“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. Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation, unless they repent of her works, and I will strike her children dead. And all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works. But to the rest of you in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching, who have not learned what some call the deep things of Satan, to you I say, I do not lay on you any other burden. Only hold fast what you have until I come. The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father. And I will give him the morning star. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”’”

Ecclesiastes 1:9 states,

“What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.”

We who live in a fallen world, who live within the bounds of time, watch the days pass and season change and imagine that things are different. But the passage of time does not change the conditions of things – sin is sin, and righteousness is righteousness. God’s holiness is eternal, just as intact and perfect today as it was before time began, and as it will be once this universe and all that is in it are gone. The rebellion of man, while taking many different forms from the human perspective, has been set within the same repeating framework since the fall. The shadows may seem to take on a variety of sizes and shapes, but darkness is darkness. We can see the repetition of sin in some of the challenges and stumblings of the seven churches. Last week, when looking at the accusations that Jesus levels against some at Pergamum, we see that there are some who follow the teaching of Balaam, the wicked prophet who set himself against God’s people in the days of Moses. This week, as we look at Thyatira, we see the woman Jezebel, her name tying us back to the wife of king Ahab, the queen who was a blight on the northern kingdom of Israel, recorded in 1 and 2 Kings. As we look back at the Old Testament, we can gain a greater appreciation for just how dangerous and destructive this self-proclaimed prophetess and purveyor of adultery was to the church. Just because the sin is not new, doesn’t mean it’s not just as corrosive and hazardous as it was before, and it doesn’t mean we’re not just as susceptible. Without the discernment we know through Christ as our foundation, we will fall for the schemes of the enemy repeatedly without fail. As with all of the churches, Thyatira gives us an example to look at, where we may understand historically what our brothers and sisters in Christ contended with, spiritually what they were subjected to, and hopefully through Jesus, delivered from. An example that illustrates what it looks like to grow with our roots in the gospel, persevering through the temptation of wicked and heretical teaching, and obtaining the eternal victory that is offered in Christ and Christ alone. This is a church through which God again shows us what it means to stand with, and without Him, now and into eternity.

The Seven Churches: The Steadfast Standing of Christ

1. Continued Sanctification in Standing with Christ

“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.”

With each church, Jesus states an identifying title, referencing back to John’s recording in chapter one. We know that this is Jesus speaking, and so we should always have a general sense of what He’s about. But it always merits stopping to consider the specific attributes that Jesus gives to each church – partly because He in His perfect holiness and power deserves consideration and acknowledgement, and partly because it helps us appreciate what the words of Jesus when considered from this angle would have meant. Firstly Jesus calls Himself the Son of God. This is actually not one of the things that He is called in chapter one of Revelation, but it is something that is clearly communicated through Scripture, and something that should have been a great comfort to those at Thyatira, as well as to us all. John 5:16–18 records the rapid escalation of the persecution brought against Jesus by the religious elite, saying,

“And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, ‘My Father is working until now, and I am working.’ This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.”

First they sought to persecute Him because He was working miracles on the Sabbath, specifically in this case, healing a man who had been crippled for thirty-eight years. Then, after Jesus declares that God is His Father, they immediately move from persecution, to seeking His life. But this is His authority. In John 10:27–30, Jesus speaks again, clarifying on the unity between Father and Son,

“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”

This again is a declaration that prompts the ruling Jews to immediately respond by attempting to kill Jesus. But the words are true, and absolute. To those who hear His voice, to those who follow Him, Jesus gives eternal life, something He can only do because His authority is the Father’s authority, because they’re both One. This is who is giving word to the church at Thyatira – this is who gives word to all the churches, but here it’s stated more explicitly, and this is the only church where we see this. The two qualities we’re given referenced from chapter one are that Jesus, the Son of God, is the One with “eyes like a flame of fire,” and “feet like burnished bronze.” Last week we looked at the sword of His mouth, the separation and division that is brought by the Word, the Truth that is Christ. But this is an application of His discerning comprehension, not a limitation. It’s not as though God has to cut something into pieces, to dissect in order to understand. His Word is divisive, and bares us down to our very souls, but His eyes see all, and understand all. Jesus says in Matthew 6:22–23,

“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”

Our eye turns dark as we set it on darkness, as we look and long after the things of the world and turn away from God. Jesus, whose will is entirely the Father’s, has His eye set fully and completely upon God. The Light that fills Him is His own Light, the eternal Light. He teaches in Luke 8:16–18,

“No one after lighting a lamp covers it with a jar or puts it under a bed, but puts it on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light. Take care then how you hear, for to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he thinks that he has will be taken away.”

Jesus’ eyes burn like flame, pouring out light. He is the Light of the world, and there is nothing that is hidden from His perfect and unyielding sight. In regard to the feet of burnished bronze, we can understand that Jesus’ position is fixed, stable and immovable. These are not feet of flesh, prone to the ravages of time. They are burnished, polished and buffed to a lustrous shine, but not made of a softer metal like gold or silver. His feet are set and entirely sure, and His eyes see through the hearts and minds of men into eternity. This is the One, the Son of God who addresses the church at Thyatira.

“I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first.”

Scripture is quite clear on the matter that we are saved by faith in Christ, and no work of our own can bring us into a right relationship with God. This is why John 3:16 sums up the entirety of the gospel so neatly,

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

All that is required is that you believe – this does not simply mean saying that you believe, but rather truly placing your trust and faith in Him. But genuine faith produces works. This is why Paul can write in Romans 5:1–2,

“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”

And James can write in James 2:17–18,

“So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.”

And neither is contradicting the other. This is also why Jesus says in John 14:12,

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.”

When we are made new in Christ, when His Spirit indwells us, we know salvation, but in acting that out, we bear fruit in keeping with the Spirit we now serve. Thyatira is flourishing in this. Galatians 5:22–23 tells us,

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”

We see some of these listed specifically as Jesus speaks of the admirable righteous works in Thyatira. What’s more, we see Christ’s testimony that their sanctification is continuing, they are growing and maturing in Him, so that their later works exceed that which they first produced. Jesus teaches the disciples in John 15:1–2,

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.”

Thyatira shows the evidence that they have grown and been pruned to continue in their growth. In this they show themselves to be the opposite of Ephesus, who had abandoned their first love, and rather than growing, had lost even their initial works. The development we see through the church at Thyatira is admirable, and shows the promise we all know in Christ, that in standing in obedience with Him, in following the first steps of the gospel’s calling, we will grow, continuing to be sanctified in Him, until the day when we stand in His presence.

2. Total Destruction in Standing Against Christ

“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.”

Unfortunately, Thyatira’s opposing nature from the church at Ephesus didn’t stop at excelling where they fell short. Ephesus, despite losing their way without their first love, to the extent that they were at risk of having their lampstand removed and losing their standing as a church altogether, did an excellent job at identifying and rejecting false teaching. Thyatira however shares a common problem with Pergamum, in that despite doing well, they tolerate false and heretical teaching, and so some of their congregation are led astray. Along with the heresy of the Nicolaitans, Pergamum was beset by some who practiced what Jesus calls the teachings of Balaam, which led to eating food sacrificed to idols and practicing sexual immorality. Thyatira is poisoned by a false prophetess who Jesus calls Jezebel, and her teachings lead to practicing sexual immorality and eating food sacrificed to idols. Two different wicked individuals from the Old Testament, yielding in the same perverse teaching hundreds of years later, because again, there is nothing new under the sun, and we keep falling for the same evil. Something to realize is that across all of time, there is arguably no greater stumbling block than that of sexual wickedness. It was lust that led to the birth of the Nephilim in Genesis 6. It was sexual depravity that marked the wickedness of Sodom in Genesis 19, and even after being delivered from this place, it was the incestuous perversion of Lot’s daughters that led to the birth of the Moabites and the Ammonites, who act as enemies against God’s people. It was seduction that Balaam counseled the king of Moab to use tactically against the people of Israel. It was his lust that drove David to adultery with Bathsheba and to murder her husband Uriah. And it was the temptation of his foreign wives that caused Solomon, the king blessed to build the temple of God, to turn from the Lord, and to worship idols as recorded in 1 Kings 11:1–8,

“Now King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, from the nations concerning which the LORD had said to the people of Israel, ‘You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods.’ Solomon clung to these in love. He had 700 wives, who were princesses, and 300 concubines. And his wives turned away his heart. For when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the LORD his God, as was the heart of David his father. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the LORD and did not wholly follow the LORD, as David his father had done. Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain east of Jerusalem. And so he did for all his foreign wives, who made offerings and sacrificed to their gods.”

If you’ve ever read through the Old Testament and wondered at the repeated fall of Israel and wondered how – how a nation so blessed by God, how a people delivered miraculously from their enemies again and again could turn and go astray, you have to understand that sexual immorality is a central theme of what dulls their hearts and minds and leads them to reject God and bow down before pagan altars. This is shown in passages like Jeremiah 2:20–25

“For long ago I broke your yoke and burst your bonds; but you said, ‘I will not serve.’ Yes, on every high hill and under every green tree you bowed down like a whore. Yet I planted you a choice vine, wholly of pure seed. How then have you turned degenerate and become a wild vine? Though you wash yourself with lye and use much soap, the stain of your guilt is still before me, declares the Lord GOD. How can you say, ‘I am not unclean, I have not gone after the Baals’? Look at your way in the valley; know what you have done—a restless young camel running here and there, a wild donkey used to the wilderness, in her heat sniffing the wind! Who can restrain her lust? None who seek her need weary themselves; in her month they will find her. Keep your feet from going unshod and your throat from thirst. But you said, ‘It is hopeless, for I have loved foreigners, and after them I will go.’”

We have to understand that while this image of a donkey in heat may be figurative language, this description of promiscuity on “every high hill and under every green tree,” literally describes the high places where the pagan altars were built, and the Asherah erected. Orgies and pagan worship have always gone hand in hand – it was the case throughout the Old Testament, it was the case in the first century when Revelation was written, and we are blind if we think that sexual temptation is the central theme of the culture of the world today that still seeks so ardently to pull us away from God. This is why Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6:18–20,

“Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”

This is in no way a new tactic of the enemy, but it is no less effective, and as we see, it was a serious blight on the church at Thyatira. As when we looked at Balaam last week, it also helps to understand the seriousness of contending with a Jezebel who is leading certain members of the body of Christ away. 1 Kings 16:30–33 says,

“And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the LORD, more than all who were before him. And as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, he took for his wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal and worshiped him. He erected an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he built in Samaria. And Ahab made an Asherah. Ahab did more to provoke the LORD, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him.”

And 1 Kings 21:25–26 tells us,

“(There was none who sold himself to do what was evil in the sight of the LORD like Ahab, whom Jezebel his wife incited. He acted very abominably in going after idols, as the Amorites had done, whom the LORD cast out before the people of Israel.)”

Once divided from Judah after the death of Solomon, the northern kingdom of Israel saw many wicked and corrupt kings, but we see that Ahab held a particular prominence among them, and that while he may have achieved great wickedness on his own, this was in many ways incited by his wife, Jezebel.

“Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation, unless they repent of her works, and I will strike her children dead.”

Jesus says to the disciples in Luke 17:1–2,

“Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come! It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin.”

The millstone of Jezebel’s sickbed will come for her – as to those who have followed her, we still see hope offered to them, if they repent. We shouldn’t understand the coming judgement as Jesus striking down her literal, biological children, but rather those who remain devoted to her wicked teachings, her acolytes, her spiritual children. This is in the same vein as when Jesus says to the ruling Jews in John 8:42–45

“If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.”

So those who repent and turn to Christ will be forgiven, but those who reject God, who hold to the teachings of sexual immorality and idolatrous feasts that Jezebel the false prophetess has taught them – who indulge in what Jesus goes on to call the “deep things of Satan,” will be destroyed.

“And all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works.”

Again, with the Light of the Spirit, with eyes that shine like flame, Jesus sees. Heart and mind, thought and deed, there is nothing hidden from His sight. No one – at least no sane, rational, or spiritually compassionate person, likes the idea of hell. It is difficult for us as sinful humans, to look upon another sinful human who has rejected the mercy of Christ and think, “Yes, I want you to spend eternity sealed in the outer darkness, I want you to burn and suffer, to wail and gnash your teeth, judged and rejected from the presence of God.” We want justice, but we can’t fully comprehend the horror of hell, and so it can be unnerving to think of even the most wicked being condemned to that fate forever. However we must know, and take a sense of comfort in the fact that God is perfectly just – and if he is perfectly just, then there is no one sentenced to hell who does not deserve hell. There is no person who sincerely accepted Christ who will be flung from His presence, but there is also no one who will reject the Son, who will spurn the incomprehensibly merciful sacrifice of Jesus, and will be welcome in the righteous eternity of the Living God. God sees, He understands beyond our reckoning, and He judges, justly and accordingly. To stand with Christ is to be entirely secured – but to stand against Him, to work the works that bear the fruits of flesh and wickedness, is only to court the outer darkness of hell and eternal isolation.

3. Eternal Security in Christ Standing with Us

“But to the rest of you in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching, who have not learned what some call the deep things of Satan, to you I say, I do not lay on you any other burden. Only hold fast what you have until I come.”

For those in Thyatira who have followed Jezebel, who have practiced the deep things of Satan by corrupting the message of the gospel through melding it with wicked, pagan practices, there is work to be done. Jesus teaches during the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:27–30,

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.”

This is not a call to literal self-mutilation, but rather a confirmation of the gravity of anything that causes you to stumble or turn from God. There are those in Thyatira who must do some cutting, who must repent, cast out what is wicked and rooted in flesh, and cling to the one, true gospel of Jesus Christ – a message which needs and allows no addition. But for those in Thyatira who have not ventured down this path, we see tremendous promise and hope. These are people whose spiritual fruit is growing, blessed by God, and all that Jesus calls them to is to continue on the path they’re on. This does not mean they can become complacent, that they can rest on their laurels, and coast along. Jesus says in John 9:4–5,

“We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

There was work to be done while Jesus was physically in the world, and there is work to be done in His absence through the helper of the Holy Spirit. He gives a parable in Matthew 24:45–51 teaching,

“Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household, to give them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions. But if that wicked servant says to himself, ‘My master is delayed,’ and begins to beat his fellow servants and eats and drinks with drunkards, the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know and will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

And so Thyatira is commended for their works, and called to no new burden, but to continue to carry their cross, to teach His Word and hold fast to His name as they have, and to continue to flourish.

“The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father.”

There are two things we see promised to those who stay the course in Thyatira, and the first is this absolute, divinely given authority. Galatians 2:19–20 tells us,

“For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

It is through the rich rewards of eternity that we can begin to understand what it truly means to be alive in Christ, as He is alive. Daniel 7:13–14 says,

“I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.”

This power, this absolute, unshakable, eternal authority that is held by Christ is shared with us, because in standing with Him, He stands for us. When we abide in the True Vine, the True Vine abides in us, and we are delivered into the victory of His eternal authority.

“And I will give him the morning star. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

The morning star is that which heralds dawn, it’s the final marker that precedes the light of day. To see this means that you’ve been delivered through the darkness, that you’ve lived through another night into a new day. It is a finish line and a starting point, it both brings to an end, and makes new. It’s Christ. Jesus says in Revelation 22:16,

“I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.”

The path is simple, though not easy. It is unimaginably vast, yet not complicated. We are called to the Truth, we are called to obedience. We are called to stand in Christ, to flee from sin, to die to lust, and idols, and flesh, and to live in the spirit, pursuing that which is eternal and imperishable, and forsaking that which is rooted in a lost and dying world. Our victory is assured, because the Morning Star rises to testify, to claim us as His own, and to share with us His perfect and eternal authority. We have only to obey, to endure, to love faithfully, and to bear the fruit that His Spirit brings forth through us.

Pastor Chris’ sermon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-ix1FbbmTM