First Homogenized Church of Thyatira

Take your Bibles, if you would, and turn to the book of Revelation. We're thinking about Jesus' letters to his churches. I don't think I told you my name's Brian if you're a guest, but you'll figure that out. First homogenized church. of Thyatira.

How would a church be homogenized? Does it just mean they put milk milk in their coffee? What is a homogenized church. That's what we're going to look at as we're doing this series. through these churches.

That as this revelation goes around, connects from Patmos to the seven various churches, you'll remember this map. And we have these seven churches, and just by way of reminder, it's moving in a clockwise fashion from Patmos. The letter goes to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. And so this whole revelation of Jesus Christ goes to these seven churches, and yet within this whole corpus of the collected vision are seven individual letters that are written with specific issues regarding the specific churches here. And so our series for the summer has been focused on looking at these letters and some preparatory material in Revelation 1.

So we're going to think about thyatira. If you homogenize something, right, is of the same type, if it's homogenized, right? It's of the same type. If we think of it in terms of dairy, when you think about homogenization, so you disperse the fat globules. This will make you want to drink your milk, by the way.

You disperse the fat globules through the milk, right? And so in that process, it's dispersed so that it fights actually against what would happen if the milk just sat there naturally. What's going to happen if it sits there naturally? If it sits there naturally, the cream's going to rise, skim's going to settle down, right?

So for all of you who like skim milk, you're just a bunch of bottom feeders down there drinking that stuff off the bottom, right? But it is a process that allows, it disseminates those globules within.

so that the cream and the skim stay together, as it were.

Okay, I want you to keep in mind something. I want you to keep in mind that if you don't If that doesn't happen. There's a natural tendency And the natural tendency is for those things to separate. I'm going to submit to you that when it comes to you coming to Christ, the natural inclination. That is to say, the momentum of your life in Christ.

Is not to look like the world, it is not to be homogenized with the world, it is actually to separate. And yet, what happens is the evil one stirs us up in our flesh.

so that we end up looking an awful lot like the world and we end up feeling quite good about it. We feel good about it because we feel This implicit sense, and I see it in a variety of settings, and I can hear it in talking with people. We have this notion within us that relevance is found in sameness. But that's actually mythological. Relevance is found in distinction.

It's not found in sameness. I'm not more relevant when I look most like. I'm actually relevant when I don't look like because when an individual finds out that their world view is bankrupt, the last kind of place they need to come is something that just looks the same. They need something different. And everybody in this world.

runs out of real estate. At some point. And if all you have to offer them is a life that looks just like them, Then what on earth are you inviting them to? The nature of the Christian life is a distinct Qualitatively transformative life, the textures of which feel different. The light that shines from it is distinct.

The sounds that it has are unusual. They're not the same.

So the last thing we need to do... Is be homogenized. The last thing we need to do is look like.

Now, This is not necessarily an exclusive call in this particular letter because in many ways all of these letters are calling the church to be authentically the church and the moment the church is authentically the church, guess what it doesn't look like? It doesn't look like the world. But there are some distinct features in this letter to Thy Tyra that I want to talk about and I want to look at.

So I'm going to invite you to look with me, Revelation 2. through twenty nine, eighteen through twenty nine. And as we do so and work our way through, we'll see seven aspects of Jesus' words for the homogenized church, a church that's looking too much like the world. What are they supposed to do? What are they supposed to know?

What are things he wants them to be aware of? You've got notes pages. If you want to jot these down, that's fine. You'll see seven of these. There's really about four of them we're going to run through pretty quick, and there's three of them that I'm going to spend a little time with you on as we kind of process through this.

Here's the first one: the first aspect is the recognition of Christ's rulership. If you don't see and establish. Who it is that you serve then you will only listen carefully, you will only see... Connection. With the world as the driving piece.

What happens then is everything walks its way back from connection, so that anything that you feel disconnects you from the world is now somehow sub-Christian. It's actually, you don't want that, because that's the kind of thing that will make you irrelevant, you think. But relevance is a long-term play. Relevance is not a short-term play. Relevance is not found in me creating a form, right?

But this is what we do. This is what evangelical pop culture does.

Alright, so you've got a dating app and now you've got a Christian dating app. You have a game show, and now you got a Christian game show. You got a radio station, now you have Christian radio. And you got this, that, or the other, and you've got Christian, this, that, or the other. And what happens is we're baking the same cake as the world.

We put some Jesus frosting on it, serve it, and go, now we're relevant. No, you're not. You're silly. And they all see it. And they all know it.

And they know that you're lacking substance, right? It's like that King of the Hill episode. I know you all watch that. But there's that King of the Hill episode where if you're unfamiliar with it, it's an adult cartoon. It's a little edgy.

But man, if you've ever lived in Texas, Texas is pretty much King of the Hill. And there's an episode where Bobby, the little boy, Hank's son Bobby, gets involved with the local youth pastor. The youth pastor is zany and crazy. He's got a Christian rock band. He likes to skateboard.

He does all these fun things. He's sort of a blue-haired, fun guy. And Bobby starts putting up Jesus' rocks, posters all in his room and all this kind of crazy stuff. And now Hank starts to get concerned because Bobby is actually losing in a way any sense. And there's a very poignant moment at the end of the cartoon where he talks to Bobby about the fact that he had all these fads in his life, beanie babies and stuff like this, and he's afraid Jesus is going to just end up as another beanie baby.

as another fad. And he has this great moment where he confronts the youth pastor and he tells him, you're not making Christianity better. You're only making rock and roll worse. I love that line. You're not making Christianity better.

You're only making rock and roll worse. So you're doing a form, but you're not doing it as good. But you're relevant. Not really. Here's what makes this relevant.

We live our lives under the lordship of Jesus. Look at this. Verse 18. And to the angel of the church in Thyatira, write, so to this heavenly messenger over this church, write this, the words of the Son of God. who has eyes like a flame of fire.

And whose feet are like burnished bronze? This is a regal, royal picture.

Son of God, you'll see at the end of this message, is picking up on a text that is actually referred to at the end of the passage, which is Psalm chapter 2. That is a royal psalm about the Davidic ruler who is the king of kings in one sense. He's the greatest king, the ruler over all the other rulers, the one who reigns in supremacy, whether they realize it or not. And so he references him here, and it talks about sonship in that psalm. And so that is sort of sitting as a backdrop piece.

Here, for our purposes, I want you to see, we'll kind of step past the Son of God statement, and I want you to see eyes like a flame of fire, and his feet are like burnished bronze. That goes back to chapter 1, verse 14, the end of it, and chapter 1, verse 15, the beginning of it, where we've talked about the fact that each of the beginning descriptors of Jesus in each of these seven letters show up in that kind of pressus, in that sort of introduction in chapter one. And he's described in these various ways as well there, and it's threading out, and each of these letters is pulling from that. And so you get this description. Where does that description come from?

Listen to Daniel chapter 10, verse 6, that is not speaking about God, but it is speaking about a heavenly messenger from God. And it says, his body was like beryl, that is the jewel, his face like the appearance of lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like... Like the gleam of burnished bronze, and the sound of his words, like the sound of a multitude. There is a picture here of flaming eyes and burnished bronze legs and feet, because two ideas are being communicated. The first is he comes with piercing gaze in judgment.

That's the flaming. Eyes, it'll show up later in Revelation. He comes with this sense of there's a fury, if you will. There's an intensity to the gaze that bespeaks judgment. That's the first thing.

The second, this burnished bronze feet are he's. established upon a basis of purity.

So he is the pure. Judge who reigns as the Son of God. That's the summary of what it means here in verse 18 for him to be introduced, the words of the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and whose feet are like burnished bronze.

So now, what we're going to read, we've got to read in light of the purifying judgment of the King who is to come. That'll come full circle. when we get to the very end and we see the closing. All right? Second aspect, look in verse 19.

I know your works.

Now, what you should, if we could sort of grammatically probably write this out in terms of what's probably happening in the Greek here, it should be something like, I know your works, and then maybe if we're writing English, we might put a colon, I know your works. And then the works. are going to be explicated. The works are going to be laid out. Here are the works.

I know your works.

Your love, number one. You operate in each other's best interest. You're loving. Your faith. Probably here a combination of the idea of you really believe.

But also with the idea of the walking out of that faith, namely the term faithfulness.

So you have a life that is characterized by faith in all of its facets, namely that makes you the kind of person that's faithful. And service.

Some have connected this sort of to love and they've connected the next patient endurance to faith, but the idea, of course, is your love takes action. and you're actually doing stuff. For people in demonstration, the kind of character you have. And then Patient endurance, which is the theme, one of two themes, really, in the book of Revelation, right? I've told you the purpose of this is to give people comfort in the midst of a fallen world that's going crazy and to help them beyond feeling comfort to walk forward in patient endurance.

So he says, Look, you've got works, you're loving, you're filled with faith, you're acting in service, and you are patiently enduring. And not only that, Not only that, but look at the next phrase. He says that your latter works and that your latter works exceed the first. What's that mean? He means you are Acting in your corporate life.

in these four ways. But you're growing. You're even better now. Than you used to be.

So You have a growing church. He's made them aware of the rulership of Christ, and if they're a growing church, we might stop and might say, what's the problem? What else would he want?

Well, sometimes you can be growing. But other things can be growing with you. Remember when Jesus talks about the wheat and the tares? He actually basically says, let's let them grow up alongside each other. It's going to get sorted out in judgment.

It's gonna get sorted out in judgment. Just because something's growing doesn't mean That there aren't weeds. Last night I came home. And I I try pretty regularly to weed. Right?

Or try to recruit weeders. You know how that goes at my home. We try to weed a little bit here and there. And last night, hidden behind, I got this. weird bush in the back of our Property, I say property.

I live in daybreak. Can you call it property? I don't know. In my back, 48 inches, and back here against the fence. I've got this, and I didn't even notice until I got home last night, there was a weed, and it's the largest weed.

Like. When I say the largest weed I've ever seen in my whole life. In Meholith, anywhere. I have a fence. That is like six feet, maybe six and a half feet.

I am ashamed to say this because I didn't even notice this thing growing up behind a plant. It was a foot and a half higher than my fence. I looked and I'm like, what in the jack in the beanstalk is that thing? And so I got that, I pulled that thing out, I had to fold the thing to put it in the garbage. It was unbelievable.

Right. I mean, you can get some crazy weeds that'll grow up. around you. And those plants are growing fine. They're growing, they're healthy.

And yet, in the midst of them. or other things. And so this is the caution. And he's Gonna take no prisoners and neither are we this morning.

So I hope you will forgive me before I even start. Rebuke for toleration. Let's look in verse 20. We'll spend a little time here. But I have this against you.

What is it that he has against them? That You Tolerate. I just want to stop before we even see what is being tolerated. The word for tolerate is a word affiemi, and it means either, depending on its context. It's translated as to forgive.

Quite often. But it's also translated as to Leave alone. to leave alone. That's the use here.

So what you see translated as tolerate is that there's something going on around you. There's a weed that is growing up. It's towering. And you don't pull it. You won't pull it.

Now, how is it that a growing church has a weed that towers and doesn't pull it? Isn't that strange? Not really. Not really. They're all around us in evangelicalism.

They're all around us in the church. And it has to do with the fact that we're a church in a place of a people in a culture. And sometimes it's hard to tell the distinctions that exist between weeds and plants in culture.

Now, let me give you a background piece that's important before I continue. Thyatira, you might wonder, where does that show up else in the Bible? It shows up in Acts 16. And it is the hometown of Lydia, one of Paul's first converts. And Lydia, it is described that she was a seller of purple goods, is how Acts describes her.

The goods were textiles most likely. clothing, garments. Possibly textiles for tents or ornament or what have you. But Thyatira was a smaller city. in the plane.

Not as prominent as Pergamum, not as prominent as Ephesus, but it was a center for something important, and that was trade guilds largely around textiles.

So they had trade guilds.

Now, think like unions.

Okay. They had these guilds. where people work together. And they work together and they're rallying together in those guilds, kind of like a union would socially sometimes in different places. They're connecting in business and commerce.

And what that meant is there's a melding within the guild between the social life, the family life, the religious life, and the cultural life. And it's all kind of in the professional life. And it's all kind of of a piece. And you have these pagan temples throughout cities, and you had them in Thyatira. And so you have social events that are done as feasts and festivals, and trade guilds would gather in these contexts in these various religious sectors.

The blending of the spheres of life, listen please carefully to this, the blending of the spheres of life creates a context. where idolatry can be fostered in ways it can't when the spaces are segmented. There are certain things that in here and in the life of the church, if we introduce them, they become apparently idolatrous. It doesn't fit very well. But there are things that when we view our lives all of a piece, and we see them all together, it's easy to let things bleed.

It's easy for things to cross the lines, and all of a sudden we find ourselves in a, dare I say, homogenized. kind of Christianity. Where now we blur the lines in ways. and we talk ourselves into things. and we reconsider things that we never would have reconsidered in our whole life.

Because we've ceased to be able To understand what's distinct, and we have let the weeds grow. We've left them alone. We've left them alone. And we've left them alone for too long. We're tolerating what is it that they're tolerating?

Look at it. Do you tolerate that woman, Jezebel?

Now was her real name Jezebel? Probably not. Was she a real woman? Yeah, I think so. There's too much detail here.

I don't think this is just a metaphor in that sense. But there's an analogy, there's a typology that's happening. This woman Jesus says it's like Jezebel. You remember Jezebel? Let me refresh your memory.

with Jezebel. Don't ever call somebody a Jezebel. By the way. Um 2 Kings 9.22, When Joram saw Jehu, he said, Is at peace, Jehu? These are two.

Kings Judah and Israel. Is it peace? He answered, Jehu says, What peace can there be so long as the whorings and the sorceries of your mother Jezebel are so many? How what are you talking about? I'm coming for you, man.

I'm coming for you. Why? Because your mother... has led us into Baal worship in the context of what happened. 1 Kings 18, 4.

Earlier than that, and when Jezebel cut off the prophets of the Lord, Obadiah took a hundred prophets and hid them by fifties in a cave and fed them with bread and water, cut off, meaning she killed the prophets of the Lord. Of course, her constant conflict with Elijah, 1 Kings 19, 1 and 2, Aab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a message to Elijah saying, So may the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow, I'm going to kill you, sucker. That's what she's saying. I'm coming for you, Elijah, just like I did the other prophets.

Right? I mean, she is straight out of the WWE, old Jezebel. She's a mess. And she was a great enemy of Israel and a propagator of false worship. Pulling Israel.

Into idolatry and immorality, in whoever this woman is in this church. That you tolerate that woman, Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. By the way, there was nothing inherently wrong with a woman being a prophet. You see it in 1 Corinthians 11. You see it with the daughters of Philip.

It shows up in the text. You see it in the prophecy in Acts chapter 2 of Joel chapter 2 that your men and women will prophesy, your sons and daughters will prophesy. The problem is the content. And prophesy, different than preaching, that's a different story, but prophecy here. It says she calls herself that, but the problem is she is teaching.

And seducing my servants to practice what? Sexual morality and eat food sacrificed to idols.

So we're going to stop there for a sec. It's the same things that happen. back in The church at Pergamum we saw last week. Only there it was attributed To the teachings of Balaam from Numbers, remember? But it's the same stuff.

It's sexual immorality and idolatry, and the reason why is because they're all of peace in this ancient world when you go to the festivals and you are enticed into sexual activity and sexual immorality under the guise of idolatry. And now you've got professional life involved in your sex life, your professional life, your cultural life, your social life, your spiritual life. They're all coming together as a whole. And he's saying, you got weeds, guys. They're growing up in the church.

You're not seeing it clearly. You're growing. But something's towering over you and I hold it against you. Hold it against you. Let me put up a verse for you.

Like a muddied spring. Or a polluted fountain is, look at it, pay attention to it. It's a key verse for this morning. Is a righteous man or a righteous woman a righteous person? who gives way before the wicked.

Do you see that? The person themselves are righteous. The person does the right things. The person is active and growing. The person is fruitful.

So what could possibly be the problem? They give way before the wicked. The wicked say, we want to do this. And the righteous says, all right. I'm not going to stop you.

Why would you do that?

Well, maybe because aspects of your own worldview are getting a little clouded in some ways. I mean, you think culture doesn't seep in here? You think it doesn't seep into our hearts? It has throughout the history of the church seeped into people's hearts. L let me let me real quick share something with you.

You may be familiar with William Wilbur Force, right? Who stopped the slave trade? In England? Who, as a very young man, came to Christ in about 19, 20 years old. Gave his life to the Lord, ended up being mentored by the guy that wrote Amazing Grace, John Newton, in some ways.

But Wilberforce was an intellectual giant. Got into parliament, and he kept bringing back again and again and again and again and again the injustices of slavery. He set, in fact, about, he said, my two big purposes in life are to do away with the slave trade and to, he said it this way, reform manners. He wasn't talking about where you put the knife and the fork, though. To reform manners meant moral reformation.

And he said, I'm out. to have a moral society.

So he did, and he went after It. Um One publicist for the West Indies slave trade at the time said the following. In a publication, the impossibility of doing without slaves in the West Indies will always prevent this traffic being dropped. The necessity, the absolute necessity then of carrying it on, must, since there is no other, be its excuse. In other words, we can't give it up because economically we couldn't handle it, so we got to keep it.

Right. So Wilberforce said, who cares? Yeah. He he said economics be damned. What we have to do is do what's right.

What we have to do is do What? is Right. Full stop. cul-de-sac No through street, no utilitarian idea, no means to an end, stop. You've got to think about that for a moment.

I'm going to read you something, and it's going to be easy to get lost in it, but I wanted you to see it. Uh It's a letter that he wrote. On the abolition of the slave trade. This is not all of the letter, but it is a portion of the letter, and it was addressed to the freeholders and other inhabitants of Yorkshire. It was written in 1807.

So let me read through a little bit of this with you. The course of public events. has for many years been such as human wisdom and human force have in vain endeavored to control or resist. The counsels of the wise have been infatuated, the valor of the brave has been turned to cowardice.

Now, what is he saying? A bunch of people have seen a weed. And they have said no. A bunch of people have seen it, and they are tolerating aphiemi, if I want to use the Greek term here.

So he says, though the storm has been raging for many years, yet instead of having ceased, it appears to be now increasing in fury. The clouds which have long been gathering around us. Have at length almost overspread the whole face of the heavens with blackness. In this very moment of unexampled difficulty and danger, those great political characters to the council of the one or the other of whom the nation has been used to look in all public exigencies have both been taken from. us, the people that we would look to for leadership are no longer around.

He says. If such be our condition, and if the slave trade be a national crime declared by every wise and respectable man of all parties, without exception, to be a compound of the grossest wickedness and cruelty, a crime to which we cling in defiance of the clearest light, not only in opposition to our own acknowledgements of its guilt, but even of our own declared resolutions to abandon it. Is not this then a time in which all, and I love the way he words this. All who are not perfectly sure that the providence of God is but a fable. Everybody who thinks that the providence of God is not a joke.

Is that you? Do you think the providence of God is a joke? I hope not.

So he's saying, if you think the providence of God is real, Should be strenuous in their endeavors to lighten the vessel of the state of such a load of guilt and infamy. That is, we ought to work real hard to do away with the slave trade because it dis. Honors God, it's deleterious to our society, it's destroying us, and we all know it, but nobody has the courage to stand up. And so he's asking, Will you stand up with me and not let the weed grow? That's what he's doing.

You with me? Anything like that going on in our culture. Anything like that going on? as we drive towards election. Yeah.

Let me come back to this verse real quick. It might be, but you might not be thinking about what I'm thinking, so I think I'm going to tell you what I'm thinking if I can do that. Is that okay? Like a muddied spring or a polluted fountain is a righteous man who gives way before the wicked. Do you know that we're facing an election?

Where right now By both party platforms, in one of the most unusual turns in American history. I hope you haven't missed it. The Democratic platform has historically been pro-choice and an advocate of that. And now the Republican Party switched their platform, reduced it to 75 words on abortion at their last convention, and has now become pro-choice as well. Have you followed that?

Have you seen that? Have you noticed? That is where our culture has headed. Did you know that 1,037,000 children were aborted? In 2023, And did you know That, by a progressive think tank, that's not a right-angled number, that's a very progressive.

Progressive number given over a million. Did you know that 63%? of the 1,037,000, that means about 635,000 of them occur by mifopristone, the abortion pill. That now Everyone running for president, everyone, conservative, Republican. Liberal Democrat.

Everyone says, We're down with this going out.

So do you understand? That we live in a world Where whatever yes you give to the binary system You are saying yes. To over 635,000 children being killed this next year.

Now The reality is, if they were all three-year-olds, Everyone would be uprising and we would have a civil war.

So why don't? because we actually don't believe that they're children. Otherwise, it wouldn't matter what you think about this issue, this issue, this issue. There's not a ledger you can build. Can you possibly build a ledger and go, yeah, but all these issues outweigh the 635,000 children that will be martyred?

And killed. Of course not. But we as a culture enter the game, we play around with it because we've muddled the worlds. Weeds growing up over our heads. We need to ask ourselves, what's actually driving our thoughts?

Don't be a righteous person. Don't be a righteous person. Who becomes part of a muddied spring pollution. It gives way before the wicked. The church does it.

That's one illustration. The church does it in other ways. But it's when our world view gets clouded by other things, we forget the core essentials of why we are here. And I would dare say to you, standing up for life is a pretty crucial one. I'm not sure who else is going to do it if the church doesn't.

At least that's what the tea leaves have told me. And we need to be careful here. That leads me to a next sobering point. which is the requisition for repentance.

Now requisition is not a request. If you were in the Army and you were requisitioned, you don't... look and go, I don't think I really want to do that. When they you get requisitioned, what happens? You are coming.

Your hide will come if your spirit doesn't.

So it's this command to lay claim to property. or to lay claim to a person.

So you have Here. In verse 21, I gave her time to repent. I told Jezebel. Yeah, I worked with her. I said, listen, you're a false teacher.

You need to stop this nonsense in the church and leading people astray into idolatry and sexual immorality. I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality. Behold, I will throw her onto a sick bed. And those who commit adultery with her, I will throw into the great tribulation. Unless They Repent.

Di so what should you do? What should we do? When we see ourselves getting swept in. Muddied. When we see ourselves getting caught up with the weeds.

What should we do? And the answer is we we move toward repentance.

So I thought about this. And I wanted to just give you some thoughts on repentance, but in a little bit of a deeper way. And I thought, what's the best way to do that? And so I wanted to go to a Puritan named Thomas Watson who wrote a little book called The Doctrine of Repentance. And in this book, he talks about six different facets of repentance.

And they're utterly scriptural, so I'm just going to bang through them real quick. Because repentance is an easily misunderstood idea because sometimes we reduce it to meta-noia, which is the Greek word, meta, change, transition, noia, mind. You change your mind. And it's sort of the idea is almost just cognitive, like you would flip your mind on something as though you liked a movie, but now you don't like the movie. You repented of it.

You don't repent of not like I hate seafood, and if I start eating seafood, it's not that I've repented.

Okay, I've changed my mind. There's a difference there. And yet repentance isn't either like earning something back. That would be penance.

So what is repentance? And in a sense, it's like an intent to turn. And he talks about that in a few different ways, sort of in six steps.

So here we go. The first, he says, is you got to have sight of your sin. You got to be able to see it. I I know a lot I I know times in my life when I don't see it. I don't see it.

Marriage teaches you what you don't see. Because that other person Seize. in ways you don't. Right? And so you've been hitting the same thing again and again and again in your marriage.

But you're convinced it's all them. It's not. Have eyes to see. You've bumped up against the same things repeatedly in relationships. It's not everybody else.

It's not. Have eyes to see. You feel like you're always getting the raw deal. You're not. Have eyes to see.

Like don't be a blame shifter Have eyes to see, right? If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth's not in us. And a lot of people walk around deceived. Right? Because they assume that the first person that's at fault is certainly the other person.

Rather than asking questions, do I have eyes to see myself? And so here's a good question to ask. Is it possible? that in this conflict I'm in in my life, There is something that I need to see more clearly about myself that I don't see clearly about myself right now. You might even consider turning that into prayer.

And asking the Lord to give you eyes to see things about yourself that you might not even see right now. He says: first, you gotta be able to see it if you're even gonna know what to do with it. The second is, you gotta feel. feel existentially. You gotta feel bad about it.

You have to have sorrow for it. I can't get in a conflict with my friend Jerry up front here. And if Jerry calls me out something, I go, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, man.

Okay?

Sorry, there. Happy now? I said I was sorry. Hit the ball into Jerry's court.

Now Jerry has the moral responsibility to receive a pathetic apology from me that was disingenuous, but I said the words. It's just manipulation. It's not repentance.

Sorrow for sin. For godly grief, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 7.10. produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret. That's the key part, without regret. Whereas worldly grief produces death.

What's worldly grief? Self-pity. That's worldly grief. Feel real bad cause you're so bad. And now I feel bad.

Jerry, I can't believe I said that to you, man. I feel so rash that I tell you, I'm the worst, Jerry. I'm just a piece of garbage. And Jerry goes, no, you're not. You're really great.

I love this woman, Jerry. Jerry, stop. Don't say that to me, Jerry. Don't say that to me anymore, please, please. I use self-pity as a tool of manipulation so I can have my ego stroked.

Instead of just being debased before Jerry and Sarah. Confession of sin. This is the point. Naming not I'm a sinner. Naming what it was that I.

did. as I did it. I'm sorry, man.

We all make mistakes. Nope. Nope, it wasn't a mistake. It was a willful act. of using my body, my members, as an instrument of wickedness.

If we confess famous verse, right? What happens? If we confess our sins, the good news is he is, I should say he is, not his is, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, cleanse us from all unrighteousness, confession of sin.

Now we get a little bit into the next class. of repentance. Shame for it.

Well, I don't want you to feel shame, man. That's the last thing. No, no, no. If beware of the shameless man. Beware of the man who feels no shame.

You can't trust somebody that feels no shame. That's different than living in shame after you have applied the redemptive properties of the cross to your life. You've been forgiven. But man, shame is what tells you that what you did was dead wrong, and you should feel and experience shame. 1 Corinthians 15, 33 and 34.

Do not be deceived. Bad company ruins good morals. Watch out for those weeds growing up around you. Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning, for some have no knowledge of God. I say this to your.

Shame. He doesn't say, good news, it's not good, but the last thing I want you to do is feel shame, because that would give you trauma and make you feel very bad. You'd be with a therapist for a long time if you got shame. He says, no, you ought to be ashamed of yourself for the way you're acting. You're living outside your identity.

Who do you think you are? You're letting these weeds grow up around you, you're following them along, and you should be ashamed of yourself because you should be more rooted than that. Swept away by the mass. of whether whatever it is, the populace, the media, the people around you, whatever, within the church. Hatred.

Should hate sin. Psalm 101.3, I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless. I hate the work of those who fall away. It shall not cling to me. I'm not going to leave that weed alone.

I'm pulling that sucker. I will not because I hate it. because it is competing for the nutrients of the soil. I gotta get it out. I gotta get it out.

Finally. Watson says you got to turn from it. You got to order your life in such a way that you're going to leave that in the rear view mirror. Whoever conceals his transgressions won't prosper. But he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.

The last part, right? Confess, but. Run from it, run from it. But if you conceal it, you hold it under your tongue. You have morsels for later.

Your life will just spiral out and fall apart. Look back at your text with me. Verse 23. and I will strike her children dead. That's a little brazen.

And all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind. and heart. And I will give to each of you according. to your works. The word that's used here with mind and heart.

The word for mind. In this particular text, is nephros. If you have a nephrotic problem, is that a problem with your mind?

Well, it's a nephrotic problem. You go to the doctor. It's a problem with your kidneys. Right? So he's telling you here that I've searched.

All your kidneys. In your heart.

Now you don't you know, I don't think like that. You don't have somebody that's really bothering you in your life and say, you are just in my kidneys, man. You don't say to somebody on a card. Valentine's Day is wonderful. I love you with all my kidneys.

Every one of them. Both of them. Or one if I've donated them. But in the metaphors of the Old Testament, think of it like guts, how we talk about guts. Right.

In deep. Indeed. It's Sylvester Stallone, Rocky Balboa, in the basement he talks about. down here. where life happens, right?

where life happens. It's the way the Old Testament talks. Psalm 7, 9 says, Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end, and may you establish the righteous who test the, and it says minds and hearts in English, but in Greek, in the Septuagint, it reads, Kidneys. He tests them. He gets inside your life and sees what's actually in the basement of your life down deep.

Jeremiah 17.10. I, the Lord, search the heart and test the mind. the kidneys. to give every man according to his ways according to the fruit of his deeds. Here In this verse, there is a reckoning because the inner life is searched.

And that reckoning comes in the form and in the context. of judgment. Look at verse 24. But to the rest of you in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching. who have not learned what some call the deep things of Satan, to you I say, I do not lay ho on you any other burden, only hold fast.

to what you have. Until I come. He revisits their resolve. And he says, What I want you to do is, and there's our word, we've seen it a bunch, hold fast. He saw it.

in chapter two, verse one. He holds the churches, holds them fast. He saw it in Pergamum, holding fast, laying hold of some things. I want you to hold fast. To your resolve in the midst of all of this, you got people who think they are learning the deep things of Satan.

What is that? Are they having seances and it's overtly satanic? No, it's not that. It's one of two things. Either he's speaking in this way sarcastically, because probably Jezebel is the prophetess is claiming that she has the inside knowledge in the deep things of God, and he may be sarcastically exposing that they're not the deep things of God at all, they're actually the deep things of Satan.

That's one possibility. The other is that they really are deep things of Satan. Not that they're actually presented as that. It might be that both are true. But that what's really sitting under this is a satanic thing that's pulling you away, who comes as an angel of light.

She's probably telling them felt goods and things that would be appetizing to their cultural soul, as are most things that are false teachings. And they're going, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he says, Hold on a second. I need you to wait. I need you to stop.

I need you to hold fast. To your faith and not let go. And I won't lay any other burden on you. Why does he say that? And what does that even mean?

Do you, you may not remember. But in Acts 15, which I referenced last week, There's a text where the Gentiles are told in the letter from James in the apostles that they're to abstain from sexual immorality and from things sacrificed to idols. Remember that? And as they abstain from those things, he then says, We lay no more greater burden on you. It looks like Jesus is referring to that.

And here's his point: just don't give into this teaching that encompasses. Idolatry on the one side and sexual immorality on the other, and just hold fast, and you're going to be fine. I'm not going to lay anything else on you. You're going to be fine. Why?

Because you've already got the works, the love, the service, the faith, the patient endurance. You've been growing, you're active and growing, but you've got weeds coming up over top, and they're cultural and they're coming in around you, and you're nodding your heads, and you're trying to hold on to this on a Sunday morning, and yet you're getting swept up in an idolatry over here, you don't even realize. And he says, look, I need you just to hold on. Let go of that for what it is. See it for what it is.

Call it for what it is. In verse 26, He says, only hold fast. What you have, verse 25, until I come, hold on until I return. The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority. Over the nation.

So remember, Every one of these ends with a, to the one who conquers, the one who conquers, and have already established that that means those who receive eternal life. This is not a secondary, greater reward. He's using different metaphors for what you get as a result of being the kind of person that perseveres, who shows that you have real faith in this world. Who keeps my work to end? What does he get?

I'll give him authority over the nations. He'll rule them with a rod of iron as when earthen pots are broken in pieces. That's a quote from Psalm 2. Even as I myself have received authority 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.

Let me close and show you a couple of things. Psalm 2. Again, the psalm is a Davidic psalm. About a Davidic king who is, even though people are coming against him, he's greater than all the kings. And it actually finishes and refers to him as the sun.

As the sun, it's a famous verse that says, kiss the sun. Kiss the sun. Ask of me. and I will make the nations your heritage. And the ends of the earth your possession, you shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.

He is a direct allusion to that.

Now We started off. With the rulership of Christ. Who is the Son of God, who's got eyes like fire, and his feet are like burnished bronze. In pure judgment, he comes. And now, what you're seeing is that his authority and his rule is not being passed off.

but others are being invited into it. That's what he's saying. Yeah, I'm coming and I'm going to rule in judgment. And if you persevere, You pull out the weeds, you pay attention, and you keep moving forward in faith. Guess what happens?

At the end of all things, I'm pulling. Y'all in with me. And you're going to reign. In Daniel 7, when Jesus, after the ascension, docks up in heaven, he is given a kingdom before the ancient of days in Daniel 7:13 and 14. Just a few verses later in Daniel 7:27, we read this: And the kingdom and the dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High.

His kingdom shall be an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him. That is, he gets a kingdom to give a kingdom. Revelation chapter 20, verse 4. Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom the authority of the judge was committed. Also, I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and those who had not worshipped the beast for its image or its image.

And had not received its mark on their foreheads or their heads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years. They reigned, they reigned, they reigned. This is the invitation. that you would come To him and be able to reign alongside him.

So, what is it that you get?

Well, you get. First, being pulled into his kingdom and being co-reigners with the risen Christ. That's the first thing. Then he says at the end, This reference to the morning star, I'll give him the morning star. What's the morning star?

Well Everybody hearing this in the Greco-Roman world. heard this, and here's what they thought. They look to the east. And they saw Venus. And they didn't know Venus was a planet.

But they thought it was an incredibly elucidated star, which it was. Roman generals would associate themselves. With Venus. Because Venus rises from the east and gives light over all of us. of the earth.

Right? So there's a play on words that's happening here. That play shows up At the very end of the revelation of Jesus Christ, he gets all the way done. And in Revelation 22, 16, we read, I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things for the churches. I'm the root and the descendant of David.

The bright and morning star.

So what do you get? You get Jesus. That's what he's saying. You get Christ. You get to reign with Him and you get to live in relationship to Him and receive Him.

Forever. Forever. So, what's the exhortation to Thyatira? The exhortation to Thyatira is. You're a good church.

You're working hard. But you got too close to the culture. You got so close that there are weeds growing up around you and you don't see it. And if you're not careful, you're going to sacrifice serious, major. eternally defining goods, for the sake of a bunch of other things.

Unless you keep your eye on a prize and you unmuddy. and then pollute your spring. Father, I ask that you would help us to honor you. with the fabric of our life to bring you praise and glory. To seek you.

Protect our hearts from evil. Help us to passionately seek What you desire first and foremost, keeping our lives and our worldviews and our hearts and our teaching more to you, Lord Jesus. In His name we pray. Amen.