There Are Some Things About Me You Ought To Know Series

AM Sermon preached at Central Christian Church October 22, 2006

The Letter to the Church at Thyatira Rev. 2:18-29

[SERIES SLIDE ---will automatically advice through the TITLE SLIDE to a blank slide] "There Are Some Things You Should Know About Me…”

We’ve all seen television shows and movies where a guy or girl has just started getting serious about having a relationship with this special someone and that special someone introduces the bomb they’re about to drop on them with the words, “Before we allow things to go any further between us, there are some things you really ought to know about me.”

Reminds me of this joke Wayne Smith tells about this guy who went to the Opera and fell in love with the leading lady. She had a wonderful, beautiful stage presence. She had this gorgeous long brown hair flowing down her back. She had a pearly white smile and a nice shapely figure. And sing? Boy could she ever sing. She had the voice of an angel. Enamored by this woman, the guy attended every performance, every night. And after about the third night, she couldn’t help but notice this man. What with the bravos and ovations and flowers he kept sending her way---and the front row seats he somehow kept managing to get---she had to notice him. At the first performance on the last night the man sent a note to the woman, a marriage proposal and to his delight she accepted. They were wed after the last performance. They went out to dinner and later arrived at their honeymoon suite. As she was hovering over the gifts they’d received the man went into the restroom and put on his pajamas. He came out, slipped under the covers and sheepishly said, “honey why don’t join me?” She said, sure darling, but I need to get ready first. She went and stood in front of the mirror---and whoosh---much to the man’s surprise off came the long flowing brown hair. She leaned over and filled a glass with water and then “plop, plop.” She dropped her dentures in it. At that the man let out an audible gasp. She turned and saw his ashen face and said, “I guess there’s a few things I should have told you about me.” He muttered, “a few? You mean there’s more?” “Well,” she said, “there’s the false eye lashes and the girdle.” He managed to choke out “Anything else?” “Just the artificial leg” To which he responded, “Please, please turn off the light and sing. Sing, honey, sing!”

The scriptures pull no punches when it comes to God wanting to have a serious relationship with us. We matter so very much to God. He loves us and invites us to love Him back. Only with Him He’s decided there won’t be any last minute or after the fact announcements. God wants us to know up front what He’s like. That’s one of the reasons Jesus took on human form and walked among men for 3 plus decades. And that’s one of the reasons God gave us the Bible. It’s also I believe one of the reasons God wrote the letter to the church at Thyatira. God was inviting the people there to take their relationship with Him to new deeper levels.

I encourage you to listen and follow along as I read Jesus’ letter to the church at Thyatira. It’s found in Revelation 2:18-29.

Read Scripture passage... [SCRIPTURE SLIDES]

18"To the angel of the church in Thyatira write:

These are the words of the Son of God, whose eyes are like blazing fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze. 19 I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first. 20 Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols. 21 I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling. 22 So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. 23 I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds. 24 Now I say to the rest of you in Thyatira, to you who do not hold to her teaching and have not learned Satan’s so-called deep secrets (I will not impose any other burden on you): 25 Only hold on to what you have until I come. 26 To him who overcomes and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations—