Revelation 2:18-29 (Thyatira, Conquer Your Tolerance, Jeff Kliewer)

Help us to love you more than the temporary and fleeting pleasures of sin. Set us free, Lord God, and help us to be the instrument that you use to set others free as well. In Jesus' name, Amen. Ahab. Wicked King Ahab.

He was the poster boy for tolerance and pluralism, peace, and prosperity. The poster boy for tolerance. Ahab, first of all, tolerated Baal worship. How did he do that? Well, he married the daughter of Eth Baal, king of Sidonians.

Eth Baal's daughter, of course, was Jezebel, and she herself was a worshiper of Baal and the many gods of the Sidonians. He took Jezebel, daughter of Eth Baal, king of the Sidonians, to be his wife and before long, the worship of Baal became commonplace in Israel.

So much power did Jezebel gain, in fact, that she began to persecute and even put to death the prophets of Yahweh. Many of them, probably the ones that were outspoken, as prophets tend to be, speaking out against Baal and Baal worship.

Jezebel went to war with them. In fact, Obadiah hid 100 prophets in two caves because Jezebel was seeking their lives. Of course, we know where this all led, and that was to the great showdown on Mount Carmel.

Ahab, Jezebel, and the Danger of Tolerating Sin

First Kings chapter 18, Elisha came and challenged the prophets of Baal to a showdown. 450 of them versus the one true prophet of Yahweh. They go to this mountain, on top of the mountain. It's an amazing scene where the prophets of Baal are cutting themselves and calling upon the names of their gods.

When it's Elijah's turn, he douses the sacrifice with water and calls upon the name of Yahweh, and God answers with fire. But notice, before that powerful expression of Yahweh, before his power is revealed, the people are undecided.

They tolerate Baal worship, and they tolerate the worship of Yahweh. They are limping between two opinions, according to First Kings 18. So Ahab was a very tolerant fellow. Ahab also tolerated Ben Hadad, or Hadad.

This was the king of the Syrians. Well, the Syrians had gained power, and they created an alliance with 32 kings, and when they did that, gathering troops north of Israel, north of Samaria, they sent a message to King Ahab, saying, your sons, your daughters, and your wives are mine.

Now, what should a man say when another man, a king, says, your wives, first of all, he shouldn't be having multiple wives, First Kings 17, but be that as it may, when another king says, they're mine, what should this man of God say?

Should he tolerate such a thing? By no means. And yet, Ahab, being the tolerant and pluralistic, peace-loving man that he was, answers back, okay, fine, they're yours. To which Ben Hadad says, oh, well, I'm gonna send my servant, and I'm gonna find out which ones you love the most, and then I'll take that one.

I think maybe Ahab was thinking, I'll send Jezebel your way, be done with her. But, in fact, when Ahab hears this ultimatum, he cannot stomach such a thing, and he finally gets a backbone. And they begin trash-talking one another, to which the king of the Sidonians, of the Syrians, claims that he's going to come and wipe out Israel, so that it'll be handfuls of dust, and Ahab answers, the one who puts on armor ought not boast like the one who takes it off.

It's a good point. And so they go to war, and God delivers, mercifully, from the hand of the king of Syria. But again, it was the tendency of Ahab to seek peace, where there is no peace. To call for tolerance, where there is nothing to be tolerated.

Sin is not to be tolerated. Ben Hadad, cowering in an inner chamber, sends word to Ahab that he would like to come and see him. And, of course, Ahab, being the tolerant fellow that he is, says, oh, Ben Hadad, he is my brother.

He is not your brother. He just sought the lives of your people, and he sought your wives and your children, but you call him your brother. The messengers of the king say, just kind of picking up on that, oh, yes, yes, he's your brother.

And so he comes and Ahab forgives him, sets him free, and restores his land to him. One of the prophets of Israel is so disgusted by this, he tells a man of Israel, strike me! But the man, afraid to do that, says, oh, no.

And because he would not listen to the voice of the Lord, a lion struck him. Finally, another man struck the prophet, at the prophet's request, strike me! And he goes to King Ahab with wounds and bandages over his eyes, and makes the claim to the king that I was in the war, and I was supposed to be guarding somebody, but I let him go.

What should happen to me? Should I die? And the king says, yeah, you spoke it by your own mouth, you should die. And then the prophet reveals who he is, the big reveal, takes off the bandages, and said, you, king, are the one who let the king of the Syrians go.

You spoke your own judgment. Well, this was not the end of the tolerance of Ahab. Not only did he tolerate Ben-Hadad, and was judged for that, not only did he tolerate Jezebel and her introduction of Baal worship into Israel, he even tolerated wicked schemes and murder.

One day, Ahab was noticing that next to his beautiful palace was an amazing vineyard. This vineyard was growing beautiful grapes, and everything was turning out wonderful. It was a prized vineyard, and it was right next to Ahab's property.

So he went to Naboth, the owner of the vineyard, and said, can I buy this off you, and maybe give you a different vineyard somewhere else in Israel? And Naboth refused. And so, Ahab, the king, moped around his house, looking sullen and sad, until his wife, the wonderful Jezebel, asked him, what's wrong, honey?

And he said, Naboth won't sell me his vineyard. And Jezebel said, don't worry about that. I'll get the vineyard for you. Now, he should have suspected that this will not go well. This will not be a godly outcome.

But he did like the idea of getting the vineyard, and so, of course, Jezebel comes up with a wicked scheme, hatches a plot to send two ne 'er-do-wells to talk about Naboth in the public square, and claim Naboth has cursed God and the king.

And so, these men do the bidding of Jezebel, and the people take Naboth out and stone him to death. Wonderful woman, isn't it? Isn't she a peach? And all the while, Ahab puts up with this. He tolerates, and he tolerates, and he tolerates.

And he takes the vineyard, and takes possession of it. Well, at this, Elijah has had enough, and he meets Ahab again. And he says to him, you will be destroyed as you have destroyed others, and dogs will lick up your blood the way Naboth's blood was licked up in his own vineyard.

And the same fate will befall Jezebel. This is the word of the Lord. And the most amazing part of this story, which just blows my mind and reminds me of the kind of God we serve, is that even after all the evil that Ahab had done, introducing Baal worship into Israel, murdering and scheming, all of the incredible wickedness and the destruction that came as a result of that, the war that was fought, he puts on sackcloth and ashes, he fasts, and to some measure he repents.

Just the littlest token of repentance he brings before the Lord. And God says to Elijah, do you see that? And he responds to that repentance and grants a stay that Ahab would not see the destruction of his family.

God, our God, was merciful toward this wicked king. Isn't that amazing? When he saw but the smallest amount of repentance, and of course Ahab does not continue along that path for long, when Micaiah comes bringing word, he doesn't want to hear it.

In fact, he says, I hate that prophet. He never says anything good about me. And he prophesies against him. Ahab wouldn't listen, goes into war against Ramoth Gilead, puts on a disguise as if he's just a common soldier and hides among the troops so that he wouldn't be targeted as the king, and a random arrow finds its way between the breastplate and the shoulder pad and pierces Ahab, and he dies in battle.

And that's the wicked end of Ahab. But what about Jezebel? Her son then takes the throne and she continues to rule until one day God raises up a righteous man with zeal and passion for the truth, not tolerant of the sin of Israel, not inclusive of Baal worship and murder and sin of all sorts.

His name is Jehu, the expression he drives like Jehu. He was a crazy driver. His chariot was bobbing and weaving, bouncing over the rocks. He comes to see Jezebel, and when he gets there, having killed already Jezebel's son, the king that replaced Ahab, he comes to the tower.

Jezebel sees him coming, paints her face, still defiant, comes to the window and says treachery. Do you seek my life, Jehu? And Jehu speaks to the the eunuchs who are standing beside this wicked, adulterous woman and says, are you on the Lord's side?

Throw her down. And they take Jezebel and they throw her out the window and she dies. And the dogs lick her blood. She's eaten and destroyed. We were talking about this pleasant story with the kids yesterday, driving around in the car, and my daughter said, oh, it was defenestration.

I said, what is defenestration? That is the act of throwing someone out the window. She had a vocab word for that. I said, you read a lot, don't you, daughter? Defenestration. The end of Jezebel, the wicked woman, was defenestration, thrown out the window and judged.

See, sin always results in death. Sin always results in death. Sin kills. If you're not killing sin, sin will be killing you. We turn now to Revelation chapter 2. We saw a problem in Pergamum last week.

Lust beginning to take root in many. We see in Thyatira the full expression of idolatrous, adulterous lust, not only having taken root, but taken over a church. And the words of Jesus to the church at Thyatira.

The Church in Thyatira and the Call to Repentance

Revelation chapter 2, verses 18 to 29. I told that story because it's the background of what we have in Revelation 2. To understand this passage, we need to know who Jezebel is. We need to know how the tolerance of that woman Jezebel, as Ahab tolerated her wickedness, is still a problem today.

And so we read Revelation chapter 2, verse 18 through 29. And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write, the words of the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze.

I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first. But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols.

I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality. Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation unless they repent of her works.

And I will strike her children dead, 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. 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 on you any other burden, only hold fast what you have until I come.

The one who conquers and who 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 earthen pots are broken in pieces, 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. So if you'll notice the map that we have of the churches of Revelation. Ephesus was the first of the seven that we address. This is the great cosmopolitan city.

This is where the temple of Diana Artemis is. This is the crossroads of the roads and everything that leads to Rome, a very important city. Heading up to Smyrna, which means myrrh, a place of crushing.

This is the persecuted church, where faithful Christians are being put to death for the sake of the name. In Pergamos, we have the worship of Asclepius, which is that healing center in Pergamos, where people would come to be healed and the great libraries and place of learning in Pergamos, an important city.

And then as you head inland and a bit to the north, there is a city called Thyatira. Now, this is a small city. It's the smallest of the seven cities in Asia addressed in the book of Revelation. It's famous for its trades.

There are more guilds, trade guilds in Thyatira than any other place in Asia. So there are many trade guilds, and one of them that is most famous is the making of purple dye. You'll remember Lydia from the book of Acts 16, the maker of purple, the first convert that was in Europe that Paul had reached in Philippi.

Well, this is where this purple dye was made. So there's different cosmopolitan trade guilds in Thyatira, and each one of these trade guilds is associated with some kind of idol worship. So there's different gods that are worshipped by these workers, and it would also involve sexual immorality and feasts dedicated to these gods, all kinds of horrible practices in Thyatira.

And into this wicked place is born a church. If it were like Smyrna, they would find themselves persecuted and marginalized in the culture. Even hated and killed for the sake of the name. But in Thyatira, you have the world entering the church.

You have compromise, complicity in the evil of the surrounding culture. In fact, you have a woman here that the Bible will call her Jezebel, who is teaching from within the church that it is okay to participate in the worship of idols, in the trade guilds, and in the sexual orgies and issues that are taking place in Thyatira.

So you have a compromised church. The danger here is from within. The church teacher here, this particular woman, has led others and her children represent teachers that are following in her footsteps.

So in verse 18, let's first of all see the judge. To the angel of the church in Thyatira write, the words of the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze.

Here, the picture of Jesus is one of power, of penetrating laser-like eyes that see through the surface of our outward behavior. They see to the heart. They cut to the intentions and thoughts of the heart.

Jesus, not deceived by the outward appearance of the church, sees what's going on. His eyes burn with passion. Eyes like a flame of fire and feet like burnished bronze. Burnished as having come through the furnace we saw in Revelation 1, where the first depiction of Jesus sees these feet burnished in bronze glowing because he himself has come through the furnace of affliction and was proven righteous in his suffering on the cross.

He was made perfect in suffering, not that he needed to gain righteousness, but his righteousness was demonstrated in that he was persecuted for righteousness' sake to the point of dying. He's been through the furnace.

He's been to the cross and his feet glow with that authority. And so when he comes to judge, it's not like we would judge. Our feet don't glow. Our eyes don't penetrate. We ourselves are guilty of sin.

But the judge of all the earth, Jesus the Christ, he's righteous to judge. And the picture of him here in verse 18 is powerful. The words of the son of God. In chapter one, he was described as the son of man, indicating his compassion for sinners.

He's become a man and was tempted in every way that we were tempted, Hebrews 2. But now he's described as the son of God. This is a picture of him in his deity and his right to judge. It's a powerful image.

And isn't it consistent with who he was while he was here in his first coming? Did Jesus tolerate sin the way Ahab tolerated Baal worship in Israel? No. When he came to the temple and saw that it had been changed into a moneymaking scheme, he saw the tables of the money changers.

And what did he do? He made a whip of cords and he drove the money changers out and the sheep and the oxen and he overturned their tables. Picture the fire in his eyes when he did that. The Bible says the zeal of the Lord had consumed him.

He was consumed like Jehu who said, come and see the zeal of the Lord. He is zealous to cleanse his temple. Zealous. Jesus is as passionate as he is pure. Think about that for a moment. He's as passionate as he is pure.

His eyes blazed with fire because he's pure and he has a passion for the purity of the church. Next in verse 19. This is not an outwardly dead church. This is an active serving church. Look at verse 19.

I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance. There is some suffering for the sake of the name. There are works, there's faith, service. These are people who are going and helping when a natural disaster strikes, when someone's sick.

These are Christians who are there to help and that your latter works exceed the first so they're getting more into ministry, not less. But is that enough? In Luke chapter 14, Jesus calls for disciples, but he does not offer a call of compromise of a half in kind of Christianity and outwardly appealing Christianity.

He calls for disciples to be all in or nothing at all. Do you remember that? He says, unless you hate your father and mother and sister and brother for my sake, you cannot be my disciple. Well, what did he mean?

Unless you hate your father, it doesn't mean a literal hatred for your father, but that your love for me must make all other loves look like hate by comparison. He's calling for an all in kind of love.

He says, unless you take up your cross and follow me, you cannot be my disciple. And then he gives two illustrations. The first, he says, what man planning to build a tower will not first count the cost to see if he has enough to finish the task?

Otherwise, he might build half a tower and mockers will come along and say, hey, he tried to build a tower, but he didn't count the cost. And the second illustration, what king goes to war without first counting the cost if he can take on the opposing king who comes with twice as many men?

And so he concludes that by saying, unless you renounce everything for my sake, you cannot be my disciple. And then he says, salt, if it loses its saltiness is good for nothing. It's only fit to be thrown out and trampled by men.

What is Jesus's point? To be a follower of Christ, you have to be all in. It's not enough to come and do works. It's not enough to do religious things, to come and go through the motions of going to church.

Even if it's the religion of your parents, even if it's something that you learned as your tradition, it's not enough. And so in verse 19, Jesus knows their works. There is love and faith and service, endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first.

But that's not all he has to say, is it? It's not enough. The tower is half built. The war can't be won like this. Count the cost, leave it all behind, renounce everything and go all in or nothing. Because he says in verse 20, but I have this against you.

Now, I don't know about you, but to hear those words, imagine you get a letter from the risen Christ directed to you, to the church at Thyatira. Your ears perk up. This is what Jesus says to us. And then he says, I have something against you.

You don't want the one who has feet like burnished bronze and eyes that blaze like fire to be against you. You don't want to hear the word against in this context, but I have this against you that you tolerate.

So the issue here is tolerance. Tolerance, inclusiveness. Tolerating what God does not tolerate. That woman, Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. There at the church in Thyatira, there is a woman.

I don't think her name is Jezebel. I think that's the figure that's used of her. Parents, never name your daughter Jezebel. That would not be a kind thing to do. Nobody does that, right? But she is a Jezebel.

She has that same spirit of which we spoke in the introduction. Rebellious, seeking control. She calls herself a prophetess. Right there, red flags. The alarm should be going off in your mind. What's the problem with this?

1 Timothy 2, 11 to 15. There's danger here already. But not only is she wrong just to be in that position of teaching authority over the church. What is she teaching? Teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols.

Go to the trade guilds. Participate in the culture. Perhaps this is some kind of Gnostic dualism, which was common at the time, where there was a separation between the physical fleshly and the spiritual.

The flesh is just evil anyway. So do whatever the flesh wants, but separate out the spiritual part of your life and offer that to God. This could be the teaching that she's coming from. Or she may have some other means of twisting the word of God.

We notice people still do that to this day. Teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality. A license to sin. Is it possible? For Christians, genuinely born-again Christians, to fall into patterns of sexual immorality?

According to this verse, it is. Because my servants indicates doulos, the servants of the Lord. These are bond servants. These are ones who are bound to Christ and belong to Him. And yet they're being led by false teaching into sin.

They're going to need to repent or else suffer destruction. My servants, the discipline of the Lord would fall heavy, apart from repentance. It says here in verse 21, I gave her time to repent. Isn't that a great indication of God's grace?

Isn't His desire to crush us with those bronze feet? No. In this age in which we live, He's offering us freely the grace of God. He came. Jesus came and He died to bear that penalty so we don't have to.

The Son of God was hung on a cross and absorbed the wrath of God into His body. So passionate is He. His eyes don't just burn with passionate judgment against sin, although they do. But they also burn with love, passionate love.

In the cross, God's judgment and His love kiss. They meet at the cross. His passion for purity and His passion for your soul, for forgiveness, meet at the cross. And the offer is real. Repent. He says, I gave her time to repent, but she refuses.

The implication there by gave, that time is now up. Jezebel's opportunity has been exhausted. She refuses to repent of her sexual immorality. I was researching this just a little bit this week and came across a site called biblicalarchaeology .org.

You don't need to write that down because I don't recommend that you go there. I use this as an example of the horror that is the Christian culture at times. It was a feminist writer and her name is Janet Howe Gaines.

She paints Jezebel's face virtuous in 1 Kings. Yeah, somebody's laughing. How do you do that? I'm about to show you how she did that. Here's the words of Janet Howe Gaines interpreting the 1 Kings story that we were told this morning.

She says, The Torah shows the Israelites to be an ethnocentric, xenophobic people. In biblical narratives, foreigners are sometimes unwelcome and prejudice against intermarriage is seen. Since the day Abraham sought a woman from his own people to marry his son Isaac.

In contrast to the familiar gods and goddesses that Jezebel is accustomed to petitioning, Israel is home to a state religion featuring a lone masculine deity. Perhaps Jezebel optimistically believes she can encourage religious tolerance and give legitimacy to the worship habits of those Baalites who already reside in Israel.

Perhaps Jezebel sees herself as an ambassador who could help unite the two lands and bring about cultural pluralism. Regional peace and economic prosperity. Did you catch some of the buzzwords there of our culture?

Reading the cultural value of tolerance and pluralism into the text of Scripture, rejecting the interpretation that the text itself gives, she paints Jezebel as the virtuous woman who had good motives, just trying to bring people together under a tolerant, inclusive banner.

This is the interpretation of a feminist writer at a supposedly biblical website. Incredible. She says ethnocentric. The Bible says that we are to put Christ at the center of our lives and that Christ has a race, the chosen people, a holy people that are chosen and called out to belong to him.

She says xenophobic. And isn't it interesting that whenever Christians speak to matters of truth, the assumption of those who would oppose, and this is the agenda, is to call that a phobia. Recently, this last week in Switzerland, the New York Times has an article that says the Swiss vote to penalize public homophobia.

Under the amended law, homophobic comments made in public would be punishable with up to three years in prison. The judgment is that if someone makes a comment that's homophobic in public, three years in jail.

That's the culture in which we live. But this is part of the agenda to silence Christians from saying the truth. She says prejudiced. We say the Bible has authority. She says familiar gods and goddesses.

We say that even if my own mother taught me to pray to Mary, I will not worship that. By the way, she didn't. I will not worship that goddess. If I'm taught to pray, I don't care how familiar the relationship is.

It's the Lord who teaches us the truth. She says lone. Our pitiful God, in her view, is just a lone deity. Whereas the gods of the nations are pluralistic. Not only is there Baal, there are multiple Baals.

And there is Asherah, the female goddess associated with Baal worship. In contrast, we stand with the one God. Who according to Isaiah 40 through 48 is alone. And there are none like him. Who is there in heaven besides him?

And he laughs at the gods and the idols of the nations who are but wood. The Asherah pole that they would erect in Samaria is but wood carved by the hands of men. She says masculine. And I say, yes, God is masculine.

Get over it. The pronouns are he in the Bible. She says pluralism. The Bible teaches monotheism. She says peace. But the Bible says peace, peace when there is no peace. Peace must be established on the truth of God's word, not fabricated based on sin.

She says prosperity. But what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose one's soul? What does Jesus say? What does Jesus say in Revelation 2 20? He says, I have this against you that you tolerate that woman, Jezebel.

This is the revelation. That comes from God. She calls herself a prophetess. We are to say, no, you are not a prophetess. She's teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality, giving a license to sin.

The church must be pure. We must reject teaching of that nature, which is prevalent. The Thyatiran deception was not just in the first century. This is a church that's probably 40 years into its existence.

96 AD. By this point, it is so deteriorated that Jesus himself is against it. And yet they still do the works of Christianity. Here in America, we are 2000 years almost removed from the birth of the original church.

And sad to say across this country, there's probably more compromised churches than there are genuine. There are more Thyatiran churches. If you just put all the churches on a map and just threw up a dart and hit a random one, you'll probably hit a Thyatiran church, sadly, that doesn't agree with God and what Jesus says in identifying sexual immorality as sin.

And offering food sacrifice to idols. Next, we see in verse 22 and 23, judgment, judgment. This is the judgment of God. Behold, I will throw her onto a sick bed. The word there is just bed in the Greek.

And if you have a different version, maybe the King James, you'll see bed of sickness in italics, implied sickness. If that is implied, it's not just sickness as in she's going to get sick and get well.

The implication is sickness unto death. In fact, I like the way MacArthur describes it. This is a bed called hell. I will lay you down in a bed of hell. She was so quick to invite people into her bed as an adulteress.

Now, says the Lord, I will lay you in a bed of sickness unto death, a bed of hell. This is judgment for her. Her time to repent has run out. And those who commit adultery with her, I will throw into great tribulation.

Here's the good news. Unless they repent of her works. This is the call to the Thaeterian church. Repent, repent, repent. I remember hearing that Spurgeon had preached the same message for so many weeks in a row.

Repent, he told the people, repent. Finally, a woman came up to Spurgeon and said, when will you stop preaching about repentance? To which he answered, when you repent. Repent, says the Lord. There is opportunity here.

And so it is with us, Christians. There's time to repent. But we don't know how long that gap exists for us before it closes. If you're in sexual immorality, now is the time. The Lord calls you now to renounce that and go all in for Christ.

Leave it all behind and take God at his word and enjoy his blessings that will come from that. That road is death. It's deception anyway. Remember the story of Jezebel. It doesn't end well in that way.

Leave it behind. Now is the time. Come and repent. You can do that as I'm preaching. You can stop listening to me right now and begin praying in your heart, repenting of your sin. Turn away from it. Now is the time.

There's another group here in verse 23. And I will strike her children dead. Who are her children? I don't think it's her physical offspring any more than she is actually Jezebel. No, she's that woman Jezebel.

And her figurative children are a second generation of teachers. People raised in her teaching who have been taught these deep secrets. Don't you love the way the author here, it's Jesus speaking, describes the deep things?

Every cult that I've encountered believes they're deeper than us. You simple evangelical, they have something deeper. A deeper secret. And every false teacher that has that spirit of Jezebel, feminist writer from biblical archaeology, I guarantee you they will think that I am adult.

A moron. Unread, unschooled, unlettered. Looking down their nose, they have the deep things. But Jesus says the deep things of Satan. I think the genuine Christians that remained, they heard the teacher saying the deep things, the deep things.

And as they're going home in their chariots or walking along the road with their kids, they say, yeah, they have the deep things of Satan. Don't listen. The deep things of Satan is how Jesus describes them.

To you, I say. That's in verse 24. But in verse 22, the children, verse 23, are going to die. The judgment that's falling on Jezebel is about to hit all of the teachers that follow along her train of thought.

And all the churches will know. We don't know when this judgment fell. The implication is that it happens quick. And church history shows that the church in Thyatira doesn't seem to exist long after 96 AD.

So evidently, not many repented. And if they did, they might have ended up in another town. It's kind of like Ephesus. The lampstand snatched. Go to Turkey today. This is a city of about 25 ,000 people and hardly a Christian there.

24, though, wasn't all bad news. 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 on you any other burden.

Only hold fast what you have until I come. You have need of perseverance. You have need of endurance. You'll be hated by all because of the name. Jesus told us that would be the case. Matthew 10, 22, you will be hated by all for my name's sake.

But the one who endures to the end will be saved. He's not putting a heavier burden on us. Simply believe, continue on the straight and narrow path that leads to life. It's not really the hardest road.

Why do I say that? Jesus said, my yoke is easy, my burden is light. When you choose to walk along the straight and narrow without turning to the right or to the left, you will have hardship in this life.

But it's much easier to walk a path without the Hebrews 12 discipline of God on your life than it is to endure that. Will you have suffering? Yes, you will suffer. But it won't be the kind of suffering that's avoidable.

Many people shoot themselves with arrows, do the same thing again and again, and make this so much more complicated than it is. Just obey. Obey the simple commands of Scripture and walk in the fullness of the Spirit.

And you'll see he is with you and you'll suffer, but he'll suffer with you in that. You will feel him in the midst of your pain. He'll walk you through the valley of the shadow of death. You'll make it through.

He'll be with you in that. And he just says, just obey and believe. Keep doing these good works. Don't follow the false teachers. Reject that. Stay on the straight and narrow. I don't put anything else on you.

I do not lay on you any other burden. His yoke is easy. His burden is light. Finally, the promises 26 to 29. There are two of them that we read. The first you will rule with them, with Christ over the nations.

What does that refer to? I would say this is one of the strongest arguments that the millennium is yet to come. Because in the millennium, we will rule as Christ's vice regents in the earth. And for a thousand years, we will keep the peace of the earth.

But not all of those who are born in the millennium will be saved. In fact, at the end of the millennium, you see a great rebellion and a great battle where Christ himself crushes those who rise up against him.

In those thousand years, we see the fulfillment of Revelation 2, 26 and 27. The one who conquers and who 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.

That's a reference to Psalm chapter 2, verse 9. Do you recognize that? Kiss the son lest he be angry. Christ is the son and he will rule the nations. Ask and I'll make the nations your inheritance. And you'll rule them with a rod of iron.

You'll dash them to pieces like pottery. Now he says, you poi men like a shepherd will be given a shepherd's staff and you will rule with an iron rod in the millennium kingdom. Isn't that an amazing promise?

He will use you in this role for a thousand years. And what's the second promise? Verse 28, I will give him the morning star. I see two references to this in the New Testament. Chapter 22, verse 16, the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star is Christ himself.

First, in 2 Peter chapter 1, verse 19, the morning star will dawn in our hearts. But until then, we have the prophetic word made more sure. We have the light shining in a dark place. We have the word until we see him face to face.