Don’t Bow to the World
Sermon 4 in the Series “You’ve Got Mail”
Chuck Sligh
July 31, 2011
For the PowerPoint for the sermon, write me at chucksligh@hotmail.com.
Intro and a few key ideas adapted from Jim Drake’s sermon, Behind Closed Doors.
TEXT: Please turn to Revelation 2:18
INTRODUCTION
Illus. – Sometimes, the contents a single letter can change a person’s life forever.
* You’re going to graduate from high school and you’ve applied to a prestigious college that can impact your future permanently—and the envelope with the name of the college embossed on it arrives from the admissions department.
* You’ve been accused of a crime you did not commit and the jury has returned with a verdict and you stand with baited breath for the judge to open the envelope and read the verdict inside—guilty or not guilty.
Many envelopes we receive are just regular, ho-hum, run-of-the mill mail that you throw away by the hundreds every year. But then you get that one that makes you stop in your tracks—a letter from an old high-school buddy, or a job offer from a coveted employer, or maybe just a note from a friend, family member or spouse who’s been away. We open those letters with great anticipation and excitement.
I wonder if that’s how the church of Thyatira felt when they received this message from the Lord by way of the apostle John in Revelation 2:18-26.
It’s interesting to note that this message is the longest letter of the seven, but written to the smallest city mentioned in these chapters.
Although in it Jesus commends the church for some things, this is one of those flaming letters.
Illus. –It’s kind of like one of those emails you get that are all in capital letters with multiple exclamation points scattered throughout. In his message to Thyatira, Jesus is red hot mad. Let’s see why this morning.
First, a little background on the city and the situation the church was facing. Thyatira was different from all the big cities Jesus has addressed so far. The others were sophisticated, wealthy, cosmopolitan metropolises, whereas Thyatira was your typical small town with a lot of blue-collar manufacturing. It was full of working class folks who worked in a variety of industries, the most important of which revolved around textiles. It’s amazing how similar the working folks of Thyatira were to working folks today. They were known for a couple of things:
* First, they were known for their trade guilds, which were kind of early labor unions. – So they were working men and union men.
* Second, like a lot of workingmen today, they weren’t very religious. The church at Thyatira wasn’t persecuted like the other churches we’ve seen so far because the people of Thyatira didn’t really care what you worshipped. They weren’t into all that religious stuff. They were too busy working hard and playing hard.
And play hard they did. Each of the trade guilds regularly held meetings. The meetings would go like this: Spend a little time paying tribute to the pagan god of their guild; then spend a little time taking care of business; and then spend a lot of time drinking and partying. And the partying always included sexual immorality.
That’s where the Christians from the church at Thyatira ran into problems. As Jim Drake said, “Thyatira wasn’t an open shop”—to use union jargon. In other words, you had to be a member of a trade guild to work there, and if you were in a trade guild, you had to participate in the meetings. The right thing for the believers there to do would’ve been to sacrifice their personal comfort and welfare for the sake of Jesus and refuse to participate in the pagan guilds and refuse to engage in their immoral practices. Of course that would have meant they wouldn’t have been able to work a trade.
That’s the context of the message to the church in Thyatira. Now let’s look at the message to Thyatira:
I. NOTICE FIRST THAT JESUS APPLAUDS THE CHURCH – Verses 18-19 – “And unto the angel of the church in Thyatira write; These things saith the Son of God, who hath his eyes like unto a flame of fire, and his feet are like fine brass; 19 I know thy works, and charity [love], and service, and faith, and thy patience, and thy works; and the last to be more than the first.”
Wow!—I think this is the most effusive praise so far given to any of these seven churches. Unlike the believers in Ephesus who had lost their love, the church in Thyatira is commended for their love. This was a church family that understood what mattered most to God! They genuinely loved God and one another. They were building relationships with each other, carrying each other’s burdens, serving one another, experiencing fellowship with God and each other. And their love was continuing to grow, for Jesus says that their last works exceeded their first works.
And it wasn’t just their loving service that was increasing.
* Jesus also noticed their FAITH. Is your faith (that is, your level of trust in Jesus) showing constant growth?—Theirs was! They were learning to trust Jesus more and more, and not to “lean on their own understanding.” Their faith was stronger and bolder as their relationship with Jesus grew deeper.
* And they showed PATIENT ENDURANCE. In other words, they were dependable, reliable and consistent. Whenever the church doors were opened, they were there. Whenever something needed done, they volunteered. They had a spot on a pew worn in the shape of their own bottoms, but they were always willing to slide over for someone new.
Yet all was not well in the church of Thyatira…
II. NOTE NEXT THAT JESUS ACCUSES THE CHURCH – Verse 20 – “Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.”
This was indeed a great church, but no church is perfect in every way. Because a church is made up of imperfect people, despite all the good it does, there’ll always be ways the church should be better.
The problem in Thyatira was similar to the church of Pergamum last week: they tolerated a false teacher who taught things that spawned wicked behavior. Jesus calls her “Jezebel,” which most probably was not her real name. Jesus used an Old Testament personage to express his feelings about this woman. The believers in Thyatira would quickly make the association.
The original Jezebel was the pagan wife of King Ahab in the Old Testament. She was the epitome of wickedness and immorality, causing her husband to provide places of worship to idols. Then she turned on the prophets of God, having hundreds killed. She must have had a demonic streak because she scared the living daylights out of the great prophet Elijah. He’d defeated the prophets of Baal in an ASTOUNDING display of God’s power on Mount Carmel, but when he heard Jezebel was after him, he high-tailed it to the desert quicker than a policemen looking for a donut.
So Jezebel is a symbol of an idolatrous, treacherous, immoral woman, and once the believers in Thyatira put two and two together about who Jesus was referring to in their congregation, I bet there were gasps throughout the congregation that Sunday.
Scholars aren’t sure about everything she taught, but apparently her teaching was similar to that of the doctrine of Balaam and the doctrine of the Nicolaitans that were tolerated in the church of Pergamum. These doctrines taught that the body and the spirit were like separate compartments and you could worship idols and commit fornication in the pagan feasts with the body, but worship Jesus with your spirit. Something like this was also apparently what Jezebel taught, based on verse 20.
The believers in Thyatira faced a tough situation: Do their little worship thing at the trade guilds to the guild’s god and stick around and be part of the immorality that followed…or to refuse to attend and lose their trade, and thus their livelihood.
It’s easy for us to see how wicked these things are today, but faced with the consequences of being blacklisted professionally, unemployment and ostracism by not participating, you might find it attractive if someone claimed to be from God said, “You can have your cake and eat it too”—you can participate in the sinful deeds of culture around you and still be a good Christian.
You can understand the attractiveness of this kind of teaching—but it was WRONG! Jesus was FURIOUS that the church of Thyatira, despite all the good it did, tolerated false teaching and gross sin.
III. WHICH LEADS TO MY THIRD POINT: IN VERSES 21-23 JESUS PROUNOUNCED AN ANATHAMA ON JEZEBEL. – “And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not. 22 Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds. 23 And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works.”
In the message to the church of Pergamum, Jesus called on the believers there to repent before He had to pronounce judgment on them.
But it was too late for Jezebel. Jesus had given her time to repent and she wouldn’t, so now she faced His wrath. So Christ pronounces judgment on this prophetess, saying in verse 22 that her bed of sin will become a bed of sickness.
Jezebel’s window of opportunity to repent had passed, but those under her influence still had time to turn from her teaching.
You know what?—Jezebel’s judgment ought to be sobering to us with regarding our own sin. God IS a God of love and mercy, but He DOES NOT TOLERATE SIN. God help us to seek His mercy and forgiveness and to root out sin in our lives.
IV. NEXT, IN VERSES 24-25, JUSUS ADVISES THE FAITHFUL REMNANT – “But unto you I say, and unto the rest in Thyatira, as many as have not this doctrine, and which have not known the depths of Satan, as they speak; I will put upon you none other burden. 25 But that which ye have already hold fast till I come.”
Thank God, not everyone had fallen for this false teacher. To these faithful saints Jesus advises them to hold fast till He returned. He’s saying, “Don’t give in to the sinful demands of culture. Don’t answer the siren call of the world. Stay true to me until I come back.”
V. FINALLY, JESUS ASSURES THE OVERCOMERS IN VERSE 26 – “ And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations.”
As with the other churches, Jesus promises that believers who are overcomers in this life who remain faithful in the midst of false teaching and sinful behavior, and continue his works to the end will receive a reward in the New Heaven and the New Earth. Those who are NOT overcomers will be deprived of the special recognition and honor that come to those who were faithful in this life.
CONCLUSION
Well, that’s message number 4 in our series on Jesus’s messages to the seven churches of Asia. Now what can we take away with us from this message?
I think that we need to see something very clear in all these messages so far. If you’ll notice, there’s a common thread that really got Jesus hot under the toga. In the churches of Ephesus, Pergamum and Thyatira, they had all fallen sway to the perverse teachings of Balaam, the Nicolaitans and this false teacher Jezebel, and Ephesus too had been confronted by the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, though they had censured it. The common thread that ties all three of these false teachings together is this: They all tried to assimilate wicked things from their culture into Christianity so as to avoid the stigma of Christ.
Not everything in culture is evil.
* Some things in culture are GOOD, like much good art and music, patriotic events, and so on, which the Christian can participate in with a good conscience.
* Some things in culture are NEUTRAL, like what style of music you or like what hairdo is the “in” thing right now—those kinds of things.
* But some things in our culture are clearly evil—its sensuality, its pleasure-seeking, its materialism, its drunkenness and wicked revelry, its rebellion against authority. It’s these things that we should not participate in, that we should not accommodate with, that we should not approve of. When we’re asked to participate in sinful activities or do things that go against our conscience, we have to draw a line in the sand and stand against it, even if it means loss or persecution or ridicule.
Illus. – I’m sure you’ve all seen the movie Chariots of Fire, the true story of British athlete Eric Liddell who was in the 1924 Olympics and who later spent the rest of his life as a missionary to China. Liddell was faced with an ethical dilemma: He was scheduled to race on the Lord’s Day, which violated his deeply held conviction that the Lord’s Day should be set apart and holy and a day of rest. But the culture even then said, “Naw, Sunday is just another day at the Olympics.”
He said, “I cannot race on the Lord’s Day and I will not.” This decision led to extreme pressure upon him—all the way from the King down—for him to violate his convictions and race on the Lord’s Day. But Liddell stood firm against the onslaught of pressure and negative media coverage, to the dismay of millions of Olympic fans.
But he was allowed by the Olympic committee to compete in a different running event. Amazingly, though he had not trained for it, he was victorious [PAUSE]—in more ways than one.
He emerged from the games a moral champion as well as an Olympic gold medalist. Liddell explained to his sister once why he was postponing going to the mission field so he could compete in the Olympics. He said, “I believe God made me for a purpose, but He also made me fast.” He entered the arena of the world, but he never bowed to it.
There’s no foolish Jezebel in our church calling people to go out and get drunk at a unit function and commit fornication as part of that function and then just show up for Sunday School and church and everything will be hunkey-dorey. But don’t be fooled! You’re faced with the temptation to compromise your stand for Christ every single day. When you face that temptation, remember James 4:4: “…know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.”
Believer, don’t tolerate sin in your life and don’t accommodate your behavior to the world. Live holy and faithfully for our Lord Jesus Christ until He returns and be a friend of God.
