Have you ever been a part of something too wonderful to comprehend? A couple years ago our family went to Cedar Point and my youngest was still getting used to roller coasters –a love for which my wife and I had developed since our youth and enjoyed two days as a part of our honeymoon. Nate wanted to ride the Rugaroo, so we boarded and sat next to each other. It didn’t take long and I was yelling, whooping, and telling my youngest, “Put your arms up,” and out of the corner of my eye I saw his arm DRIFT upward and back down. I looked over and the young guy was totally passed out!
So, have you ever been a part of something too wonderful for you? I get the impression from JOHN what he SAW and HEARD was too wonderful for him! In Revelation 1, John writes that it was on a Sunday, he was in the SPIRIT –and wouldn’t it be great if TODAY which is a SUNDAY that we can be in the SPIRIT too!
John states, I HEARD behind me a loud trumpeting voice…John then says, I TURNED to SEE
REV 1:12-16
And how did John respond? Like my youngest on a roller coaster!
REV 1:17-18 - When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. 18 I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.
In these few verses is the KEY to experiencing the presence of GOD in OUR worship service.
Author and speaker, JOHN BEVERE, shared about being at a conference in Brazil he was to speak. The worship team was leading the music and singing, but he did not feel the presence of God. Can you relate? Several of the speakers that day were reputable and known to be spirit-filled men and women. People were in the back walking in and out, getting food and drinks, in the crowd were those who were thumbing their phones, some in the back were laughing and having conversations on their phones, with one another, as if they were still waiting for a show to begin. This was all happening while the worship music was playing. Nothing changed when one of the leaders read from the Scripture just before John was to speak.
As John was introduced, the Holy Spirit spoke to him, “I want you to directly confront this.” So when John got to the pulpit with his translator, and he said nothing for a full minute. He just stood there and stared at the people. By the end of that time, the hum of confusion was silenced, all heads were turned toward the pulpit, and a respectful silence was rendered.
JOHN opened with these questions: How would you like it if you were meeting with a friend, sitting at a table, and all they did was ignore you, stared at the ceiling, or talked to the person next to them the whole time? He answered the question himself, “You wouldn’t like it would you?”
He asked another question, “What if every time you went to your neighbor’s house, you were greeted with the most unfriendly, uninviting face that either ignored you, or said, “Oh, it’s only you.” Would you continue to go to their house?” John answered for them, NO WAY!
Then he said, “Do you think the KING OF THE UNIVERSE is going to manifest HIS presence or speak in a place where HE is not honored or revered? But if some sports figure you like, or musician you enjoy, or public figure you respected stood up in front of you, you would be on the edge of your seat listening to every word. YET while God’s word was being read a moment ago, you paid no attention to it whatsoever.
John then preached for 90 minutes on the fear of the Lord. When he was finished he asked for those to stand who knew they had lost a fear and reverence for the Lord and wanted it back. 75% of those in attendance stood to their feet for prayer. But God didn’t wait for the prayer to move among those people.
What if God wanted to manifest HIS PRESENCE HERE to us this morning? Would you want that? Like a felt breeze, powerful but invisible, a presence was felt here that caused you to revere and respect the holiness growing in this place, like an unleashing of the Spirit from church camps gone by, fresh, freeing, and close.
John said there was a move of God before he prayed over those people. There was a move of God after he prayed over those people. And when he sat down the Spirit of God spoke to his heart and said, I am about to manifest myself one time in this place.”
Do you want to hear what happened? It might just be too much for you. One thing is for sure, God can do anything HE wants too, but history and Scripture show that when we resist Him, people miss out. When there isn’t a reverence and an awe for God and a fear and respect for God, IF GOD shows up, most will miss out on Him.
BUT if more of us would open ourselves to God and to His Spirit and to allowing our hearts to be shaken and freed from what holds them back, God would do the work we’ve wanted HIM to do for so long –and we would see it happen together.
Thyratira was the name of the church and they were having a revival! But like many churches advancing for the Lord, it came time to confront an evil that was being TOLERATED among the people. Somebody say TOLERATED.
What Christ has for you is so much better than any tolerance will ever give you. And I can tell you one thing: If you settle on temporary things in the here and now, you will never know the things God has prepared for those who love Him.
The message today is for you to be an overcomer in this life, you become a CONVINCED OVERCOMER.
REV 2:18-29 (one verse at a time) “the Son of God;” the only place in the book of Revelation this title is found.
It isn’t Apollo and it isn’t Zeus, or the emperor of Rome or the guardian deity of Thyatira, but the resurrected Christ, the true son of God, and he is speaking today! What did he look like?
Eyes like blazing fire and feet like burnished bronze.
Both descriptions are taken from the initial vision of chapter 1. In Daniel’s great vision of the last days, the celestial being appearing to him has “eyes like flaming torches” and “legs like the gleam of burnished bronze” (Dan 10:6).
It is really hard to make eye contact with your momma when she is questioning you and you’ve done something wrong! Really hard. Because you say just about anything without looking at her. But if you have to look at her, or worse, look straight into her eyes, you know she is going to see right through you.
The blazing eyes are the penetrating power of Christ’s ability to see right through you. Feet (or legs) like burnished bronze is how he stands - in strength and splendor, with an assurance and undeniability.
2:19 The glorified Christ is well aware of the deeds that characterize the Thyatiran church. They are listed as love, faith, service, and perseverance. The first two identify the motive forces of Christian activity, and the other two, the results that follow. While the love of the Ephesian church had decreased, the practical expression of love at Thyatira had grown (“you are now doing more than you did at first”). It was like having a mini revival!
2:20 But there was this woman in the church struggling for power. She is some sort of self-styled prophetess called Jezebel, whose seductive teachings had led some of the believers at Thyatira into fatal compromise with their secular environment.
When I was into scouting, I was a Cub Scout and Boy Scout leader, in the Sagamore Council here in Howard County area. Every so often we had to have Youth Protection Training and be certified again. In the training video, you learned about a tactic predators would use called, “grooming.” You ever heard of this?
In this context, GROOMING refers to the manipulative behaviors a perpetrator uses to build a relationship, trust, and emotional connection with a child and his parents, ultimately leading to abuse or exploitation. Grooming can happen with
ADULTS too.
Bible Trivia - Who was Jezebel? She is referred to by Jesus about this person at the church in Thyatira.
But if you know your bible history, Ahab was the king of Israel, who married a princess from Tyre. When they married, Jezebel brought with her all of the idols and idolatrous ways of Tyre and her priests with her to the throne in Israel. She soon controlled her husband, threatened Elijah the prophet, had a man killed for his property and vineyard.
The spirit of Jezebel lives on. It did in Thyatira. Does it here?
Listen to what the SPIRIT has to say to our church in Thyatira and here at our church today.
NASB 2:20 - calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads My bond-servants astray so that they commit sexual immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols.
These references indicate a parallel with the wicked queen of Ahab who fostered in Israel the idolatrous worship of the Canaanite Baal. In Thyatira, the economic life was dominated by trade guilds –it was like everybody had a yard sale in the front and back yards AND a statue with incense burning constantly in honor of the gods they trusted in. Yard sales were sacrfices to their gods.
Everybody did this! So if your life was touched by God through his true SON, and you didn’t have a yard sale any longer, and you took down your idol and you stop burning incense, your yard WOULD look different.
And WHY shouldn’t it? You NEED to understand that this is a central core tenant of a faith in Jesus, that when he SAVES you on the inside, you are going to look different on the outside!
I want to remind you of the story of a man who was saved in my home church. I was but a youth, but I knew this man as I saw him day after day when his kids got off the bus and he would be wearing his dingy white tanktop and drinking a can of beer every day and tipped it at the bus driver when his kids got off. Our pastor at the time would stop and visit that man. And ONE SUNDAY, I heard a man testifying in our church about the love and grace and goodness and the mercy of God and the joy he had was evident–and at first I didn’t recognize him. Then when I was told who it was I couldn’t believe it. I had to go and see for myself. And sure enough, it was that man.
Every Sunday he would stand and testify. And sure, it went long sometimes and I wish he would make it short and sweet, but I would never ask him to stop. It was real, it was authentic, it was challenging–but in time, he stopped. He started working with the youth ministry and one night I just asked him about it and why he didn’t stand and testify anymore. And he told me, people asked him to stop doing it.
Something had to change for our church to grow! He brought the change! And the Balaams and the Jezebels in the church felt challenged, like they were loosing the control they had and demanded him to be quiet.
People in the church need to recognize their failures, repent of them, and make amends. Christian converts are faced with the problem of compromising their stand –just enough to allow for the old, sinful ways to continue among the body - to not make a clean cut with the adultery of the society. To reject yard sales and burning incense and statues erected in the yard meant social isolation and economic hardship.
We need to be ready for any push back we might receive for our unwillingness to go along with the simple requirements of the trade guilds in our own society.
Jesus spoke to this church and is speaking to us today with a great severity about any such compromise. SINCE they were unwilling to repent as a church, their Jezebel was going to be judged –she and her little pack of people were going to suffer greatly for their adulterous activities and her children are to be struck dead (v. 23).
But the mercy of Jesus, first to speak to them to let them know what they could be doing better, what they need to be separating themselves from, and TIME to repent. There must have been many attempts made by the messenger of their church, and messages on the radio, and messages on TV and messages from dear godly friends over this period of time.
BUT SHE CHOSE NOT TO LISTEN. SHE was a leader in the church, SHE was known, well known, and SHE was a self proclaimed PROPHETESS, and SHE had followers. She LOOKED blessed.
Make no mistake, she was influencing the people of God to forsake their loyalty to God by promoting a tolerance toward and involvement with the old lifestyle of immorality and false religion among the people of God.
But under the leadership here at our church we will not be persuaded by what is popular and built upon unexamined assumptions. We are not going to be seduced into a compromise with what Jesus is so clearly against!
Jesus is challenging us last week and this week to take note of the false teaching happening by the lifestyles of the world that have made their way into the church–HIS CHURCH.
The fornication Jezebel was not willing to repent of was her adulterous alliance with the pagan environment. This causes me to think back to the days of high school, when you could be Christian at church, but act like those unbelievers at school. Or you can be a Christian at church, but act like those unbelievers at work. Is that too hard to see?
That’s the Jezebel spirit in the church! Listen, don’t be afraid of a Jezebel spirit or any spirit. There will be manifestations from time to time of unclean spirits seeking power here, but we can rest assured that GREATER IS HE WHO IS IN ME than he that is in the world!
The SPIRIT of GOD is holy, and we are holy as we obey and surrender to HIM and follow the Lamb of God, the one the book of Revelation teaches us about.
A JEZEBEL SPIRIT
Uses power to MANIPULATE
Uses power to DOMINATE and get her way.
GROOMS those around her to get them to think like she does, to FEEL like she does.
With each web she spins, the more layers are woven of DECEPTION.
Uses ISOLATION–she will pull you off to the side and spread her deceit so you can hear it straight from her.
Creates a big MESS bringing confusion and chaos –people just don’t know what to believe. And division happens–and the body becomes sick.
Rewards her followers by allowing them to be close to her
She becomes arrogant so you cannot correct her. You cannot challenge her. You cannot be a rival to her. Listen, the Jezebel spirit is controlled by another spirit. The spirit of the world, overseen by that ancient Dragon, the Serpent from Genesis days.
Jesus IS THE ONE WHO IS REALLY IN CONTROL and Jesus takes charge of this situation.
Have you ever heard the phrase: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God?” Hebrews 10:31.
She had been given time to repent, but had refused. Her bed becomes a hospital gurney and then a casket. Her feasts lead to sickness and pain. Disease is the punishment for the sin of accepting her views.
Listen, this punishment from Jesus would demonstrate that the one who searches the “hearts and minds” of people had found them guilty.
Each is to receive “according to [his or her] deeds.” Through the prophet Jeremiah, God expressed in the clearest of terms the principle of divine judgment: “I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve” (Jer 17:10).
REV 2:24–25 But what about those who didn’t fall for Jezebel’s teaching and lifestyle? Jesus did not lay an additional burden on them but challenged them with these words “hold on to what you have until I come.”
REV 2:26–27 “He who has an ear …” - the order has changed and the exhortation now follows the promise - “I will give.”
Authority over the nations and “the morning star” are promised to the overcomer –the one who does the will of Christ until the end. It is by faithful allegiance to the cause of Christ that believers overcome in the hostile environment of cultural values and practices.
Listen, there will be some hard times in life where you are going to try and have both what you want and what God wants, but you can’t have both. But you are going to try to do this. Those moments of temptation are to COMPROMISE and I am very familiar with them myself. But is there anyone else here who understands what I am trying to say?
To want what you know God doesn’t want for you, like that fruit on the tree Eve was made to look at by the evil serpent and he gives her “secret truths” and “deeper truths” –you won’t die, but God knows you will become like him!
And there are times we are tempted to become the god of our own lives, the controller of destiny, the ruler of time and space–and by some trickery of our own design, we try to fool ourselves and justify our actions to ourselves and everyone else with practiced mottos and phrases. Let me give you two of the greatest ones I have dealt with from time to time.
Nobody else will know; nobody else needs to know; this can remain a secret;
This doesn’t hurt anybody; nobody is going to get hurt; what does it matter? This only involves YOU. It isn’t anybody else’s business.
How would you address these lies with the truth?
When Satan speaks saying, Nobody else will know; nobody else needs to know; this can remain a secret.
–WHAT is really the TRUTH?
God knows. Be sure your sins WILL find you out.
And when SATAN speaks and says, Nobody is going to get hurt; What does it matter? You have a right to do this. You owe it to yourself. It isn’t anybody else’s business.
–WHAT is really the TRUTH?
You are not your own. You are a part of God’s whole family. You are a part of the temple of the living God. Be holy as I am holy.
Rev 2:26b–27 = Ps 2:8–9, interpreted messianically –that the followers of the Messiah would share in his final rule. But the word RULE actually means SHEPHERD and the wooden club capped with iron was to chase off the attacks of marauding beasts–we will be demon slayers with JESUS ya’ll!
Overcomers in Thyatira and our church have been upgraded in their status as true exorcists! Jesus gave that power to his disciples and tells us we will do more things than those things done while Jesus was on earth!
JESUS is TOTALLY into seeing the absolute power of the victorious Christ worked out in his followers over the rebellious nations. But we are not using a whip on people, but as Jesus spoke over PETER’S shoulder to that SPIRIT behind him, GET BEHIND ME EVIL SPIRIT! YOU do not DESIRE the eternal things of God, but only the temporal things of this life.
Christ has given YOU that authority –to the overcomer just as JESUS has received it from his Father.
REV 2:28 The overcomer is promised the morning star = Christ himself (Rev 22:16-I am the bright and morning star)
The wise man builds his house upon …what Jesus says and THAT HOUSE will stand against the coming storm of judgment –but that building is done by hearing and doing the word.
Later in this book of REV a satanic beast has access to devour God’s people through deceptive doctrine. John speaks about the beast and a “false prophet,” whose master the Devil. He is giving the Thyatirans believers this perspective and how the real characters in their church right then –those false teachers are trying to “lead them astray.” Do you think you could ever be led astray?
So what are you convinced of?
Are you really living by any convictions?
Let’s pray–but please don’t leave or check out at this time: Take a moment to really contemplate what the spirit is saying.
“He who searches the minds and hearts” is here today.
Christ’s “eyes like a flame of fire” pierces to the core of our being and is the basis for the judgment or reward that he renders. God WILL give to each according to her and his works.
Have you been teaching falsehood by your lifestyle?
Do you have a Jezebel spirit you need to repent of today?
God has given you time to repent. Are you hearing him?
The First week we learned that we need to keep coming back to Jesus, to keep coming back to our first love!
The second week we heard to overcome we must believe in Jesus 100% and fully trust him.
Last week we heard how to overcome by holding on as tight as we can to the WORD of God and to not be swayed by the flood of confusion in the world. We need to study it, memorize it, give our time to reading it every day, just like we do when it comes to meals and our food! It is the pure MANNA of Jesus we need, because we all know, that MAN SHALL NOT LIVE BY what? BREAD ALONE! BUT how? BY EVERY WORD of GOD!
And today, we learn we need to have convictions, so strong we do not TOLERATE a Jezebel spirit or any spirit to cause us to compromise what we KNOW to be the truth of God, given to us in HIS WORD, lived out BY JESUS, who we continue to come back to, and love, and surrender to, and give our lives to over and over again!
So I ask you today, are you CONVINCED? Do you have strong convictions about the WORD, about your GOD about your LOVE for Him? OR can you be easily persuaded, and moved, and tricked to compromise and tolerate a Jezebel spirit or a wayward spirit or a confusing spirit or and unclean, dark spirit that would lead you away from the PURE nature of your LORD AND SAVIOR???!!!
Have you surrendered ALL??? Most of the time when we sing that song, we sing it I SURRENDER ONE TENTH! I surrender 1/10th. 1/10th to Jesus I surrender. And I don’t mean to make light of this at all, but we HAVE TO become people who are in love with Jesus, fully believing in Jesus, completely filled with the trust in the WORD of God and FEAR Of GOD and have a deep conviction of HOLINESS UNTO THE LORD!
Take a moment and allow the presence of God to look inside your heart. Do you have a fear of God? Do you honestly reverence Him, or do you just like the idea of being able to say you do with your mouth but have no conviction whatsoever in your heart? LET HIM LOOK INSIDE!
JOHN BEVER said the third move of God among the people was such a move, that after 20 years he is still meeting people from that conference who are testifying to him about it –saying I WAS THERE IN BRAZIL WHEN WE HEARD THE WIND.
Do we need a fresh wind here at our church? To have an encounter with our holy God?
Jesus announced himself to the church and then declared his glory. With eyes as a flame of fire and get as burnished bronze.
Can you look into his face? He is inviting you to.
