the bank that's how you feed your little ones you have to compromise and engage with the paganism of the world because that's the reality around us and we have no way around it, so While the city itself, historically speaking, may have been rather Insignificant, the church wasn't. And Jesus' message to the Christians there is a very relevant message for all of us, too, because we have to remember that we have to avoid the temptation to sort of make peace with paganism in order to fit into the world around us or succeed in the world around us or thrive in the world around us. As much as they were called to resist that temptation, we are called to. Now, in terms of this letter, notice first of all, that the aspect of the vision of Christ from chapter 1 that is focused on here is Jesus' eyes of blazing fire and His feet of burnished bronze. Why do you suppose that these are the ones that are referenced here? Verse 18, the word of the Son of God who has eyes like a flame of fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze. What are we learning about Christ's character from those visionary symbolic aspects? Discipline. OK. Authority. Mm hmm. Purity. Yeah. Bronze often indicated purity and holiness. Many of the vessels in the temple, even the great pillars to the entrance of the Holy of Holies in the temple, were made out of bronze that was was polished so that it would reflect. And the idea was reflecting and radiating the glory and the holiness and the purity of God, which indicated the purity of the one in whose into whose presence you were about to enter if you were the high priest. Fire is a purifying agent. Right. So the fire associated with his eyes indicating purity. Fire associated with judgment. Right. Right. And so if there is not repentance from this compromise and this this paganism within the church, there will be judgments. Right. Right? Verse 23 especially, right? He says, I am He who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you as your works deserve. Combining that omniscience with the judgment that Mitch is speaking of, I think that has a lot to do with the image of Jesus' eyes burning with fire. He sees it all. And He sees it all with righteous anger where there is injustice and unrighteousness in the world. He will judge it. Jesus is the one who does that. He knows our sin. He knows the spiritual complacency in the hearts of the Christians there in Thyatira. He knows their wickedness. And in contrast to that are his burnished feet of bronze, his holiness and the transforming power, perhaps combining now the aspect of mercy that Christ can come and purify this church, that he is the only one who can purify this church and keep them unstained from the paganism that surrounds them. He's calling them to repent of their worldliness and the idolatry around them and to be pure in their devotion to Him. Again, we see the concept of purity. We've seen that over and over again already in the first three letters that Christ is calling us to an undiluted devotion to Him. Don't mix the worship of God with the paganism and the immorality and the worldliness of fallen mankind. Keep the worship of God pure. So this all-knowing, glorious, holy, pure Jesus speaks directly to the situation that is facing this church. And the first thing he does is to commend them. for the good things that are going on here. Recognize, as we talk about and go through this letter, the juxtaposition of the letter to Thyatira with the first letter, the letter to Ephesus. The good things that Jesus commends them for are, I know your deeds, your love and your faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first. That's sort of the opposite situation that there was going on in the church in Ephesus that Jesus confronted. What was the reality in Ephesus that we looked at several weeks back. Right. So they were doctrinally discerning and they had done a good job of recognizing the false teachers and the pagans and the false apostles and throwing them out and protecting the church from all of that. But in all of their doctrinal discernment they had lost the love that they had at first. They had lost the love for one another that they had at first and they had become overly critical and and judgmental and bitter towards one another divisive. There was a lot of infighting going on in the church in Ephesus. And so Jesus rebuked them for that and said I'm going to pull out your lampstand if you don't repent of your lack of love. Here the opposite is true. They've got lots of love. In fact they've got so much love that the good deeds that they're doing out of love have increased as the church goes on whereas in Ephesus They started out with a lot of love and a lot of service and a lot of good deeds, but then they lost that love that they had at first. So here it's on the on the increase, even though their spiritual discernment is obviously dwindling because they are seeing fit to participate and compromise with the paganism around them. So the deeds of love and service and faith, he links it to faith, doesn't he here in that way? The those things are self-evident and through them they are manifesting their faith in God they are manifesting their faith in Christ Jesus. But the problem was that their love. had gone beyond the biblical boundaries of love and turned into worldly tolerance. Dennis Johnson, in his little commentary on the Book of Revelation entitled The Triumph of the Lamb, he summarizes the message to Thyatira this way. He says, Jesus's statement to them is basically, I love your love, but I hate your tolerance. That's pretty relevant for the world that we live in today and for the church in the world that we live in today. It's so important for us to be doctrinally discerning and loving but not loving to the point where we lose our discernment and just become tolerant of things that Jesus hates. And that's liberalism and that's what's encroached the boundaries of the church ever since. the church was instituted. We see it all the way back in Thyatira and we still see it in our day and age today where it is thought that in order to evidence the love that God is and the love of Jesus Christ that we must be tolerant of people who engage in things that Christ hates and we've even lost the sense that Christ hates them. So there's a a message there, isn't there, that just doesn't make sense to our culture. It just doesn't make sense to people who are thinking in the way that our society thinks because we've fallen into the same trap as the Thyatirans have fallen into. We've valued love in this culture, which is really, really good, but we've valued it so much that we've removed its boundaries. And by removing its boundaries, it's become redefined. And we've extended it all the way out to include things that God hates. We've become liberal in our application of love, very liberal. We've taken liberties with the application of love. Society, and I think that the church has to a great degree in many cases, many churches, many congregations have followed in the direction of the society and the culture. Protestant liberalism, as you know, probably in the earlier part of the 20th century, Protestant liberalism was simply an attempt to make Christianity relevant. to show how now that enlightened thinkers had come upon the scene and declared that religion was irrelevant and just the speculations of superstitious people who believed in supernatural things that obviously now science can disprove the existence of. Therefore religion is irrelevant. Protestant liberalism came and said well you're right that that science would disprove all of this superstitious supernatural mumbo jumbo but let us show you how if you strip all of that from Christianity we can still make the essence of Christianity relevant and still retain a form of Christianity as they would define it that is relevant to the society any time anybody tries I believe to make. the pure doctrine of the Christian religion relevant to the society around us, it does us no favors at all. It's a thanks but no thanks endeavor. We don't want any more favors, please, from the liberals or those who seek to be relevant to the culture. The losing party is always the gospel. The losing party is always God's word and the truth contained in God's word. But that's what was going on in Thyatira, is that they had extended love way beyond the biblical boundaries to include things that God hates. So Jesus says in verse 20, I have this against you. You tolerate. There's the tolerance. You tolerate the woman Jezebel who calls herself a prophetess. By her teaching, she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrifice to idols. So the problem is similar, isn't it, to the problem that we saw back in the letter to the church in Pergamum. Last time we were together in Pergamum, it was the Nicolaitans, this sect of false teachers who were coming and seducing the Christians to indulge in idolatry and in paganism and in immorality at the same time that they were worshiping Christ. So the Christians in these two cities aren't explicitly denying Christ. They aren't saying Christ isn't God, Christ isn't the son of God, and the cross isn't the way of salvation. They aren't saying any of that. They're still pledging allegiance if you will to Jesus as their Lord and Savior at least with their with their words and with their lips. But what they're doing is then mixing and combining and not only diluting but polluting the true worship of God with the paganism and the immorality and the false worship around them. And those are things that God despises here. It's not the Nicolaitans who are guilty of seducing the Christians. It's a woman who is she's called Jezebel but I don't think that her name is actually Jezebel. I think that's a reference to Jezebel in the Old Testament who of course was guilty of all of these things. whoever this woman is, and I believe she's an actual woman. Some people don't even think there's a literal woman at stake here in Thyatira who's running around as a prophetess leading people astray. I believe that there is an actual woman. Whether or not there's an actual woman, somebody's responsible for leading people astray and is being compared to Jezebel in the Old Testament. Again, a throwback to this woman who lived as Ahab's wife and introduced Ahab and the Israelites to the idolatry and the immorality of the worship of the Baal, the gods of the pagan people there. Turn back to First Kings, chapter 16, and we'll read just a few verses about Jezebel. It's God's word, Dorothy. Alright, 1 Kings 16 and look at verse 29. In the 38th year of Asa king of Judah, Ahab the son of Omri began to reign over Israel. And Ahab the son of Omri reigned over Israel in Samaria for 22 years. And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all who were before him. And as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, the sin of Nebat, he took for his wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal. You hear the reference there, even in the name of her father to the Baals, the gods of the ancient people. the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal and worshipped him. He erected an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he built in Samaria. And Ahab made an Asherah, another false god. Ahab did more to provoke the Lord and the God of Israel to anger than all of the kings of Israel who were before him." Now in this passage, it's Ahab who's getting all the blame, right? Ahab's the one who went and took for himself this woman to be his wife. Ahab's the one who allowed her to bring this false worship into the kingdom, and Ahab's the one who erected the Asherah and introduced the people to this false worship. But if we were to take the time, and let's not do it, but if we were to take the time to go to 2 Kings chapter 9, It's made very clear there that Jezebel is the source of the witchcraft and idolatry that starts to come and to infiltrate the kingdom. You probably know this story very well and have heard a lot about this woman Jezebel. We still use that name sort of as a bad name. Not many people name their daughters Jezebel, do they, in this day and age, or name their sons Jezebel. Esau or things like that. It's not a not a popular name not a good name in biblical history. She was a wicked woman an adulterous woman and she introduced that into the worship of the kingdom of Israel. And in Second Kings Chapter 9 there her fate is spelled out. Remember what happens to Jezebel. Kind of a kind of a terrible fate. Her servants throw her out the window and her body ruptures on the pavement below and dogs devour her. And that was the end of Jezebel. So her story is sort of symbolic. The point is in using her name of what was going on in Thyatira. They were being deceived much as Jezebel had deceived Old Testament Israel into spiritual harlotry and false worship. Men get seduced into the arms of harlots. Why? Why do men get seduced into adultery or prostitution or things that we just look at and say, what in the world happened there? Yeah, their ears are tickled. And also because the relations feel intimate and they feel loving, even though they're not, even though they're immoral and even though they're based not on love, but selfishness and wickedness. and godlessness and unrighteousness in the same way, you see, the church was being seduced by the feelings and the experiences of what seemed to them to be spiritual vitality and spiritual intimacy, but in fact was really immorality and idolatry and wickedness. So there's an application right there for us. We've got to be careful of the same thing. Was it you and I who were just talking about Harold Bloom's book? Not a not a Christian man but whose basic diagnosis of Western Christian religion is that it is essentially Gnostic. And there are many evangelical scholars who would agree with him and say he's right. We've just become Gnostic. You know about the Gnostic heresy and the Gnostic religion in the early church. very mystical, purveyors of this secret knowledge and gnosis, very platonic, believing in this dualism between matter and spirit and that we must escape the spiritual world and have this divine encounter with the Lagos, the God who is out there somewhere and can give us intimate kinds of experiences and knowledge of the spiritual realm that we can't have if all we do is study the physical world, right? Or eat the physical bread and drink the physical wine. Mysticism has come to dominate religion in many, many facets. And I think that that's what was going on in Thyatira because they were prone to that mysticism, because they were prone to craving those experiences and that spiritual, what felt like spiritual intimacy. They were prone to chasing after it in all kinds of wicked ways. And remember God doesn't purvey religion that way normally and ordinarily. God is a supernatural God. God possesses deep secret knowledge doesn't he. Beyond anything that we can ever comprehend. But he normally and ordinarily mediates his relationship with us through his word through his son Jesus Christ who took on human flesh. That's a contra Gnostic concept right there. He became flesh he became matter and died on a cross and shed human blood in order to pay the price for our sins. That's where the gospel is found not in mystical encounters and mystical experiences of things that are simply feeling spiritual. We've got to be careful of that. Not everything that feels deeply spiritual is of the spirit of God. How do you tell the difference between something that is and something that isn't? You need a guide. You need a light unto your path and a lamp unto your feet and God's word is that and where we wander from it and allow ourself the license and the liberty to chase after things that look spiritual to us but are not prescribed for us or condoned or spoken of in God's word in a favorable way. Then we're bound for trouble. Right. All all forms of that are dangerous at best and deadly at worst. So in Thyatira This woman I take her to be a literal woman who calls herself a prophetess is compared in by Christ to this this character in the Old Testament. Jezebel and she's claiming in Thyatira now she's claiming to reveal the secret things of God through her prophecies. She's claiming to possess knowledge of the divine that Christians wouldn't have access to in the word. She's undermining the entire idea of the sufficiency of God's word in scripture. She's undermining the entire idea of the sufficiency of Jesus Christ by saying you need more than Christ. He's a stepping stone to get to this greater knowledge or this greater experience. And they're buying that hook, line, and sinker. So she's misleading them through spiritual deception. And furthermore, she's actively encouraging Christians to participate in the paganism there in Thyatira that is associated with those local trade guilds in order to receive the blessings of financial prosperity. So the principle is, I think, if Satan can't destroy Christ's church through overt means like persecution and martyrdom, if he fails to do that, then he will attempt to destroy Christ's church through more subtle means like the seduction of false teaching. And we seem pretty prone to that as opposed to as opposed to the things like martyrdom. But even in the midst of the sin that was going on in Thyatira, we do see God's grace on display not only to the people in the church there, but even to this prophetess who is compared to Jezebel. It says in verse 21, I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling. God has been patient with this woman. He hasn't just struck her with a bolt of lightning or killed her like was done with Ananias and Sapphira in Acts chapter 5. He didn't just wipe her off the face of the planet. He's warned her about the consequences of her actions, probably through the word that was being preached and taught in the church there in the city. But she doesn't repent. Despite God's patience, she refuses and she continues. And what's important for us to note is that not only does she refuse to repent, but what else? Many of the people following her refused to repent and the church refuses to deal with her. The church continues to tolerate her and refuses to cast her out. So the warning is given to the congregation that judgment is going to come against them if they continue to tolerate her. Verse 22, Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation unless they repent of her works. I will strike her children dead." At the beginning of verse 23 there. So the warning extends not only to her. Judgment is going to come against this woman because she's refused to repent. And all who have followed after her will participate in the judgment that she is going to drink of. mechanism of church discipline. Certainly. Well, if she was claiming to be a part of the church, a member of the church, then they would have gone through the steps that Jesus prescribed and Paul models there in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, for example. If she's a false teacher, then they would have made her name known as such and warned the people not to associate with her or listen to her. congregations like the congregation in Berea that we read about in the book of Acts we're doing testing the teachings of all who came through the city including the apostles to see if it was in line with God's word. They would have done that and found it wanting they would have done what was done in the in the city of Ephesus as we read about in chapter 2 and verses 1 through 8 there are 1 through 7 there. They didn't they didn't tolerate. They didn't allow it says verse two I know your works your toil and your patience and endurance how you cannot bear with those who are evil but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not and found them to be false and as false apostles they were not allowed to be a part of the church services and the people were admonished not to listen to their their teaching as being authentic. Yes, that's a good point. Split a church right we've seen that we see that in modern day contemporary examples where it's thought that the church discipline against this person might result in a church split or might result in people leaving or stopping to tithe or whatever and so. Let's just sweep that one under the rug. Christ's admonition is that purity is obviously more important than that and taking matters into your own hands and trying to steer the course according to your own wisdom always leads to failure and impurity. So yeah. Yeah, I think that I think that there are a lot of congregations where the tears have taken over or in other words Christ has pulled the lampstand. He has removed his presence from such a congregation. The promise of Christ in the parables there in Matthew 13 is that the tares will not take over the church at large, that the gates of hell even will not prevail against the church. That's not Matthew 13, but nonetheless, the guarantee of Christ in Matthew 13 is that there will always be within the church at large wheat and tares growing side by side, and that Christ will be the one to sort them out at the end. Individual congregations. That's another matter where I think yeah I think we do see examples of apostate churches or churches that are in danger of complete apostasy here. If they fail to repent. So. So he promises punishment and he promises it fairly severely here. I'll throw her under a sickbed and those who commit adultery with her I'll put into great tribulation. I will strike her children dead. And then he says all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds and I will repay each of you according to your deeds. In other words God is going to do whatever it takes in order to preserve purity in order to preserve holiness in order to prepare a pure and spotless bride for his son. he is going to protect and he is going to purify his church in the broad sense. And God, remember, doesn't punish sinners because he's a cruel tyrant. He does it for the purpose of that purity. And he does it for the purposes of sanctity and protection of the church at large. So in verse 24, Jesus speaks to those who have been pure, to the rest of you in Thyatira who do not hold this teaching, Who have not learned what some call the deep things of Satan to you I say I do not lay another burden on you only hold fast What you have until I come the one who conquers and keeps my words into the end I will give authority to reign over the nations. What does he mean by? To the ones who do not hold to the teaching and have not learned Satan's so-called deep secrets or what some have called the deep secrets of Satan. However you want to translate that. What is being referred to there? What are these deep secrets of Satan? Well, that's no secret. That's being waved around out in the open. He mentions that it goes so far in some contemporary circles that it's gone that way, I guess, for a long time to try and make Satan the hero of the biblical narrative. Especially in the creation account. Gnosticism in some forms has so twisted and perverted the biblical narrative and turned it on its head that Yahweh is the bad guy. He's the one who because the whole thing is about this cosmology of matter being evil and spirit being good and Yahweh created people in the material world and that was evil. And Satan came along, the serpent came along to teach them how to escape the material world and ascend up into the spiritual realm. And Eve was the great heroine who made that happen by eating of the forbidden fruit. So it completely turns it backwards. So is it real knowledge, the secret things of Satan? That's why the word so-called is used here. It's sort of a play on words. This woman prophetess has been deceiving Christians into thinking that she has access to the deep secret things of God, to hidden knowledge and to hidden revelation. And what Jesus is saying is that whatever deep secret she knows are certainly not of God, but are of Satan. Satan being the father of lies, whatever deep secrets this woman has and come from Satan cannot be considered to be truth. Much like the distortion of the creation account in the Genesis narrative there. So, Jesus is commending these Christians for resisting to the urge to have these deep spiritual experiences at the expense of purity and at the expense of doctrinal truth. So He says to them, I will not impose any other burden on you, only hold on to what you have until I come. In other words, His yoke is easy and His burden is light. He's not going to impose a burden of judgment upon them. They need to remain faithful. All that He asks is that they remain faithful to the Word and to the Gospel and remain His worshipers until He returns. So then he closes with this promise, to him who overcomes and does my will until the end, I will give authority over the nations. He will rule them with an iron scepter or a rod of iron. He will dash them to pieces like pottery even as I have received authority from my Father. What's the content of that promise? It seems to me it's certainly related to authority and rule. And it seems also as though there is no exhortation here to the elders of the church to exercise the authority they ought to have exercised from the start. So their time is up on that. The ones who haven't been implicated in this, it sounds as though they're the ones who have been sort of marginalized, perhaps. They just have no influence anymore. So your take would be that the elders are sort of written off. Very good. Very interesting. I think. Yeah. Yeah. And when does that authority and when does that reign take place ultimately? Yeah, I think what Christ is ultimately promising them is that if they remain pure and faithful to him and witnesses of his glory and righteousness and gospel, that they will have a share in his reign when he returns at the end of the age, that they, in other words, will be members of the kingdom and they will be given the privilege of reigning with him in righteousness at the end of the age. And then there's this this one last thing, which is, in fact, an even greater blessing that is promised to them than participating in the reign and the rule of Christ at the end of the age, he says, I will also give him the morning star. What is the morning star a reference to? He's going to give Satan to him. Well. OK. So you see it as if Satan is the Morning Star, then they will be given rule and reign and power and authority over Satan in that sense. OK. OK. Any other theories? Right. Mitch is saying that the encouragement will come from from realizing that they will participate in the reign of Christ even over Satan. I think so. In Numbers chapter 24, Balaam sees this vision of a star that emerges from Jacob who is going to ride forth from Israel and crush all of the idolatrous Moabites, an obvious reference and foretelling of Messiah, of Jesus Christ. And that star is pointing forward to this coming warrior king who is going to conquer all of God's enemies. And then I think what's what's identified there in terms of fulfillment of the Numbers 24 passages in Revelation chapter 22, look over there, very end. Gary had his thumb in it there. 2216, I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star. So I believe that the morning star is, in fact, Christ and that the promise is that Jesus is not only promising them participation in his reign, he is promising them what? Yeah, himself, what we were speaking of even in the worship service this morning, that God doesn't just give us blessings that he casts down sort of from heaven like rain. He gives us himself. He gives us his son, not just the blessings of his son. He unites us to his person. And that is the promise that is being given here. Not only will you reign with me, but you will participate in me. You will you will be united to me. Yeah. It can't be a very great morning star that ends up rotting the earth. So certainly you could say that whether the Morning Star refers to Satan, the truth that the Christian will participate in a reign with Christ over all of the enemies of God, including Satan, is certainly implicit and explicit, I think, in the previous statement that he will give to those who persevere and endure the rod of iron and a reign and a rule with the rod of iron. Right. We'll see that as we go on, too, especially with the beast coming up in Chapter 13 and the mark of the beast, the number of the beast. All of it has to do with counterfeit, counterfeiting Satan's attempt to disguise himself and mask himself as Christ and to deceive people into believing that he is Christ. So. Probably both things are true that the Christian will rule in that sense of participating in Christ's rule over Satan and all of his minions. But I believe that the Morning Star promise is a promise that we will actually be given Christ. So we're reminded that the essence again of the Christian life is being united to Christ to his person filled with his spirit. And that is the source and the wellspring of all of our blessing. God doesn't just send us care packages. in the mail saying here's some blessings to get you through your stay here on earth much like you would get at summer camp or you're away at college. God gives us his son and his son is the wellspring and the source of all of the blessings. So all of that in mind the application is very straightforward. I think very simple. Jesus is warning us not to tolerate Paganism and godlessness and idolatry. He's warning us not to tolerate those who claim to possess great spiritual knowledge or insight, but who at the same time make unholy compromises and alliances with the paganism around us. That was one of the tests of a false prophet in the Old Testament, Deuteronomy chapter 18. How do we know if the prophet is true? How do we know if what he's telling us is of God? Well, is he consistent with scripture 100% of the time? Is he telling you to worship another God besides the one true God? Is he making compromises with the pagan gods around and so on and so forth? Because God doesn't deal in that way. God doesn't mix with his enemies. So we must never make peace with paganism. And we must never make peace with the teachings of non-Christian religions, whether it be to secure our our futures to get a job because of our desire to participate in cultural activities. There are no good reasons, in other words, to make compromises with paganism. We have to be willing to sacrifice and count the cost of following Christ in purity, even when that means enduring the scorn of the world, even if that means enduring the loss of all things. Paul says, I'm willing to do that for the sake of gaining Christ. And there's only one way to gain Christ, and that is in purity. So we have to remember also that Christ promised us the victory as He works to crush His enemies and as He gives us grace, as He promises us Himself through word and sacrament. We need no secret knowledge. We need no prophecies. We need not make peace with paganism. Jesus is with us always. He's with us in the midst of our greatest trials. And He's with us through His word. And He's with us through the sacraments of baptism in the Lord's Supper. And in him and in them, we have everything we need, don't we? And so people who would say there are other things that you need, there's more that you need, those are a good first start, but what you really need is, and then start to enumerate all of the things, are to be resisted. We have to be careful with that kind of thinking. That is essentially Gnostic thinking. that would take the Word of God and the Son of God and relegate them to stepping stones and to greater spiritual experiences or realities. We have to resist that impulse. Any further questions on Chapter 2 and especially the letter to the church in Thyatira? Okay, next week then we'll look at the letter to Sardis at the beginning of Chapter 3, verses 1 through 6. Okay, let's stand together and close with A final hymn number 727, is that right? In your hymn, I'm not used to numbers that high. Our old songbook didn't go up that far. But 727, in light of this truth and this theme of God's purity and our need to be purity, we ask the Lord to lead us in His righteousness. Stand together and we'll close with this.