When The Church Put Up With What It Should Have Put Out Series

The Church on Trial Pt. 4

When the Church Put Up With What It Should Have Put Out

Revelation 2:18-23

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.

I want to use as a thought on today again as we continue this series entitled the church on trial. But I want to use as a sub-topic if you will “When the Church put up with what is should have put out.”

My brothers and sisters, when a person is given credit, they are usually told when they have credit through Sears, Macy’s, Visa, etc… what the credit limit is. Whereas they are saying you can spend up to here, but that’s it. When a person gets car insurance, they give you insurance to insure your car. But after so many tickets and accidents, they say that is it. Normally what follows after a sequence of tickets and accidents and failure to pay and all that other stuff, there is a notice that you have been cancelled or terminated.

The limit says, ok, this is how much you have and how much you can spend. Creditors don’t tell you what to buy, how to spend it, when to spend it or the consistency. They just know when you reach that limit, that’s it.

I want to suggest to you on today my brothers and sisters that the church ought and should have a limit on what it tolerates just as well. We reached a point today now where it’s a free-for-all even in the church. We reach a point now where behavior that once did not grace the presences of the doors has now trickled into the church and has made itself at home.

We reach a point now where those in leadership have abandoned their ecclesiastical authority to make everybody happy when ain’t nobody is being saved. We just happy to say we got a full house. I rather have a couple people full of the Holy Spirit than a house full of people that are not saved.

And my brothers and sisters, all of us have what we call a threshold of pain. We say ok, I’ve reached my threshold of pain, I can’t take anymore, this has to change or else something is going to happen. God has reached a point now, where God is saying enough is enough. I’m seeing stuff go on in my church, I’m seeing stuff going on in the walls under which we profess that we believe in Christ that does not represent me and that it’s now time for the church to put some stuff out of the church that does not belong in the church.

And today the church is on the hot seat. The church is on the hot seat because God has called a trial. He has convened a trial and he is pointing out evidence that is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the church is not doing everything that God has told them to do.

A couple weeks ago you will have recalled he brought to trial the church at Ephesus, in the first seven verses of Revelation. And what God says is there is no doubt about that you love me and that you serve me. What God says is look somewhere along the road, you have veered off course and now you have left your first Love.

You know when I look at this church, the church of Ephesus; can I be real about it this morning? This church reminds me of people in the church now. You know how when people 1st joined the church, they were on fire. On Sunday morning, before the Pastor even got here, you were sitting in the parking lot waiting for the church doors to be opened. Now you’re the last person to get here and the first one to leave.