Judging Jezebel

We are a bunch of hypocrites, if you're a hypocrite, where you live or work. We are foul-mouthed, coveting liars, if you are. We are impure people, if you are.

Or we are honest people, if you are. The reputation of this local assembly is no better or worse than the reputation of each individual member. Every believer is part of the body of Christ.

That has really significant implications. The reputation of the church stands or falls not just on what happens when the church gathers on Sunday, but how the church acts when we are dispersed in the community. What that means is that one Christian's sin can taint the reputation of Christians in general.

Your life impacts how people view your entire church. Today on Wisdom for the Heart, we return to the book of Revelation as we continue looking at seven letters to seven churches. Stephen called this lesson Judging Jezebel. We have been reading other people's mail these past few sessions, and included in the mail are personal evaluations.

We could call them report cards. He writes or dictates in Revelation chapter 2, verse 18, this new letter, and to the messenger of the church and Thyatira write, The words of the Son of God, whose eyes like a flame of fire, and whose feet are like burnished bronze. Now again, the Lord selects something from the opening descriptions of himself found in chapter 1, and then specifically introduces that description to one or more of the churches, and it always relates to what he's about to say as he repeats these descriptions. The one who has eyes like a flame, and whose feet are like burnished red hot bronze.

This description is both comforting and terrifying. Before we get to that, as always, the gracious Chief Shepherd begins with commendation as he praises the church for whatever it is about their testimony that is praiseworthy, and there are a number of things in this particular church worth praising. Verse 19 tells us six of them. He says, I know your works, first of all, your labor, that is your love from agape. I know your commitment to me.

I know of your faith, third. I know of your service from Diakonion, which gives us our transliterated word deacon, simply means servant. Evidently, this flock wasn't leaving it up to a body of deacons to serve the body. They were pitching in and serving the flock. They were also commended for their patient endurance.

They're burying up under the strain. We're not given all of what they might have been straining over or suffering through. Of course, Christ did, and he commended them for their patient endurance. And then the sixth commendable characteristic of the church was simply the fact that they weren't slowing down. It's a wonderful testimony of this church. Your latter works exceed the first. You are, unlike Ephesus that was running out of gas, walking away from their priority of commitments.

You are excelling in later days what you are even doing in the first. So this church was busy. It was loving. It was committed. It was faithful.

It was patient and suffering. It was attempting even greater things for God than before. Not this church here. This church was at least 60 years of age when it was delivered this letter.

However, even though they were claiming more, moving forward, reaching higher, so to speak, they were in grave danger, whether they knew it or not. Now comes the criticism where the Lord will unmask it so they will be fully aware of it. Verse 20, but I have this against you.

This is what I have against you. That you tolerate that woman Jezebel. She calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. The underlying challenge in all of this was the fact that each guild had chosen a guardian god or goddess, their patron god. If the business prospered, it was that god they gave the credit. If the business languished, they would pray to that particular god or goddess for help.

The guilds regularly feasted together, offering libations to their gods before and after the meal. Before a meal, they said grace as it were to a false idol, a false god. So listen, the problem would be then, if you're a worker in this city, you'd belong to a guild, and as a believer, then you'd have to compromise, right? You'd have to go along and just sort of be quiet while they said grace to a pagan god. Can a Christian participate in the idol feasts and even the immorality of the temple and really be a Christian?

That was their number one question. And evidently, there was an influential, perhaps, prosperous woman in the assembly who was offering a solution to the problem. She apparently argued that the answer was yes, you can do all of that, but don't worry, you can still be a good Christian. In verse 20, the Lord simply calls her Jezebel. The implication is that she was a Jewish woman, which leads us to believe that Jezebel probably wasn't her real name. Jezebel was as popular a name for your little girl as Judas would be for little boys, even to this day. I don't know of many that are named Jezebel, and I haven't bumped into a Judas lately. So this was probably more than likely a figurative name since she was effectively doing in this church what Jezebel did to the nation Israel in the Old Testament. In fact, one translator by the name of Moffat, an old translation translator, this phrase in verse 20, that Jezebel of a woman, Jezebel had successfully combined worship with immorality. In the nation Israel, she had successfully combined business with idolatry, and she had invited sin into the assembly under the guise of tolerance.

Jesus Christ says this to this church. Basically, I have this against you that you are tolerating Jezebel. So what were they to do? Well, we'll learn they were to repent of their tolerance and judge the sin and the unrepentant sinner in their assembly. They were actually to get busy judging Jezebel. In fact, the implication of God moving through Elijah by fire is hinted at Christ coming with fiery eyes and feet, acting through the believer who like Elijah condemns sin and excludes the sinning, unrepentant individual from the assembly, thus serving as the agent of judgment of God.

What I want to do is work quickly through this text and turn it around and show you the danger lurking in this assembly. And every assembly to this day refuses to act with the authority of Christ in removing immorality and idolatry and unrepentant sin from the church. Six dangers in refusing to deal with sin.

Let me give you the first one and then we'll look at the text. Without disciplinary action, here it is first of all, the church will encourage the deception of sin in the sinner's mind. We can't forget the one who is sinning as we try to protect the church. Without disciplinary action, the church will encourage the deception of sin in the sinner's mind.

In other words, without calling out the warning and judgment of sin, the sinner may actually think they're in the will of God. Look at verse 20. Again, she calls herself a prophetess. In other words, she claims to be speaking something that God would approve. She claims to have the words of God. She believes she is representing the word of God. And with every convert she makes, every person in the church who comes up to her and says, man, you are so insightful, you're so right about this, I'm having the time of my life now that I've loosened up, only deceives her further into believing that she's right. Well, in reality, she's being driven further away from the truth. I have had individuals tell me, Stephen, ever since I left my wife and shacked up with this other woman, I am closer to God than ever before.

This other woman is the best thing that ever happened to me. Now that I've walked away from church and God and you people, I'm happier than ever. It's what we call a seared conscience. The truth is, Galatians 6, 1 says, they are literally wrapped up, they are entangled, they are ensnared with the sin. And the most loving thing to do with that person is not ignore their sin, it is to warn them.

Paul wrote without quarreling, simply correct them. And perhaps he wrote, God may grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth that they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil being captured by him to do his will. 2 Timothy 2, verses 25 and 26. The fire of judgment is coming. Christ warns this church in Thyatira, just as he warned the prophets of Baal through Elijah, the one with eyes of fire and burnished feet, red hot feet, speaking of authority.

He's coming, be warned. Confronting the sinner for any church is the action of a loving body that attempts to awaken the sinning believer. Paul speaks of this person as if they're hypnotized.

They are deluded. They're under, as it were, the spell of the enemy by virtue of their own willingness to sin. So you lovingly, firmly, with caring and passion, attempt to rescue them before the fire of judgment reaches them.

Without it, you only encourage the ongoing deepening deception taking place in that person's mind and heart. Secondly, the second danger that came from refusing to judge Jezebel for this church and for any church was that the church actually provides an audience for false teaching. Verse 20 indicates that Jezebel is teaching the assembly. She calls herself a prophetess and is teaching. She's teaching the servants of God. Perhaps, as I've studied this letter, the believers in Thyatira were more open to this woman's teaching who claimed to speak the words of God simply because they'd been converted out of a similar situation. We know from archaeologists that this town during the days of John had a famous oracle. It was a famous fortune-telling shrine where the gods supposedly spoke. And in this particular famous oracle, it was presided over by a powerful woman who spoke for the gods. So you can imagine these people getting converted, coming out of that into the church environment, and guess what? There is an influential, evidently gifted woman speaking the words, supposedly, of God.

More than likely, she would be teaching what would become popular by the end of the first century and further on repackaged over and over again, teaching sort of a dualism that taught that since God saved our spirit, our bodies really don't matter. You can do anything you want with your body so long as your spirit is saved. It can't be tainted. The spirit is eternal. The body is temporary. So do whatever you want with your body and enjoy it, but your spirit will still be or remain untainted. Now, certainly seeds of truth, for we do sin daily with our bodies, yet our spirit is secure with Christ.

We don't have to get saved every other day. But do we sin with abandon? Do we revel in sin? Do we give our bodies over to it without any thought or guilt or recourse or repentance? Paul answered that question when he wrote, are we to practice sin that grace may abound?

God forbid. How can we who died to sin live in it? Romans 6, verse 2. John also wrote, whoever makes a practice of sinning, makes a practice of it, belongs to the devil, 1 John 3, verse 8. Not whoever sins, but whoever believes you can practice sin and live in sin and revel in sin and not repent, feel no remorse or guilt, that person, John writes, is not a believer. He writes further in the next verse in the same paragraph, no one who is born of God makes a practice of sinning. Jezebel was saying, sin away. You're saved.

God has your spirit. Live it up at the guild feasts. Revel in immorality. Don't bother with those feelings of guilt. It's sort of leftover whatevers. Join in the orgies of the temple.

Your spirit is saved, so don't worry about your body. This sounded so insightful. Wow, what a solution. It sounded deep. Truth?

Was it? Verse 24, Revelation chapter 2 informs us that it was nothing less than the deep lies of Satan. It sounded clever, but it was corrupt, emanating from the depths of hell and the enemy itself. Because the church refused to judge Jezebel, they allowed her, first of all, to continue in her deception, which hurt her. Secondly, they gave her a captive audience in the assembly. Thirdly, they allowed an unrepentant sinner to influence and promote sin in the lives of others. Our Lord says in verse 20, notice this, that Jezebel was seducing his or my servants.

Can you imagine the horror of that? Seducing the believer to sin. She was leading them, as it were, into the discipline of God. Seducing them with their words. Jesus Christ put it this way, if you cause one of my little ones to sin, you might as well hang a millstone around your neck and jump into the middle of the sea.

I don't know what a millstone is, but it sounds heavy to me and something you wouldn't swim with or surface with one tied around your neck. John writes here in verse 20, the middle part, Jezebel is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. You notice though that she's teaching them to practice exactly what the early church council in Acts chapter 15 asked the church not to do.

Those who were Gentiles joining the church, they sent word back, you are welcome and you don't have to be circumcised, you don't have to become a Jew, so to speak, in that sense of the word, but we ask that you do not practice immorality and associate in any way with idols through temple feasts. The ink is barely dry and she's leading them to do it. No wonder Jezebel was in grave danger of God's judgment. Look at verse 21, and I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her own sexual immorality. So for the church, ladies and gentlemen, to ignore the role of judging sin and excluding the unrepentant from the assembly, that church not only allows the sinner to continue in their self-decepting, self-destructing ways, they gave her, secondly, a captive audience. Third, they allowed her unrestricted influence over others to sin.

Fourth, they actually helped delude the sinner and the sinners into believing that they could avoid a harvest of consequences, but it was only a delusion. Look at verse 22, I will throw her onto a sick bed. The word sick is added, contributed by the translators and I believe it misses the point.

The word here for bed is klinae, it can be translated banqueting couch. What I believe is happening here is the Lord is telling us that she will be struck down in the middle of one of her festivals, one of her banqueting feasts at a time of her own idolatry. This is the irony, by the way, of her end. She cannot avoid the judgment of God and even though the church has remained silent and tolerant of her sinning and she is saying, hey, everybody, come on in, the water's fine.

And everybody is either being quiet, they're either following her or others are putting their blinders on saying we're not going to bother with her. God is preparing her own judgment. Like Jezebel of the Old Testament, this Jezebel is an unbeliever whose delight is tempting the believer and causing the believer to err in his ways. She's hardened her heart, refuses to repent, which is the sign of an unbeliever, she will be struck down. If this was all the harvest of consequences brought in, it might not be any more than a good stiff warning to the church.

However, there is a fifth consequence for the apathy and tolerance of this assembly. Number five, the lives of weaker or younger believers are not only devastated but in grave danger of an early death themselves. He writes in verse 22, the middle part, and those who commit adultery with her, I will throw into great tribulation.

This is not the eschatological tribulation that will come. In fact, Christ goes on in verse 22 to warn, unless they repent of her works, I will strike them dead. So there still is hope for these children that is these followers of her false teaching. They can in the future repent. Perhaps it will be in seeing Jezebel struck down on her banqueting couch that causes them to come to their senses. But if they don't, they will also be taken perhaps early in death.

Now follow me with this. Among other forbidden acts, these unrepentant believers who are asked to repent and follow after Christ, they would have sinned against the Lord's table, wouldn't they have? They would have participated in the ordinance of communion while at the same time practicing either secretly or openly immoralities. Paul writes to the Corinthians these startling words, let a person examine himself then and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup for anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, that is without being in fellowship with the claims of Christ, eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, he writes to the church, and some of you have already died.

1 Corinthians 11, 28 to 30. Imagine Paul saying some of your church members in Corinth have died, the final act of discipline so to speak, not because they were unbelievers like Jezebel, but because they were unrepentant sinning believers who brought continual shame to the name of Christ and to his church. So when the church fails to deal with sin and unrepentant sinners, the cost is high, isn't it?

What great cost to people's lives. Finally, number six, this church and all churches like her become an example of God's displeasure. That alone ought to keep us from wanting to tolerate sin, that we could become as a body of believers experience the displeasure of God.

That's exactly what he tells them in verse 23. 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. Can you imagine a church wanting to be known as the church that experienced God's displeasure?

Would we want this kind of reputation? He's warning this church in Thyatira that this is your developing reputation. All the other churches will know.

This is an open letter. They're all going to know that you are tolerating sin, so repent, stop, turn around, judge, first Jezebel and then sin among your own selves. No church would want this reputation. But I can tell you, dear flock of God, that this is the reputation of the average church in America. It has a reputation of refusing to deal with sin. The reputation of the average church in this culture is toleration of sin. Even to the point where one church leader said some time ago in a denomination that was accepting openly homosexual individuals, he said, look, when it comes down to it, if we have to choose between dividing among ourselves over this sin or heresy, we will choose heresy rather than division. This isn't a new problem.

The church was tolerating it nearly 2,000 years ago. The pressure was on. Their culture said come. Their livelihood was at stake. A woman of gifting and influence said here's the way to get around it.

So you can do it. And they were facing the one who said to his beloved, I am going to come to you with eyes of flame and feet of burnished bronze. Now as was his letter writing custom, he returns to gracious comments that both commend and encourage the believer. He writes this to those who weren't following Jezebel and for those who would repent of following her.

He says this to us as well. Verse 26, the one who conquers and keeps my works until the end. To him I will give authority over the nations and he will rule them with a rod of iron as when earth and pots are broken in pieces even as I myself have received authority from my father. This is clearly talking about the Messianic Kingdom.

That 1,000 year reign that we'll talk about a lot later. This isn't the future heaven and earth. There will be no need of a rod of iron in heaven. There will be no breaking apart like pottery rebellious nations on the earth. Verse 28 provides a wonderful promise. And I will give him the morning star. What a great promise. This can be nothing less than the promise of Christ's own presence.

In Revelation chapter 22 verse 16 Jesus Christ calls himself the bright and morning star. The bright and morning star will be given to you physically present with you. And he's saying effectively, there's gonna come a time when you're not gonna need the letter.

I personally, physically will be with you and in your presence. It's going to happen. His word will come true.

Let me give you two final lessons and we'll close here. Number one, big sins can happen in little churches. It's a warning. No matter what size church it can be overtaken. Great sin. This church made headlines because of its tolerance of great sin. And I can imagine they were mortified and embarrassed and hopefully repented after receiving a letter that other churches were allowed to read. Imagine the Lord sending colonial a letter and saying, here's who you really are. And sending a copy of it to all the other churches in the community.

Number two, the effects of one person's sin can destroy the effectiveness of an entire church. The local church that meets here in the mind of God illustrated in 1st Corinthians 12 is one body. And listen, with my own physical body let me illustrate.

I could cut my, I could cut the tip of my finger on a nail or scrape it open with the top of the can of dog food that those dogs are about to get. And if I don't deal with that properly, that could cost me my life. There is no one insignificant in the body of Christ. That is a good aspect and it has a warning aspect.

In fact, what happens to the rest of the body is dependent on each individual part. The reputation of this local assembly is no better or worse than the reputation of each individual. Remember, we are a bunch of hypocrites, if you're a hypocrite, where you live or work. We are foul-mouthed, coveting liars, if you are. We are impure people, if you are.

Or we are honest people, if you are. We are people of integrity and purity, if you are. We are a body known for putting Christ and his priorities first in our lives, if you individually and I are known for putting Christ first.

So this letter then closes with a personal question, effectively, are you listening? He that has an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches. Thank you for joining us today. If these lessons are a blessing to you, we sure would love to hear about it. Let us know how God's using the ministry of Wisdom International in your walk with Christ. There are many ways that you can interact with our ministry. You can write to us at info at wisdomonline.org. You can also call us today at 866-48-bible. That's 866-48-bible or 866-482-4253. We look forward to being back with you next time, right here on Wisdom for the Heart.