Call me old fashioned but I like a good old bologna sandwich. Just the cheap bologna with a little cheese on some bread and I’m good. I eat them pretty often and here is what I have learned. Here, I’ll show you with this sandwich I made. I made it last Wednesday and then left it on the counter. Now, I know that doctors and scientists would tell you that it’s not good to leave food out like that, but I’m telling you there is nothing wrong with it. That mold growing on there gives it a nice flavor. Anybody want some? I’ll share.
Don’t listen to all those medical school graduates. I bet they have never even eaten a moldy bologna sandwich. A fresh sandwich is fine but a crusty, moldy, dark cheddar cheese, old sandwich is good too. It’ll be fine. Trust me. No? Why not? Have you ever eaten one? Then how do you know it wouldn’t be good?
You know it wouldn’t be good, even though you have never eaten one because you believe medical science, right? Yea, it looks gross and that’s a turn-off, but guacamole looks gross too and you eat that. The difference is that you trust what medical science has said for a hundred years or more. You trust the books written by educated men that prove that eating this sandwich would make you sick.
But what if I went around telling people in the church that eating moldy bologna sandwiches was fine. If I brought them to game night and to snack on at Bible study and I kept on doing it? You wouldn’t tolerate that, would you? If I want to eat moldy bologna, it’s one thing. But to encourage the rest of the church to do it would be unacceptable. You would do whatever it takes to stop me from spreading those lies.
Okay, okay, so I hear you. You don’t want to eat a whole moldy bologna sandwich. How about just a little bit of one? How about just a bite? Just eat a little bit of this black cheese here and see what you think. No? Well, how much mold is too much? How much moldy bologna sandwich is okay to eat? How much can you tolerate? None? Exactly right!
Turn to the book of Revelation with me this morning to the second chapter and we will see that something similar but far worse was going on in the church at Thyatira. We are continuing our look at the letters Jesus told John to write to the seven churches. These churches were real churches with real problems. Some of those problems were because of when and where they lived and some of their problems were of their own making.
Thyatira was the smallest of the seven churches in the smallest of cities but Jesus wrote them the longest letter. Thyatira was actually a military outpost set up to protect the other cities in the area. But in this city were a bunch of trade guilds, like unions, that were in place for all the different tradesmen that were there. Thyatira was a booming little city for trades such as textiles, tanners, potters, bakers, coppersmiths and such and each one had its own guild or union. Like in other cities we have seen, if you weren’t part of the union, it was hard to make a living.
The problem was, when these unions would meet, it would always turn into a “religious” feast that would include worship to all these false gods and that worship included all kinds of sexual immorality. You know, I guess if you are going to make up a god, make up one that encourages you to do what you want to do. That way you can do what you want and still be in right standing with your god. It looks like that is what was happening in Thyatira.
Let’s read Revelation 2:18-29 and see what kind of trouble this church was in. As usual, Jesus starts off by giving some good news but when you look at it closely, you see it is all Jesus can do to tell them anything good because He is obviously ticked off. Look how He starts this letter.
To the angel of the church in Thyatira write: These are the words of the Son of God, whose eyes are like blazing fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze. (See. That is not the greeting of a happy Jesus.)19 I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first. 20 Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols. 21 I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling. 22 So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. 23 I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds. 24 Now I say to the rest of you in Thyatira, to you who do not hold to her teaching and have not learned Satan’s so-called deep secrets, ‘I will not impose any other burden on you, 25 except to hold on to what you have until I come.’ 26 To the one who is victorious and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations— 27 that one ‘will rule them with an iron scepter and will dash them to pieces like pottery’[a]—just as I have received authority from my Father. 28 I will also give that one the morning star. 29 Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
I remember when the internet was just starting out. It was starting to make a dent in the profits of print media like newspapers and magazines. We see now that the internet has almost completely taken over the areas of news and entertainment. But I remember back in the day that the owner of Penthouse magazine was on the national news making a plea for pornographic magazines and not just his own. I remember him encouraging people to buy his magazine but if not his, then buy Playboy because porn is normal and healthy. It is good for you. He wanted everyone to know that porn was good, no matter whose mag you bought.
I remember thinking how crazy that sounded. It’s crazier than a moldy bologna sandwich. But, I wonder if he really believed it or if he was just trying to make money or maybe he had convinced himself it really was true because he wanted it to be true.
In our text today, the biggest problem in this church in Thyatira was one woman. Jesus called her Jezebel. That was most likely not her real name but Jesus often changed peoples names to reflect their personalities and this nickname was no compliment. If you remember, Jezebel was in the Old Testament in First and Second Kings and was the evil queen of King Ahab. The Jezebel in Thyatira was a little more subtle. She evidently claimed to have direct insight from God that allowed her to encourage the Christians in that church to feel free to participate in the sexually immoral idol worship that was going on at these guild meetings.
I don’t know if she really believed it or if she was just trying to make money or if she had convinced herself it really was true because she wanted it to be true. But evidently the people in the church were tolerating it and that made Jesus mad. I bet it was very tempting to tolerate her and her teaching because if you don’t belong to one of these guilds, then it’s almost impossible to work. So, the Christians in the church in Thyatira had to make a choice and I’m sure it was difficult.
She was evidently teaching that you could be a Christian and be part of these guilds, even if those guilds worshiped idols and indulged in sexual immorality. They could sin and still be saved; that one thing had nothing to do with the other. This may have been the tool that church was using to get the pagans of Thyatira to come to their church. They were compromising their standards to attract the world. They were saying, “Oh, come as you are! Don’t change a thing. Keep living like you have always lived. We’ll accept you just like you are. God loves you and we do too. Neither He nor us expects you to change one thing.”
This goes back to the rules we have or don’t have around here. If you want to come to this church in filthy clothes, we don’t have any rules about that. We seriously do not care about such things. Please come. If you want to come to this church with a filthy heart, that’s fine too. We don’t have rules about that.
But we love you too much to let you stay either way. If you want better clothes, we can help you, but we really don’t care what you look like on the outside. If you want a clean heart and clean hands before God; a renewed mind; if you want to be a new creation, as God calls it, we can help you with that too because we do care about that.
The problem is we are surrounded by…the world. When we are here in this building, we all get loved on and supported and prayed for and did I say loved on? Good grief, this is a loving church; a giving church. Thank you, Lord, for the heart you have given this church and especially when this church is in this building, life is good.
But unfortunately, we have to leave here. We have to go out into the world; the nasty, perverted, sin-sick world where we are not loved on but lied to. We are lied to by the TV, the radio, internet, the world and ultimately Satan and we are told that porn is healthy. We are told that homosexuality is just a different lifestyle. We are told that sex before marriage is just the way it is and that there is nothing different about it than what married people do. But that is all a lie and it is a lie that is slowly making its way into the churches of today just like it was creeping into the church in Thyatira.
I have to brag on Cody and Teresa again for a minute. Guys, I am so proud of you! I know it has been hard and you have had every excuse in the world to quit but you have held on to what you have in the Lord and I know He is blessing you for it. Cody and Teresa and I had a talk when they first started coming here. I knew they weren’t married and were living together and I didn’t want to discourage them or run them off but I knew they didn’t know the truth so I tried to lovingly tell them what passages like 1 Corinthians 7:2 says. It says, “But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.”
It didn’t take long before Cody called me. “Hey! Been thinking about what you said. We went and got our marriage license and it says we have to wait 72 hours but can you marry us on the 73rd hour?” Yeet! Yes, I can! And God was glorified in that ceremony and God is glorified in their lives and that is just fun to see!
And that’s what happens when people are obedient. God blesses them. But you also know what comes after that, right? The people are obedient. God blesses and then Satan attacks. Set your watch by it. Count on it. I promise it is going to happen. Satan hates when you get out of a sinful lifestyle, especially a sexually immoral lifestyle.
Let me ask you a question. Is all sin the same? Is one sin as bad as another? Well, honestly, that’s kind of a trick question. In one sense, all sin is the same in that any sin – big sin, little sin, medium sin – puts a barrier between you and God. Isaiah 59:2 says, “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.”
But sexual sin has worse consequences because as 1 Corinthians 6:18 says, “Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.” So, Satan has a thing for trying to get us to sin sexually. You are never too old or too spiritually mature for sexual immorality not to be a temptation.
But, as always, Satan is too smart to just come right out and try to get you to do something big. It always starts small. It starts with a picture or a word which leads to a thought and then another couple of thoughts and a small bad thing and then all of the sudden one thing has inevitable lead to another and you look around and find yourself hooked into something you can’t even imagine.
My favorite hero in the Bible, David, was walking around in the cool of the evening minding his own business up on his flat roof. Things were going well. He was the king of all Israel and God was blessing him. He was conquering all the nations around him. There was relative peace in the land. David himself had everything a man could want including more than one wife. But all it took was a look.
You know the story that 2 Samuel 11 tells. It went from an innocent glance to a longer look to asking a couple questions and pretty soon there was lust, adultery, murder, lying, deceit and the death of a child on David’s hands. He should have just bounced his eyes off her and gone downstairs and his story would have been way different. There was repentance and forgiveness for David but the consequences of those sins were devastating.
God doesn’t want you to have those consequences and so He warns us about that kind of thing all through His Word. When you do find yourself in that kind of a hole, the first thing to do is quit digging. As soon as you realize you have made a mistake, you should go to God and ask for forgiveness before it gets any worse or before you run out of time. Look at verses 21-23 again. 21 I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling. 22 So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. 23 I will strike her children dead.
Wow! That sounds pretty harsh, doesn’t it? Evidently God takes this stuff pretty seriously. He says, “She likes that bed so much, she can die on it with all her customers and followers!” Most commentaries agree that verse 23 is talking about the people that follow her teaching. Jesus is protective of His bride, the church. He is protective of His Word and His glory and when anything threatens any of that, He can and will cut them off. He says in verse 24, “Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds.” That ought to thrill some of us and it ought to scare some of us to death. Nothing gets past the penetrating stare of Jesus. He is searching our hearts and minds all the time.
We have talked before about how our churches today don’t really know persecution. So many churches in foreign countries have to have underground churches or sneak around at night because just believing in Jesus is against the law. We don’t have anything close to that. But I’ll tell you how Satan persecutes our church and it’s not much different than it was for the church in Thyatira.
We are surrounded by evil. We see and hear things all day every day that make fun of God and Christianity, tell us that perversion is normal and that just a little bit of evil isn’t going to hurt you. There isn’t much we can do about some of it. We have to go to work where there are unbelievers and unbelievers are just going to act like it. Don’t be surprised when they do.
We have to drive down the road and see certain billboards and awful bumper stickers. Sometimes you just can’t help seeing those things. I hope we can just bounce our eyes off those and keep driving. But while you are driving, what are you listening to? When you get home, what are you watching on TV and online?
I want you to be mindful this week about that sitcom you like to watch. Oh, I know they aren’t worshiping Satan or anything but if Jesus was sitting on the couch next to you, would you continue watching it? Do you think Jesus would laugh at those shows? First of all they just aren’t funny and secondly that half-dressed hussy on there that is trying to seduce a man she isn’t married to is subtly brainwashing you into thinking that’s no big deal.
Tell me that’s not true when you think about how far we have come from Ricky and Lucy being married but sleeping in separate beds to today where it’s just assumed that everybody lives together before they get married. It’s just assumed now that every good first date ends in sex. Tell me our society hasn’t been brainwashed into thinking that is okay.
That’s just exactly what this Jezebel in Thyatira was trying to do. It’s okay. You can be a Christian and still watch filth on TV. You can go to church and the rated “R” movies. One doesn’t have anything to do with the other. Well, it’s time to repent of that. Right now. Right here before it’s too late. God is searching our hearts and minds and He sees what is on that TV and computer and He hears that filth coming from the stereo and He is coming soon to “repay each of you according to your deeds.”
Are you ready for that? If you are then it’s good news in verse 24 where Jesus says, “Now I say to the rest of you…who do not hold to her teaching and have not learned Satan’s so-called deep secrets, ‘I will not impose any other burden on you, 25 except to hold on to what you have until I come.’ That word for “hold on” in the Greek is “krateo” which is a strong word indicating it will not be easy. Jesus knows that but He is coming soon and He will make it all worth it! Hold on, dear one. Hold on!
If you are going to be a holy, godly Christian in these days, you might as well get ready to be hated, misunderstood and persecuted. But, this is not the end of the matter! One day, the King is coming! When He does, He is going to let His faithful servants reign with Him. We might be weak today. The worldly, compromising churches might be the ones with all the people, all the power and all the prestige. But, when the King comes, those who have served Him faithfully now will reign with Him then! It will be worth it all when that day comes! (Adrian Rogers)
If you aren’t ready then, as Paul said back in his day, today is the day of salvation. Ask God to forgive your sins – everything you have ever done - and scripture says He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9) Allow Him to be Lord of your life. Whatever He says is what you want to do. No compromising on any of that. And allow Him to change you and bless you and make you more like Him. Do it right now as the music plays.
*Prayer*
This Jezebel was teaching things that contradict scripture. We need to be searching the scriptures every time a red flag goes up like that and if it doesn’t match what scripture is saying, that so-called prophet or preacher is a false prophet and you need to never listen to them again.
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