Thyatira

Tom Shrader teaches on the letter to Thyatira from Revelation 2, where Jesus confronts a church that combines good works with tolerance for false teaching. He warns against separating faith from practice, emphasizing that Christians must integrate their beliefs into every area of life rather than compartmentalizing spirituality.

“This faith that you and I have cannot be isolated from whatever your activity is.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: The 7 Churches (2010)

Recorded: 2010 at Cannon Beach Conference Center

Duration: 59 min

Themes: tolerance, compromise, false teaching, good works, faith, integration, compartmentalization, spiritual maturity, church leader, struggling with compromise, new believer, pastor, navigating false teaching, church member, facing doctrinal confusion, spiritual mentor

Scripture: Revelation 2:18-29, Ephesians 2, Romans, 1 Kings 16, Acts 16, Acts 5, John 14, Ephesians

Theological Themes: ecclesiology, church discipline, doctrinal purity, orthopraxy, right practice, biblical discernment, spiritual warfare, sanctification

Full Transcript

Sermon title: Thyatira
Part 1 of 9

Not sure exactly what to say or where to go with that. I made the comment last night that it feels like God's bringing a certain personality to our weekend together. Every conference, every church, every gathering has its own sort of personality to it. The personality for our weekend feels to me like one that has a certain soberness to it. Not to say we don't have fun—I'm a fun guy—but there's a seriousness about life.

As I said, it could just be me. I've just had my vacation, so I had a lot of time to think and reflect and maybe just watch a lot of news and television and look at the world and my world and our world and see things and wonder, what's going on here? That song is just a great setting for what we've been talking about, that Jesus is the light of the world.

What Is a Christian?

It occurs to me that since we started on Friday night, I haven't really taken the time to define what a Christian is. I've learned from experience that it's possible to come into an environment like this, even out of a church setting, and perhaps think I'm a Christian when I'm not at all. So let's make sure that we're using the same terms and the same definition.

A Christian is a person who comes to a point in their life—you may be able to draw a line in the sand and say it was this day (I could tell you it was March 6, 1980 for me), you may be somebody else who can't pinpoint it exactly—but you get to the point where you understand that there's something wrong. You look around the world and think, this is really messed up, something's wrong. But it's not just that the world is messed up. I stop and in the quiet of my heart I realize, you know what, I'm messed up. Something's wrong with me.

I find myself periodically engaged in the things I don't want to do. I know they're not right. I don't even need God to tell me that—I just instinctively know it.

Conscience and the Knowledge of Right and Wrong

My daughters were very different than me, one of them radically different than me. I was not much of a student. I didn't like school particularly, at least the classroom part of it. Mark Twain once said he never let school interfere with his education, and that was kind of how I felt about it. I didn't take it very seriously. I was smart enough to get by.

This is a true story. My freshman year of college, I'm meeting with my counselor and she said to me, "Do you have any questions?" And I said, "What grade point average do you need to graduate?" She said "2.0," and it was the first time in my life I had a goal. So I wasn't very serious about it.

In my school, we were in the late 60s, early 70s, and right in the midst of that came the greatest thing that ever happened to my education—something called the honor system. Well that's perfect, because I didn't have any honor, and I was able to get through.

But my daughter, I remember one night she was doing math and I went in when she had to be about 12 or 13, and I said, "Let's go for a walk." And she said, "I've got to study." I said, "You don't need to study, let it go." She said, "No." I said, "What are you studying?" She said, "Math." I said, "Well when I was in school and math, all the answers were in the back of the book." She said, "They're back there." I said, "Well just look it up and put the answer down." She said, "I need to know how to get there."

She said, "How did you ever get through school?" I said, "Well, my grades in math were in direct correlation to a guy by the name of Jim Grummer who sat next to me." She said, "Dad, don't you know that's wrong?" I said, "Well I wasn't a Christian." This is my 12-year-old. She said, "But that's your answer to everything."

She said, "Let me ask you this: did you hide when you did it? Did you hide when you cheated?" I said, "Yeah I did." "So you instinctively knew it was wrong." She said, "Dad, let me help you out here. That's called conscience." I said, "You know what, I'd rather go for a walk by myself. I don't need this. I don't need a lecture from you."

Coming to Christ in Repentance and Faith

My point is, you understand that there's something wrong with you. Then the Holy Spirit comes along and opens your eyes to see the truth. You come to Christ in repentance and faith. That means you acknowledge you're a sinner, and the effect of your sin is it separated you from God. Now you have all of the effects of that sin.

Even as Mila sings, I think of those that Jesus healed. That's an amazing deal. The lame could walk, the blind could see, the deaf could hear, but still they died. Lazarus rose from the dead, but still he died. The picture there physically is to point us to something spiritually—that spiritually we're dead, spiritually we're blind, spiritually we're infirmed. There's nothing we can do to heal ourselves spiritually.

But Jesus died. Paul says it this way in Ephesians 2: you were dead in your sins and trespasses, but God in His divine mercy, God in His great riches, causes you to be born again.

What Being a Christian Doesn't Mean

I want to make sure that we're clear here. Being a Christian has nothing to do with—in other words, I can't say I belong to this church, therefore I'm a Christian. Are Christians in churches? Christians are in all sorts of different types of churches, meeting all around the world. What Christians have in common is an understanding that their sin has separated them from God, and the effects of that sin are obvious all around us, and the cure spiritually is Christ.

So I come to that point where I believe. I believe Jesus is who He said He was, He will do what He said He would do, I'm who He says I am, and I come to that point where God heals me spiritually. I was dead—very important—and now I'm alive spiritually, and I'll never die again spiritually.

Jesus Identifies Himself as the Son of God

We're taking our sessions together and looking through the book of Revelation. This is the revelation from Jesus Christ to the Apostle John, and He tells him, "I want you to go and address these churches."

If you've got a Bible, almost any Bible, but for sure a study Bible, in the back are those maps that you go to only when you're bored. In those maps you'll see a map of Paul's missionary journeys and a map of the eastern side of the Mediterranean. You'll see the island of Patmos, where John is as Jesus reveals Himself to him. Jesus takes him on this kind of revelatory tour of these seven churches.

There are seven actual churches joined together by a road that linked them all together. They form, as you go inland, kind of half of an oval. You go from Ephesus to Smyrna to Pergamon to Thyatira to Sardis to Philadelphia and to Laodicea.

Seven Churches, Seven Mirrors

We've looked at what God has to say to each of these seven churches. We've examined Ephesus, Smyrna, and Pergamos. We've said these are a picture of seven churches, actual churches, given to us so that we can do a little bit of an inventory. We can examine the DNA of the church that we're in, especially if you're a pastor, leader, or elder in your church. This is always a helpful exercise.

It's also individual. Some of you are very much like the people at Ephesus. You love to color up your Bibles and circle things and move them and study them. You want to talk about the nuances and the subtleties. You want to read and reread these great books. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, but I have to guard my heart to make sure that doesn't just become rote and that my heart is still tender before God.

Some of you will be like the church at Smyrna. Remember we said there's a pattern here - a general pattern where Jesus highlights first the recipient, then a strength, then a weakness, then an action, then a promise. That was the church at Smyrna, the suffering church. Let me just say it to you again: I guarantee you, there's some of you who are barely hanging on. There's suffering, there's pain, there's hardship in your life, and He says to you, "You know what, it's worth it. Hang in there."

The Danger of Compromise

Some of you may be like the church at Pergamos - compromised, right on that edge. I was talking to someone when we were done last night, and it's just amazing how that happens. I kind of move the rules a little bit. Not even sinful, I just kind of get a little sloppy, get a little casual. If I'm not careful, and by the way, I believe this happens to everybody throughout the course of their Christian life, I either become the strong Pharisee where it's rule, rule, rule, rule, rule and I lose my heart, or I have this tendency when I want to incorporate grace. I have a very tough time balancing that out, and sometimes I'm just gonna let that pendulum get away from me a little bit.

It may not even end up in any great big sin. It just kind of weakens me a little bit. My communion with Christ is not as strong. My filling of the Spirit is not as full. That's what was happening at Pergamos. There was this church, and He's warning them. He said, "Listen, you're on a very slippery slope here. Be careful. Grab it now." So maybe that's you.

Thyatira: When Compromise Becomes Institutionalized

When we get to Thyatira, this is the longest of the seven letters written to the church that we know really least about. While in Pergamos there was this subset that's compromising and they're introducing compromise into the church, by the time we get to Thyatira, what's happened is that compromise has now been institutionalized.

Let's look at it. It's chapter 2, verse 18: "To the angel of the church at Thyatira, the Son of God" - remember we said how Jesus identifies Himself to each one of these gives us kind of a tip of where He's going - "the Son of God." It's the only time He identifies Himself that way. I believe it's the only time in the book of Revelation Jesus refers to Himself as the Son of God.

"It's the Son of God who has eyes like a flaming fire, and His feet are like bronze, says this: I know your deeds, and your love, and your faith, and your service, and your perseverance, and that your deeds of later greater than at first."

The Commendation and the Condemnation

So He says, "I see these things." We'll come back to them. "I see your love, and faith, and service, perseverance, and they're bigger now than they were." But this I have against you: "You tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads my bond servants astray, so they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols. I gave her time to repent, and she does not want to repent of her immorality." I gave her an opportunity - that's what He's saying.

Now listen to this: even a casual reading, if you just landed in here today, you don't have any Bible history, you don't know Greek, you don't know barely no English, you don't know any of this stuff - you don't need to know much to get a sense here that God's serious about this, that Jesus is angry.

"I gave her time to repent. She doesn't want to repent of her immorality. Behold, I will throw her on the bed of sickness, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent."

of her deeds. And I will kill her children with pestilence, and all the churches will know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts, and I will give to each one of them according to their deeds. But this I say to you, the rest who are in Thyatira, who do not hold to this teaching, who have not known the deep things of Satan, as they call them, I place no burden on them." If you've been able to resist this, I'm not coming after you. "Nevertheless, what you have, hold fast until I come. He who overcomes, and he who keeps my deeds until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations." It's the idea of ruling in the new millennium. "Authority over the nations, and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, as vessels of the potter are broken into pieces. As I also have received authority from my Father, and I will give him the morning star, and he who has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the church."

The Seriousness of Christ's Warning

As I said, even a casual reading, without really knowing much about this, here's what you get. You get the idea that Jesus is saying, "I'm serious here." God is a God of love, amen? But if all I talk about is God's love, though it's true, I've edited Him.

I'm married to Susan, so to talk about me as a husband is absolutely true and fair. But if you only know me in the context of my relationship with Susan, you know part of me well, but not all of me. You lived in a time there, and we think this is probably what this Jezebel was teaching, where God is a God of love, and God is a God of forgiveness, and God is this wonderful God. So boys will be boys, and girls will be girls, and things will happen. Don't worry about it.

But Jesus comes along and says, "No, there's a corresponding side to this. If you love something, you also hate something that corresponds with it. If you love your child, you hate the thing that will destroy it. If you love righteousness, and holiness, and purity, you will hate, despise sin."

The Universal Christian Struggle

Therein lies the struggle for every church, and for every Christian. Paul articulates it well in the book of Romans, where he says, "I"—now this is "I" the Apostle—"I've got things that I want to do, and I don't do them. I have things I don't want to do, and I find myself doing them."

I have these things, and you can make your own list. Go ahead and do it. I have those things that I want to do, and not just climb Mount Everest. I want to be the man. I want to be the woman. I want to be the student that God's called me to be. I want to spend time with Him. I want to be holy. I want to be righteous. And yet there's this cataclysmic struggle.

Now we know the end. The end is victory. The end is heaven. The end is with Him. But until then, I guarantee you, this battle never ends. I personally feel more alive now than I did 20 years ago.

God's Progressive Revelation of Sin

I think when you come to Christ, you have this moment where God reveals your sin, and there's this breakthrough moment. There's this extraordinary moment. Some of you can probably go back and say this, especially—how many of you became Christians after age, let's say, 18? Let's see your hand. Keep your hands up really high. Okay, these are the ones that really know sin real well. So if you want to talk to somebody about it, those are the people you see at lunch. Those are the ones right there. That group right there are the bad ones, okay?

So you have this moment, and you go, "Boy, I don't do that anymore." But here's what God does. God, more and more, day by day, reveals how wicked your heart really is. He peels it back. My big thing, and I pray a lot about them, but I used to drink a lot. That was my big deal. And I thought, "Boy, if I just get sober, I'll be okay." So I got sober, and then all of a sudden, He goes, "You know what?" Because I thought I was just a bad drunk. Here's what I discovered: I'm just a bad guy. That's just who I am.

Day by day, and it seems odd, doesn't it? It seems like, you know, here I am, and I come to Christ in repentance and faith, and now after a period of 30 years, I ought to feel closer to Him and see myself more like Him than ever before. When in reality, I see myself more sinful now than I did 30 years ago. Because He reveals now the wickedness of my sin. Not this great big activity, but my heart. How wicked my heart is. How selfish I am. How much I think about me. I don't want to. And then you could easily argue, "If you don't want to, don't do it." I got it. But there's the battle. There's the struggle.

Personal Illustration: "What About Me?"

When the girls were small, I used to travel a lot, speak a lot. I don't hardly do anything now. I mean, the only thing that I do, and they've been good to me, and so we're here again next year, but I come up here every year. Other than that, on my calendar, the only thing that I do outside, on a regular basis, outside the church, is to come here. But I used to go all over, all the time.

Every time I'd come home, I'd try to bring something for the girls, and typically it was a t-shirt. That was the easiest thing to get. Inevitably, I would give a t-shirt to one of them, and immediately the other would say, "What? What about me? What about me?" That becomes my mantra: "What about me?" And He reveals this sinfulness. I can deal with it in a whole variety of ways.

Historical Background of Thyatira

Here's Thyatira, longest letter. We know essentially very little—I was going to say nothing, but we know a few things about this city. Today it's a city of about 25,000. It has no significant historical, political, or really religious background. It was located midway between Smyrna and Sardis. It became a little bit of a military outpost. It was a city that was built and designed to be destroyed and rebuilt.

There are probably two things we know about it that really relate to this story. One, remember in Acts 16, we meet this woman, her name was Lydia. Remember her? Lydia from Thyatira. You got to get the old dentures in there tight when you're going to say this, okay? Lydia from Thyatira, she was the purveyor

The Commercial Backdrop of Thyatira

Lydia was a seller of what? Purple. That purple that she sold and Thyatira produced was produced in either one of two ways. Either from a plant that was called madder. Take it, crush it, get purple. Or from a shellfish, murrex. They would take this fish, and this is really important now, they would take it that when it was killed, they would extract one drop of purple. So if you had a garment that was dyed purple from murrex, you had a very expensive garment.

The area was a textile manufacturing area filled with guilds. Every specialty would have its own guild. Every guild had its own god. Every guild had its own worship, its feasts, its orgies, its sinfulness. And if you weren't in a guild, you weren't going to do much business in Thyatira. So there's a backdrop for this church.

Jesus Establishes His Authority

Jesus identifies Himself as the Son of God. I think it's the only time in these letters for sure that He does this, maybe in the book. And what He's doing is establishing His power, His deity, His authority. He's got some harsh things to say. We read them, right? And He's going to come and be very simple for you to say, "Well, who are you?" And He's saying, "Well, I'm the one who created this and holds it together so I have the authority over my creation."

He identifies Himself in verse 18 and says He has eyes like a flame of fire. They're laser, divine laser eyes. I was flipping through the other day and the old Superman was on. I don't know when they made those, mid 50s. There's Clark Kent and now it's kind of hokey, but he'd be looking into this building and he has this x-ray vision. What Jesus is saying, I have this sense of an x-ray vision where I see right through your facade and right into your heart and your mind and you can't fool me with a fooling machine. And I have these brass feet, bronze feet, and they trample sin. They're filled with judgment.

The Uncomfortable Message to the Church

Remember we said these are letters to the angel and what would happen is they'd receive that letter and then they'd receive it to the church. Imagine going to church on Sunday and the guy gets up and says, "You know what, Jesus has spoken to us. All of you listen close," and you would. And then he starts to read these things and imagine when he talks about this. "I've got laser vision. I know your deeds, but here's the deal. I've got this against you. You've got that Jezebel. There she is right there."

And there she is and she's the one and she's a false teacher. And the Son of God has this against her. He's going to destroy her unless she repents. And He's waited and waited and waited and she hasn't repented and He is going to destroy her. And not just her, but any of you who are following her. There's a seriousness and a somberness about this.

The Strengths Jesus Acknowledges

We said He always shows the strengths. Look at verse 19. "I know your deeds." I'm going to link these together. There's love, there's faith, there's service, and there's perseverance. And you seem to be growing in these.

Now, I want to make sure we understand the background and all the settings. I want to make sure we're talking about how does this apply to us?

Faith, Love, and Service Connection

There's an inevitable connection between faith and love and service. If you love Christ, you'll show it. What you believe affects how you behave.

Every other year, there's a class that they teach at seminary in Phoenix, Phoenix Seminary. It's on church leadership or something. They have like 15 or 16 different guys. I'm one of them. And we come in and we teach for an hour on leadership and leadership strategies. A couple of years ago, they wanted one of the ladies from the valley to come and to talk about women's ministries. Well, the gal that they chose was a gal from our church. So I said, "Well, it'd be convenient if you kind of set us up at the same time." So I got there and they said, "Okay, Tom, you, and then her." And I said, "Let's change it. Let her go first." So she did.

The Question About Staffing Ministry

There's a lot of Q&A. That's what I did mostly in mine, really, is this Q&A. So the question to her was this: How do you staff all this stuff at church? Like on a Sunday, like this morning, we've got probably 800 kids, birth through sixth grade. We got all these kids. What do you do with them? How do you staff it?

And the people are saying, "We can't get people to volunteer. We can't get people to serve at our church. How do you do it? Do you pay these people?" No. "Well, how do you do it?"

Christians Serve Because They're Christians

She had a great answer. She said, "Here's the way we do it. At our church, we have something you don't find at a lot of churches. We have Christians." Now, she wasn't trying to be a smart aleck. She was just simply saying, if you have people that know Christ, when you express a need, even if there's not in there, "Well, I'm not gifted." How many times have you heard that? You don't need a gift to take care of a three-year-old. Just go do it.

Again, we had a building program, I don't know, 10 years ago. My introduction, because all these people wanted us to hire experts and everything, and I said, "Here's our building motto. I got good news and bad news. The good news is we got all the money we need. The bad news is it's in your pocket. But we got all the money we need. We don't have a problem. We're not short of funds. They're here, and you got them."

So, you will have people, and you can tell by the questions. They'll never say to you, "Should I serve?" They'll say, "Where should I serve?" I never have a Christian say, "Should I give?" They'll say, "How much should I give?"

Give you a little tip here. Susan and I do this, and I think we go in spurts where we do it more than others, but the way you ask the question determines, in a lot of ways, your answer. If your question is this, how much should I give? I may get this answer. But if you ask the question this way, how much of God's money should I keep? You get a different answer.

What Jesus is acknowledging here is what's absolutely true. There's a connection. See what He says in verse 19? I know your deeds. I see the love that's there, and the faith that's there, and the service is there, and the perseverance is there. I know you love Him because I see the activity.

The Danger of Activity Without Truth

Remember, we're going to come in with false teaching. He's not talking here about false teaching. He says, you've got the practical side of this down really, really well. You're serving. The roles are filled. The activity is there. I see that action around you. You seem to have the right activities.

We used to say this in business all the time. We didn't invent it. We just said it. Don't confuse activity with progress. Well, in church, we have to be very careful. Don't confuse activity with spirituality. Just because you're busy doing doesn't mean that you are a follower of Christ.

So let's paint this picture here. Here's what we had in Ephesus. We had a church, remember, that was hardworking, and persevering, and discerning, but they had this kind of lovelessness about them. And we said that is wrong, and it is, but equally wrong is compassionate service without sound doctrine. That's what's going on in this church.

True Discipleship Requires Love

I want to make sure I get it here. There should be that activity. The night that Jesus is betrayed, Judas is now gone. Jesus is sitting with His boys, and He's preparing them for what's going to happen the next day, because this is going to be traumatic for them. They've been with Him for three years. They've invested literally everything in Him, and He knows He's about to die. So He's going to say, when we get to John chapter 14, He's going to say, don't let your heart be troubled. Sean Hannity didn't invent that. Don't let your heart be troubled. I'm going to go away. I'll come back. I won't leave you as an orphan.

But before that, He says to these guys, it's pretty interesting. He said, this is how the world is going to know that you're my disciple. Now stop there, because all of you know the answer to that, and so you just fill it in glibly. But imagine if you were there that night, hadn't heard this before, and Jesus says, this is how the world's going to know you're my disciple. If He paused at that moment, what might your head have said? Bible study? Church?

He said, this is how the world's going to know you're mine, that you love one another. But never confuse that activity in and of itself for the end results.

The Problem: Tolerating Jezebel

Now here's what's going on in this church. There's the weakness in verse 20. I have this against you. You've tolerated this woman Jezebel. I list four possibilities, because we don't know what this Jezebel or who it is.

There's four possibilities that scholars suggest. One is that she was the wife of the lead pastor of the angel at Thyatira. There's really no reason to believe it, but it's kind of one of those theories. A second theory was that it was Lydia herself. But again, there's no basis for this.

The two most likely scenarios, and frankly you can pick either one, I don't know that it matters a ton, is that this Jezebel is a composite figure of several people in the church. Kind of like for years, remember, Woodward and Bernstein, the deep throat. One of the things was it wasn't really a person deep throat, but it was a little bit of this guy, a little bit of that guy, a little bit of this guy. Probably the most likely is this Jezebel is a real person, and that's just a pseudonym. Jesus just picks this name because He's going to convey much more than just the name.

The Significance of the Name Jezebel

Jezebel, to me, is kind of the female, by name I mean this, the female version of Judas. Like I've never met a guy, you know, where they're thinking about names. So when Haley was, and it's happened with really each of, we have two kids and five grandkids, and so there's always kind of this name contest. Well, when Haley and Tyler, they're expecting a baby, and now they find out it's a boy, they're going through all these names, and the last name is Johnson. Which, you know, not a great name, but the last name is Johnson.

So I'm trying to contribute to it in my own way, and I'm saying, well, Johnson, you could do this, because you could name them like presidents. Like Washington Jefferson Johnson. And then I thought of Andrew Johnson and Lyndon Johnson. I said, you call him Johnson Johnson Johnson. And then I had some names that I thought, Emerson Kennedy Johnson sounded fast. Well, they came up with a name, it's a great name, I love it, and so his name is Yale. I love that name, yeah.

We talked about hundreds of names. No one ever suggested, hey, why don't you name him Judas Johnson? Nobody ever suggested it. And if they just said it's a girl, we could have had all sorts of discussions. We had one, Susan and I had one girl's name, it was Sarah. We had Sarah, we named her Sarah. Susan's pregnant again, find out it's a girl. We're out of names. We use the only one we want. Again, the same thing. The way we resolved it is we each took legal pads, and we wrote down a first name, and passed them back and forth until we wrote the same first name, and then we had to do a middle name. It was interesting, we both wrote the same middle name at the right at the beginning, because her name is Haley. I just felt like Elizabeth went with it. But we didn't pass forth, the female version, we didn't pass forth Jezebel.

Jezebel is a wicked character that we meet in First Kings 16, married to King Ahab. She made Baal worship popular in the nation of Israel. She personally wrote, like, you may support,

You go home and on your refrigerator, maybe a picture of a missionary or somebody that you support. She supported 800, personally funded, 800 prophets of Baal. She attempted to kill Elijah. In fact, Elijah was pretty afraid of her. He fought the 480 false prophets, but when she came, he ran. She killed her neighbor because her husband wanted the land. She died when they threw her out of the palace, and the dogs licked up her blood. Not a very happy ending.

She is bringing in false teaching. She's bringing in sexual immorality, animals that are sacrificed to idols, but now they're eating the meat, and there's all sorts of conversation about what that means. She's made this acceptable and popular.

The Challenge of Faith and Business

Now, let me give you the backdrop, and then we'll kind of gear this toward a close. Remember what I said at the beginning? All of these guilds had their own gods. So Jezebel is now teaching in this church, and here's what they're grappling with. How do I take my faith and marry it to my business?

Because when I get to this area of business, here's what they're saying. You need to do this, and this, and this. It's the equivalent of saying Caesar is Lord. You need to come and participate in these pagan worship services, and orgies, feasts, and all sorts of this stuff. And they're saying, listen, I can't do that. Here's what the Word tells me. Here's what business is telling me.

And Jezebel seems to be coming along and seducing them with this idea. Business is business, and faith is faith, and the two of them never really need to connect. Maybe some sort of dualistic philosophy. Even there's flesh, and there's spirit. So you take and keep your spirit healthy, and it really doesn't matter what you do with your body.

Being the Light of the World

So let's go right for the application here in our life. It's so important to us to understand that we come together, and we have this thing called church, but this is not the end of this. We come together. We encourage, hopefully, encourage one another, fellowship together, spend time together for the purpose of going out now.

So let's take the last song that Mila sang. He sang about Jesus, the light of the world. What does light do? Well, light's a measuring. We talk in terms of the speed of light. Light measures. Light reveals. Room's dark, turn on the light, see things as they really are, and light gives energy.

So Jesus comes, and forget this the physical now. We sang about it, that part's true, but also spiritually. He's the light of the world. He becomes the standard, the measurement. He allows us to see things as they really are.

I went to a college, small liberal arts college, St. Ambrose College, now St. Ambrose University. They upgraded it shortly after I graduated, and we used to have, we were the fighting, everybody has their own little mascot, right? We were the fighting bees, and now you don't need here, this is not a giant leap, not a trick question. So the Student Union was called what? The Beehive. That's right. And off the Student Union, so they made great cheeseburgers. So here's the Student Union, and then there were some small meeting rooms off of it. It was a small Catholic liberal arts college.

And so we're in there, and this is 1968-69-70. I was president of the freshman class. This is interesting. I was president of the freshman class, and the next year ran for re-election. Didn't have enough hours to be a sophomore. So not proud of it, but it happened.

Well, we had in town one of the leading Catholic theologians of the world. He was a priest from the Netherlands. And so we would gather together, and a typical night for us would go something like this. We would be in the Beehive, in one of the rooms. The rules were not very stringent, and the night would go something like this. What is reality? And then we'd guess at the answer.

Jesus comes along, and He's the light of the world, and now I see things as they really are. Now you can see things. You can see His agenda, His value system. Well, this is really important. He's the light of the world, but He says this to you and me. He says, now I'm gone. What? You're the light of the world. You're the one to bring the standard. You're the one to bring reality. You're the one to energize.

The Darkness of Our World

And as the world gets darker and scarier, Susan and I were on vacation four days in a row. Either Megyn Kelly or Shepard Smith, as they were coming out of one segment and leading into another, said, we have a story you're not going to believe. Four days in a row. And pretty soon you go, you know what? This is an unbelievable world we live in. We do some incredible things, some goofy things.

As the world gets darker, our tendency is to want to run and hide. Find another group of Christians and just sit with them and go through Bible study with them. And put this, and I don't mean this, I'm not trying to make any huge point here, but put this bubble over ourselves and try to isolate ourselves from the world. That's exactly the opposite of what Jesus calls us to do.

Sent Into the World

He prays the night before He died. He said, Father, just as you sent me into the world, I send them into the world. How is that? Incarnational. Skin on skin. How did Jesus come? He was born. He lived.

This faith that you and I have cannot be isolated from whatever your activity is. Marketplace, home, school, gym. You represent Christ in each of those places. Church is not just what we do on Sunday, or not what we do under the banner of this organization. Church is who we are. We're the body of Christ, charged with taking the gospel message to the world around us, living it and speaking it.

And so we, like these people at Thyatira, are going to come into this kind of collision, because this is what the world says. And we want to get along, and we want to be part of it. Nobody wants to be an outcast. And there's going to be those times, you know what they

Christ's Message Trumps the World's Message

Where your value system comes in collision with the world's value system. And what Jesus is saying to Thyatira, to you and me, is that Christ's message trumps the world's message.

My background is commercial real estate, and I was in the process of doing this deal with a Christian guy. Big Christian guy, this is how I knew it - he had a big credenza with a big Bible. So we're in the process of trying to find this property. I'm going to take a long story and condense it down - I'll give you the bottom line. He screws me at the end of this.

Now there's two sides to every story, and you could listen to the other side, but after you listen to it, you would say, "Well, Tom got screwed." There's two sides to this story, but I got it. I'm telling you, I can lay out the facts for you - it isn't even a close call.

So we're doing the post-mortem on this, and I'm sitting with him. I'm really frustrated, and I'm a little angry, and I'm a little hurt, a little defensive. There's some dough involved, a lot of dough involved. And I said to him, "I thought you were a Christian." The minute I said it, I thought, "That's so stupid." I was just ready to say, "I'm sorry." Here's what he said: "I am, but I don't let my Christianity affect the way I do business." And I said, "Well, if anybody doubts that, have them give me a call."

The Balance Between Truth and Love

Let me say it again here: the loveless doctrine that we saw in Ephesus is wrong, but so is the compassionate compromise that we see here. This is a loving church. If you are a loving church and a loving people, you will somehow - because God's going to have to do it, I haven't figured out how to do it other than to rely on Him - you are to communicate the truth, but to do it in love.

I have friends that week by week see their circle get smaller and smaller. Their explanation is, "We speak the truth, and they can't handle it." Well, think about this: Jesus spoke the truth, and thousands followed Him. Now, I get that by the end they deserted Him - I get that. But somehow there's a way to speak the truth.

As a group, the only group that really seemed to have a problem with Jesus were what? The Pharisees, the religious. The prostitutes didn't. The drunks didn't. The tax gatherers didn't, by and large. And yet we know Jesus never compromised the truth. So there's the call to speak the truth and to speak it in love.

Jesus' Example: Truth Spoken in Love

The rich young ruler comes to Jesus and says, "What do I have to do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus says, "Keep the commandments." The guy says, "I've kept all of them." Now, one of the gospel writers adds something to this story here. He says Jesus loved him very much. That's really important.

Jesus loved him so much that He told him the truth and said, "Really? You've kept all the commandments? Really? Well, sell everything you have, give it to the poor, and follow me." Now, Jesus, I think, is saying something there about giving and distribution of wealth and all that goes with it, but He's not suggesting this is the path to salvation - salvation by philanthropy. If you take that to its logical conclusion, if I take everything and give it to Mila, I'm saved, but I've now condemned him. So we're passing it around and hope we don't die with the stuff in our possession.

He's not suggesting that. I do think He's suggesting generosity, compassion - I don't want this to get obscured in the story - but He loved him. Because He loved him, He didn't say, "Wow, you kept them all - good going, buddy." He didn't soften the message. He made the message even more crystal clear.

The Narrow Path in a Spiritual World

That's the world we live in, right? You live in this world that's filled with spirituality. If you go to Powell's Bookstore in Portland - though I've never been there, I guarantee it's true - there's this spirituality section, maybe now sections, maybe a floor of it. We're more spiritual than we've ever been.

And yet here's what Jesus says: "I am the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the Father but through me." There's an exclusiveness to it. For us, the challenge is to deliver this very narrow message. When people say to you, "That's so narrow," don't go, "Oh, it's not." Yeah, it really is.

There are all these religions in the world, whatever they are, and what we're saying is this: they're all wrong. That's a pretty narrow message. And that whole spirituality section - you might pick a nugget out of that, or a nugget out of that - but here's what we say: when it comes to salvation, they're all wrong and we're right. That's what we're saying. And we say it because Jesus said it. The only way you can frankly understand it is because He opened your eyes to see this truth. So as we go into this world, we bring to it a certain salt along with the light.

Love and Discipline in Every Aspect of Life

It's in every aspect. You see that principle - it's in every aspect of our life. Jim Dobson says the number one mistake we make raising our kids is thinking if we love them enough, we don't have to discipline them. And that's true, that's really true.

Some of you know really the balance, the toughness of that. You have a blended family, or you work - both mom and dad. Parenting is so - I think parenting, personally, this is me - I think it's the toughest job on the planet. Because it requires a consistency and a tenacity unlike almost anything else.

Not to be destructive - I think probably every time I'm around I give my same philosophy of raising kids - but it's especially when kids are young: keep those boundaries very, very, very tight. We did. So by the time our girls were 12, 13, 14, we had in our house no rules, no curfews, no anything. We taught them responsibility and then we dealt with them in a responsible way. So if they were going out, it's like, "I have these friends and here's

Teaching Children Boundaries

What they teach them. They'll take their girls and say, "All right girls, no dating until you're 16. You can't date until you're 16." Well, here's the problem. What if they're 16 and not ready to date? I know 36-year-olds who shouldn't date.

So what you arbitrarily said is, when you turn 16, apparently this naive child is going to get an infusion of maturity on their 16th birthday. I know 14-year-olds that I'd be very comfortable if they dated, and I know 18-year-olds that aren't near ready. Why would you make a rule like that?

So the idea is now, "I'm feeling guilty, I love them, therefore I don't have to discipline them." No, you have to bring discipline and truth to them. The same thing is in the marketplace, and the challenge is to compromise, and God hates this.

God's Patient Warning

We read it, we have to close. Look at verse 21. We see the beauty of God. He's going to come along, He's going to deal with Jezebel and her followers, and He's going to punish them. But He says, "Listen, I've waited and waited and waited." God is a patient God.

I'm sitting with a group of guys, and we're praying. They start to my left, so I'm the last one. That's really bad. If ever you're in that opportunity, and they say, "Let's pray," jump in fast. Because by the time you get to the end, all the good prayers are taken. They're all gone. There's none left. You always pray first, because it's not covered then.

The guy right before me says this, and this is what he prayed: "Father, thank you for your infinite patience." I thought, "Uh-oh." He's patient, but it's not endless patience. See what He says in verse 21? He may be saying it to you: "I gave her time to repent, and she doesn't want to repent. I gave her time. I waited. I've shown her the truth."

The Seriousness of Sin

Here's what we get. We get a seriousness that God has about sin. Remember Acts chapter 5? Remember Ananias and Sapphira? They sell this piece of land, and Ananias comes in to Peter and to the church, and he said, "Listen, I've sold this piece of land. Let's arbitrarily say he got $1,000, and I want to give you this $500. This is all we got from this."

Peter said, "Why would you lie against the Holy Spirit?" And he struck dead, and it says the young man came and took him away. Pretty soon Sapphira comes in there. The most amazing thing to me is, apparently she doesn't know about it. I can't believe that word didn't spread, and Peter says, "Is it true that you got $500 for this?" And she said, "Oh yeah, we gave it all," and he said, "Why are you lying against the Holy Spirit?" And she struck dead, and the young men come and take her away.

Let's make really clear the distinction there. The problem is not the amount that they gave. The problem is that they lied against the Spirit of God.

A Culture of Divine Discipline

That phrase, "the young men," some scholars believe, get this, this is pretty scary. Some scholars believe that was like an office in that church, like deacons. Like regularly God was dealing with people, and they were dying, and these guys were equipped. They'd just take him out, and they'd take him out the other town and bury him.

Well, you know what it says after Sapphira died? I want to make sure I get all the words and get it accurate. It's not going to be too surprising to you. Here's what it says: "So they died. She immediately fell over. She breathed her last. The young men came in, found her dead. They carried her away. They buried her by her husband." Here's what it says, verse 11: "And a great fear came over the whole church." Really?

Hey, imagine this. Jeff is already, okay, we have dinner at one, and then we're going to eat again at five. We're going to be here at seven. Imagine if I said, "Here's what's going to happen tonight at seven. Okay, Mew is going to sing, and after he sings, I'm going to get up, and when I get up, here's what God's going to do. He's going to kill all the hypocrites."

I'm thinking a bunch of you are going to be at Bill's Tavern, and the Driftwood, and the Lumberyard, and you're going to need to spend time with your kids. I'm guessing attendance is low. Here's how I know. I'm not going to be here.

God's Heart for His Church

Here's the deal. God's serious about His body, the bride, the church, and He's serious about sin. It's not that He doesn't forgive. It's not that He isn't loving. We have a very distorted view of sin.

If you're in the church, there's like some of these sins, and they're big. Like if you're gay, the church is not very forgiving. And a lot of churches, though, it's kind of changing a little bit. You're divorced, you might as well be gay. And then we have other sins that are equally distraught, like gossip.

How many of you are in churches that have been destroyed by people who just talk, and talk, and talk, and talk, and talk, and won't shut up, and it's none of their business, and we somehow think it's okay? We need to see sin as God sees sin, and He's serious about it.

The Light of Grace and Truth

Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. Once was lost, now I'm found. Blind, now I see. The light of the world come and infiltrates your heart. Now you become the light to the world. Does it mean we're perfect? No.

Is struggling enough? Well, it at least indicates something, right? I really believe that for most of us, the best indication of your spiritual condition is not when you're sitting in church singing, or in a Bible study reading. The best indication of your spiritual condition is, how do you feel when you sin?

Can you just go willy-nilly? Because that's what was happening to Jezebel and her followers. Just sinning away. Boys will be boys. Where's your heart broken and aching? And the result is, there'll be this repentance. There'll be this turning.

The Ongoing Struggle

Here's what I want, and it doesn't work this way. It's like that there's one time, once and for all, where I turn, I put it behind me, and I never have to deal with it again. It just doesn't happen that way, does it? There is this struggle.

That's why Paul ends the book of Ephesians and says, put on the full armor of God. Those of you who've heard this before, we've talked about it. That phrase, put on the full armor of God, the way it's in the Greek, is put it on once and for all, and leave it on. When I read and understood that, it changed my understanding of that passage.

When do you put on armor? Not to go to dinner. You put on armor when you go into battle. So if He's saying to us, put on the armor of God and leave on the armor of God, what's He saying about the battle? It's 24-7. You're in a war.

The Reality of Spiritual Battle

That's why sometimes you feel so close to Him. There's those moments where you feel like you can just touch Him, and then there's other moments where He feels miles away. There's moments when you are victorious. There's moments when you're just sucking gas, and you can barely get by, and you're in the middle of it going, I don't even know why I'm doing this. I'm just doing it. But there's a struggle, isn't it?

Let me tell you something. When we see ourselves as God sees us, wretched, saved. At a funeral service in a church, they picked up the hymnal or their little prayer book, and it was song 25, and so they started it, and they said it's Amazing Grace. So I thought, well, I don't need a book for that. I can sing that. So I'm singing Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved, here's what they sang, that saved a soul like mine. That's not what the song says. Saved what? A wretch. God sees me for who I really am, but I'm not a wretch left in isolation. He comes and He saves me.

Closing Prayer

Father, we pray that in our life, in the midst of all this struggle, that we would not just be struggling and say, well, that's enough, but there would be markers along the way where we see You work, and we can go, that's something You did. Father, grace is indeed so amazing to us. When we really understand it, we deserve death and condemnation, we sin against You blatantly with no repentance at all, but You come along and Your spirit awakens our heart, and for the very first time, You breathe life into us spiritually. We were dead, now we're alive. We were blind, now we can see. We are new creatures, not through any work of our own, not through our own will, our own desires, but through Your work in our life.

God, thank You for that truth, but let us just be engulfed by that. And it doesn't mean an end of the struggle. It doesn't mean that You'll necessarily at all remove the burdens, but it does mean You'll join us in the midst of that. And where there was certain defeat, there's now certain victory. God, I pray You continue to work in our life until the day we breathe our last and we're joined with Your son Jesus forever. We pray to You in His name. Amen.