The Church at Thyatira
Tom Shrader teaches on the fourth of seven churches in Revelation, examining how Thyatira represents the corrupt church that compromised by allowing false doctrine and immoral practices. He warns that compromise naturally progresses to corruption, showing how business pressures and cultural accommodation can lead believers away from biblical truth. The message calls for repentance while affirming God's patience and ultimate judgment of sin.
“Most people, when they have a spiritual problem, blame their church.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: What Christ Says to the Church (Revelations)
Recorded: 2004
Duration: 39 min
Themes: compromise, corruption, false teaching, repentance, judgment, patience, discernment, holiness, facing cultural pressure, business leader, pastor, church member, struggling with compromise, new believer, elder, navigating worldly influence
Scripture: Revelation 2:18-29, Revelation 2, Revelation 3, Acts 16, 2 Corinthians 5:14, 1 Thessalonians 1, Acts 5:5-11, 1 Corinthians
Theological Themes: ecclesiology, church discipline, biblical authority, false doctrine, sanctification, divine judgment, pastoral oversight, spiritual discernment
Full Transcript
The Church at Thyatira: An Introduction
Open your Bibles to Revelation chapter 2. We are in a study—a seven-week study that will take us right up to summer break. This study was inspired by some reading I was doing where John Stott was writing about this section in Revelation 2 and 3, where Jesus speaks to John about seven actual churches.
If you go to the back of your Bible where those maps are and look, you'll see one of Paul's missionary journeys. You'll see the island of Patmos and then into modern-day Turkey, and you'll see the cities that form kind of an oval: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. These are seven actual churches. Jesus appears to John and says, "I want you to write to these churches," and He has a message to each one of them.
Each message follows a general pattern: He identifies the recipient and then typically lists a strength, a weakness, an action, and a promise. That's a general pattern, though there are a couple of exceptions. Last week at Pergamum was an exception, and just to remind you, the CDs are there from the first two weeks.
What Stott said that sounded compelling to me was that he believed these seven churches represent seven types of churches that you'll find through all of history. I thought this was helpful, and we encourage you to be judgmental and try to see maybe where your church is. Then I stepped back and said more specifically, churches are made up of people, so it represents seven categories that we might find ourselves in. Not cut and dry—you're going to find some of this and some of that—but some predominant ones.
Reading the Letter to Thyatira
Today we look at the church at Thyatira. I want to just read the section to you, and if this is brand new to you, you'll get the heaviness of it just as we read it.
"To the angel of the church at Thyatira write: These things says the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire and feet like brass: I know your works, love, service, faith—there's that strength—your patience, and as for your works, the last are more than the first. Nevertheless—here's the weakness—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 eat things sacrificed to idols. And I gave her time to repent of her sexual immorality, and she did not repent."
You can sense the heaviness of it: "Indeed I will cast her into a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of their deeds. I will kill her children with death, and all the churches shall know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts. And I will give to each one of you according to your works."
Here's the action: "Now to you I say, and to the rest in Thyatira, as many as do not have this doctrine, who have not known the depths of Satan, as they say, I will put on you no other burden. But hold fast what you have till I come."
The promise: "And he who overcomes, and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations—He shall rule them with a rod of iron; they shall be dashed to pieces like the potter's vessels—as I also have received 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."
That is really heavy, in my mind, for seven o'clock on a Thursday morning. There's a real soberness to this.
The Historical Context of Thyatira
The angel of Thyatira would be the elder or the teacher there. One of the things I've loved as we've done it in each of the cities is to be able to do a little history lesson. We have a problem here. One author writes, "We know less about Thyatira than any of the other seven cities and are therefore seriously handicapped in trying to reconstruct the situation." This is the longest and most difficult of the seven letters, addressed to the least known, least important, and least remarkable of the cities.
The city is still up and functioning today. It has a population of about 25,000 people. It has no significance historically, politically, religiously, or militarily. It is exactly 30 miles from Thyatira to Sardis and from Thyatira to Pergamum.
This is interesting: the city was constructed to be destroyed and rebuilt. The idea was that an attacking army would hit this city, they'd give resistance, they'd fight, they'd destroy the city, and the city was—as I wrote—a military speed bump.
We hear the city of Thyatira mentioned in the book of Acts, chapter 16. There was a lady there—a long shot that you would remember her name—Lydia. Lydia was a seller of purple. Purple was made in two ways: one with a plant called madder, which was a dye, and then there was a shellfish called murex. They would get the shellfish, destroy it, and from it they would get one ounce of purple dye. So if you had a garment that was dyed purple from murex, you had a very expensive garment.
Lydia is an interesting figure in that culture. As a female, Paul reaches out to her. She's part of a core group that establishes this church. We conclude she was a very successful businesswoman, and she has that base in Thyatira.
I've encouraged you—and my guess would be none of you have done it—to go online and just Google the images of the ruins of these cities. You see some striking things. I had coffee with a guy the other day who led a group that just got back from Turkey. They were on Patmos where John wrote this letter, they were in Ephesus, and he said Ephesus was just stunning. But if you Google Thyatira, you will be stunned at how bad it looks. Nothing significant then, nothing significant now.
Jesus the Judge
This is part of a progression that we see from Pergamos to Thyatira to Sardis. Last week we said Pergamum was the compromised Church. Today Thyatira is the corrupt Church. Next week Sardis is the dead Church. Last week I had three or four people that came up to me and said that lesson was for me—that's where I am. It was on that compromise, on that tension. There's not going to be one person that comes up to me this week and says this is me, I'm corrupt. Put me down for corrupt. That isn't going to happen. But it's a natural progression in all of this.
We said Jesus identifies Himself—customized His identifying characteristics to each church to address the issue that's there. Verse 18: "the Son of God who has eyes like flames of fire, and His feet like fine brass." In Smyrna I used the phrase Jesus was the sympathetic Savior. Here it's Jesus the judge. It's a picture of fire and judgment.
So often, especially as you begin to move outside of the biblical, fundamental churches, Jesus gets neutered. He's a little baby Jesus, meek and mild. But we don't understand that there's judgment to this. That He's a holy God and a great God, and He hates sin. And He's ultimately going to judge sin. Is He patient? Yes. But He destroys the facade and the disguise and the masks that we have.
God Is Serious About Sin
I need to understand that God is serious about this. God is serious about sin. He's a God of love. Remember, Larry used to grind this point home: He's a God of love, and because He's a God of love, He's a God of hate. Because He loves holiness, He hates sin. And God is dealing with sin.
What's happened in Thyatira is there's been an extension of the compromise that we saw last week, and now it's in the church. There's doctrinal compromise. There's behavioral compromise.
The Natural Flow of Love
Look at verse 19: "I know your works, love, service, faith, your patience." That sounds so stupid to say, but the last year, I've been spending a lot of time talking about love. I had a chance to teach Sunday at Desert Springs Bible Church, and I was so excited and so ready, and it happens every time I'm excited and ready—it wasn't very good. And it's probably because I thought, I'm excited, I'm ready, and I'm good. But the whole message was love.
Whatever it was, it just didn't work. It felt that way to me. And talking about the things that we talk about in here all the time, and it becomes so familiar to us that we somehow, I'm afraid, we go, yeah, that's really great, move on to something else. But the fact that God loves us in spite of us, not because of us.
"I know your love." It's the love they have for God, and then as a result of that, it's the love they have for one another. 2 Corinthians 5:14: "The love of Christ compels you." What compels you to be here? What compels you to serve? Well, it's the love of Christ, that if I love Jesus, I'm going to begin to serve others.
A Story of Love in Action
I was listening in preparation for this to the last time I taught this, which was like five years ago, and I was talking about a lady who was in the church that I had met. She came every Sunday night, and as I stood here, she sat right there. And I was talking to her, and somehow it came up—she's working in children's ministry. Got to know her a little bit, and she was 45 and single and working in children's ministry, which is a little unusual. Usually it's people with kids that are in there.
I said, "Oh, wow, do you like children's ministry?" And she said, "Yeah, I like it better than working with students. I did that last year. And then I've worked as a greeter and usher." So there's the story and then the rest of the story. I said, "Do you not feel called to anything, or are you called to everything?" She said, "No, I love Jesus, and I have a lot of freedom. So when you say you have a need, I don't try to figure out whether I'm gifted. I'm not sure how gifted you need to be to work with the three-year-olds. I go and serve."
Now, the irony of this is it was Sandy. I didn't know. I didn't even know her name at the time. So that's kind of cool. But that's supposed to be the natural flow of this—as I love God and fall in love with Him, all of a sudden, there's that progression. There's service, and there's faith, and the faith produces patience. The faith produces endurance.
The Long Haul of Faith
This is the ultimate delayed gratification program that we're on—deferred compensation—that we're in this for a long haul, that it takes a lot of time. We were having a meeting the other day, and I was doing an interview with a guy who was writing some paper on churches, and he said, "What's your biggest disappointment in church?" And I thought, that was interesting.
I said, "One of the things that's the most frustrating—I don't know about words like biggest disappointment—is the people we help most always end up frustrated and leaving, almost every time. The people that we help most, they end up leaving. They take, and they're not afraid to stick it to you on the way out. They're the ones that write the letter, and they post it on the internet, and it gets ugly."
But you just keep doing it, because you're not doing it for that end result, but over a period of time, you just develop, and you have to be careful. You don't want to get calloused and lose sensitivity, but you have to understand that this is a long haul.
The Pattern of Love and Faith
So there's a test for you. When we come back in September, we're going to do—and I'd encourage you to read it. We got July, you got July and August to read it. First Thessalonians chapter one, and you ought to read it, and just start to make some observations, but there's a cool little pattern in there that I want to take and expand, and we'll relate to this.
So putting a bow on this section, here's what Ray Steadman says: Those are 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 the sign that you are willing to serve is a sign of love. If you have faith, you'll persevere. You'll understand God's in control, and things will work out according to His purpose.
And that could be a bumper sticker and can almost appear insensitive. God's in control. I mean, that's the tagline for the election. God's in control of who's in control, and the sovereignty of God. And so, He says, worry about nothing, but pray about everything. Why? Well, because I've got it under control. And it may or may not end up the way you want it to, but God's in control. Doesn't always feel like it. That raises all sorts of questions.
But I know that nothing is beyond His grasp or His reach, that everything that happens in the world—and this is, for those of you that have been around, you're gonna go, no big deal. But if you're newer to this, this is kind of a mind blower—is that everything that happens in the world is either caused by or allowed by God. If that's not true, then He's not God. Now, that raises all sorts of questions about God, but here's what I know. He's a God that I don't understand fully why He would do what He does. I can't always explain it. It's very hard. But that faith, as I begin to walk with Him, that grows deeper.
The Danger of Wrong Motivation
If I start to serve motivated by anything other than love, it's gonna turn into legalism real fast. I'm gonna want to do this out of duty. Now, that's all right for a while. I've got an old saying: do what's right because it's right till it feels right. There are times where I'm going, this doesn't really feel right, but ultimately, if I'm doing this out of duty, it's gonna move into legalism. You're gonna get pooped. You're gonna quit. You're gonna get angry with your church.
I have a friend who's a pastor, and one day he said, and it was a throwaway line, and I thought, that's pretty good. He said, most people, when they have a spiritual problem, blame their church. I thought that was interesting. The church doesn't do this. The church isn't enough of that. When in fact, it's me. So I'm moving in service out of love.
The Weakness: Tolerating Jezebel
Here's the weakness, verse 20. Nevertheless, I have a few things against you. You've allowed that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce my servants. Two things: commit sexual immorality, that was all part of their worship, and to eat things sacrificed to idols.
So a couple of things, who is Jezebel? We don't know. There's four suggestions. Two of them extraordinarily weak and no basis for them, but I was amazed and kind of befuddled and disappointed that people wrote it. One said that it was the wife of the elder, there's no basis for it. One said it was Lydia, there's no basis for that. The two kind of dominant thoughts, and in the final analysis, it doesn't matter. One is that it's a composite. Remember when Woodward and Bernstein had deep throat, they were trying to figure out who's deep throat, and one of the theories was, well, it's actually a compilation of five or six people, so that's one of them. The other is, it's a pseudonym for an actual person.
When we get through it all, it doesn't really matter. The Old Testament, we see Jezebel, she's a bad lady. She's the one who introduced the worship of the god Baal and made it popular in Israel, brought in the false worship with the temple with prostitutes, lured the people of Israel away from the one true God. Elijah, after he had his encounter with the 480 false prophets of Baal, and he defeats them in his courageous act, comes in contact with Jezebel, and he runs away from her. Her days ended when she was thrown from the palace window into the courtyard, and the dogs came and ate her and licked her blood. That's kind of a sad ending.
Names Associated with Evil
It's a name that's just linked to just—when Tyler and Haley, they had Braden, and Haley was pregnant, and they knew it was a boy, and they were trying to figure out what to name him. And so the last name is Johnson, so I got on this kick that they should pick all presidents' names. So I had like Washington, Kennedy, Johnson. I said, I don't know if he'll be fast, but he sounds fast. And then because there was Lyndon Johnson and Andrew Johnson I had Johnson, Johnson, Johnson.
Oh, we went back, and we had one girl's name, and that was Sarah, and so then now Susan's pregnant, and it's a girl, and we didn't have a name, and we're like five days away from delivery, and so we took two legal pads, we each had one, and we wrote down a name, and passed them back or forth until we both wrote the same name. And we were so relieved, and then I said, well, what are we gonna do for a middle name? And we started the whole process again.
In all of our discussion, no one ever said, oh, it's a girl, let's name her Jezebel. No one ever suggested that. No one ever said, oh, he's a little boy, let's pick Judas. There's names that are just associated with evil, and Jezebel is one of them.
The Compromise of Cultural Practices
And what Jezebel is doing here is she's bringing in the practices of the culture in and grafting them in as doctrine, and compromising the people that are there, bringing sexual immorality that was part of this false worship, and there was the eating of things sacrificed to idols. They were forbidden from doing that.
There were a group, I read from William Barclay, there was a guild that met frequently, and they met for a common meal. Such a meal was at least in part a religious ceremony. They'd probably meet in a heathen temple, and it would begin, most certainly, with a libation and a toast to the gods. That would change SPC on a Sunday morning. The meal itself would largely consist of meat offered to idols.
The official position of the church meant that Christians could not attend such a meal. So this was oftentimes the meat that was the best meat, and you should be thinking, if the meat...
was offered to idols, how could they be eating it? Well, it's like anything, they came up with their own version of it. They would take hair from the animal, burn it, and say the meat had been sacrificed to idols, then they'd butcher it. It would be the finest meat. It would be the center of the social world.
So I wrote down, it's really easy to underestimate this. The prohibition of the meat, and the eating of the meat offered to idols, virtually cut the Christian off from all social and business interaction. Jezebel argued, business is business, church is church, religion is religion. Dr. Earl Palmer observes this: the most subtle challenge to faith originates in the daily places where we earn the money we need to live. When business collides with principles, principles tend to go.
The Timeless Tension Between Faith and Business
But see how that transcends right into your life? That tension that I feel? Where is that line? What is that line? Is that a hard line? Is it an ethical issue? Is it a moral issue?
I remember the first time I was at Coal Banker, and we were in an arbitration over a commission. The other guy began the hearing with, "It's not about the money." And I thought, well, that's the only reason that I'm in the room. If this was fifteen dollars, we wouldn't be in here.
I learned early on teaching that illustrations are what drives stuff home. And I learned early on that my life experience only gave me so many of them. So I repeat them. You've heard this one, but it's a classic.
I'm with a guy one day, and he screwed me in a deal. Now, there's two sides to every story except this one. There's not a second side to this. If I brought in all of the data, and I got ten impartial, uninformed people, they would all say he put it to me. And it was something—I had met him through a Bible study, and he was a Christian kind of guy.
I felt I needed to close the loop. So I went to his office, and he had a big credenza. On that credenza was the biggest Bible I've ever seen in my entire life. So I'm trying to summarize it, and I'm talking too long, and I need to just get out of there. I said, "I need to go." And he said something, I don't remember what it was, but it set me off like a rocket.
So I said something. It's coming out of my mouth. As it's coming out, I want to grab it and put it back in. But I said to him, "I thought you were a Christian." Stupid, it's not helpful, it's not going to move the ball down the field. All I'm trying to do is hurt him at this point.
But God is so good, because his response gave me a classic. He said, "I am, but I don't let my faith affect the way I do business." I said, "Well, if anybody doubts that, you have him give me a call, because I can tell him." And I'm sitting there going, really?
And that's what this is about. That compromise, that corruption. And I get the tension. It's even tougher when the economics kick in and the market gets hard and there aren't as many deals. Or you've nurtured this idea from concept all the way through to manufacturing, and now you're ready for marketing, or whatever it is. And what's crept into them is this corruption. Like I said, a lot of people last week saying that was for me. I didn't hear it this week. What's God say to you?
God's Patient but Not Infinite Grace
Verse 21: "I gave her time to repent." And in her case, from the sexual immorality, from the bad doctrine, from the bad behavior. God's patient.
I was sitting in a prayer circle one day, and we're praying. It's one of those where, you know what that's like. Two minutes into it, you're out of prayers. I mean, you prayed for the planets and the stars and everybody, Aunt Mary's sister's cat. I'm going to put a bow on that. There must be something wrong with me, because I want to wrap it up.
I'm getting ready to say, "All right, let me close." And the guy next to me says, "God, thank you for your infinite patience." And I thought, okay, there's our punchline. God is patient, but it's not infinite patience. God's patient, and God is gracious, and He gives you time to respond, but He's a judging, condemning God. And that's because He loves you.
Remember the rich young ruler comes to Jesus and says, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" And Jesus said, "Keep the commandments." And he said, "Well, I did all that." Well Jesus, it says because He loved him, said, "Sell everything and give it to the poor and follow me."
Now, He wasn't teaching salvation by philanthropy. He was exposing this guy's heart, which was the very first commandment which he hadn't kept—the money was his god. And it says the man walked away because he was very rich. If you love, you tell the truth. You deal with sin.
Love Requires Discipline
Jim Dobson used to say the number one mistake people make in child rearing is thinking if they love their kids enough, they don't have to discipline. But along comes it, and it's so hard.
I remember, it's like a movie. I remember one night, and I'm working through due process with Sarah, and we're at the end. I said, "All right, it's time for punishment now. You're going to get a spanking." So I'm doing my thing. And I said, "Sarah, I want you to know this really hurts me." And right out of a movie, right on cue, she said, "You know what hurts me a lot more than it hurts you."
I said, "That's not really true." I disciplined her because I loved her. Now, here's the tension for those of you that are parents and grandparents. Hopefully grandparents are still disciplining every time the grandkids come over. "I got to go, boys. We don't do that. We got to go through these rules every time. Come here just a second. Pop, knock it off. You can't do that. Get your feet off my chair." I love them, but because I love them I discipline them.
Here's the tension: to discipline and love, not punishing in anger. Not punishing in anger—that gets brutal. And that can be an outlet.
And then He said, "I gave her time to repent," but there's judgment to pay. "I'll kill her children."
The Depths of Judgment
The metaphor here shows that her followers will know the depths of the punishment. In Acts chapter 5, there's a couple by the name of Ananias and Sapphira. I always thought they were Marvin Gaye's backup singers, but they're not.
Ananias and Sapphira are this couple, and they sell a piece of property. I'm going to arbitrarily assign a value to this like a hundred dollars. They come before Peter in the church and Ananias comes and says, "I want to give you all the proceeds from the sale. Here's all $50 of it." Peter said, "Why have you lied? Not to men but to God." Acts 5:5 says, "As he heard these words, Ananias fell down, breathed his last, and great fear came upon all who heard it. And the young men arose and covered him up and carried him out and they buried him."
That term "young men" - many think it was an office in the church, kind of like usher or greeter, that God was regularly but not frequently moving in this way in the church. Then three hours later his wife comes in and Peter says, "Is it true that you gave us all the proceeds from the sale, all $50?" She said yes, and the same thing happens. Acts chapter 5 verse 11 says, "A great fear came upon the whole church and upon all who heard these things."
He warns us - Paul in 1 Corinthians - to not come to the communion table in a casual way. God's serious about sin. Imagine this: imagine if next Thursday morning in this 7 o'clock meeting all the liars were going to fall over dead. I'm guessing I'm here all by myself, and at 6:59 I'm leaving. But God's serious about sin. Why would He deal with that?
The Promise to Overcomers
"He who overcomes" - here's the promise - "He overcomes and keeps My works until the end, to him I give power over the nations." Those who overcome are the believers who persevered to the end. They will receive in verse 28 the morning star - Jesus Himself.
The Corrupt Church at Thyatira
So the church at Thyatira - those of you that might say this is me - it's a corrupt church. It had got sloppy with its doctrine. It had got sloppy with what it taught and how it lived. We can't separate those two. If I believe Jesus is Lord, then my life has to look like it.
I wrote - and this must have been an extension of the lesson, but it was something that had touched me - I said when it's really tough, I need to hear two things. Number one, I need to hear God say, "I'll give you strength." And number two, I need to hear that it's worth it.
The Epidemic of Exhaustion
I watch - it's an epidemic now of young men, and I don't deal with the wives, so young men 30 to 35. It's epidemic how tired, worn out, beat up they are. I was talking to one of them just the other day, and he said, "You know, I think we bought into a lie that we need to be a great husband and a great father and a great worker and a great guy at church and a great this." I said, "I remember when the women's movement started - women can't have it all - and I tried to say nobody can have it all. You can't do it all."
We've created in the church sometimes this false expectation, and then we start teaching "find your purpose" and "what's your calling" and "you're unique and special." Well, you're not. You're average. Average doesn't mean anything. There's nothing unique and special around you.
I got a certain group of guys I hang with, and I'm absolutely Albert Einstein in this group. I love to hang with these guys. But I got these other meetings I go to where I sit down with Jamie, and Jamie starts asking me these questions. Oh my gosh, I don't know. Who studies that? Who cares?
The Need for Encouragement
Well, all of a sudden when you're just slugging it out day after day after day, doing what you know is right and doing it out of love, you still need to hear it's worth it. There's nothing better than a call from the girls that say, "Hey dad, I kind of get it now."
I got one of the kids today, and all I've said all day is "no, no, no, no, no, no." I feel like such a tyrant. Susan used to say that to me. I'd come home and she said, "You gotta - all I've done all day is no, no, no. I need to talk to an adult. Talk to me." I'd say, "What's for dinner?" and she said, "That's not what I'm looking for."
But you need to be reminded of that in the middle of this, that corrupt road leads to destruction. That's next week - that's Sardis. We'll get there next week.
Father, thank You for these truths. They are amazing truths. We sometimes can be like that frog in the kettle and just get kind of boiled into a situation where we don't even realize it, and we've moved from compromise to corruption. God, maybe we're there. Maybe our doctrine's got loose, our beliefs have got loose, our practices are a little loose. God, bring us closer to You. Help us do the right thing for the right reason. Remind us that You'll give us the strength to persevere and that it is worth it, because one day we will be with Your Son Jesus forever. We pray to You.