The Church at Thyatira
Tom Shrader walks through Jesus' letter to the church at Thyatira in Revelation 2:18-29, commending their love, service, faith, and perseverance while addressing their tolerance of false teaching. He warns that love without discernment leads to corruption, using the example of 'Jezebel' who seduced believers into compromise. The teaching emphasizes that authentic Christian faith cannot be compartmentalized - Jesus must be Lord in all areas of life, including work and business.
“It's one thing to sit in this room and say Jesus is Lord, it's a whole nother thing to say it out in the world, at the workplace, at school, in the neighborhood, wherever it might be.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: What Christ Says to the Church (Revelations)
Recorded: 2010
Duration: 42 min
Themes: love, service, discernment, compromise, tolerance, false teaching, lordship, faithfulness, pastor, church leader, struggling with compromise, business owner, workplace decisions, tolerating sin, new believer, facing false teaching
Scripture: Revelation 2:18-29, Acts 5:1-11, 1 Corinthians 11
Theological Themes: revelation, ecclesiology, biblical discernment, false doctrine, lordship of christ, church discipline, spiritual authority, apostolic correction
Full Transcript
Open your Bibles to the book of Revelation, Revelation chapter 2. If you don't have a Bible, raise your hand and the guys will make their way down the aisle. We'll give you a copy. You go to the back of the Bible, the last book is the book of Revelation, and we are taking our time to examine Jesus' message to seven churches.
The introduction every week is pretty much the same. It's Jesus, and He says at the very beginning of the book that this is the revelation—it means to disclose, to unveil. He's revealing Himself all through the book, but specifically as we look at chapter 2 and chapter 3, to seven actual churches.
The Seven Churches and Their Geographic Connection
Remember, we started the first week and we went through the map. We said that John, as he receives his vision, is on the island of Patmos. If John is to go on land, he would connect, when he comes to Ephesus, first city that he would meet, with a major highway that would connect these seven churches together. So he would travel north to Smyrna, and then to Pergamum, and then he would travel southeast to Thyatira, straight south to Sardis, then a little bit to the east to Philadelphia, and then Laodicea.
We also said that in each of these seven letters, there's a general pattern that Jesus uses. We say it's general because obviously there are some exceptions. What's cool about today is this exactly follows the pattern.
Reading the Letter to Thyatira
Let me point it out to you. Let's go ahead and read verses 18 through 29. I might mention it's the longest of these seven letters. It's also the longest to the city that we know the least about. So let me read it. I'll make a couple of comments on the way, just to remind you of the pattern.
So here's the recipient: "to the angel of the church at Thyatira." Then Jesus' description of Himself. It changes in each of these seven churches. There's some overlap, but there's a change, and generally the description is relating to something that He wants to communicate to them, oftentimes as He begins to point out a weakness.
So He said, "These things says the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire and feet like fine brass." Verse 19, here's the strength: "I know your works, love, service, faith, and patience. And as for your works, the last are more than the first." Nevertheless, and here are the weaknesses: "I have a few things against you, because you allow that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce my servants to commit sexual immorality and to eat things sacrificed to idols. I gave her time to repent of her sexual immorality, but she did not repent. Indeed, I will cast her into a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her into tribulation unless they repent of their deeds. I'll kill her children with death, and all the churches shall know that I am He who searches minds and hearts. And I will give to each one of you according to your works."
"Now I say to you and to the rest of Thyatira, as many as do not have this doctrine"—here's the action—"and have not known the depths of Satan, as I say to them, I will put no further burden on you"—here's His action—"but hold fast what you have until I come." Now here's the promise, verse 29: "And he who overcomes and keeps my works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations, and he shall rule over them with a rod of iron, and they shall be dashed into pieces, the potter's vessel, so as I have also received from my Father, and I will give them the morning star. He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
The Striking Seriousness of This Letter
So there's the pattern. As you read that, just reading it cold, I'm going to operate on the assumption that many of you have not read that letter for a while, and maybe for some of you, maybe joining us even for the first time, it's the first time you read through that. When you read it, is there something that just strikes you?
Because there is for me. When I read that, I have a strong reaction to the heaviness and the seriousness of this letter. When you begin to read things like, "I will kill her children," all of a sudden you begin to get the sense and the magnitude of this, and I hope that's what we can pull out of this.
The Representative Nature of These Churches
We said that these actual seven churches are designed to represent seven types of churches that we would find in all of history. Obviously no one church is made up of 100% of people who are like this, but churches tend to have certain characteristics or certain traits. We've seen that as we looked at the church at Ephesus and up to Smyrna and Pergamos and now in Thyatira. We see here the weakness that Jesus is addressing in this church.
The recipient is obvious. It's the angel of the church at Thyatira. Angel means messenger, elder. It's the one who would receive this letter and be reading it to the church.
What We Know About Thyatira
We have each week stopped and said, well, here's a little bit of a historical script of the city. We don't know hardly anything about Thyatira as it existed before. Today it's a population of about 25,000. Our ability to really unpack the seriousness and reconstruct the situation is a little bit complicated by that, but we can pull big principles out of this.
The city of Thyatira is exactly equal distance—if you go northwest, you encounter Pergamos. If you go south, you run into Sardis. If you take the big bucket categories that we've had, talking about history and politics and religion and culture, we can't apply any of those. There's none of those that we know about this city.
It had a military strategic position, but this was interesting in terms of studying and preparing. Here's what they said about the city. It was designed to be destroyed and rebuilt. It was designed so as people, as enemies might come ashore, it would be logical—they'd come down this historic highway. It was designed, companies like here, to be a speed bump to slow them down. So we get a sense that through the time, the city was built up, torn down, built up, torn
We know two other things about the city that become important to us. One is Lydia. Remember Lydia? We met Lydia from Thyatira. She was the seller of purple.
The purple dye that was made and produced in Thyatira had two sources to it. One was from a plant called madder. They would take the plant, and from it they would get the dye to dye the garments. There was another way that they got purple—it was from a shellfish called murrex. When they killed this fish, they got from it, and this is really important, one drop of purple dye. Think how many fish had to be killed to dye a garment. So if you had a garment that was a purple garment of murrex, you had a very expensive garment.
The other thing that is significant to our understanding as we begin to unpack this today is that the city was known for its working guilds. I want to use the word union only to try to paint a picture—I'm not trying to equate these things at all. But they were organizations of workers in specific areas. That becomes very important to our story.
The Insignificant City
This is the smallest of the cities, the best we can tell. Absolutely insignificant. As we looked at these other cities, I said, because we had talked about Ephesus—remember we said it was like Miami at Super Bowl time—you had cities like New York, Washington, Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles. And then I wrote, "What Cheer, Iowa." That's all I could think of.
There was a young man that I met this morning who said, "Where are you from in Iowa?" I told him Davenport, and he's from Centerville. Centerville is a small town in south central Iowa. My mom's from Sheraton, that's about 4,500. Then my dad's from Melrose—that was about 400 when my uncle Yogi was on the city council. It's now, I would guess, well, Lake Rathbun went in there, so maybe a little growth spurt. But that's what this is. This is a little town of really no significance at all.
Jesus Identifies Himself as Judge
Jesus identifies Himself, and this is important, as the Son of God. It's the only time that He uses that description as He relates to these seven cities. But He gets to this: who has eyes like a flame of fire. This blazing anger burning against sin, this penetrating gaze, this idea that looks through a facade, a disguise. There's nothing hidden from Him, there are no secrets. There's no point in you or me trying to fool Him.
He sees this, and His feet are like fine brass. It's a picture of trampling the judgment of sin. When we looked at Smyrna last week, Jesus in His description doesn't deal with any strength or weakness, just their hurt and their pain. As Jesus describes Himself to Smyrna, He reaches to these people who are really hurting, and He describes Himself as what I call a sympathetic Savior.
Jesus here comes not as little baby Jesus, meek and mild, but as Jesus the King, the Judge. The one who will judge, the one who does punish. He is a God who's patient, but He's not a God of infinite patience.
The All-Knowing Christ
We see here what we've seen in that general pattern in verse 19: "I know your works." We need to get this deep. Here's what He's saying: it's not that I know about them, I know everything there is to know about you as a church, you in Thyatira. The church is made up of people. You heard Will say, "I would never go try to do this alone. If I didn't have leaders, I don't care how many people I have, if I didn't have leaders, I'd never go do this." So the church is made up of people.
Here's what Jesus is saying: He's saying, "I know you." That can do two things. One, it can scare you. He knows everything there is to know about you. You cannot hide anything from Him. He knows everything you've ever said and everything you've ever done and everything you ever will do. So that can be scary.
It can also be, and this is what's important to me, very freeing and very comforting. All of a sudden, you don't have to play a game with God. When you give Him information, you're not informing Him of things He doesn't already know. All you're doing is acknowledging that He does know them. So He knows it all. That changes the way you communicate. You can just go to Him and pour out your hearts. He knows you're weak and hurting. He knows your sin. He knows your strength. He knows the trials. You pour your heart out to Him.
That's why we pray. We pray because we know that He knows and we know that He cares and we know if He chooses, He can do something about either changing the circumstances or more importantly, about changing our hearts.
The Commendation: Love, Service, Faith, and Perseverance
He says, "This is what I know. I know you." Here's what He said—look at the words there. "I know love and I know the service and I know the faith and I know the perseverance." Ray Stedman writes this: These are all related. Love leads to service. Faith leads to perseverance.
If you love God, you'll serve His people. You can't help it. It's a sign that you love that you're willing to serve. If you have faith, you will persevere. You will understand that God is in control and things work out according to His purpose.
"I know your love"—it's the only time so far in the commendations that Jesus has given to these churches that He said this. I know you're a church that loves. Remember, that was the indictment against the church at Ephesus. They were loveless. "And I know that you serve." The word literally means minister. "And I know that out of that comes great faith. And out of that faith comes steadfastness, perseverance."
all come together. Jesus is saying they're inseparable.
Now, sometimes, obviously, we see and feel that connection way more strongly than others, but if I love, what happens at this moment is I immediately begin to model what Jesus says. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son. If you love, you give. And that give comes in the form of service, ministry. Again, Jesus modeled it. He said, I didn't come to be served, I came to serve.
And now you begin to move out and you move out with a great deal of faith. Just as we're standing here, so we had the opportunity to pray for the church plant at first hour and second hour. And as I'm there, I just smile in two ways. One, I'm very happy. And the other is, these guys have no clue what they're getting into. They have no idea the depth of this. They have no idea, there's just no way to communicate it. And I don't mean it in a demeaning way. I just mean, you just don't know.
The Reality of Church Planting
I mean, you can pretty much tell that there's that group and I can guarantee you that on February 13th, 2012, after that one year anniversary, that formal launch, there'll be a fraction of those people that won't be there, because there'll be something that comes up, either life changes, there's just so many things that come up, you can't possibly know. But what deepens in that is your faith, because you really do understand. I think at the beginning you say it, and then every day you understand it more. It really is God's church, it's not your church, and it really is Him that sustains it, not you. And it's ultimately His vision that matters, not your vision, because if your vision isn't His vision, then you're not going anywhere. I mean, it really is much more complicated than that. But you can't really prepare for it.
Last night, I had the chance to emcee at Christian Family Care Agency. Over the years, Susan and I have done a lot with Christian Family Care. We used to do foster care for babies. In fact, we had somebody who came in with a picture of their son who had just gotten married, and they had a baby picture. They said, do you want to see his baby picture? Not really. I mean, they all look like a cross between Gandhi and Churchill to me, so it doesn't matter. I said, no, no, no, no, take a look at the picture. And they showed me, and the picture was of the baby, but Susan was holding the baby. It was one of the babies that we had taken through our house. They were coming through there pretty fast for a while.
The Power of Simple Songs
They did two things. They had a kids' choir, and there's something about kids singing that seems so innocent. And then Dr. Jesse McGuire did the music. The kids sang "Jesus Loves Me, This I Know," and Jesse did a bunch of songs, but one of them was "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands." And those two songs, for the last three or four years, have been very important to me.
I remember the moment, talking to Braden on the phone, he called and he said, hey, I want to sing for you. And I said, okay. And he sings, "Jesus Loves Me, This I Know." And it's essentially impossible to not have a reaction to that when a kid sings it. And I remember hanging up and going in and sitting down, and I was in the midst of studying or something, and I remember making some notes. And I remember thinking, the rest of his life is going to be spent trying to understand what those words mean. Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.
So it's not just that He loves me, but I go to the Bible and I can see it. And He knows everything there is about me, so He loves me now. This is really important. He loves me now and He'll love me forever. There's never going to be that moment in time. We hear it in relationships. A man and a woman get married. And sometimes, along the course of events, one of them will say, I want out of this. In fact, they'll use this phrase. If I knew that about you when I married you, I would have never married you, right?
Jesus is never going to say to you, if I knew that about you when I chose you, I would have never chosen you. Because He already knows everything there is to know. He knows everything you're going to do, all the good, all the bad. So He can't love you more, He can't love you less.
God's Control Over Everything
And then, when Jesse's singing, He's got the whole world in His hands. I remember as a young lad watching Mahalia Jackson sing that on the Ed Sullivan Show. I just remember the power of that and her singing, and the little bitty babies in His hand. He's got the whole wide world in His hand. Sometimes I forget that. Sometimes I watch the news and I'm thinking, nobody's got anybody in anybody's hand. Nobody's got control of anything, anywhere. And I have to step back.
Now, get what He's saying. These are all the good things. Man, this is incredible. You love, you serve, you have faith, and you have perseverance. But there's a problem.
The Problem with Success
William Barclay wrote this, a church which is crowded with people, and which is a hive of energy, is not necessarily a real church. It's possible for a church to be crowded because its people come to be entertained instead of instructed, or to be soothed instead of confronted with the fact of their sin and the offer of salvation. It may be a highly successful Christian club rather than a real Christian congregation. That's what Jesus is addressing here.
Susan and I had an experience the other night that we've had dozens and dozens of times. I'm flipping through watching TV, and I stopped on, and I will do this. I'll stop on the religious channel. And so there was one on, and there were thousands and thousands of people, and this guy's teaching, and I'm just watching this, and I'm just watching. And I said to Susan, I don't
Nevertheless, I have these things against you. You allow that woman Jezebel, come back and try to figure out who that is. You allow her to call, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach. And in this process of teaching, what she's done is seduce the servants when they've committed sexual immorality and they're eating things that are sacrificed to idols. They've become, here's a virtue that we kind of lift up in our culture, they've become very tolerant.
They've become tolerant, and that's a good thing. It's good to be tolerant of people. We talk about this all the time. When He says, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, when we talk about that word patience, that word patience relates to people, not to circumstances. You don't know if you're a patient person until you run into people who try that.
So there's nothing wrong with being tolerant, but He said, here's the problem. They're tolerant of bad doctrine, and that bad doctrine, which will always happen eventually, leads them into bad behavior.
Who Is Jezebel?
At the core of this is this woman called Jezebel, and in my study I found four theories of who she is. One is that she is the angel's wife. She is the messenger, the senior pastor's wife. That's one. The second one is that it was Lydia. Well now, let me tell you this. There is no, zero, nada evidence for either of those, but that's how things go.
Most would believe it's one of two. Either it addresses kind of this composite picture of the people, and it becomes just kind of the general condition of the church, and then most of the guys that I tend to read and follow believe that it's really a pseudonym for a real person, some woman in the church that has risen to this position of teaching. Jesus takes us back into the Old Testament to Jezebel, King Ahab's wife, the one who introduced the worship of Baal into the nation of Israel, and 800 prophets rise up really under her domain and authority. After the 480 prophets of Baal challenged, the false prophets challenged Elijah, they went away. She then tried to kill Elijah.
Most of the guys I read think that what has happened is that there's a woman in the church at Thyatira who's risen to a position of teaching, and as she achieved that level, she began to teach false doctrine. We're not really sure exactly what it is, but it certainly, and I don't know how much profit there is in trying to unpack all that. What we can do is get at it was false doctrine that was leading, you see it in verse 20, to seduce them into sexual immorality and eating things, sacrifice to idols.
The Guild System and Religious Commerce
Now I said at the beginning there's this group, these guilds, these workers, and I said we don't know much about them, but they were really prominent in the city of Thyatira. For someone to engage in commerce and business and be skilled, and have any sort of real significant employment, they had to be members of those guilds. Again, William Barclay writes, these guilds met frequently and they met for a common meal. Such a meal was, at least in part, a religious ceremony.
So you start to see how this is now creeping in. It would probably meet in a heathen temple and it would most certainly begin with a libation to the gods. Here's to you, God. And the meal itself would largely consist of meat offered to idols. The official position of the church meant that a Christian cannot attend such a meal.
Now you get the rub. Jezebel comes along and she begins to teach. So you get the tension. For a Christian to begin to participate in this is now sending something other than Jesus as Lord. Jezebel comes along and begins to say, wait a minute. Church is church, but business is business. And though these gatherings, as best as I can tell from my research, were kind of wild orgies of idol worship and exaltation of false gods, Jezebel said, listen, it's business, it's not church.
Faith in the Marketplace
Dr. Earl Palmer, listen to this insight and we're just going to hang on this for the next 10 or 15 minutes. The most subtle challenge to our faith often originates in the daily places where we earn the money we need to live. Here's what he's saying. It's one thing to sit in this room and say Jesus is Lord. It's a whole other thing to say it out in the world, at the workplace, at school, in the neighborhood, wherever it might be.
And our faith and our life outside of this can't be segregated. We can't say Jesus is Lord in here on Sunday and then follow the principles, and Jesus' words are pretty strong here. The principles of Satan, the teaching of Satan, we can't go and do that during the week.
I've told this story a million times, but I like it because it works, fits. From my own life, I'm in the process of doing a deal with a guy, trying to do a deal with a guy, and he absolutely screwed me. Now there's two sides to every story most of the time. There's not another side to this story. If I gave you all the facts and I told you what happened, you would say that guy put it to me.
So it cost me a bunch of money, cost me time, energy, you know the stuff. So I'm sitting down with him, and I said this to him, I said, I thought you were a Christian. And I said it, and after I said it, I thought, that's so lame, that's so weak, that's just so, I mean, all I'm trying to do is hurt him.
All I want to do is just stick it to him a little bit. I'm ready to say something when he said, "I am a Christian, but it doesn't affect the way I do business." Well, wait a minute. I said, "Hey, amen. If anybody needs any sort of testimony or witness to that, go ahead and give me a call, because I can testify that your faith is not in the way at all when you do business."
You don't have the right, and I don't have the right, to say, "This is Sunday, and the rest of that's separated from this." When you say Jesus is Lord, and you say that this is the Word of God, it now begins to dictate how we live.
A Moral Crisis Behind the Financial Crisis
I'm preparing for the interview with the governor on Tuesday night, and I'm spending time trying to understand the budget. I don't—I've done a lot of budgets in my life, but they all made sense. These don't make sense. You can't make them make sense. The numbers are big, and they're moving, and it's really hard.
But I believe, and I'm convinced, that the problem we have now is partially a financial bankruptcy, but it's more than anything a moral bankruptcy. You had people who took advantage of the system, and this goes both ways here.
So they're announcing that Bank of America will do no foreclosures in the next year, and they think Wells Fargo and the big four are going to follow. I'm not an economist. I don't even play one on TV. But I can tell you what's going to happen. If you got a loan with Bank of America, and things are tough, and they aren't going to foreclose for a year, what are you going to do? You're going to slide that money right in your jeans. You're not going to give them a dime.
Now, as a follower of Christ, we face a dilemma because we've said we're going to pay. We have the ability to pay. We need to pay.
The Temptation of Self-Righteous Indignation
So I'm going to try to pull out of this, and I hope this is fair. I want to pull out of what we're looking at and just apply it to our lives. When I look at this—I'm talking about me now, me, in my own sinful way—I look at this, and I turn on TV, and it says, "Boy, if you have credit card debt of $10,000 or more, we can get it reduced to $2,000. If you owe money to the IRS, and they're bothering you, you call us, we'll get them off your back."
Here's where I'm going, and now you're over there, and you have the ability to make your house payment, and you don't make it? Well, I got to tell you, here's how I feel. I'm going, "Wait a minute. If I owe $10,000, I'm paying the $10,000. You're not making your house payment. I am making my house payment. The IRS isn't after me, I hope, because I pay my taxes, and you don't pay your taxes."
Everything rises up in me with this kind of pseudo-righteous indignation, and all of a sudden, I got to be really careful here, right? You don't even need to shake your heads, just your heart. You feel that way, don't you? Yeah, you do. You want to shake your head. This is the one time they all want to say amen.
But that's a little bit like the church at Ephesus. We should be doing those things, but that's what Ephesus is doing. They're saying, "We know all this. We're discerning. We have the knowledge," but there's no heart. I get that there's people who are really hurting in the midst of this, and we have to be sensitive to that.
The Challenge of Balancing Truth and Love
I want you to see the balance here. You got a church at Ephesus problem—they're loveless. You got a church here at Thyatira filled with love, but just dumb as a brick when it comes to discernment. We tend to sit in these two poles as churches and as individuals. I am—and I'm doing this and we're doing this and I discern this—and this guy's saying, "Can't we all get along? I love everybody."
Here's the challenge for the church corporately and obviously the people in it. It'll be the challenge for Will and his team. It's a challenge that eats—it's everywhere—is to be a church that stands for the truth but does it with love, to be able to somehow marry those two.
I can just tell you as somebody who serves in a capacity of leadership within this church, there are people who are pulling you in both directions away from it. There's people who are saying, "We just got to love, love, love. Don't let all that doctrine get in the way." And there are people over here who are saying, "All that matters is doctrine."
The problem with the church here at Thyatira is that they bought into this idea that if you just love and if you just serve and if you're just active, then the truth really doesn't matter that much.
Jesus: The Perfect Blend of Truth and Love
Jesus is a perfect blend of this. He loves, but He never just soothes over sin. There's a classic interaction for me that He has with the rich young ruler who comes to Him and says, "What do I need to do to inherit eternal life?" And He says, "Obey the commandments." And the ruler says, "Well, I've done all that." And the Bible tells us—one of the Gospels says—Jesus looked at him with love.
Stop the tape now. Here's the situation. Jesus loves this guy. He has confronted this guy. He's answered his question. What's the loving thing to do at that point? What Jesus does in an extraordinary act of love is tell him the truth. He says, "If that's the truth, then sell everything you have and give it to the poor and follow me."
He's pointing out to the man that in fact, he's very much in love with his possessions. He's pointing out to the man that in fact, he's violated the very first of the commandments that he said he's kept. See, if you love someone, you will tell them the truth. But if you tell people the truth, it's because you love them.
Love Compels Us to Speak Truth
We have that—we've seen it. I've seen it in my life with Susan since Susan got the cancer. We have people I barely know who are sending me recommendations. Like this is my favorite—make a note of this. This is the dumbest thing you can say to somebody: "Do you have a good..."
Doctor? Oh no, we got a quack that works out of his van. What a stupid thing to say to somebody. No, we got a really bad one. We got the worst doctor in the world, but we needed the business. I mean, it's so stupid.
Well, I've had people who have sent me—and I mean this well-meaning—they've sent us juicers, they've sent us recommendations, they sent us all sorts of things. Okay, people I barely know. Now I think they do that out of love, and I'm grateful that they love that way. Isn't it interesting? Because even if you give her all these things and even if they healed the cancer, something else is going to get her, right? Something else is going to kill her.
If you really love people, you're going to tell them about the juicers and the cures, but you're going to tell me you know what the ultimate healer is: Jesus. Because your real problem is sin. Somehow you got to marry those together.
The Contrast Between Churches
They didn't get it. Ephesus blew it on the loveless side—doctrine, belief, discernment, no heart. This church at Thyatira, it's got all the heart and love and service and faith and perseverance.
It's a common practice we think this all the way through. James and I say the number one mistake we made raising our kids is thinking if we love them enough, we don't have to discipline them. So we always are going back to this: Well, I really love them. Well, I don't want to hurt the kids.
The Balance of Love and Discipline
So when the kids were small, we were constantly getting in the way of the things that kids wanted to do, constantly. Especially when they're small—that's when you got to do it. So we'd say, "Don't play in the street. Don't play in the street." "You don't want us to have fun!" "We don't want you to get hit by a car."
Now I confess there were days I was rolling their ball out into the street: "Chase it, you little runt, chase it!" Well, you get the principle, right? Well, God's the same way. And that's the combination.
He said, "Listen, I look at verse 21: I gave her time to repent and she didn't, so I'm going to destroy her." He speaks to those of us who know the gospel who are involved in sin and says, "Stop it." Listen, you're going to sin. I got it. You and me, we're going to sin. When we sin, we repent. It's not that we go on in a happy home way. We just know that He forgives us. It's not a source of license. It's a source of comfort.
He said, "I gave her time, she didn't repent." Look at verse 23: "I will kill her children with death." Why? "So that all the churches will know that I am He who searches minds and hearts. I'm really serious about this. I'm not just kidding."
A Biblical Example of God's Seriousness
Turn—well, yeah, let's do—let's turn to Acts chapter 5. It's page 95 if you got a Bible from us. And I want you to look at just one thing, because when I read that the first time, I mean as a new believer, I'm going, "Really? He's going to kill him?" Yeah, that's what He's saying. He's saying to those of you that don't know Christ, you need to repent because death is coming. And to those of us who do, He is here and He's serious about it.
Acts chapter 5: There's a couple named Ananias and Sapphira, and they sell a piece of land and they kept back some of the price for themselves. And Ananias did this with his wife's full knowledge, and they brought a portion of it and laid it at the apostles' feet.
So let me just plug some numbers in here so we get it. Let's say they sold this piece of land for a hundred bucks. So here's what they're doing: Ananias comes in and says, "Okay, Peter, I sold my piece of property. I want to give you all $50 of it."
Okay, now there's nothing wrong in the size of the gift. Look at this: Peter goes right to his heart. God opens Peter's eyes and gives him supernatural ability here. "Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit to keep back some of the price of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it's sold, you're not under any control. You're not on a compulsion to give us anything. Why is it that you've conceived this deed in your heart? You've not lied to men but to God."
The Death of Ananias
And as he heard these words, Ananias fell down, breathed his last. And obviously then fear gripped upon the heart of all of those who heard it. The young men arose, covered him up, carried him out and buried him.
Verse 7: "A time elapsed of about three hours and his wife came in, not knowing what had happened." That may be, by the way—verse 7 may be the most amazing part of the story. Because I'll have a conversation and within 10 minutes I'm reading about it on CNN. And this guy for three hours—I cannot fathom somebody didn't come to her and say, "Did you hear what happened to your husband?"
The Death of Sapphira
Nonetheless, Peter responds and says, "Tell me whether you sold the land for such-and-such a price." And she said, "Yes, for that amount." So Peter said, "Did you sell it for 50 bucks?" Remember, the price was 100. "Yes, I did." And Peter said to her, "Why is it that you've agreed together to put the Spirit of the Lord to the test? Behold, the feet of the men who have buried your husband are at the door, and they shall carry you out as well."
And she fell immediately at His feet and breathed her last. And the young men came in, found her, carried her out and buried her beside her husband.
Now some of the commentators that I've read suggests that that phrase you see it in there a couple of times—"the young men"—were actually kind of a part of the ministry team within the church. It's like you had ushers and greeters and communion prep. You had young men because God was on a regular basis in the process and a part of healing His church from sin.
The Fear of the Lord
Look at verse 11: "And a fear came upon the whole church upon hearing all those things."
Imagine this: Imagine if I said, you know what, today was 10-10-10 Sunday. Here's what we're going to do next Sunday. Next Sunday, God's going to strike dead all the liars. Well, I bet we solve our parking problem. We don't need—I know somebody else is teaching. Okay, we don't need the police to get us out.
What's God doing here? Does He do that? Yeah, First Corinthians 11. Paul's talking about—
The Seriousness of God's Truth
The seriousness of communion and he said some of you have abused it. Consequently, that's the reason some are weak and some are sick and some are even dead. Here's the point: the message God's really serious about this. God's really serious about this truth and the fact that they love and have service and faith and perseverance—that's terrific. But there's a part of the church that's following this Jezebel.
There's a part that have allowed this to take place and those are gonna suffer and there's judgment for them. That's what He's saying and there is for you. There's for us.
Timing and Church Planting Pressures
There's so there's a it's kind of cool that that's the message on the day that we announced the next church plant because you feel the burden of it on both sides. Maybe all sorts of pressure because men will come and they'll want to know—they'll be at this six or eight months and you know what they're gonna say? "How's it going down there?" "Fine." Here's what they're gonna—what's the next question? "How many people go?" Well pretty soon you're gonna want to give them a number.
There's gonna be great tension. I've watched it in every church plant we've done. You allow people to lead and you put people in leadership and you allow things that take place early on in a church that you would never allow later on because you're feeling all that kind of pressure at the beginning. It doesn't ever go away. We have it. It's just have it in a different capacity.
Two Essential Truths for Difficult Times
Here's what you need to know—two things when it's tough. Number one: I need to know that I have His strength, not mine. You could look in Will's eyes when he's up here talking and I've talked to him before—I believe him. He knows if this is just a human enterprise it can succeed. I mean, I think I see churches around that have big numbers and all that, but God won't use it in a powerful way. So when I'm weak, He's strong.
Here's the second thing and you need to hear this: This is all worth it. There are gonna be moments when you look around and go, "Man, it just doesn't seem right. It doesn't seem fair." You know what? God—that's God's job to figure all that out. He's the one who has the vengeance, not you, not me, not us.
The Progression from Compromise to Death
Here's what we see and it gets really serious if you can imagine this. When we looked at Pergamum, we take Pergamum, Thyatira and Sardis. Pergamum was a compromised church. Thyatira today is the corrupt church. When we get to Sardis next, it is the ultimate consequence of corruption. Sardis is the dead church. Look at that next week.
Let me pray as Rick comes to lead us in communion. Father, thank You for these amazing truths. God, we pray as we end our service in the conference center and as we head to communion here that You would lead us, guide us, strengthen us. Father, thank You that You love us because that's the only reason we could love You and we would love one another. God, I pray that we would be a place and a people who love and serve and have faith and perseverance and we have that flows from the doctrine that You give us—the truth You give us. God, let us love in the truth. We pray that in Christ's name. Amen.