Let's open our Bibles this morning to Revelation chapter 2 and find verse 18. Beginning this morning, and really for the next few Sundays, we're going to be looking at Jesus' words to the church at Thyatira. Thyatira was the tolerant church. G.K. Chesterton was right. He said, tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions. Now think about what he's saying here. If a man doesn't have any passionate convictions of good or bad, right or wrong, true or false, if there's nothing for which a man is willing to fight, then to be tolerant of those who do is about the closest thing to virtue in his life. You know, the word tolerant has changed. It's morphed over the years, especially in America. The original definition of tolerate means to put up with something. Today's cultural definition, if you hear the way the word tolerant or tolerate is used in the media, the modern cultural definition means something like openness or accepting without passing judgment. You just accept it. You not only accept it, but there's almost the idea of you have to like it today. That's what tolerant has come to mean. Nowhere is tolerance more dangerous than in the body of Christ regarding sin. The fourth church in our survey here of the seven churches is Thyatira. This was the sinfully tolerant church. And we're going to see why this tolerance elicits such a strong rebuke from the Lord Jesus. It's because Jesus cares for the spiritual well-being of His bride. Jesus loves the church. And in saying that, we also are saying that Jesus hates whatever hurts the church. He hates whatever destroys the church. Now, there's more said to this church by Jesus than any of the others. In fact, this is the longest of the seven letters. The whole letter covers verses 18 through 29, but this morning, for our official reading, I want to focus on verses 18 through 21, and that will really be the extent of the exposition this morning. In fact, I'll just barely get into verses 20 and 21, and I want to say more about that, Lord willing. next Sunday, but I want to encapsulate it and give you a little bit of a preview of where these verses are headed. But now, in honor of God and His Word, would you stand with me for the reading of these verses, Revelation chapter 2, verses 18 through 21. 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. Father, I pray that you would remind us of the battle that is at hand. And remind us that the battle is yours. And I pray that you would fight the fight of faith through your servants that you have called and chosen through the Lord Jesus Christ. And use this message this morning to embolden us in our faith. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Please be seated. In these four verses we have our Lord's introduction, really, to the church in Thyatira. They were really a mixed lot. There were some commendable activities being advanced and even increasing in this church, according to verse 19. However, there was also a systemic problem, a problem that outweighed every good deed in Thyatira. And before examining the first point, listen again as I read verses 18 and 19 as Jesus introduces himself to the church. Just hear it one more time. 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." Now here's the first point I want to make in the message. This is the first proposition. When a church is tolerant of ongoing sin, its loving deeds and active service will not spare it from the impending judgment of Jesus Christ. The idea here is judgment. Now, granted, that's taking the context of the whole letter and bringing it to bear on verses 18 and 19, because we're going to see that this church is compromising. There is sin in the church, and the fact that verse 19 tells us about the good things, that they were doing well, reminds us that we can do a lot of things well and still need correction as a church and still need to be reformed in that way by the Word of God. Now, let me make a very obvious observation. I've been reminded that I have a great grasp of the obvious sometimes. Sometimes the best thing you can do is to point out the obvious to start out with. But as a general observation, you'll notice that there were seven churches addressed by Jesus in Revelation 2 and 3. And of those seven churches, four of those churches were a mixed bag of good and bad. And this group, the four, characterizes the majority of churches in the world today. Most churches are a mixture of good qualities and bad qualities. Yet there were two churches on this list about which nothing bad was mentioned. No rebuke, only encouragement. That was Smyrna, which we have seen, and later Philadelphia. Only one church in this group receives no praise at all, and that's Laodicea. Now that's really a statement in and of itself. Even Sardis, the dead church, had one verse of praise. But of the four churches that we've studied so far in this little series, Thyatira is in the worst spiritual condition. They're still better than Laodicea, but we haven't gotten there yet. But so far in our progression, it's never been as spiritually bad in a church than it is here at Thyatira. We've talked about cultures that were worse outside the church, but now it's really bad inside the walls of the church. So Jesus identifies himself up front as the Son of God. Now that's a rare thing. In fact, this is the only place in all of Revelation where the title Son of God is used. It's a clear reference to his deity. I read one commentary that said this is practically the same as the title Messiah, but the more I've researched this, I've learned that in a Jewish mindset, for Jesus to say that He is the Son of God actually has a lot more weight than the title Messiah alone. Because in the Jewish mindset, they had been steeped in the Old Testament, and they understood that God would send his Messiah. They believed that the Messiah would come, but they believed that God's anointed one would be like another David. Like a human ruler that God would empower to deliver his people from political oppressors like Rome. Never in the Jewish mindset did they conceive that the Messiah would be God himself. That was a totally new thought that had not been introduced until the ministry of Jesus. They had no idea that the Messiah was going to be God in human form, who would come to them, die on a cross for their sins, and deliver them from the ultimate evil, which is separation from God. their sin. That's the deliverance that they didn't see coming. And so this title is very weighty. Now the significance of the title is key to understanding the religious culture in Thyatira. By using this reference, Jesus is likely alluding to his supremacy over their city's chief idol. All these cities have idols, right? We've seen so many of those in our study already. But the local god here was named Tyremnus. That was the main local idol. The worshipers of Tyremnus called him a son of the gods. That was their title. His image was stamped on the city coins. And the image of him on the coins of the city were of a warrior riding a horse and wielding a two-edged battle axe in judgment. Oh, he was mighty. It was a picture of a mighty deliverer, referring to himself as a son of the gods. According to one author, the city also had a unique temple to Apollo. That's another one of the Greek gods. He was the sun god. And that explains, perhaps, why the Lord introduced Himself here as the Son of God. He is the Son of God, and He is, in fact, God in the flesh. So if society here in Thyatira thinks Tyrimnus is to be feared in His judgment, well, Jesus employs His own terms of judgment. That's what eyes like a flame of fire and feet like burnished bronze symbolize. These are images of judgment. These are figures that both have to do with the allusion to judgment. In my notes, I've circled the words eyes and feet. Notice that those are two parts of the body that Jesus refers to. Eyes being part of the uppermost part of the body, and feet referring to the lowermost part of the body. It's like a consummate description. He is describing himself from the top to the lowest part of his body. Now keep in mind, each image here that Jesus uses is from John's earlier description in chapter 1. So every time Jesus addresses one of these churches, he picks the precise imagery that is most suitable to that church because of what they're dealing with. For Thyatira, the imagery is in the context of judgment, and here's why. Beginning with the title, Son of God, the emphasis again is on His deity. Jesus is not coming to Thyatira in the role of a sympathetic high priest. He is coming as their divine judge. And when we get into the rest of the letter, you're going to see why. He's not coming for their comfort. He's coming to warn them of impending judgment. This is a compromised, adulterous church and they must immediately repent. There's a problem, we're going to see, with their leadership. There's a problem with their authority and what they accept as authoritative. There's also a reference here, as we mentioned, to eyes like a flame of fire. That's John's way of telling us that the eyes of Jesus are piercing. They are penetrating eyes. He sees everything. There's nothing that is unknown to Jesus. Nothing is disguised, nothing is covered, nothing is hidden from Jesus. Later in Revelation 19, verse 12, Jesus is described at the second coming with this description, His eyes are a flame of fire. and upon his head are many diadems, and he has a name written upon him which no one knows except himself." Now in the context of judgment, here's what this image is telling us. This is telling us that at the judgment, no one is going to be able to excuse their sin and their disobedience by claiming that Jesus has misunderstood them. You don't have all the facts, Jesus. If you only knew what I really meant, or if you only knew what my motive was. He's saying here, that is null and void. There are no excuses that will hold at the judgment. Jesus says, I know everything. That's what this image, eyes like a flame of fire, is telling us. There are no errors in judgment based on a misunderstanding by Jesus. He has consummate, perfect understanding. He not only knows what you have done, He knows what you have not done, He knows what you could have done, He knows all the contingencies. And yet Jesus goes even further with His imagery. We've noticed His eyes, now notice His feet. His feet are like burnished bronze, and in both of these images he uses the word like. Note that Revelation is full of symbolic language, like. It's a simile. It's where you're comparing things, and it's used often in symbolic language. Now let me explain a little bit about how we use similes. This will help you when you're going through prophetic literature. Even as the sword of his mouth that we referred to previously is symbolic, this reference here to feet like bronze is also symbolic. So he's not talking about actual bronze feet or an actual sword with a metal blade in his mouth. Rather, the referent for each of these images is real. It's very real. But the symbol merely points to that reality. Like when someone says of a judge, he's going to throw the book at that defendant. That's symbolic language. That doesn't mean an actual book is going to be hurled in the direction of the guilty party. Rather, it usually means every charge will be brought to bear and the stiffest penalty will be incurred. The image is symbolic, but the reference behind the image is very real. Now in the city of Thyatira, there were many trade guilds. Whenever you have a lot of trade guilds in an ancient city, that invariably points to a concentration of idolatry. They made idols for a living. And all of these guilds had like a cottage industry of idol production. That's how they made most of their money. Because there was a constant need to produce idols and supply the demand of polytheism. One powerful trade union in Thyatira was the Bronze Guild. That was one of the major guilds in this city. And now that Christ's feet are described as burnished bronze suggests at least two things to me when I think about why Jesus used that image in this context. Why do you think he said that? Well, two of the things that jump out to me is that if they made all of their idols of bronze, or at least they had a large contingency of bronze idols, and they're bowing down and they're worshiping these mute, deaf, stupid idols, these pieces of metal, and Jesus says, my feet are bronze. What does that suggest to you, first of all, in the context of where your worship should be? I think he's saying, among other things, that his feet are more worthy of worship than what you're calling an idol, than what you're worshiping as a dumb God who cannot deliver you. The feet of Jesus are more worthy of adoration than any handmade idol. Second, it suggests that his feet are protected from all attempts at retaliation. Keep in mind that bronze is also a medal of warfare. It's a warrior medal. Warriors use bronze in battle. You've heard of bronze greaves. If you read the Old Testament, you remember that sometimes warriors protected their feet and their legs wearing bronze greaves. And they did this, and Christ is saying, I do this to trample over my enemies. And so Christ's judgment is sure and final, and he's using these battle images to describe himself. There's no plea bargaining, there's no retaliation. This is really terrifying battle imagery of severe judgment to get Thyatira's attention, and ours as well. In our context, it would be like Jesus describing himself as having all the power of every nuclear arsenal in the world. Now that pales in comparison to the true power of Jesus. When you look at what Jesus is actually going to do to the planet in Revelation, you're going to see that it's actually more destructive than all the nuclear arsenals in the world combined. It's going to be a conflagration of fire. Jesus is going to destroy it before he creates the new heaven and the new earth. But as the perfect judge, Jesus also knows every mitigating factor. Now that's either a great comfort to you or it's a great concern. I hope it's a great comfort to you as a believer. Because even a sinful church under impending judgment can have good deeds. And that's what verse 19 teaches us. Look again at verse 19. He says, I know your works. your love and faith and service and patient endurance and that your ladder works exceed the first. Now that doesn't sound so bad. It actually sounds like they're on the upswing. They're making improvement. They're better than they were at the first. From this description, we also see that Thyatira was almost like the exact opposite of Ephesus. Remember what we saw when we studied Ephesus? In Ephesus, They were very orthodox, they were theologically correct, and they were also intolerant of evil, and yet they had misprioritized their love for Christ. But in Thyatira it was just the opposite. They were loving, they were indulgent, they were tolerant, but at the price of doctrinal fidelity. So they had forsaken a true authoritative system of what the church should look like in the name of tolerance. They were just sort of easygoing, just open arm for everything and everyone, every message was given an equal hearing. And so Jesus is about to severely warn this church, notwithstanding the deeds in verse 19. This serves to amplify what our Lord Jesus takes most seriously in this church and in every church that is called by his name. In the way the letter is ordered and arranged, Jesus is telling them and us that good deeds and love and faith and service and perseverance and all the admirable works are commendable. In other words, there's nothing wrong with that. He's not saying you have to stop that. Every church should desire to have these marks. But there's something Jesus requires above these things. And note, I said above these things, not instead of these things. It's not an either or. For us, it's a both and. We need to have these works. We need to have love. We need to have service and faith, patient endurance. And we need to be improving, but that's not enough. We need to go beyond that. Even here, order and priority make all the difference. First of all, any healthy church begins with truly converted people. That's the bottom line. The entry into the church, truly, is being born again, born of the Spirit. That's the entry point of the true church. So we need to have truly converted people who are committed to the written Word of God as their standard of authority, who are also scrupulous about the spiritual qualifications of its leaders. Not that any leader of the church is perfect. I mean, the leaders of the church are fellow sheep. All the leaders of the church have a great shepherd in the Lord Jesus. But those who are appointed to leadership must meet certain qualifications that are clearly spelled out in Scripture. And no matter how low the church tries to set the bar, culture is pushing that bar lower every day, every year. It seems the culture is driving the bar of what the church accepts and embraces as leadership principles even lower. And that's a major issue here in Thyatira, and that's why I think I have to mention it here. And I want to spend just a few moments explaining what leadership is in the church, because that's what was wrong in Thyatira. So think a moment about the importance of spiritual leadership in the church. And I want you to see how this directly applies to the problem in Thyatira. Consider the uniqueness of the church. What institution or organization or organism on the face of the earth is like the church? It is unique. The church is not like any other institution on earth. All analogies in comparison to business models ultimately break down. The church is not a business. But in recent years, the visible church has just about jettisoned all the biblical principles for its leaders and has actually started embracing business principles to govern the church. Members are now compared to customers and clients. Marketing has replaced the exposition of Scripture. In fact, that's why many pastors in America are starting to look less like pastors and shepherds and more like CEOs. When I think of a shepherd, the word professional sounds incongruous. A professional shepherd? That just doesn't go together. And yet, so many of the men who do what I do for a living crave and hunger for that status that society gives to men who are called professionals. And, you know, John Piper wrote the book, Brethren, We Are Not Professionals. That's a book to help remind people who preach that you're not going to have the status that the world accords to businessmen, men who are executives and CEOs, men who influence the temporal world with great power. You're not going to have that prestige, nor should you seek it. You should not seek those great things. Now folks, this is something that I believe the enemy of the church would love to intoxicate pastors with, is the idea that they should crave and pursue prestige in the world so that you can look big. And you can justify it in your mind by saying, if I just had more respect and clout in my culture, then I could draw more people to Christ. Then I could preach to a larger crowd. And all of these things begin to ponder through a man's mind. You should see the volumes of marketing literature that comes to me here at the church. Just volumes of mail that I get every week. Just stacks and stacks of mail with information on it that is not worth the paper it's printed on. It's just destined for nothing but the garbage can. And when I think about what the church is being taught and how leaders are being influenced by the world, I'm astonished. And I have to be reminded every day that my job is not to look like the world in terms of a business CEO. I will never resemble that if I'm a faithful shepherd. In fact, I'm going to be the off-scouring of people who have had such success if I do what Jesus has told me to do. They're going to look down on me. And I have to say, that's part of the call. That's part of it. Frankly, I don't believe, notwithstanding all of the acumen that some of these businessmen have, I don't believe that Jack Welch or Rudolph Giuliani or Donald Trump can better tell me how to feed Christ's sheep. I've never found anything that matches the New Testament for an order for the church. It is so clear. It is so powerful that if we actually applied the New Testament, it would transform the church and it would influence the culture. It really would. If we believed every word that is written in God's book, it would transform us so much, I doubt our friends would recognize us. If we truly believed what is written in the Word of God, Now our culture tends to look at a man's business qualifications as evidence of his spiritual leadership. But Jesus doesn't. Jesus gets very candid with his leaders. He gets into our personal lives. Jesus bypasses the business office and he goes straight to our homes. Jesus goes to the kitchen and the living room and the bedroom and he says, this is the litmus test of your qualification as a leader in my house. Jesus looks at the man's private character and how he manages his home and his children. According to Jesus, that's the primary evidence of the way he's going to deal with the members of the church. Now that hurts. Those are vulnerable areas in every leader's life. And it's a daunting thing to think that Jesus says that's the first order of business for a leader is his home. Listen to what Paul wrote to Timothy in 1 Timothy 3, verses 4 and 5, where he lists among the necessary earmarks of a qualified elder that, quote, he must manage his own household well, with all dignity, keeping his children submissive. For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church? He won't. That's the implied answer. It's a negative response that's implied. He won't. Such a man will not be able to take care of the church of God if his family is without godly management. And much the same thing is required for deacons, down in verse 12 and following in that same chapter. Now throughout Christian history, there have been many gifted men who are otherwise qualified and equipped for spiritual leadership, except for this one thing, the home. And I've seen it so many times, both when I was sitting as a member in the church watching leadership from the pew, as well as when I have been in pastoral leadership. I have seen and have learned and been so honored to know men who are qualified for leadership in the church who have voluntarily recused themselves because of their home life. They've said, I need to take care of my children. I need to get my life in order at the home. And I respect that so much because that is so unlike the world. And even when a man does that, even when your home life is not everything that it should be, and whose is? Whose is? But when you recognize that and you have the potential for leadership, your stock soars. I mean, you are doing exactly what a faithful leader would do. Faithful leaders spend more time paying attention to what Jesus requires of them than they spend looking at titles or status. And by the way, I'm very grateful at this church that the men I serve with are like that. They're men who do take the Word of God seriously. what I'm saying does not apply to our particular situation, but it certainly applies broadly to the church. And the awareness and submission that a man has of his fitness honors God. You know, it's bad enough to have a home in disarray with children practicing open immorality, but to add the sin of holding a position in church leadership only compounds that offense before God. The church must give up its love affair with pragmatism. The church in America must give up its love affair with pragmatism. We want to be so practical so that a man who is disqualified at home says, well, let's be practical. How many times have I heard that? Let's be practical. You know, don't, don't put all these heavy, emotional, spiritual burdens on me. Nobody's perfect, right? So what difference does it make? Well, it makes a lot of difference. And the fact that we're not perfect does not mean that we can jettison the dictates that Jesus has given in His Word. Now, that may be hard to hear, but the Lord commands it. And when we do fall short, and all of us do, we must continue to strive to meet those qualifications. We should never think that we're doing God a favor by serving in leadership. I've seen some people have that attitude, well, I'm doing God a favor. He needs me. No, He doesn't. Jesus doesn't need us. He uses us. But He does so for His own glory. And Jesus can bury me today and go on with His work. And the world will not miss me. Jesus will continue His work with or without me. I want to be faithful. And you do too. You want to be faithful in what He's called you to do. Thyatira was failing at this level. Everything I've said for the last five to ten minutes is where they were failing. They were failing at the level of leadership because they had jettisoned the authority of apostolic teaching. So they had major leadership problems, and they were tolerant of sin, and this is a warning for all churches. Doctrinal fidelity and Christ-centered community are are both part of a healthy body of believers. And since God has created all of us with various gifts and abilities, He has ordained a plurality of biblically qualified elders and deacons to resemble, with the rest of the church, the many parts of a healthy body. That means there are no unimportant members in the body of Christ. Every member of the body is important. Every member of the body plays a part in a healthy body. You know, it's sad when we see people who have, because of various reasons of disease or illness or paralysis, have lost the use of certain parts of their body. And it's really sad when we see that played out in the church, when the church has large pockets of paralysis among the membership, where we see people who can function who, for whatever reason, are not. And the leaders of a church want to see that change. The leaders of the church want to nurture and nourish the church and help bring those members back into a functioning order. That's what we want at this church. We want all of you to have a role in the church. Even though my role is more public, it's not more important than the other roles that go on in the church. I'm just the front man, and most of the things that keep this church going have nothing to do with me. It has to do with the people who work faithfully behind the scenes, many of whom do not get any notice from week to week, but we are so grateful that they do what they do. Every member is needed. Every part of the body working with the others according to their gifts as governed by His Word. You see, Thyatira allowed corrupt leadership to influence the church and it led to this most severe rebuke of all the churches so far. Now look back at Revelation chapter 2 verses 20 and 21. I just want to get into this a little bit and again I'll continue this thought, Lord willing, next Sunday. Jesus says, 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. Just this morning as I was reviewing my notes, I did another word study on teaching and seducing. Those words jumped out. They're verbals. These are both participles. Teaching is the common word for teaching, but that word seducing really caught my attention. You remember the word plenao from James when we talked about what plenao means? How it's where they named the planets using this verb because they were the wandering lights. Plena'o means to lead astray, to deceive, or to cause one to wander, to wander from the truth. That's the idea. The editors of our English Standard Version have translated that verb with one of the most strong English translated words using the word seduce. Seducing. And why did they do that? Because of the context. It's in the context of leading someone astray or deceiving them into sexual immorality where the word seduce makes perfect sense. That's a beautiful way to translate this form of plenao. She was teaching them and seducing them. And so here's the second point I want you to note. When a church is tolerant of corrupt leadership, it breeds apostasy and rampant immorality among the people. Now the rest of this letter from Jesus to Thyatira deals with three different groups. First, there's a woman referred to as Jezebel because of her idolatry and her immorality. Second, there's her devoted followers in the church who do her bidding and follow her example. They are referred to by Jesus as her children. And third, there are those who haven't sinned directly who are exhorted to overcome and hold fast until he returns. Now Jesus has something to say to each of these groups in the rest of this letter to Thyatira. The issue we're going to examine, Lord willing, next week is, what happens when a church is surrounded by a corrupt culture which threatens to destroy one of two things? It's either going to destroy your livelihood and you're going to lose your career, or it's going to destroy your faith. And you have to choose between those two. Am I going to keep my job? Am I going to stay alive with the temporal things I need? Or am I going to keep my faith? That's what it came down to for these people. And the next question is, how should the church respond when the culture creeps into the church, into their leadership in unbiblical roles and heretical teaching, are tolerated by the congregation? And what does Jesus say when apostasy and immorality begin to spread through the church like a cancer that is metastasized? What does he say? That was all in play when Jesus spoke these words. And the answer he gives is very clear. Jesus always has the final word on every subject, especially within the church. It's a call to repentance. And he's going to spell out exactly what that looks like. The words of Chesterton are going to come to bear in the church of our day. as it came to bear in Thyatira and elsewhere." Remember what Chesterton said? He said, tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions. We're going to learn from Jesus that such tolerance is really just another name for sin. And as always, the battle is really the Lord's. It's not our battle. Don't make it a personal thing. But remember that God fights His battle through His faithful people. And we are, as we sang earlier, like soldiers of Christ. And the call to you and to me this morning is for us as soldiers of Christ to arise in the strength that He makes available through faith. The battle is the Lord's. Well, let's close in prayer. Father, I do pray that You would deliver Your people, not just in our own area, but around the world, from the spirit of the age, that we may embrace the truth of Your Word and find life and joy forevermore. In Jesus' name, Amen.