Word of Salvation – Vol. 40 No.48 – December 1995

 

The Church That Tolerated A False Prophet

 

Sermon by Rev. P. Kossen on Revelation 2:18-29

 

Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ,

First of all, when you look at this letter, you may well ask, “what could the Lord say to us through this letter?  We don’t have any of the problems Thyatira faced.”  But as we will see, this letter has a very relevant message for us today.

Jesus introduces Himself as the Son of God, whose eyes are like blazing fire, and whose feet are like burnished bronze.  In Thyatira, there were two other sons of gods who were being worshipped.  One was the Divine Caesar, who was called a son of god by the people then.  And the other was a local god Tyrimnos, son of Zeus.  But Jesus sets Himself above these.  He alone is the true Son of God.

With those penetrating eyes of His, He sees so much further and deeper than we can see.  He sees the state of His whole church.  He sees the dangers which face His Church.  And today He wants to warn us against the danger of Jezebel.  He exhorts us, in verse 25: “Hold on to what you have, until I come.”

Well, what sort of things do they have?  We see that in verse 19, when…

1.  The Lord Praises Them

When He praises them, we see what sort of things are valuable in God’s eyes.  I am reminded of the Calvinette text in Micah 6:8.  “And what does the Lord require of you?  To act justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

I am reminded of an advertisement I saw just recently in the local paper, where one church was advertising its services, and in the ad they were claiming what a spectacular church they were, with contemporary music, and spectacular miracles, and entertaining sermons, and they were openly having a go at churches like ours, which were pictured as dull and boring and irrelevant.  Now it’s one thing for men to judge one another like that, but the real judgment of a church belongs to the Lord, and the things He looks for are quite different to the sort of things men look for.

In our text, the Lord tells us what sort of things He finds praise-worthy in a church.  I know your deeds, the way you live out your Christian life.  Your love.  Your diakonia — your service, your works of service within and without the church.  Your patience and perseverance when the going gets tough.  And your growth – not speaking here of growth in numbers, but spiritual growth – he says of them, you are now doing more than you did at first.  And that is what the Lord Jesus finds commendable in a Church.

When He walked upon the earth, He walked as a servant, He walked in love, He walked in grace, He walked in truth.  And the Lord rejoices when He looks at His Church, and He sees His own characteristics being reflected back.  When a church like Thyatira shows these qualities, He can only tell them, as in verse 25, “Hold on to what you have until I come.”  These are the qualities which are attractive in the eyes of God.

However, today the church is under pressure to make it more attractive according to the judgment of men.  We are expected by some to conform to a more worldly and man-centred pattern and theology in order to be made attractive and acceptable in the eyes of those around us.  This is a pressure which the church has always faced.  This is the pressure Thyatira faced.  And it’s the same pressure which the church faced already in the days of Ahab and Jezebel.

That leads us to our second point.  First, the Lord has praised her for her spiritual qualities.  But secondly…

2.  He Rebukes Her for Tolerating that Woman Jezebel

Now again, like in the other churches, it wasn’t easy to be a Christian in Thyatira.  Thyatira was an industrial city with all sorts of businesses centred there.  Potters, tanners, weavers, robe makers, and every other business under the sun.  Lydia, the maker of purple cloth, originally came from this city.  Most of the people in the church were probably also working people.

Now the main problem these people faced, is that each industry was ruled by what we would today call a powerful trade union.  If you wanted to get ahead, you needed to belong to the union.  But more than that, being a member of those particular unions, implied that you served the god of the union.  And being a member also meant participating in the meetings of the union.  And often these meetings were filled with acts of pagan worship.  The food would be offered to the idols, and then those present would eat that food – sort of an act of worship.  Then, after the eating, that’s when the real feast began, with all sorts of lewd and immoral behaviour.

This was a very real problem to the people of Thyatira.  Their work depended on it.  What should they do as Christians?  Join in or remain separate?  This woman, called Jezebel, taught, that as Christians, they could participate in this sort of thing.  She encouraged them to do so.  She gets her name from Jezebel in the Old Testament, wife of king Ahab.  You remember, she was from Phoenicia, outside of Israel.  She was a Baal worshipper.

She came into Israel – into the church if you like – and what struck her was what a narrow minded lot these Israelites were.  They were so set apart from other nations.  You can’t do this and you can’t do that.  They refused to participate in the worship of other nations.  And she set about to change that.  If you want to be in this world, you’ve got to fit into the world.  Come and worship Baal.  Worship Yahweh, through Baal.  Conform a little bit more to the world.

And Jezebel in Thyatira was something like this.  ‘Worship the Lord by all means, but you can do it just as well through Baal.’  She taught that what really mattered was not what you did, but the motives with which you did it.  And so, as a Christian, you could participate in all these worldly sorts of things, these so-called deep things of Satan, as long as you did so with the right motive.

You see, as a Christian, you had a different perspective on the world.  Those around you might think that these idols were gods, but you knew differently.  You knew that the Lord is God.  And so, you could do the same things as those around you as long, of course, as your motives remained pure.  And she taught that, in fact, if you as it were, entered into the deep secrets of Satan, with pure motives, you were a more realistic, more spiritual sort of Christian than the poor legalistic minded, narrow minded, intolerant Christian who refused to join in all of this.

She said, as it were, to them: you don’t know what Christianity is all about.  We are in the world, and we are called upon to serve God in the world, and you can’t just turn your back on everything that goes on around you.  And more than all this, the woman Jezebel called herself a prophetess.  She claimed that the Lord had told her that this was the way that they were to live.  And by her teaching, she led many in the church astray.

Today, of course we don’t get this sort of idol worship.  And we don’t have the related immorality at pagan feasts.  And we don’t, as far as we know, have such false prophets in our church.  What then does the Lord say to us in this text?

And again, I repeat what I said before, I believe the Lord is telling us the exhortation of verse 25: Hold on to what you have until I come.  Do not tolerate Jezebel in your midst.  He needs to tell us this because those false prophets and prophetesses like Jezebel, are always just around the corner.

First I would remind you of some of the charismatic prophets of today.  They come with a message which they say is directly from the Lord, and under so called divine leading.  They can lead their churches completely astray.  They get some hard questions, like Thyatira faced, whether or not to participate in a certain thing, and they go and wait upon the Lord for His leading.  If after enough waiting, they are internally convinced that it is alright, they go ahead and teach their church likewise.  That is one sort of Jezebel in the church today, who get their leading, not from the Word of God, but directly from the word of prophecy.

But then there is also a second Jezebel in the Church today, and that is the Jezebel who claims to have new insights into the Word of God itself.  These prophets, like Jezebel of old, try to find Biblical grounds to allow what God has forbidden.  Like Jezebel of old, they try to break down barriers between church and world.

And so, if the most popular scientific theory is evolution, they will try to twist the Bible into an evolutionary mould.  If the current fad is feminism, they will try to re-read the Bible in feminist eyes, to allow Christians also to hop on the band-wagon.  If the most powerful lobby in society is that of homosexuals, they will try to give this lobby a hearing in the church as well.  And these new prophets claim to speak in the name of Christ.  They, like Jezebel, claim to have a deeper insight, a deeper spiritual understanding, a deeper love than intolerant Christians like us, who don’t hold to that teaching.

And we must admit, that such prophets are closer to home than we might like.  Churches like us, even for some of us, our very mother church, the GKN, which one generation ago was faithful to God’s Word, have had such false prophets come in amongst them.  They have begun reading the Bible in a different way, and behind it, they dare to say, “Thus says the Lord…!”  And they look down upon those Christians who are so narrow-minded to read the Bible in such a narrow way.

It started off small – just a few questions here and there.  But those small questionings are the thin edge of the wedge, and the trickle soon becomes an avalanche.  And those churches today, openly, directly, blatantly, allow what God in His Word has openly and directly forbidden.  And why, in one generation, have these churches gone so far away from Scripture?  It is because, they did not listen to this part of God’s Word which rebukes churches for tolerating that woman Jezebel.  They allowed false prophets into their midst.  And these false prophets have led God’s people astray so that today they can be called God’s people no more.

3.  The Judgment Prescribed

And that is also the judgment the Lord has prescribed for them.  First there is a time of grace in which the Lord gives them time for repentance.  But very few, once they have started on this road of undermining God’s Word, are willing to come back from that.  But after this time of grace, when they continue on in defiance of His Word, He will repay.

In the case of Jezebel and her followers, the Lord foretold sickness.  Those who defile the bed, will end up on the bed of suffering.  But we don’t know if this ought to be taken completely literally.  All we do know is that God will not be mocked, and He will repay.  He also adds in verse 23, “I will strike all her children dead.”

And isn’t that so true?  When one generation turns away from the Word of the Lord, this judgment carries through to the next generation who are never taught the Word of God, and who thus suffer the results of their parents’ sins.  And when we now look at a church like this, which has turned away from the Lord in the last generation, and we see the results now, with the children growing up living like pagans, this next Word of the Lord comes true.  “Then all the churches will know that I am He who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you, according to what he has done.”  God is not mocked.  A Church cannot continue in teachings and actions which are dishonouring to Christ.

And brothers and sisters, this church, for many of us our mother church, stands as an object lesson to us from the Lord.  If at any one small point we allow Jezebel a hearing, we give room to teaching contrary to God’s Word.  And if repentance is not forthcoming, the hand of the Lord will come down.  And I again want to take this opportunity to warn us of this.  The GKN is not the only such example.  It is only the clearest for us at this present time.

But a spirit of unfaithfulness and toleration is sweeping across the whole world.  And it is not so much our older members who will be affected, but our younger members.  If you continue to uphold the Word of God as it is upheld in our churches today, you in time, will also be labelled narrow minded, fundamentalistic, bigoted, intolerant, puritanical Christians, by those who read the Bible differently, and read into it, things which God has plainly forbidden.

4.  The Call to Hold on to What You Have

And to you, the Lord goes on, “Now I say to the rest of you in Thyatira, who do not hold to her teaching, who do not follow the false prophets’ teaching, and have not learned Satan’s so called deep secrets, I will impose no other burden on you.”  Satan’s so called deep secrets.  People like Jezebel who follow the delusions and fantasies of their own minds believe that they are the ones with the deeper spiritual understanding.  If you don’t follow our way, you are just an old fashioned fuddy duddy.

But the Lord dismisses these deeper paths out of hand.  There is nothing to them.  There is nothing new, says the Lord.  I am not going to burden you with anything new.  There is nothing more you need to discover about My ways.  Just hold on to that which you already have, until I come.  And that is an amazing truth brothers and sisters.  There is nothing new to come.  What more can He say than to you He has said?  He has spoken clearly in His Word.  And His people in all ages have held fast to that one Word.  And for us today, that Word remains the same.

Now to be sure, we keep searching His Word for new light.  But in essence, what we believe and practice today, is the same as the Church believed and practiced 2000 years ago.  And for sure, we have deeper insight into those truths.  But those truths remain the same.  Only, hold on to what you have, until I come.  Hold on to those things which are of real importance in the Lord’s eyes.  Your love.  Your faith.  Your service.  Your perseverance.  Your spiritual growth.  Again, summarised in Micah 6:8, “And what does the Lord require of you?  To act justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”  In the light of His Word.

5.  The Reward

And to these people who simply try to serve Christ in the best way they know how with deeds of love and faith, the Lord makes this amazing promise.  “To him who overcomes and does my will to the end, I will give authority over nations.”  And then He quotes from Psalm 2, “He will rule them with an iron sceptre; he will dash them to pieces like pottery.”  These people may be seen now as weak and narrow minded, and may be despised by the so called Christian intelligentsia.  But the time will come when they will reign with Him, and receive glory and honour.

And that is also what is meant when Christ says He will give them the morning star.  Christ Himself is the morning star (Rev.22:16).  The morning star rules the heavens, and so believers will rule with Christ.  They will share in His glory and dominion forever and ever.

6.  Conclusion

Brothers and sisters, this letter to the Church in Thyatira is an important one for the Church, also especially today.  It drives us forward to attain those things which are important, not in the eyes of the world, but in God’s eyes.  Love, faith, service, perseverance, growing into the likeness of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Are those the things which are on the top of our agenda as Church today?

He who has an ear, let him hear, what the Spirit says to the Churches.

Amen.