Monday, August 6th | Trade Guilds and Associations

Welcome back, everyone. Today is Monday, August the 7th. I'm Ryan Hill. I'm John Galantis. You're listening to Clearview Today with Dr. Abbadon Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. You can visit us online at ClearviewTodayShow.com, or if you have any questions for Dr. Shah or suggestions for new topics, send us a text to 252-582-5028, or you can email us at contact at ClearviewTodayShow.com.

That's right. You guys can help us keep the conversation going by supporting the show, sharing it online, leaving us a good review on iTunes or Spotify, anywhere you get your podcasting content from. We're going to leave a link in the description of this podcast, so you can do just that. The verse of the day today comes from Psalm 68, verses 32 and 33. Sing to God, you kingdoms of the earth. Oh, sing praises to the Lord, to him who rides on the heaven of heavens, which were of old. Indeed, he sends out his voice, a mighty voice. To him who rides on the heaven of heavens. Oh, my goodness. I don't know that I've read this psalm in recent memory.

That language is like, wow. I love that worship is a command. Especially as a worship pastor, it feels good to tell people, like, you have to do this.

You are commanded to worship. But in all seriousness, God's majesty and God's might and splendor is so magnificent that it's not that you better do it or you're in trouble. It's that there's no more appropriate response to what he is and who he is other than praise.

That's the only response that makes sense. And, you know, sometimes we lose sight of just how big and vast and majestic God is because we talk about the nearness and the intimacy of God, which is true. And we need to emphasize those things. But don't neglect just how magnificent and how huge and how awesome literally what that word means God is, because when we get the full scope or even just a glimpse of the scope of what God is and who God is and what he's done for us, our only response is praise. You know, a lot of times during times of worship, I'll see adults who have, you know, identities and personas and egos.

And it's difficult to let that guard down. And it's difficult to just fully praise God and fully enjoy him. But when I see children, when I see little kids praising God, it's nothing but pure, 100 percent just ecstatic joy. Sometimes they're just hyped that there's music and they're allowed to dance and be silly. And then you put God in those lyrics.

You start talking to him about Jesus. And then at weeks like VBS, day after day after day, they keep coming back. They keep experiencing that joy.

And it just gets better and better and better for them. Well, one of my favorite things, I'm glad you brought up VBS because we were just coming off of the heels of VBS. One of the things that we did this year that is different than what we've done in the past is we actually had you and the rest of the worship team up there because one of the songs is a song that we normally do. And I was like, well, you know, if this is a song that we normally do, I'd rather the kids hear you as their worship pastor and then the rest of the worship team up there leading the song. And I absolutely being on stage and kind of looking out at the kids when we were singing, the song was House of the Lord. When we were singing that song, just hearing the kids like just this wave of sound and wave of worship coming back at the stage and just seeing them, you know, doing the motions and laughing and smiling. Man, you're absolutely right. That's what our worship should look like. Do we need to talk about how I almost lost my life at VBS?

Do we need to? Yeah, the dreaded Twinkie. That was a little bit hazardous. Yeah, we have sort of a template of how things go at Clearview churches that typically one of the staff is, you know, leading VBS or one of the volunteers has led VBS. And Ryan is always the like the kooky character that comes in. And every VBS has that like kind of character that comes in, is trying to learn about Jesus with the kids. And sometimes he's an explorer and sometimes he's a railway conductor, a pirate. And this year he was an astronaut who was a mechanic trying out to be a captain.

Right. So his name was Mickey Way. Mickey Way.

Here's the catch with Mickey Way is that Ryan and his wife were leading VBS this year. So he can't be the silly character. Right. So he turned to me and was like, well, you'd be the silly character. And I was like, yeah, absolutely.

I'll do it. I think that's fun. He did a phenomenal job, by the way. Incredible job.

I tried to do it, give it like a William Shatner sort of vibe, like solar mechanic, Mickey Way to be captain of the Starship fleet. So anyway, night one goes great. Great. Night two. Fantastic. Kids are loving it, loving it. The thing about Mickey Way is he really loves Twinkies. So on the third night, it said that you have to, the script called for him to like pack three or four Twinkies in his bag and just go to town eating them. So I was like, oh, on stage in front of the kids.

On stage. Yeah. Like cream. That was what the script called for. So I was like, okay, I'll do them one better.

I'll do just like six. I'll just put a bunch in the bag and I'll grab them in the script. You're supposed to open them up. But I was afraid that like with sweaty hands, I'd start fumbling. I was like, I'm gonna just unwrap them all, grab a fistful, eat them on stage.

The kids will love it. I get three in my mouth at one time and like Ryan and Elizabeth are like talking. They're like, Mickey, well, you know, you can't be a captain if you don't tell the truth and don't shine Jesus light. And I'm, and I breathe in and all of a sudden I feel a chunk of spongy cake in my airway, in my trachea. And this is not like, you know, when you like swallow a chip and you're like, this is not that this is like complete blockage. It was only for a second. It was for a brief, brief instant. But in that moment, I was terrified. And I go, and as I moved, I felt, because there's a Twinkie is really wet and spongy. It kind of broke up and I swallowed it down. I was terrified and the skit was still going on. So all the kids are like, look at Mickey. He's eating those Twinkies.

He can't eat all those Twinkies. And I was like, I was crying. I had tears in my eyes. I was like, Oh, I went back and watched it. And it only lasted for literally a split second, but it felt like an eternity.

I just breathed it in and it was complete. But you played it off very well. Thank you. Thank you. You played it off very well.

I don't know, man. And then I went to pass the shot. He was like, what happened? What was that? I choked. I choked, dude. I sucked a Twinkie down my windpipe.

He was like, Oh yeah, that's no fun. Oh, that's so much fun. We're going to go into the show in just a second. But if you guys have any questions or suggestions for new topics, send us a text, 252-5825028, or you can visit us online at clearytodayshow.com. We'll be right back. I'm just playing.

I'm just playing. Keep listening. Dr. Shah is actually the lead pastor of Clearview Church in North Carolina. Every single weekend, he preaches expository messages that challenge and inspire us to live God honoring lives. Well, one of the four core values of Clearview Church is that we're a Bible believing church. So every sermon is coming directly from scripture, which is great because that guarantees that there are timeless truths that are constantly applicable to our lives. This is a great resource because whether you're driving, whether you're cleaning the house, whether you're working out, you can always benefit from hearing the Word of God spoken into your life. And God's Word is always going to do something new for you every time you hear it.

Sometimes it's conviction and sometimes it's encouragement. But know that every time you listen to God's Word, you're inviting the Holy Spirit to move and work in your life. You guys can check out the sermons by Avidan Shah PhD podcast. First and foremost, check it out on our church app. That's the Clearview app. You can get that in the Google Play Store. You can get that on iTunes, but you can also find the podcast on the Apple podcast app or on our website at Clearviewbc.org. And listen, if you've got a little extra time on your hands, you just want to do some further reading, you can also read the transcripts of those sermons.

Those are available on Dr. Shah's website, abidanshah.com. And we're going to leave you guys a little link in the description so you can follow it. But for right now, David, let's hop back in.

All right. Welcome back to Clear View Today with Dr. Abidan Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. You can visit us online at ClearViewTodayShow.com. Or if you have any questions for Dr. Shah or suggestions for new topics, send us a text to 252-582-5028.

That's right. If today's your first time ever joining us here on the Clear View Today Show, we want to welcome you, let you know exactly who's talking to you today. Dr. Abidan Shah is a Ph.D. in New Testament textual criticism, professor at Carolina University, author, full-time pastor, and the host of today's show.

You can find all of his work on his website. That's abidanshah.com. Dr. Shah, we've had a pretty busy couple of weeks here recently. Yeah. It's been a busy summer.

This has been a rock and roll summer. Here and there and everywhere. So busy that just a couple of weeks ago, we were in outer space itself. Yeah. Elon Musk himself. We were on the literal moon.

No, I'm just kidding. We had VBS here at Clear View, and it was an amazing week. It was so much fun. I was over the moon for VBS. It was out of this world. It was stellar.

There's a million of those that we could pull out. It was so much fun. We had 160 kids register for VBS. An amazing, amazing week. Big thank you to you, Dr. Shah, and to you, John, and to the rest of the team for making VBS possible. It was unreal. It was stellar. I almost died.

Yeah, that is true. I forgot about that detail. We talked about the Twinkie on the intro this morning, but it was probably the most afraid. Your most flash before your eyes. I looked into the deep recesses of the cosmos, and I saw my life. As I stared into the dark. And I saw my birth, and I saw my childhood, and my old age, and I was like, Lord, please deliver me. And then you just saw a Twinkie. And then I looked out, and I was watching the skit, and I was like, okay, this is kind of fun. I don't think anyone knew how close I came. What did you think of all the skits and all the VBS stuff? I thought they were hilarious. Ryan and Elizabeth, of course, did a phenomenal job.

Thank you. Just dancing on the stage, and then talking up what's happening, and then staying with the program, and keeping the momentum, keeping the joy, the focus on the gospel. I mean, there's so many things that have to happen.

You just don't get up on the stage and do it. And it came from deep within, and I was just very grateful to both of you guys. And then for Jon to agreeing to be Mickey Way.

Mickey Way, the mechanic of the Solar Group. You know, I realized something. Had that Twinkie gone down and been... It could have cut off my air. And then it would have got my oxygen supply really low in my brain, I would have been in a bed, maybe for the rest of my life, Grandpa Joe style. Isn't that crazy? I would even say bedridden. You would have even been bedridden.

That's crazy. That was a great segue. That was a ham-fisted segue. It's like, I just took a big thing of ham, clutched it up, and said, here, have this. Well, bedridden ties to what we're talking about today.

Oh, does it? Believe it or not, in the message series through the churches in the Book of Revelation. You've been chatting about these on the radio show. We've heard from people writing in about how these are shifting their perspective about the Book of Revelation. A lot of times, people just kind of gloss over those first few chapters because they want to get to the good stuff.

They want to get to the meat. But there's so much that we can learn from these churches, and today is no exception. We come up to the church in Thyatira today.

Yeah. This is the fourth one. So, we already looked at Ephesus. We've looked at Sardis.

We've looked at, I'm sorry, Smyrna, and then Pergamum. And now we come to the fourth one. And these are churches sitting on the western coast of Asia Minor or right on the western part of the Aegean region. And Jesus had a word of warning to them as well. I mean, this church was not doing well. In fact, they were tolerating some very, how do I say it, destructive evil people.

They were tolerating them. And Jesus warned them that if they don't deal with this person, not only would that person be bedridden to the point of death, but others as well will follow. And this is not some metaphorical figure of speech bedridden. This is you will die. And it's a very hard one to preach on when I was preparing the sermon.

It was hard to prepare this one because it was like, where do we draw the application? Are you going to die if you mess around with doctrine? Are you going to die if you mislead people? I don't know, but I know this much.

These examples or these events are as examples for us. Don't take it lightly. When you mislead and misguide people, you may die. Now to back up a little bit and talk about the ancient city of Thyatira. It is sitting at the present day site of Akisar in modern day Turkey.

And unfortunately, Nicole and I were not able to go there. Time ran out, but this was an ancient Lydian town. So you remember the woman Lydia, right? Could it be that it's not that Lydia was her name, but that she came from the ancient region of Lydia.

So by the time she left, because she was from Thyatira. Right. Which is in the region of Lydia.

Right. So when we think about the lady in Philippi who was meeting early morning by the river outside Philippi, and Paul came, met with them, shared the gospel, they got saved. Not only was she baptized, but her whole household was baptized. Her name may not have been Lydia. Maybe she was a Lydian. Lydian. That's right. From Thyatira.

Interesting. Now something else about Thyatira is that it was sitting halfway on the Sardis Pergamum highway. And this part of the Lydian kingdom, it grew after the decline of the Hittites.

So stay with me here. The Hittites lived here, then the Lydians followed, and the Lydians were some amazing fighters. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel talk about them, that they were very good fighters.

But then, especially with the bow and arrow. Then came the Persians, then the Macedonians, then the Romans. So different peoples came through there. And Thyatira was a kind of a strategic military colony for the Macedonia. It was just the way it was situated.

It was a perfect place for a military camp. A lot of people kind of fighting over that region. Yeah, I can see that.

Especially if it's that valuable, people would be just like fighting over it. Yeah. Now I can go on and on and talk about Thyatira, but I don't want to do that because it's not really relevant to understanding this letter.

What is relevant is this. This city is this city had an unusually large number of trade guilds. Y'all know what trade guilds are? Like an association? Like an association. Like I'm part of some associations. Like I'm part of the ETS, the Evangelical Theological Society. I'm part of the Council of Biblical Manhood, Womanhood.

I don't know if I'm currently, my membership is up to speed. I need to check on that. But there are different trade guilds that you're part of. So this is like a collection of like blacksmiths and tailors and stuff like that in the city?

Yeah. Was it pretty common at this time? It was common, but not like as many as Thyatira had. Thyatira was like the hub for guilds. They had guilds for everything. They had a guild for the wool workers, weavers, tailors, linen makers, leather workers, shoe makers. There were potters, blacksmiths, bronze smith, bakers, dyers, slave merchants. And it will make more sense if we go further in this message, because when you are a part of an association like this, it's not just tempted, but I think you're almost pressured into following whatever they tell you to do.

Bob would 100% agree. Yeah. And in America today, you need to realize that there are certain things that you don't say if you don't want to be judgmental or confrontational. Now there are certain logos that you put or a little something you put on your website to let people know that you include everything and everyone. Tell me how this is not different than what these trade guilds were doing.

It's exactly the same thing. If you roll with us and we don't really talk bad about this certain thing or this political platform, if you're going to be one of us... You've got to fly that rainbow flag. If you have that rainbow flag, I guess you're okay. If you don't fly it, you're not one of us. You're not an ally. Yeah. And we're not going to include you on our website.

We're not going to send some business your way. People will say things. I mean, they'll even justify it.

You don't have to believe all that. You've got to do this if you're going to be one of us. You're going to get the perks. You've got to just keep the right people happy. Yeah. Ooh, so dangerous. Nothing new under the sun.

2,000 years ago, this was happening in Thyatira. So Jesus wrote a letter to them through his apostle John. And he begins this just like he began every letter with giving his credentials. And the credentials for this particular letter are very, how do I say this, eye-opening.

It says in Revelation 2.18, And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write, These things says the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and his feet like fine brass. Yeah, that sounds like I'm going to listen to you. If you've got eyes like a flame of fire, if you like fine brass, I'm probably going to listen to you. Yeah, you have my attention.

Yeah, you have my undivided attention. Yeah. It means he's about to destroy.

He's on a mission to destroy. It feels like people try to make a false distinction between the Jesus of the New Testament and the Jesus of the Old Testament. But Jesus was described this way in the Old Testament as well, wasn't he? Yes. Yes.

Twice. The first one is in Psalm 2, which is a Messianic Psalm. And it's about how the people of the world, the nations, the kings are planning against God. That in itself is ludicrous. Yeah, it's futile. You're going to break their bonds.

You know, you're going to do what you want to do. And so God says, they say, Let us break their bonds in pieces and cast away their cords from us. They're saying that we don't need the Trinity. We don't need this triune God. And he who sits in the heavens shall laugh. Can you see God just laughing? Yeah, but it fills me with kind of dread.

Like, you know, when you know someone's about to get it and you just kind of get that seize up in your heart. And the Lord shall hold them in derision. That's the line right there.

It means in contempt. And, you know, every single day, human beings are doing that against God. We don't need God. We're going to make our own rules. We're going to rule ourselves because we're the best thing we can do for ourselves. And God simply laughs.

And listen, those who are on YouTube or those listening on the radio or podcast, if you have that kind of a mindset, just know you'll have to answer to God one day. Yeah, that's right. These Psalms, these statements have been given to us to tell us this is how God sees those who shake their fists towards heaven. Yeah.

They're not just poems for the sake of beautiful literature. Like they're revealing God's character to us. And they're telling, in this case, they're telling us what will come.

Yeah. You claim that you're going to be a king of your own life, the king of your life. But listen to this in verse six, God says, Yet I have set my king on my holy hill of Zion. You're going to have a representative and you are the representative. Just know I have also set up my candidate for king. And who is he?

He's not going to lose. I will declare the decree. The Lord has said to me, you are my son. Means you're trying to be my son. You're trying to be equal to me. No, I've already, he's already won the election.

Okay. And he is my son. Today I have begotten you.

And so this is kind of a, the son of God that it says in Revelation 2 18, here is sort of an explanation of where we get that today. You are my son. I have begotten you.

And you would think that anybody with half a brain would be like, okay, I hear you. I'm done. I'm done.

I thought I'm not going to do that again. And then also Daniel 10, six, the whole thing about the eyes being like, like a flame of fire and the feet being like fine brass, Daniel 10, six, his body was like barrel, his face like the appearance of lightning, his eyes like torches of fire, his arms and feet like burnish bronze and color. And the sound of his words, like the voice of a multitude. And just to, just to make a quick remark here, and we were talking about the trade gills and copper and all these things. Thyatira was known for making brass, the alloy of copper and zinc. And they even had an association of chalkeys. Chalkeys means bronze workers. And so what Jesus is saying here is fine brass, chalcolibanos. He's saying your finest product that you're so proud of, it's nothing but my feet. Yeah, it's under my feet.

How interesting that this thing that you are so proud of that is your pride and joy is what I walk on. Yeah. We also, we always see it as like just imagery, but it's, it's actually makes sense in the context of who he's talking to.

Like feet like fine brass means, oh, he's got some like dark kind of olive oil skinned feet. No, it's not at all. No, it's, it's so much deeper than that.

Yeah. So here's your problem, George and Thyatira. I know your works, love, service, faith, and your patience. And as for your works, the last are more than the first, nevertheless. Hmm.

I was gonna say it starts off well, but then... If we got a problem, I have a few things against you because you allowed that woman Jezebel who calls herself a prophetess to teach and seduce my servants to commit sexual immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols. Wow. Yeah. Now Jezebel.

Yeah. I was going to say he's, he's given a really big call back there with Jezebel. Going back to the Old Testament, a Phoenician princess, wife of Israel's King Ahab, we're going back to the ninth century BC. And he, he may have married her because the kingdom is split now. I was just about to ask when you say Israel, does you mean like Israel as a people group or like the Northern Kingdom? Northern Kingdom. Keep in mind that the only time the kingdom stayed united was Saul David Solomon.

Okay. Well after Solomon is done. So we're talking about the ninth century where the Northern Kingdom and Southern Kingdom. So the, so he is Israel's, he is the King of the Northern Kingdom of Israel.

Gotcha. So this, this Jezebel, is it, is that her name in Thyatira or is it like the woman like Jezebel? A woman like Jezebel. Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you know anything about her spirit, I'm talking about the Jezebel. She tried to kill all the prophets of God, supported 450 prophets of Baal, 400 prophets of Asherah. She tried to get Elijah killed. I mean, if you remember the story, Elijah was so depressed, you know, he felt like he was the last one standing. We have a, I was going to say, we do have a song about that is available on iTunes right now, Thousands More by Clearview Worship. Make sure you go pick up that. It is a great song.

Yep. You know, just let our listeners and viewers know that song is built upon, it came out of the pandemic where some of us felt like we were the last one standing. And we had to remind ourselves, that is not a good way to look at life. Yeah, because all these other churches were shutting down. They were, there was a lot of pressure for us to shut down.

We didn't want to do it. And there was a low point, like kind of this crisis of faith of, are we really doing the right thing here? Are we truly following God? Because it feels like we're the last ones. And then through talking it through, it was in our Sunday evening Bible study.

And we were like, you know, it feels like we're the only ones right now, but we're not. There are other churches being faithful because God is not going to allow the church to fail on this level. That Rambo-like feeling that I am the lone ranger, I'm here to fight until the death is not what God wants from us. So I'd rather be biblical than to have a false sense of confidence that I can take on the world, me against the world, as long as I have God with me. Yeah, God is not pleased with that kind of a unscriptural confidence. So anyways, going back to this person, and remember all the trade guilds and associations I just mentioned in the opening, they had food offered to various idols, even sexual immorality was part of this club.

And this person in Thyatira was claiming equal authority with scripture and giving people a way to live their lives and rake in their prophets and do sexual immorality and go along with the guilds and you don't have to obey God. I'm just gonna say it, that's not okay. That's not gonna fly.

That's not gonna fly. You're gonna have the best of both worlds. Yeah, you know. Anytime someone says that, red flags should be going off. Yeah, just know it's not always that way. There's always some compromises. And so if there's anyone in your life right now, I don't know who that may be, who is giving you advice regarding marriage, children, church, sin, but they're contradicting contradicting scripture, that's a Jezebel.

And it's not gonna be blatant. It's gonna come under a package of love and tolerance and care and kindness and mercy. And I'm okay with people helping you who are full of Jesus, but if you begin to get people to help you who themselves are not following God fully and they want to help you, just know they want to take you down their path. All you have to do is follow their lives and say, do you want that life? And you may not know everything about their life.

I can assure you, you don't want their life. And Jesus says in Revelation 2 21, I gave her time to repent of her sexual immorality and she did not repent. Indeed, I will cast her into a sick bed. Not just that something's gonna fall on this person or they're gonna end up in an accident. No, they're going to suffer. And those who commit adultery with her into a great tribulation, unless they repent of their deeds. It's not just that this person is going to go through some terrible sickness and then die. But if you are committing adultery with her, you're also going to go through this tribulation. Wow.

Chilling words for us. There's a lot going on in Thyatira and I'd love, I don't want us to cut anything short. So what we're going to do is we're going to break here and then come back tomorrow to continue the discussion. Yeah. Because when you have something like this, you have a really big problem and it's almost like we're going to sell you the treatment tomorrow, but we're not, it's free.

Yeah. We're not going to sell it to you, but we want to devote enough time to it. We don't want to rush through anything. But if you guys have questions about what we talked about today, send us a text to 252-582-5028. You can visit us online at ClearviewTodayShow.com and you can partner with us financially on that same website. We love you guys. We'll see you tomorrow on Clearview Today.