The Church of Thyatira
Tom Shrader walks through Jesus' letter to the church at Thyatira in Revelation 2:18-29, commending the congregation for its love, service, faith, and perseverance while confronting its dangerous tolerance of false teaching. The false teacher he calls Jezebel had convinced church members to blend their Christian identity with the idol-laden practices of the trade guilds, essentially segregating faith from daily life and work. Shrader calls the church—and all believers—to hold truth and love together, warning from Acts 5 that God takes sin seriously and that a loving church must have the courage to speak truth, not merely soothe.
“If you love someone, you will tell them the truth. But if you tell people the truth, it's because you love them.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: What Christ Says to the Church (Revelation)
Recorded: 2010 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 42 min
Themes: false teaching, tolerance, truth and love, perseverance, church discipline, idolatry, faith at work, compromise, struggling with compromise, navigating workplace pressure, new believer, pastor, elder, avoiding hard conversations, working professional, feeling spiritually comfortable
Scripture: Revelation 2:18-29, Acts 5:1-11, 1 Corinthians 11
Theological Themes: ecclesiology, church health, false prophecy, sanctification, becoming holy, biblical authority, syncretism, mixing faith with culture
Full Transcript
Introduction to the Letter
Open your Bibles to the book of Revelation, chapter 2. If you don't have a Bible, raise your hand and the guys will make their way down the aisle and give you a copy. 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 chapters 2 and 3, to seven actual churches. We started the first week and went through the map. John, as he receives his vision, is on the island of Patmos. If John were to go on land, he would connect at Ephesus — the first city he would meet — with a major highway linking these seven churches together. He would travel north to Smyrna, then to Pergamum, then southeast to Thyatira, straight south to Sardis, a little to the east to Philadelphia, and then Laodicea.
The Pattern of the Seven Letters
We also noted that in each of these seven letters there is a general pattern that Jesus uses. We call it general because there are some exceptions. What is notable about today is that this letter exactly follows the pattern, so let me point it out as we read verses 18 through 29. It is worth mentioning that this is the longest of the seven letters — and also the longest letter to the city we know the least about.
So here is the recipient: "To the angel of the church at Thyatira, write." Then comes Jesus' description of Himself, which changes in each of the seven letters. Generally, that description relates to something He wants to communicate, often as He begins to point out a weakness. He says: "These things says the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire and feet like fine brass." Verse 19 gives the strength: "I know your works, love, service, faith, and patience. And as for your works, the last are more than the first."
Then come the weaknesses: "Nevertheless, 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 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."
Then comes the action: "Now I say to you and to the rest in Thyatira, as many as do not have this doctrine and have not known the depths of Satan, as they say — I will put no other burden on you. But hold fast what you have till I come." And finally, 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."
The Weight and Seriousness of This Letter
So there is the pattern. Reading that through cold — and I am going to operate on the assumption that many of you have not read that letter for a while, and for some joining us for the first time it may be the first time you have read it — is there something that strikes you? Because there is for me. When I read that letter, I have a strong reaction to the heaviness and seriousness of it. When you encounter phrases like "I will kill her children with death," you begin to get a sense of the magnitude of what Jesus is saying here, and I hope that is what we can draw out together.
We have said that these seven actual churches are designed to represent seven types of churches found throughout all of history. Obviously no single church is made up of one hundred percent of people who fit a given type, but churches do tend to have certain characteristics and traits. We have seen that as we have worked through Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, and now Thyatira. The weakness Jesus is addressing in this church is the central concern of the letter.
The City of Thyatira
The recipient is clear — it is the angel, meaning the messenger or elder, of the church at Thyatira. This is the one who would receive the letter and read it to the congregation. Each week we have paused to offer some historical background on the city, but we know hardly anything about Thyatira as it existed in that period. Today it is a city of about 25,000 people. Our ability to fully reconstruct the situation is limited by that, though we can still draw significant principles from the letter.
Thyatira sits at an equal distance between Pergamos to the northwest and Sardis to the south. Taking the broad categories we have used in previous weeks — history, politics, religion, culture — none of them can be meaningfully applied to what we know of this city. What we do know is that it held a strategic military position, and this is what made studying it particularly interesting. The city was essentially designed to be destroyed and rebuilt. As enemies might come ashore and travel the historic highway, Thyatira was positioned to function as a speed bump — to slow them down. The city was built up, torn down, built up, and torn down again.
The City of Thyatira
There are two things about this 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 made and reproduced in Thyatira had two sources. One was from a plant called madder. They would take the dye from it and color garments. The other source was a shellfish called murex. When they killed this fish, they obtained — and this is really important — one drop of purple dye. Think about how many fish had to be killed to dye a single garment. So if you owned a garment dyed with murex purple, you owned a very expensive garment.
The other significant thing for our understanding as we begin to unpack this 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 am not trying to equate these things at all. But they were organizations of workers in specific areas, and that becomes very important to our story.
This is the smallest of the seven cities, as best we can tell. It was absolutely insignificant. When we described the other cities, I mentioned places like New York, Washington, Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago, and Los Angeles. For Thyatira, I wrote: What Cheer, Iowa. I used to think of all those small towns around Iowa. I met a young man this morning who asked where I was from in Iowa, and I told him Davenport. He was from Centerville — a small town in south-central Iowa. My mom is from Sheraton, which is about 4,500 people, and my dad is from Melrose, which was about 400 when my Uncle Yogi was on the city council. That is what Thyatira is — a little town of really no significance at all.
How Jesus Identifies Himself
Jesus identifies Himself here as the Son of God. This is the only time He uses that description as He addresses these seven cities. He is described as the one who has eyes like a flame of fire — this blazing anger burning against sin, this penetrating gaze that looks through any facade or disguise. There are no secrets and no point in trying to fool Him. He sees everything. His feet are like fine brass, which is a picture of trampling sin in judgment.
Looking back at last week, when we examined Smyrna, Jesus in His description did not deal with any strength or weakness — only their hurt and their pain. As Jesus described Himself to that church, He reached toward people who were really hurting and presented Himself as, in my words, a sympathetic Savior. Here, Jesus 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 is patient, but He is not a God of infinite patience.
"I Know Your Works"
We see here what we have seen in the general pattern in verse 19: "I know your works." We stop on this repeated phrase, "I know," because we need to get this deep into our understanding. What He is saying is not merely that He knows about them. He is saying He knows everything there is to know about you as a church — and the church is made up of people. So what Jesus is saying is: I know you.
Now that can do two things. First, it can scare you. He knows everything there is to know about you. You cannot hide anything from Him. He knows everything you have ever said, everything you have ever done, and everything you ever will do. But it can also be — and this is what is important to me — very freeing and very comforting. You do not have to play a game with God. When you give Him information, you are not informing Him of things He does not already know. All you are doing is acknowledging that He does know them.
That changes the way you communicate with Him. You can simply go to Him and pour out your heart. He knows you are weak and hurting. He knows your sin. He knows your strength. He knows the trials you face. That is why we pray. We pray because we know that He knows, and we know that He cares, and we know that if He chooses, He can do something about either changing the circumstances or, more importantly, changing our hearts.
Love, Service, Faith, and Perseverance
Here is what He says He knows. Look at the words: I know your love, and I know your service, and I know your faith, and I know your perseverance. Rich Stedman writes that these are all related. Love leads to service. Faith leads to perseverance. If you love God, you will serve His people — you cannot help it. It is a sign of love that you are willing to serve. And if you have faith, you will persevere. You will understand that God is in control and that things work out according to His purpose.
"I know your love" — this is the only time so far in the commendations Jesus has given to these churches that He has said this. It is the only time He has identified a church as one that loves. In fact, remember that the very indictment against the church at Ephesus was that they were loveless. He also says, "I know that you serve" — the word literally means minister. And out of that service comes great faith, and out of that faith comes steadfastness and perseverance. They all come together. Jesus is saying they are inseparable.
Love, Service, and Faith
Sometimes we see and feel that connection far more strongly than others. But when I love, what happens in that moment is that 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 giving comes in the form of service and ministry. Jesus modeled it Himself. He said, "I didn't come to be served, I came to serve." And from that place you begin to move out with a great deal of faith.
Just as we were standing here, we had the opportunity to pray for the church plant at first and second hour. As I stood there, I smiled in two ways. One, I was very, very happy. The other was the awareness that these people have no idea what they are getting into. There is simply no way to communicate the depth of it, and I don't mean that in a demeaning way — you just don't know yet.
I can guarantee you that on February 13th, 2012, after that one-year anniversary and formal launch, there will be a fraction of those people who won't be there. Life changes, things come up, and you can't possibly anticipate all of it. But what deepens through that process is your faith, because you come to truly understand something. I think at the beginning you say it, and then every day you understand it more: it really is God's church, not your church. It really is Him that sustains it, not you, and it is ultimately His vision that matters, because if your vision isn't His vision, you are not going anywhere.
Jesus Loves Me — Unpacking a Simple Song
Last night I had the chance to emcee an event for Christian Family Care Agency. Over the years, Susan and I have done a great deal with Christian Family Care — we used to do foster care for babies. In fact, someone came in recently with a picture of their son who had just gotten married, and they showed me a baby picture. Susan was holding the baby in the photo; it was one of the babies who had come through our home during a season when they were coming through pretty fast and furious.
At the event, they had a children's choir perform, and there is something about children singing that feels so innocent. Dr. Jesse McGuire also performed, and the children sang "Jesus Loves Me, This I Know," while one of Jesse's songs was "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands." Those two songs have been very important to me for the last three or four years.
I remember the exact moment. Brayden called me on the phone and said he wanted to sing for me, and he sang "Jesus Loves Me, This I Know." I think it is essentially impossible not to have a reaction when a child sings that song. I remember hanging up, sitting down in the middle of whatever I was studying, making some notes, and 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. It's not just that He loves me — I go to the Bible and I can see it. And because He knows everything there is to know about me, He loves me now. This is really important: He loves me now, and He will love me forever. There will never be a moment where that changes.
We hear it in relationships — a man and a woman get married, and sometimes one of them will say, "If I knew that about you when I married you, I would have never married you." Jesus is never going to say that to you. He already knows everything there is to know. He knows everything you are going to do — all the good, all the bad. So He cannot love you more. He cannot love you less.
He's Got the Whole World in His Hands
When Jesse was singing "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands," I remembered watching Mahalia Jackson sing that on the Ed Sullivan Show as a young boy. I remember the power of it — her voice, and the words about the little bitty babies in His hands, the whole wide world in His hands. Sometimes I forget that. Sometimes I watch the news and think nobody has anybody in anybody's hands, that nobody has control of anything, anywhere. And I have to step back and remember what that song is saying.
A Church With a Problem
Now take note of what we have seen so far. These are all good things — remarkable things. This church loves, it serves, it has faith, and it has perseverance. But there is a problem.
William Barclay — and I did not check the date on his commentary, but my suspicion is it was written forty or fifty years ago — 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 is exactly what Jesus is addressing here. Susan and I had an experience the other night that we have had dozens and dozens of times. I was flipping through the television and stopped on a religious channel. There were thousands and thousands of people, and a man was teaching. I watched for a while and said to Susan, "I don't get it. I don't understand it."
Tolerant of the Wrong Things
The problem is stated in verse 20: "Nevertheless, I have these things against you. You allow that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach." And in this process of teaching, what she has done is seduce the servants into committing sexual immorality and eating things sacrificed to idols. The church at Thyatira had become very tolerant — and tolerance is something our culture lifts up as a virtue. It is good to be tolerant of people. When Paul speaks of the fruit of the Spirit — love, joy, peace, 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.
There is nothing wrong with being tolerant, but here is the problem: the church at Thyatira was tolerant of bad doctrine. And bad doctrine, which will always eventually happen, leads people into bad behavior.
Who Is Jezebel?
At the core of this is the woman called Jezebel. In studying this passage, four theories emerge about who she is. One is that she is the angel's wife — the senior pastor's wife. A second theory identifies her as Lydia. There is, however, zero evidence for either of those.
Most scholars hold to one of two remaining views. Either the name addresses a kind of composite picture — the general spiritual condition of the church — or, more commonly, it is understood as a pseudonym for a real woman in the church who had risen to a position of teaching. Jesus reaches back into the Old Testament to draw the comparison: Jezebel was King Ahab's wife, the one who introduced the worship of Baal into the nation of Israel, under whose domain and authority 800 prophets rose up. After the 450 prophets of Baal challenged Elijah and were defeated, Jezebel then tried to kill him.
Most scholars conclude that what has happened at Thyatira is that a woman in the church rose to a position of teaching, and as she achieved that level, she began to teach false doctrine. We are not entirely sure of its precise content, but as verse 20 makes clear, it was false doctrine that was seducing the servants into sexual immorality and eating things sacrificed to idols.
The Guilds and the Pressure to Compromise
At the beginning, there is the matter of the guilds — the trade workers who were so prominent in the city of Thyatira. For someone to engage in commerce, to be skilled, and to have any significant employment, membership in those guilds was essentially required. 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." You begin to see how false doctrine was creeping in through this door.
These meals would probably take place in a heathen temple and would most certainly begin with a libation to the gods — a toast to the deity — and the meal itself would largely consist of meat offered to idols. The official position of the church meant that a Christian could not attend such a meal. And there is the rub. For a Christian to participate was to declare something other than Jesus as Lord.
Jezebel came along and began to teach a way around this tension. She said, in effect: church is church, but business is business. Though these gatherings were, by all accounts, wild orgies of idol worship and exaltation of false gods, Jezebel told the believers to treat it as commerce, not as worship.
Faith Cannot Be Segregated from Daily Life
Dr. Earl Palmer offers a penetrating insight that is worth dwelling on: "The most subtle challenge to our faith often originates in the daily places where we earn the money we need to live." That is the heart of the matter. It is one thing to sit in a room on Sunday and say Jesus is Lord. It is an entirely different thing to say it in the world — at the workplace, at school, in the neighborhood, wherever life takes you.
Our faith and our life outside these walls cannot be segregated. We cannot declare Jesus is Lord on Sunday and then spend the week following what Jesus Himself describes in very strong terms as the principles — the teaching — of Satan. The two cannot coexist in separate compartments.
There is a story worth telling here because it illustrates this exactly. In the middle of doing a deal with a man, he acted in a way that was completely inexcusable. There are two sides to most stories — but not this one. If every fact were laid out, the conclusion would be plain: this man took advantage in a serious way. It cost real money, time, and energy. Sitting down with him afterward, the words came out: "I thought you were a Christian." And even as those words were spoken, the weakness of them was obvious — all they were really doing was trying to hurt him, to stick it to him a little.
Truth and Love in Balance
When someone says, "I am a Christian, but it doesn't affect the way I do business," that is a serious problem. If anyone needs a testimony or witness to that, I can testify personally that faith should never be kept out of the way we conduct ourselves in the world. You don't have the right, and I don't have the right, to say, "This is Sunday," and treat the rest of the week as entirely separate from it. When you say Jesus is Lord, and you say that this is the Word of God, it now begins to dictate how we live.
I have been preparing for an interview with the governor on Tuesday night, and I have been spending time trying to understand the budget. I have 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 very difficult to work through. But I am convinced that the problem we face now is partially a financial bankruptcy, though more than anything it is a moral bankruptcy. People took advantage of the system.
Consider what is happening now with the banks. Bank of America has announced no foreclosures for the next year, and it sounds as though Wells Fargo and the other big four are going to follow. I am not an economist — I don't even play one on TV. But I can tell you what is going to happen. If you have a loan with Bank of America, things are tough, and they are not going to foreclose for a year, you are going to slide that money right into your pocket and not give them a dime. As a follower of Christ, we face a dilemma, because we said we were going to pay, we have the ability to pay, and we need to pay.
The Temptation of Self-Righteous Indignation
I want to apply this directly to our own lives. I turn on the television and it says, "If you have credit card debt of ten thousand dollars or more, we can get it reduced to two thousand," or "If the IRS is after you, call us and we'll get them off your back." And meanwhile, there are people who have the ability to make their house payment and simply aren't making it. Everything rises up in me with this kind of pseudo-righteous indignation. You don't even need to shake your heads — just check your heart. You feel that way too. You want to say amen right now.
But that response is a little bit like the church at Ephesus. We should be doing the right things, certainly, but Ephesus was saying, "We know all this. We are discerning. We have the knowledge," and yet there was no heart in it. I also recognize that there are people who are genuinely hurting in the midst of all this, and we have to be sensitive to that. We need to hold both things together.
The Two Poles: Ephesus and Thyatira
Here is the balance I want you to see. You have the church at Ephesus — the problem there is that it is loveless. Then you have the church at Thyatira — filled with love, but about as dumb as a brick when it comes to discernment. We tend to sit at one of these two poles, both as churches and as individuals. One person is discerning, truth-focused, and sorting everything out, while another is saying, "Can't we all just get along? I love everybody."
The challenge for the church — corporately and for every person in it — is to be a church that stands for the truth but does it with love. Somehow those two things must be married together. As someone who serves in a leadership capacity within this church, I can tell you that people are constantly pulling in both directions. Some are saying, "We just have to love, love, love — don't let all that doctrine get in the way." Others are saying, "All that matters is doctrine." The problem with the church at Thyatira is that they bought into the idea that if you just love, if you just serve, if you are just active, then the truth really doesn't matter that much.
Jesus: The Perfect Blend
Jesus is a perfect blend of truth and love. He loves, but He never simply soothes over sin. A classic example is His interaction with the rich young ruler, who comes to Him and asks, "What do I need to do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus says to obey the commandments. The ruler replies that he has done all of that. At that point, one of the Gospels tells us that Jesus looked at him with love.
Stop there for a moment. Jesus loves this man. He has confronted him and answered his question. What is the loving thing to do next? What Jesus does, in an extraordinary act of love, is tell him the truth. He says, "If that is the case, then sell everything you have, give it to the poor, and follow Me." He is pointing out to the man that he has, in fact, violated the very first commandment he claimed to have kept. If you love someone, you will tell them the truth. And if you tell people the truth, it is because you love them.
Love That Speaks Truth
I have seen this principle play out in my own life. Since Susan received her cancer diagnosis, I have had people I barely know sending me recommendations. Here is my favorite — make a note of this — this is the most unhelpful thing you can say to someone in that situation: "Do you have a good doctor?" No, we got a quack who works out of his van. What a thing to say to somebody.
Love Without Truth Is Not Enough
Even if you give someone all the juicers and cures in the world, and even if they heal the cancer, something else will eventually take her. If you really love people, you will tell them about the natural remedies, but you will also tell them that the ultimate healer is Jesus, because the real problem is sin. Somehow you have to marry those two things together.
The church at Ephesus blew it on the loveless side — doctrine, belief, discernment, but no heart. The church at Thyatira is the opposite: it has all the heart, love, service, faith, and perseverance. And yet something is still deeply wrong.
James Dobson says the number one mistake parents make raising their kids is thinking that if they love them enough, they do not have to discipline them. We always come back to this idea: "I really love them, and I don't want to hurt them." So when the kids were small, we were constantly getting in the way of the things they wanted to do. We would say, "Don't play in the street," and they would say, "You don't want us to have fun," and we would say, "We don't want you to get hit by a car."
God works the same way. That is the combination — love and discipline held together.
God Gives Time to Repent, But He Is Serious
Look at verse 21. God says He gave her time to repent, and she did not. So He is going to act in judgment. He speaks to those of us who know the gospel and are involved in sin and says: stop it. You are going to sin — I understand that — but when we sin, we repent. We do not go on in a happy old way. We know that He forgives us, and that is not a source of license; it is a source of comfort.
Look at verse 23. He says, "I will kill her children with death," so that all the churches will know that He is the One who searches minds and hearts. He is serious about this. He is not kidding.
Turn to Acts chapter five — page 95 if you have a Bible from us. When I read that verse for the first time as a new believer, I thought: really, He is going to kill them? Yes, that is exactly what He is saying. To those who do not know Christ, He is calling for repentance because death is coming. And to those of us who do know Him, He is present and He is serious about holiness.
Ananias and Sapphira: A Sobering Example
In Acts chapter five, there is a couple — Ananias and Sapphira — who sell a piece of land. They kept back some of the price for themselves, with his wife's full knowledge, and brought only a portion of it and laid it at the apostles' feet. To put some numbers to it: suppose they sold the land for one hundred dollars. Ananias comes to Peter and says he sold the property and wants to give all fifty dollars of it. There is nothing wrong with the size of the gift in itself.
But Peter, with God opening his eyes and giving him supernatural discernment, goes right to Ananias's heart. He says: "Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back some of the price of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not under your control? Why is it that you have conceived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God." And as he heard these words, Ananias fell down and breathed his last. Fear gripped the heart of all who heard it. The young men arose, covered him up, carried him out, and buried him.
Verse seven may actually be the most remarkable part of the story. A time elapsed of about three hours, and his wife came in not knowing what had happened. I cannot fathom that in three hours not one person came to her and said, "Did you hear what happened to your husband?" Nonetheless, Peter asked her: "Tell me whether you sold the land for such and such a price." She said yes. Peter said, "Did you sell it for fifty dollars?" — remembering the price was one hundred — and she said yes. Peter then said to her: "Why is it that you have 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." 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.
Some of the commentators suggest that the phrase "the young men," which appears several times in the passage, refers to an actual part of the ministry team within the church — something like ushers or greeters. The picture, then, is that God was on a regular basis actively working to heal His church from sin.
The Fear of the Lord in the Church
Look at verse 11: "And a fear came upon the whole church upon hearing all those things." Imagine if next Sunday it was announced that God was going to strike dead all the liars. That would certainly solve the parking problem. What is God doing here? Does He still do that? Yes — Paul addresses exactly this in 1 Corinthians 11, when he speaks about the seriousness of taking communion.
The Seriousness of God's Judgment
God is really serious about this. God is really serious about this truth. The fact that the church at Thyatira had love, service, faith, and perseverance — that is terrific. But there was a part of the church following this Jezebel, a part that had allowed this to take place, and those were going to suffer. There is judgment for them, and there is judgment for us as well.
The Weight of Church Planting
It is fitting that this is the message on the day we announce the next church plant, because you feel the burden of it on both sides. There will be all sorts of pressure. Men will come, and after six or eight months they will ask, "How's it going down there?" And then the next question will come: "How many people go?" Pretty soon you are going to want to give them a number, and there will be great tension. I have watched it in every church plant we have done.
You allow people to lead, you put people in leadership, and you allow things early on in a church that you would never allow later, because you are feeling all that pressure at the beginning. It never goes away. We have it — just in a different capacity.
Two Things to Remember When It Gets Tough
Here is what you need to know: two things for when it is tough. Number one, I need to know that I have His strength, not mine. You can look at Will's eyes when he is up here talking, and I have spoken with him — I believe him. He knows that if this is just a human enterprise, it can succeed in a surface sense. I see churches around that have big numbers and all of that, but God will not use it in a powerful way. So when I am weak, He is strong.
Here is the second thing, and you need to hear this: this is all worth it. There are going to be moments when you look around and think, "This just doesn't seem right. It doesn't seem fair." But that is God's job to figure out. He is the one who has the vengeance — not you, not me, not us.
From Compromise to Corruption to Death
What we see in these letters becomes very serious when you consider the progression. When we looked at Pergamum, Thyatira, and Sardis together, Pergamum was the compromised church. Thyatira, which we have examined today, is the corrupt church. And when we get to Sardis next, it is the ultimate consequence of corruption — Sardis is the dead church. We will look at that next week.
Let me pray as Ricardo comes to lead us in communion. Father, thank You for these amazing truths. We pray, as we end our service and head to communion, that You would lead us, guide us, and strengthen us. Father, thank You that You love us, because that is the only reason we could love You and 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 that these things flow from the doctrine and truth You give us. Let us love in the truth. We pray that in Christ's name. Amen.