Please open your Bibles to the inerrant, the sufficient, life-giving word of truth to Revelation chapter 2. Find verse 18 and we'll read through to verse 29. Revelation 2, 18 through 29. And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write, these things says the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and his feet like fine brass. I know your works, love, service, faith, and your patience. And as for your works, the last are more than the first. Nevertheless, I have a few things against you, because you allow that woman, Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce my servants to commit sexual immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols. And I gave her time to repent of her sexual immorality and she did not repent. Indeed, I will cast her into a sickbed and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation unless they repent of their deeds. I will kill her children with death, and all the churches shall know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts, and I will give to each one of you according to your works. Now to you, I say, and to the rest in Thyatira, as many as do not have this doctrine, who have not known the depths of Satan, as they say, I will put on you no other burden, but hold fast to what you have till I come. And he who overcomes and keeps my works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations. He shall rule them with a rod of iron. They shall be dashed into pieces like the potter's vessels, as I also have received from my father. And I will give him the morning star He who has an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Let's pray. Oh Lord, we thank you for giving us truth from heaven to come to pierce into our hearts. We thank you that you search the hearts, all of our hearts. And so we pray that you would take these words of scripture and make them land upon us and change us, make us into a holy church. Amen. And be seated. These letters to the churches make it very plain that the Lord Jesus Christ's intention for his church is to make a holy church, a church set apart for God, a church that is pure, that there be no mixture, that the leaven would be cast out of the church because the leaven affects everyone. And so the context here in Revelation chapter 2, of course, is that Jesus Christ is walking among the lampstands of the churches. We've already read about that. That means that He is present Whenever His true church gathers, He is observing everything. The churches in Revelation, of course, are compared to lampstands. They hold up the light. They are not the light, but they hold up the light. And they hold up the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And everything that is connected to the message of the gospel. And the text before us speaks to the forces that are at work in local churches, either for the destruction and the pollution of that church, or for the preservation and for the beauty of that church. This passage shows us what can happen in a church living in a secular society. And in this letter to the church in Thyatira, which is a local church, it brings to mind what really is one of the great blessings of a local church. And that is that God brings people of all different kinds together in a local church. And everyone has been somewhere. Everyone has been thinking something. Everyone has been affected by something they've read, or something they've seen, or something that they have experienced. And when the gathered church comes together, all are affected. It matters what every single person in the Church of Jesus Christ is doing. If you have people who are defiling their eyes, you'll find a dampened church by the Spirit of God. If you have people thinking wrong thoughts, it'll affect the entire church. And so these are letters to churches. Everyone is not the same in the church. That's the assumption in this passage of Scripture. At the same time, God understands everything that's happening in the hearts of every person in the church. He knows exactly what you're thinking right now. There's no hiding from him. This passage also speaks about the importance of teaching, the different kinds of teaching that comes to the individuals in the church when they are not in the church. And so, you have some who have this doctrine, this teaching, and you have some who don't. in this church in Thyatira, and that's very typical of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, in this church there were three parties. First, there was the teaching and a teacher And her name is Jezebel, whether she was a real person or just carried forward all the imagery of the biblical Jezebel in 1 Kings 16, we're not sure. But this teaching and this teacher needed to be condemned and removed from the church. And then there were the followers of that teacher. And I think the assumption of the passage of some of them were following unwittingly and they needed to repent of their sin. following her teaching and then there are the people who are doing very well in the church and they weren't following the teaching. And so identify who you are in this text. I pray that for most of you, this will be such a refreshing text because you'll say, I've not loved the teaching of Jezebel. I don't want the teaching of Jezebel. I love the words of Jesus Christ and him alone. And I pray that it's an opportunity for all of you to give thanks who are in that category and for anyone who's fallen. into false teaching regarding sexual matters and also matters of social acceptability that you'll also find yourself repenting. So it's important that we examine our own hearts to see which category we are in. Some people in this church have been trapped in sin patterns that have been lingering. Some have embraced a false doctrine or two. And some are hardened. And they have refused to repent, even though God has given them many opportunities. You might ask yourself that. Are you one of those who has been given many opportunities to repent? But the time is running short, the clock is ticking, the hourglass is running out for you. That's the teaching that's here in this text. As we've been working our way through Revelation, we have found ourselves here. among these churches. Now, let's talk about the church in Thyatira. You have an outline in front of you. There are many elements to that outline. You'll see I plan to walk through each section of this text and try to linger on it. But the first thing that we encounter here is, and to the angel of the church in Thyatira. So, we're now in this church in Thyatira. It's interesting, all the rest of the cities and the churches that we've examined so far have been big cities like New York and Dallas and that type of thing. This is a small city. It would be kind of like, you know, the church in LA, the church in Seattle. And now let's talk about the church in Wake Forest. It's a little church in a little town. And the problem in Thyatira was tolerance. Tolerance of teaching. intolerance of a lifestyle that flowed from a particular source. And what the Lord Jesus is doing here is the Lord is calling the church to embrace intolerance, to embrace a virtuous intolerance of sin in that church. You know, the church is designed by God to be a holy nation, as the Apostle Peter spoke about, and it does not tolerate egregious sin in her midst. Instead, she addresses sin, she confronts sin, and she disciplines according to the guidelines that are in the Word of God. And unfortunately, tolerance has become the greatest violation that you can commit in our culture. If you're intolerant of anything, you've violated the social code. But let's be really clear. The church of Jesus Christ is an intolerant institution. And that's what's very clear from this passage of scripture. And so the central thought here that Jesus has for this church is they need to quit tolerating the teaching of Jezebel. She's been given time. to repent, but the church has been tolerating her, and they have failed to discipline this woman or this woman's teaching. It's very interesting, this church didn't seem to be experiencing persecution like the previous church that we studied, but rather they were experiencing infiltration, very much like the problem in the previous church in Pergamum. This problem was created really by the economic structure of the town. The economic structure was built around trade guilds. And the trade guilds were critical for functioning in society. So in Thyatira there were guilds for wool workers and linen workers and makers of garments and dyers and leather workers and potters and bakers. and bronze smiths, and the word that is used in Greek to describe guild is the word syntakia, which is the word we get from our word syndicate. It was like a syndicate. Now I don't know what comes up in your mind when you hear the word syndicate, but it's typically not a positive connotation. It has to do with the control system. that operates typically in big cities, you know, through the mob. And the trade guilds would hold festivals to the temple of Apollo and the other gods. And Apollo was really the patron of the trade guilds. And you were expelled from participation in the business community by refusing to participate in the activities of the guilds. Christians lost their jobs, which is probably, gives us a little bit of tip off of why the Lord would say such kind things about this church, their love, their service. There were people in that church who needed a lot of help and love and service. And, you know, later on in Revelation we'll find In Revelation 13, 17 we'll read these words. And that no one may buy or sell except that one who has the mark or the name of the beast or the number of his name. It's the same basic concept where some are barred from full-blown economic freedom. And so the business was conducted in the meetings that happened around the temples in the same way that business is conducted at golf courses and sports events and various other kinds of places. And the feasts of Apollo and of Zeus and of Dionysius were all part of this culture. And you needed guild approval to operate your business. And so, I mean, this kind of thing exists today. Maybe you're familiar with the covenants to be a part of the European Union. We have a new administration in Washington with laws about equality and environment and abortion, and they're all really designed to provide access or barring a participation from institutions and from businesses. We've just seen this kind of suppression in a different way here in the United States. Just in recent weeks, we saw the largest companies in the world collectively ban the voice of the President of the United States and lots of other people, you know, on the biggest platforms of communication that exist in the world today like Facebook and YouTube and Twitter and Twitch and TikTok and Snapchat and every other media platform that exists. So this is not, you know, what's happening right now is not new, it's actually very old and you can trace the line back to Thyatira. And You know, one commentator explains what was likely happening in Thyatira, I'll quote, It would have been almost impossible for citizens of Thyatira to participate in the economy of the city without also participating in the guild meetings. Here are the kinds of arguments that Jezebel was likely making. Now this is likely. The rituals of the guilds aren't really meaningful, even to the pagans. They don't believe them. They're just rituals. We know the gods are nothing. Participation gives us opportunity to be a positive influence. Our spirit matters more than our body. If we do not participate, we will not only be persecuted and left out, we'll lose all the relevance to the city and to guilds. So this was the tension. in Thyatira, and when we get to a description of the sinful teaching of Jezebel, it's code, it's really code for participating in the things that were happening in the guilds. But what we find here, after just recognizing that this is a local church in Thyatira, the words of the omnipotent God speak here. If we look at verse 18 in the last part of that verse. These things says the Son of God who has eyes like a flame of fire and his feet like fine brass. Now we've already encountered these words in chapter 1 verse 12. Son of God. These things says the Son of God. Here the Lord Jesus Christ presents himself as the omnipotent, omnipresent creator. He's the sustainer, he's the judge. This is the language that's being carried forward from the Old Testament, and it's a declaration that there is none higher than Christ. In fact, here he bears the name of Yahweh in the Old Testament. Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, and he is the same today, yesterday, and forever. And I think that this is here really as a polemic against the false deities, all the false counselors that the people in this city had access to. It was a polemic against going to Zeus to gain power, or to go to Athena for wisdom, or to go to Dionysius for pleasure, to Apollo for the arts and music and dance and poetry, or to go to Apollo's son, Asclepius, for healing. Don't think of these gods as just statues that people were looking at. That's not what was happening here at all. They were philosophical systems and lifestyle traits. They were identities that you identified with in order to fit in with a secular society. And the identification was the calling card that got you acceptance into the guild so that you could prosper. So these gods really are about nothing but going to the wrong places for counsel. Opening up your computer and going to the wrong places to get your pleasure, to get your wisdom, to get your power, to be who you ought to be. It's going to the wrong places, and that's what is exactly happening here. So, these gods are identities that you identify with in order to have an identity in secular society. So, this is how serious this is. In fact, Greg Beal, the Old Testament commentator, tells us that that Apollo was called the Son of God, and here the Lord Jesus Christ is making a direct hit against the gods of this town. And of course we encounter this language, Son of God, in the Old Testament in Daniel, in particular in Daniel chapter 3. You remember that remarkable story about the Hebrew children being thrown into the furnace of fire and it was just blazing hot and anybody that got close to it was licked up. Except for the Hebrew children, they weren't. They were walking around in the fire. And some of the guards were close enough to see, and they said, look, I see four men loose walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt. And the form of the fourth is like the Son of God. This was Jesus Christ walking with the Hebrew children in the furnace. So this terminology, Son of God, that we find in this verse is a carryover from the Old Testament and it's really designed to remind us of everything that happened to the Hebrew children and particularly to Daniel as he was living in Babylon in a secular society being tempted by everything in that society. And that's exactly what was happening in Thyatira. It says here that he's not just the son of God, his eyes like the flame of fire and we already encountered this in chapter one The Lord is the searcher of the hearts. And this should be either the most comforting or the most disturbing thing about this text. And that is He knows everything about you. He knows what you're thinking right now. He knows what you did yesterday and the day before. He knows how you talk to your children. He knows what you are doing in your family. He knows absolutely everything. Nothing is hidden from His sight. By the way, there are no virtual activities in the universe because God sees them all. Psalm 139 verse 1 declares this so beautifully. And this is such a comfort to people who want the eyes of the Lord on everything. Oh Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up. You understand my thought from afar. You comprehend my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Jeremiah 17 10 says, I the Lord search the heart. I the Lord search the heart. So there are no secret sins. All of them are witnessed by the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And this really is the first step in the remedy is to recognize that God sees, He already sees. So you might as well just repent and turn to Him. He has feet like fine brass. We've also read about that earlier in chapter 1 as well. You'll find that in these letters to the churches, they carry forward various elements of the nature and the power of God that are described in chapter 1, particularly beginning in verse 12 on to the end of the chapter. This also is a quote from Daniel chapter 10 verse 6, this whole idea of his feet like fine brass, meaning his feet are unstoppable, they are pure, they are the finest of brass, and there is nothing that will crush these feet. In contrast, Nebuchadnezzar's feet, his statue, had feet of clay that would fall, not the feet of Jesus Christ. His feet stand, and He crushes everything that gets in His way. And that's the idea here. And then we find in verse 19, Christ's commendation, the good things that He is saying about this church. There's so many wonderful things going on in this church. Verse 19, I know your works, love, service, faith, and your patience. And as for your works, the last are more than the first. So there's like a parallel universe going on in this church. You have those who've embraced this teaching of Jezebel, but you have also these who are just being fed by the Lord. I mean, they are saturated with the goodness of God. They are delighting in the delights of his river of delight. And this is the description of the faithful remnant that existed in this church. We don't know how large the remnant is. It seems to be large. It seems to me most of the church was faithful. We don't know, but notice what they're doing. Love. It was a loving church. What a blessing it is to be in a loving church. Service. It was a church where people were serving one another. It was a church of faith and patience. And what's remarkable about this church is they were growing. I mean, they were growing like a weed. They were converted and then they just never quit growing. They kept getting closer and closer to the Lord. By the way, that's the mark of a Christian. In some ways, it's one of the chief marks of a Christian. If a person confesses Jesus Christ and their life doesn't change, they have not been saved, okay? So that's sort of the problem of the easy believism that we find in modern evangelicalism, all they want you to do is pray a prayer. But if your life doesn't change, it doesn't matter. All you have to do is claim that you accepted Jesus Christ into your heart, which is something and a whole idea that doesn't exist in the Bible. Christians obey the Lord, they grow, they bear fruit. And so if a person has said that they have accepted Christ and they're not growing and changing and becoming more holy, you are not a Christian, okay? But these were Christians. They were increasing. Their most recent works were more than the first. You know, Peter speaks about this in 1 Peter. He says, if these are yours and increasing, praise the Lord. So ask yourself, are these things yours? And are they increasing? This takes us all the way back to what I began with. The Church of Jesus Christ is a holy church. It is a holy people and a holy nation. And of course, many of these are right out of 1 Corinthians 13 about expressing love in the church. If you read this and you say, oh Lord, these things are true of me, not perfectly, I am so weak and I'm so poor, but Lord, you are changing my life, then I hope this is a real encouragement to you this morning, that your heart desires to follow the Lord, that you see the progress of your life. The doctrine has taken hold in your heart and it's changing your life. Because it's really, it's the teaching of the word of God that changes your life. And so just keep on running toward the Lord, keep on repenting of your sin, keep on identifying anything that hinders. But know this, your love is growing, your faith is growing, your patience is growing, and you ain't what you used to be. Praise the Lord. What a wonderful thing. But in this church there was a flaw. they were tolerating something. Maybe, we don't know this for sure, but it's reasonable that sort of out of love, they were maybe a false sense of love, a twisted view of love. It's easy to fall into that. And it looks, you know, this is often the idea that people have, that if you're a loving person, then you're accepting of everything. Is that the biblical doctrine of love? No. There is a biblical doctrine of love that's communicated in very rich form. Now, then we see Christ's condemnation. He has commended the church. He'll do it again. By the way, there are lots of really positive words toward this church. But the condemnation is in verse 20. Nevertheless, I have a few things against you because you allow that woman Jezebel who calls herself a prophetess to teach and seduce my servants to commit sexual immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols. So you have there a woman and her name is Jezebel. Is she a literal woman? I think she's a literal woman, but she's not just a literal woman. She's a teaching. She's a doctrine. She's a way of looking at things that has taken hold. And I think that she is you know, an image bearer of the Old Testament Jezebel that we read about in the Old Testament. Jezebel grew up in an abusive family. Her father was a pagan and she was just as much of a pagan as her father. The sexually abusive practices of the Baal worshippers, which was the kind of family that she grew up in. It was an abusive family. It was a spiritually defiled family. And she grew up there and she never changed. She never changed until God finally threw her down and the dogs ate her up. And all you could find were her hands and her head and her feet. Because God killed her. It's a very terrifying story. She tempted her husband to sin. She was a compromiser, and she caused everybody around her to compromise. That's the biblical Jezebel in the Old Testament. You can read about her. Open up 1 Kings 16 and read on, and you'll get the whole story. It might be a good afternoon thing to do here on the Lord's Day. Now, it's interesting. In Thyatira, you have the doctrine or the teaching Jezebel. In Pergamum, the last church that we studied, you had the doctrine or the teaching of Balaam. And so now you have the teaching of Jezebel, you know, maybe the kind of the female counterpart of Balaam. Here you have the female counterpart of Jezebel and the male counterpart in Pergamum and Balaam. And of course we meet her here and she leads her husband literally to fornicate. How? By worshiping Baal. That's the language of the Old Testament. Spiritual adultery and physical adultery are always connected in some way. But we don't know if She's exclusively teaching physical adultery or spiritual adultery. I think it's both. And I think the language that's used here makes it very clear that she is. For example, she is seducing my servants to commit sexual immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols. This was guild language. This is code for the guild right here. It was code for showing up at the guild taking in the entertainments, doing the business. Maybe you didn't have to participate in everything. You might leave early, but you were there and you got your calling card as a result. But it was spiritual adultery at minimum. And so you have this doctor, she is teaching. I'm gonna give you five characteristics of Jezebel from this text, okay? The first is she calls herself a prophetess. That's the first characteristic. She was self-appointed as somebody who has something to say. What is a prophetess in this context? She was a communicator of truth, It's very interesting. She calls herself a prophetess, but she's really not. You have the same language in Ephesus. Some people call themselves apostles, but are not. In Smyrna, some who say they are Jews, but they're not. Jezebel calls herself a prophetess, but she's not. And you might just add anything to that. Some people call themselves Christians, but they're not. But she calls herself a prophetess. What did the modern Jezebels say? Well, they speak with God's authority. And when they talk about things, they say things like, God told me. They say things like, let me share with you what the Lord shared with me. I have a word from the Lord for you. God is showing me. God has showed me. And now, you need to really pay attention to this. And the problem with talking to a Jezebel is once he or she says, the Lord told me, what are you supposed to say? You know, the Lord said it. And, you know, out of her intuition and her dreams, she's manipulating the people around her, not with the word of God. But she wants to say, you know, I have a deep insight. Later on, he calls them the deep things of Satan. But she has deep insights. Compelling, interesting. Now, if you encounter people like this, beware. Young ladies, we'll just talk to the young ladies who are not married. If a guy comes up to you and says, oh, the Lord has told me that we're supposed to be married, just turn on your heels and go the other direction, okay? The Lord told me. Well, there's a lot of other things that need to line up than that. You know, we have modern-day Jezebels in this pseudo-Christian scene. There's a very popular that millions and millions of women read a while back. It was a book by Sarah Young. It was a book called Jesus Calling. It was so successful, she kept writing these private revelation books, you know, Jesus Always, Jesus Today, Then Jesus Lives. But in this book, Jesus Calling, she really says she speaks for God, and she really does what all the occult people do, They pull out their pen and they write whatever comes to their mind, and it's from God. She explicitly says that in the beginning of her book. She says, I decided to listen to God with pen in hand, writing down whatever I believe he was saying. And then she imposes that on her readers. This is what God is saying to you. Interestingly enough, the book has gone through a couple of revisions, and the things that she wrote originally, some of them have changed. Interesting. Which God was it? The first God or the second God after the editorial process? Well, this is nothing more than a cult practice. You find one of the most popular so-called evangelical feminists, Beth Moore, she takes this position. She says all the time that God told her things. She receives private revelation, she shares it with others, and she tells women what to do about it. And men as well, she's teaching men as well, has no problem with that. So she is teaching. By the way, teaching, doctrine that you find, this word is the same word that has to do with instruction. If you encounter the word doctrine or teaching in these letters to the churches, it's all the same word. Was she just doing this privately, possibly? Most likely the case. If she was teaching publicly in the church, she was rebelling, really, against Paul's instructions to the churches regarding women teaching in the church. In 1 Timothy 2.11, the apostle says, let a woman learn in silence with all submission. And I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man, but to be in silence. In other words, it's unlawful for a woman to be teaching men in the church of Jesus Christ. In 1 Corinthians 14, 34, The Apostle Paul even escalates the message. He says, Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but they are to be submissive, as the law also says. And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home. Now get this, for it is shameful for women to speak in church. It's shameful. How about that? Man, them's fighting words. You know, every time I quote this, there's a big fight that breaks out somewhere. But this is the Bible, okay? This is not my words, this is not my mail. God has given this to His church. It's very interesting, in this whole matter, and if a wife wants to learn something, let her ask her husband at home. What it really does is it puts a woman in a position of inquiry and seeking wisdom from her husband. And a lot of times when wives ask their husbands questions, they don't know the answers. That's actually good for the husband, because then he has to study. He's got to figure it out. Maybe he's not very well taught. Maybe he hadn't been studying his Bible. God gives some men wives so that they'll study their Bibles. How about that? But anyway, so this woman, she has a message. The third characteristic is that she is teaching men and women to compromise. She is teaching a position that's contrary to the Word of God regarding sexual matters. To teach and seduce my servants to commit sexual immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols. So she's teaching a false view of sexuality and a false view of love. In the same way that in 1 Kings 16 and forward, the real Jezebel in the Old Testament leads her husband to compromise and fornicate by worshiping Baal. That's the word that's used. It's a teaching to compromise. It was an encouraging teaching. I'm sure it was relieving to some people. They were kind of happy to hear it. I'm sure many of the people who heard this teaching just said, ah, I guess I'm okay. I'll just keep thinking these things and I'll keep doing these things. After all, not participating means economic suicide. Why would I do that? After all, your career will collapse The ostracism will come on your head and there'll be economic sanctions put against you. Why not? Why wouldn't we? After all, we're supposed to provide for our families. Didn't God command us to provide for our families? So why not? I'm sure it was very relieving of some who were hearing this teaching. She was convincing. And the fourth thing is she was misleading. You see this word seduce? to seduce my servants. It's a word that's often translated mislead. It's misleading teaching. Now, later on we learn it's demonic. It's the deep things of Satan in verse 24. The fifth thing about her, she really can't do anything wrong. She will not repent. There's no brokenness for sin. The broken spirit and the contrite heart is not hers. There's no distress in her sin. She just keeps pushing forward. So that's the doctrine of Jezebel. And the language that is here is code for participation in the guilds. And she was just telling the church that it doesn't matter if you go and if you participate. Just go get your certificate. You don't have to believe it. It's not your problem. You've got a biblical responsibility to feed your family, and it's not immorality to just be there. God has a different view of that. Interesting, the Bible makes it clear that adultery is not always just physical. James makes this really, really clear in James 4, verse 4. He says, adulterers and adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Friendship with the world is spiritual adultery in the book of James. Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Now the modern day Jezebels They are domineering, they are manipulative, they are dishonorable to authority. They're attractive, they're skillful most of the time. And you know, what's Jezebel's teaching today? Well, it's all over the place. The LGBTQ compliance and celebration movement that exists in business. The funding of abortion to make your company legitimate. the equality movement. Your company will be judged on these measurement tools and in the midst, in the most powerful companies of the world, your employment agreement will include some of these measurements. This is the doctrine of Jezebel that's come into the guilds of the great corporations in America. It's not, what was happening in Thyatira is happening today. And it always happens in the secular state in some form or another. We shouldn't be too concerned about it. It's the way it's always been. So, you know, the modern Jezebels in the church are the voices either inside or outside the church. And, you know, a very popular woman's writer, popular in many churches, Jen Hatmaker, she was all about grace and love and Regarding homosexual marriage, her position was faithfulness in marriage is more important than gender. As long as it's monogamous, have grace, have humility. Loving one another means that we must embrace monogamous homosexual marriage as holy. So if you think it's sin, look past it in love. That was her message. You have popular singers like Amy Grant and Lauren Daigle. They're telling us to accept homosexuality. God calls it an abomination. He calls it sodomy. He calls it unnatural desires. That's what God calls it. Even calling it homosexuality is a massive minimization of the biblical language that describes sexual sin. So the Jezebels are everywhere. They're the Jezebels of the self-affirmation movement. You are all you need. Love yourself. Affirm yourself. You are the power. You can be anything you want to be. Don't let anyone hold you back. Prove you're enough on your own. Somebody rightly called this me-ology in contrast to theology. So you have, there are many voices of Jezebel in the church today and you can get them, you can just open up your computer, they're all there. They're all accessible, maybe some are listening to her, I hope not. And then we find Christ's treatment of Jezebel in verses 21 to 23. This is really astounding here. And I gave her time to repent of her sexual immorality, and she did not repent. See, God doesn't always bring judgment right away. And sometimes people think, well, God hasn't done anything. It must be okay. No, not so. Read on. Indeed, I will cast her into a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation. Unless they repent of their deeds, I will kill her children with death, and all the churches shall know that I am He who searches the minds and the hearts, and I will give to each one of you according to your work." So she's given opportunities to repent. This is the grace and the mercy of God. So maybe if there's anybody here who's been running along any of these lines, God's given you time to repent. The Apostle Paul says that God's like that. He makes a way of escape. He says, no temptation has overtaken you such as common to man, but God is faithful. He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make a way of escape that you may be able to bear it. In other words, there's a way of escape. One of those ways of escape is repentance. And, you know, removing the sinful thing from your life is another way. Just remove it. You know, I tell men, you know, who are struggling with pornography, starve the dragon. Emaciate him. Don't give him anything to eat. If you give him a morsel, he just expands exponentially. Don't give him anything to eat. Don't give him that half-okay movie. Every morsel he eats, he just gets bigger and bigger, and then he devours you. So there are a couple of ways to escape. Starve him to death. You can emaciate the dragon of pornography. You can emaciate him. Many, many men have done it. And you ought to do it too if you're trapped. God will send sickness. This is amazing. I will cast her into a sick bed. This language, couches, beds, they're associated with partying. You've heard of the casting couch. This is the kind of thing. I will cast, I will make her sick in her bed in the place that she's chosen. Was it a plague? Was it a virus? Was it a sexually transmitted disease? I heard the other day one in five people in America have a sexually transmitted disease today. I mean, I think this is all part of God casting people on their sickbed for their sin to get them to turn. Now, maybe you have all kinds of things going on in your life because of your sin. Turn from your sin. Let the pain turn you toward him. And then he says, I will kill her children to death. I think he's talking about her spiritual children. Why? So that all the churches shall know that I am he who searches the minds and the hearts. All the churches will know. Notice something here when he says, I will cast her on a sickbed and I will kill her children. Notice that. What is that? I'm gonna categorize that as a surgical judgment. in a church. The whole church isn't judged, but there is a surgical, precise judgment. It's a little bit like, you know, laser surgery. It doesn't get everything, it only gets what's malfunctioning. So you have God with his laser beam surgical tool, but he doesn't kill everybody. And he doesn't cast everybody on their sickbed, praise the Lord for that. But in this case, it's surgical, it's focused. Same thing happened in the church in Pergamum. Jesus comes with a sword against who? Those who have embraced the doctrine of Balaam, but not the others. So I think we find his surgical tool. Here's the question. Are you trapped in a secret cycle of sin? Only you know. Or maybe it's sin in your family and only your family knows of your disobedience. Maybe it's wrath. Maybe it's abuse of some kind. Maybe it's just your unbelief. Maybe it's just your pride. But your family knows. But other people don't know. God knows. Remember, there are always three witnesses to every crime. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Now there's no hope for the unrepentant, none, no hope. But there is hope for the repentant. To disregard the call to holiness, is to disregard the message of the gospel. Because the message of the gospel is that you are saved from a perverse generation. And that when you are saved, you begin to grow. And you progressively, over your whole life long, put away the dead works that you had before. That is a picture of Christianity. And so, in this message to the church in Thyatira, we really are encountering the doctrine of the church, the purity of the church, and the recognition that the only true church is a holy church. An unholy church is an oxymoron. God is looking. He sees everything. Jesus is giving them time to repent, but the clock is ticking. Some of you might be on the countdown timer, and you've not repented, and you've been hard, and those things going on in secret, those things going on in your family, those things going on in your business, those things are going on in the secret places. They're not secret to God. Thomas Watson has a brilliant, description of repentance and how we repent, what it means to repent. He gives six marks of repentance. I'll give them to you. Repentance is a grace of God where God comes upon you and He gives you grace and He gives you certain things regarding your sin. He gives them as a gift to you to release you, to set you free so that you'll experience the beauty of Jesus. These are medicines. These are six medicines of the soul. I'll read them to you. He says, the first element of repentance is sight of sin. In other words, you see your sin. Second, sorrow for sin. You grieve for your sin and what it has done to you, to your heart, to your family, to your business, to your church. And then there's confession of sin. You confess the sin and you confess particular sins, particularly not a general confession, and then there's shame for sin, and then there is hatred for sin, and then there is turning from sin. Those are Thomas Watson's six marks of repentance. This is the way out. This is the way out in this passage is to repent. And then the Lord Jesus turns and he speaks to the faithful in verse 24. Now to you I say and the rest in Thyatira, the rest whose faith is growing, whose service is growing, the rest whose love is growing, and they're doing better than they have been in the past. To you I say, as many as do not have this doctrine, who have not known the depths of Satan, as they say, I will put on you no other burden. In other words, no reason for you to be burdened. Church, no reason to be burdened. Give thanks for the mercy of Jesus Christ in your life. He's taking you further than you ever dreamed and he's continuing to bless you. And then Christ gives them an admonition in verse 25. But hold fast what you have till I come. Hold fast. Hold it tight. The language here is like a death grip. Hold on tight. Don't let it go. Grab it. Grab it by the ankles and don't let go, right? Hold fast to what? To Christ. To the doctrine. To the faith. To the service. To the love. To the patience. To the spiritual growth. Hold fast. Keep your focus there. You know, we're not justified by works, but we are judged by works, by God. And then Christ's promise in verses 26 through 28. There are two promises. The first promise is that they would reign with Christ. And he who overcomes and keeps my works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations. He shall rule them with a rod of iron and they shall be dashed to pieces. like the potter's vessels. This is the whole concept that the saints will rule with Christ for all eternity. And he's quoting Psalm 2, of course, which speaks of Christ's rule over the nations. And then the second promise is the morning star. Remember last week it was a white stone and a new name. Now you have the morning star promised to the believers in that church. He's encouraging them. He's helping them to see how good Jesus Christ is. He's showing them his glory and his beauty. He says, I'll give him the morning star. You know, you can have Jezebel if you want. But how about the morning star? What would you two rather have? Peter, the Apostle in 2 Peter 1 talks about the morning star rising in your heart. This is that star, it's Jesus Christ. And then Christ's appeal, the last verse in this text, 29, he who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Hear what? Hear that there's a morning star for you, he's the bright and morning star. You know, Satan is also called the morning star in the Bible. He's the counterfeit star, he's the dim star, he's the cloudy, defiling, ugly star, he's most unhelpful, and he'll get you thrown on the sickbed if you follow him. But this star, the morning star of Jesus Christ shines He's the brightest. He's the most enlightening star. He's the most holy. He's the most beautiful. The most helpful. He is the most excellent. And this whole letter really is to call the whole church to that kind of holiness. To behold the voice of Jesus Christ. Not the voice of Jezebel. Shut off Jezebel from your life. And open up the windows of heaven. Let the light of that star shine in your life. Let it shine in the morning. and in the evening and all the time. So there you have it. You have this message to this church which was being infiltrated by a teacher and a teaching. Have you been infiltrated by a teacher or a teaching that's contrary to the word of God? Well, if you have, you know the way out. And if you haven't, you know what a blessing it is. The Lord Jesus Christ said in verse three of chapter one, I'll close with this. Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy and keep those things which are written in it. Would you pray with me? Oh Lord, we thank you for your voice in the church. Lord, we know that your word is your voice in this church. We pray that you would help us to understand it. Pray that you would help us to turn away from everything that hinders. Help us to identify and turn away from the teaching of Jezebel in the church today, however it might come. I thank you, Lord, for this church. I praise you that There are so many here who have not listened to Jezebel. Lord, I'm just so thankful for that. I pray that today would be a great day of encouragement and joy in your mercy and in your wisdom. In Jesus' name, amen.