Thyatira Part 2

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Good morning, Father. We come to you today, Lord, once again, that we can gather as brothers and sisters in Christ and come and hear your word.
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Talk to us, Father. I just appreciate Brother Mike as he has prepared this lesson, and I just ask that you use him and his voice to open our eyes to your word as what it has to say for these things
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I pray in Christ Jesus' name, amen. Amen. All right,
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Revelation chapter 2, we'll read verses 18 -29.
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And to the angel of the church at Thytyra write, the Son of God who has eyes like the flame of fire, his feet are like burnished bronze, says this,
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I know your deeds, your love and faith and service and perseverance, and that your deeds of late are greater than at first.
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But I have this against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads my bondservants astray so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols.
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I gave her time to repent, and she does not want to repent of her immorality. Behold, I will throw her in a bed of sickness, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of her deeds.
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And I will kill her children with pestilence, and the churches will know that I am he who searches the minds and the hearts, and I will give to each one according to your deeds.
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But I say to you and to the rest who are in Thytyra who do not hold this teaching, who have not known the deep things of Satan, as they call them,
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I place no other burden on you. Nevertheless, what you have, hold fast until I come, and he who overcomes and he who keeps my deeds until the end, to him
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I will give authority over the nations, and he shall rule them with a rod of iron as the vessel and the potter are broken into pieces, as I also have received authority from my
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Father. And I will give him the morning star, and he who has an ear, let him hear what the
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Spirit says to the churches. So last week, what do you remember we learned about the city of Thytyra?
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The city itself, industrious. Basically a blue collar city.
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It probably was the beginnings of what we would call the work unions.
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They had these guilds, and all these guilds were associated with the patron god of that city.
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And those patron gods of the city involved those people involved in that trade, whether it was dye making or wool making or whatever they were making, to be involved with those guilds to keep their income coming in.
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And then we learned that Jesus said that he was happy with this church's deeds.
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He says, I know your deeds. He even says that their deeds, their love, their faith, their service, their perseverance, their long suffering, he says they're better at the end right now than when they began.
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What does that show about this church? It was growing. Yeah, this was a growing church.
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It was a maturing church. This was something that should have been, by all means and purposes, have been something for us to look to and say, man, this is awesome.
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This is what we should model our church after. Well, then you get to this chick Jezebel, which
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I don't believe. This is actually her real name. I think it is pointing back to something in the
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Old Testament like we talked about. Certainly if somebody wants to say that was her real name, that's fine. I'm not going to argue about it.
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I think it's actually talking, it's giving her a label. This woman Jezebel, she had claimed to be a prophetess.
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She probably was the first Joyce Myers of the first century.
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If you look at what she is doing, she was making herself out to be more important than the authority by which
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God had instituted for the structure of the church. She put herself in authority over men.
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She put herself basically in teaching men and that she had this special revelation and we'll talk about that in just a minute.
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How she thought that she had this great revelations or that she had this deep thinking.
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It says, and she taught my bond servants to go astray and to acts of immorality. Even in the
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Old Testament we saw that what did Jezebel want to do? Ahab's wife. She wanted to lead them off into Baal worship.
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Because where did she come from? She wasn't an Israelite. He was even going against the Mosaic legislation by marrying someone outside of the covenant people.
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God said don't do that. Why? Because those women that you will marry will drag your hearts away.
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That's exactly what she did with Ahab. It said that Ahab sold himself to doing evil in the sight of the
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Lord. She was a Sidonian princess who was given to Ahab to be married to.
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Then we learned a story of her and how she got
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Naboth's vineyard and that she then had Naboth killed.
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Then we learned that she led them off into sexual immorality and sacrifice to idols. Now, if you remember, we talked briefly about whether it was sexual, did she really lead them into sexual immorality, meaning actual fornication?
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Or was this in a reference to the Old Testament? How many times in the Old Testament do you all, can you all recall that when the children of Israel went off and they played the harlot, it said, with the nations around them, they weren't actually committing fornication.
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What were they doing? They were committing idolatry, and God in the Old Testament always compared that to committing adultery, which ultimately would lead, with the
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Northern Kingdom constantly committing, quote, spiritual adultery, then what did
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God do? He said, I'm going to write you a writ of divorce, and I'm going to put you away, and that's what he did to the Northern Kingdom.
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He said, the Southern Kingdom should, you should pay attention.
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Do you not know what I did to your sister? Do you not think that I would not do the same to you?
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But because of David and my covenant with him, I'm going to refrain from that, but he did chastise her. So, he throws her into a bed of sickness, and then you get to,
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I think where we stopped last week was the end of verse 22, if she did not repent of her deeds.
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You see how gracious Jesus was? He gave her time to repent. Now, we don't know how long this
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Jezebel woman we're talking of in this church had been confronted in her sin.
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There obviously was a confrontation because it says Jesus said, I gave her time to repent, and she did not.
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Well, we know how, chronologically, we can look back into 1 and 2, the end of the first kings, beginning of second kings, and we can see how long
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God gave real Jezebel a time to repent. Seventeen plus years, and she refused, and then
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God ultimately had Jehu throw her over a balcony as a punishment for her sin.
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Well, God says here, I've given her time. Jesus says, I've given her time to repent, and she did not.
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I'm going to throw her into a bed of sickness. And this is why I lean more towards it being a spiritual thing, is because where it says here,
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I'm going to throw her into a bed of sickness, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation.
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It would be hard to believe that all the men of that church that were following her teaching were sleeping with her in a sexual way.
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That's why I believe those that are committing sexual immorality with her were committing the acts of immorality as far as adultery of the heart, committing idolatry with her.
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It says here in verse 23, and I will kill her children with pestilence. I think the
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King James, maybe the new King James, actually translates it, the vernacular better, because it actually, if you read it in the
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Greek, it actually says, I will kill her children with death. Mike, did you ever say that? That's actually what it says.
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The word that's used there that's translated pestilence is actually the
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Greek word thanatos. And if you were to flip over your Bible and you were to look at when the full horsemen come, and we'll get there at some point, the full horsemen, it is the one that was the death in Hades.
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Death is the word thanatos, which means death. So it just seems an odd way of saying, man, he's going to kill them with death.
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Well, how much do you kill somebody? How else? You strike them dead.
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He says, I'm going to kill her children with death. Is this not a reference back to what
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God prophesied He was going to do to Ahab and Jezebel of the
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Old Testament's children? Do you remember what we talked about briefly? Did we talk about that last week briefly? What did
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God do to their children? He killed them all. He killed every one of them specifically.
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We can talk about when they went to Samaria, Jehu sent something in and says, hey, we're going to come and make war.
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They said, hey, we want to make peace. And he said, okay, then I want the heads of all the children of Ahab and Jezebel.
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And they said, okay, here's a basket. It was 70 of them. And then they went out and everybody's descendant or offspring after that, they continued to kill that fulfilled the prophecy that God was going to wipe all of them out, just like He said
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He was going to do because of what they had did to Naboth and the prophets. And it says, why is
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He going to throw this prophetess' children into death?
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Why? And who, why is He going to throw them into it? And who are these children? Do we think these children are actually her offspring?
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Anybody? Okay. What do you think? That's it.
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Yeah. And that would be my conclusion as well. It's even if you were to read an area, I think it's in Jeremiah and Isaiah.
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It talks about the children of the children of Babylon. How would they want to, and the, the idolatry of Babylon would want to crush their children's head against the rocks.
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That's what it's talking about. Those that were following the teachings of Babylon would have, those children would have their heads crushed.
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And I think that's what it's speaking of here is the actual disciples of her.
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It said, hey, we're going to, we're going to, God's going to say, hey, I'm going to kill them with death. And for this reason, not that the church, understand, it doesn't say singular, that the churches will know that I am he who searches the hearts and minds.
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If you remember early on, we, there was, there was some in here that thought that these were individual letters that just went to that church, that they didn't collectively have this letter, a circular letter of all seven.
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Well, this right here is saying so that who will know? The churches. All the churches are going to know when he kills this woman's, basically their disciples.
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Why is he doing that? Because God's going to say, you're going to know it's me that did it. When you see this happening, you're going to know that I'm the one that did it.
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I'm prophesying it. I'm going to do it and I'm going to do it so that you know that it's, I'm the one that knows the heart.
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I'm the one that knows the mind and I'm the one that can search and know the motives.
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And then he says, I will give to each one of you according to your deeds.
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Now we believe in justification by faith alone apart from any works, but if there is, everybody in this room saved or not saved, you're going to be judged on judgment day by your works.
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You can rest assured. Now, your works will either be, when they're tested by fire, will be burned up like wood, hay, and stubble.
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I'll get it out in a minute. Or they will be refined like the jewels and the gold as they're being, the impurities being pulled out.
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Now, you're not going to be condemned by your sins anymore. Your sins have been covered in the blood.
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Your sins have been washed away by the shed blood of Christ, but you will give an account what you have done.
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Jesus even said it. You will give an account for every idle word you have said. Everything.
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It's not going to go overlooked. God doesn't forget. Even when you get to the end of the book of Revelation, it says that he opens the books.
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Now, don't think for one minute that God somehow has forgotten and he's got to have a ledger. It's an imagery of the, hey, everything is known.
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Everything's going to be laid open for all to see. Everybody's going to know. Nothing's going to be hidden.
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He's going to make that which has been hidden. It's going to be shed in the light. And he said that he's going to give one to everyone according to his deeds.
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Well, according to the believer, those deeds would be given reward that would later on be handed and placed at the feet of Christ because all of our good deeds are not done our own volition.
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How are they done? How do we do any of the good deeds that God sees as faithful, as good, and as a deed done for reward?
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Through the power of the Spirit. That's right. Everything is done through the power of the Spirit and in faith.
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He who does not do anything of faith is, James says, is of sin. Everything.
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And I'll be honest with you. Sometimes we don't know the difference. We don't. I mean,
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I don't think there's anybody in this room that says they have perfect knowledge of all their motives. God does.
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He's the one that searches the hearts and the minds. He's the one that knows your motives. He's the one that knows your every thought and deed and word in private or in public.
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But then he says this in verse 24. He says, but I say to you, the rest who are in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching.
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So once again, last week he says, hey, was this everybody in the church that was following this woman? Well, no, because he says right here, hey, but to those who do not follow this teaching, the teaching of what?
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The teaching of Jezebel. The teaching of following her, going out and committing acts of immorality, eating food offered to idols, not just eating, but being in those temples which would have been involved in the guilds.
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He says, and for the rest of you who do not hold this teaching and who do not know, have not known the deep things of Satan.
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Well, that's a weird statement. Do you think they were having satanic seminars to learn the deep things of the devil?
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Do you think they were having, hey, we're going to have three speakers this weekend at a conference at the church of Thyatira so we can talk about the deep things of Satan?
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No. But are there deep things of Satan? Sure there is.
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Yeah. Don't think for one minute back then that they had some type of satanic
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Bible. That is a relatively new invention in the 1960s, or the temple of Satan or the satanic church.
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All that's a new invention, but it's only a regurgitation of things that had been brought up in the past.
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Even our view of the devil that we see of today, red body, tail shaped like a spade at the end, horns, forked tongue, that's all a medieval invention.
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That's not how the Bible depicts Satan. How does the
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Bible depict Satan? Angel of light. That's right. An angel of light.
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I do think there is something interesting when we do think about demons and Satan and the angels that have not fallen, is we don't see unfallen angels, okay?
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I'm going to use this, not to be confusing, but redeemed angels, angels that have not fallen. Okay? We don't see them possess people in Scripture, do we?
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Who do we see possessing people in Scripture? It's fallen angels. God has given them some ability to do that.
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Satan being a fallen angelic being can appear as an angel of light, can be the great deceiver, which
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I believe that he is. But you know, we don't really have a full picture of who
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Satan is anywhere in Scripture, but I will say this, when we get to the book of Revelation as we begin to go through this, we're going to get a larger picture of who
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Satan is and what he is and his methods and modes of deceiving people. Does he use nations?
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Yeah, he does. Matter of fact, when that beast comes up out of the ocean, the red beast with seven heads, ten horns, whatever, okay?
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When he comes up out of the ocean, that is the red dragon. Once again, that's the red devil pitchfork with the horns, all that stuff is a development that they have sketched out of all of these depictions and descriptions of what the devil was.
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When we see that come up, that is a representative, that beast is a representative of world powers.
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Does Satan use world powers to persecute God's people and to deceive nations?
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Yes, but not wholesale deception of nations. But in this case,
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I think that you had Jezebel saying that she had a deeper knowledge of who this
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God of the Bible was. Remember, she's a false teacher, and what do false teachers do? They have just enough truth to set the hook.
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She didn't have the deep things of God. Jezebel, what she was claiming to have, the deep things of God, was nothing more than a deceptive scheme of the devil making it what?
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The deep things of Satan. Deep things of Satan. And then
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Jesus says this, I place no other burden on you. Look, that is a very compassionate, kind, loving statement from God.
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From Jesus Christ. He says, look, what
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I'm saying to this church, if you're not part of this and you're not following those teachings, don't let what
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I've said to you be a burden on you. I don't want to place this burden on you as if you're the one condemned.
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Look, as Andy contested this,
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Bert, Keith, when you preach, you have to be aware that sometimes you have people in your audience that have a tender conscience.
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And you have to at times, especially when you begin to speak of sin, eternal security, you have people that have a very tender conscience and you can offend someone's conscience, making them feel as if they're lost or in sin when they're not.
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Hey, if you don't think so, go home and read some of the Puritans. Hey, you'll put it down going,
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I need to get saved. Because the Puritans have a way of making you feel very inadequate to be a child of God.
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I mean, they didn't have the distractions we had. They sat in rooms with candlelight and read books. They didn't have the distractions we have today.
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And Jesus is saying the same thing here. Look, I don't want to put a burden on you.
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I don't want to make you, I'm not here to offend your conscience. If this is not you, if this is not you that's following Jezebel, then this is not concerning you.
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You're part of the group that is, I know your faith, I know your perseverance,
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I know your service, I know your deeds, and I know your love. So once again, you have two types of people within this church.
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You have the faithful and the unfaithful. And that's in every church. That's in every church.
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And he says, in verse 25, but nevertheless, what you have, hold fast until I come.
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Is this, hold fast until I come when? Come in judgment?
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Come in, you know, come for the second coming? What is he saying?
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And I'll be honest, not sure. Not sure. Because he does go, we get to the end.
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It's to be faithful, faithful until the end, the end of what? If you're to be faithful until the end, what's faithful to the end?
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To the end of your life. Look, if you think somehow, I mentioned this a few weeks ago, that someone can claim to be a
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Christian and live for 25 years and then fall away from the faith and then die in their 26th year, that that person goes to heaven, that person does not exist in Scripture.
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Think about Noah. He built the ark. Did everything that he was supposed to do.
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What if he got right before the end and said, you know what, God, I'm done putting pitch on here. I've been doing this for 60 plus years or however long you think it took him to do it.
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He said, you know what, I'm done. You said you were going to save my family, but I'm done.
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No, God said you better finish putting pitch on there. That's the very means by which you're going to seal this thing up. No, I think
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I'm going to do it my way. I'm done. Is that the non -drowning type of faith?
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No. You put that pitch on there by faith and obey God and you obey God until you get to, got in that ark and the ark was sealed.
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If Noah would not have finished the race like God told him, he would have drowned. He would have drowned.
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If you're not faithful to the end, and I'm not, don't, somebody's, I don't want anybody to say, oh, you're saying you can lose your salvation.
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That's not what I'm saying, but if you're not faithful to the end, you don't hold fast to the end, you will not make it.
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Now, from a Calvinistic approach, that's just going to bring, bring to light that that's an unconverted person.
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What does 1 John say? They've gone out from among us because they were not of us. Why? So that we would be made known to us that they were never of us.
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Faithful until the end. And here's that statement that continually comes up.
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He who overcomes and he who keeps my deeds until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations.
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He shall rule them with a rod of iron as the vessels of potter are broken to pieces.
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That is a quote from Psalm 2. And if you were to go and you were to read
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Psalm 2, it has, sounds just a little different. This quote here, the
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New American Standard, I'm pretty sure it is in all the others, is actually a quotation from the Greek translation of the, of Psalms 2 verse 9.
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If you go back, it says that he will shepherd them. So that word that was used is actually to rule them with a rod of iron.
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This is a messianic prophecy that God was going to give his son the nations. Remember at the beginning of it says, why do the nations rage?
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Why do they, why do they make war with God? And what does God do? He sits in the heavens and laughs.
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He laughs. Why does God sit in heaven and laugh at the nations who try to make war against him? It's like holding your little kid when he's a year old and you're holding him by his head.
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He's, remember how they were slotting? He can't do anything. They can't harm you.
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And God says, you're, you're, you're swinging at the wind. And he's,
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Jesus says to his followers that he's going to give to them what
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God is giving to him. You understand that God, when Jesus, death, burial, resurrection, as he is going up, he gives the son of man, if you look in, which this is also to a reference to Daniel seven, he gives the son of man, what a kingdom of every nation, tribe and tongues that they may honor and serve him.
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And then what does the son of man do after the ancient of days gives it to the son of man? What does the son of man then do?
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He turns around and gives that kingdom to his followers. And that's what he does here.
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He says, and I will give, turn them over to the nation. I'm sorry, I would give him authority over the nations and he will rule them with a rod of iron as vessels of potter are broken into pieces.
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And he says then once here, and as I also have received the authority from my father.
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So Jesus is saying, look what I've gotten, I'm fixing to give to you, but what's the prerequisite for you to receive what
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God has given the son? Faithfulness, faithfulness, faithfulness, trust and obey.
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What did God want Adam and Eve to do in the garden? Trust and obey.
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That's what they failed to do. Adam failed to trust and obey God. That's all that.
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If you want to break it down in small, that's it. He did not obey and he didn't trust. If he would have trusted God, he would have said, okay, he's giving me everything that I need to know.
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And I know that I don't need to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but what did he do? He thought that he did because he didn't trust
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God. Therefore he didn't obey. He then ate of the tree, throwing all of his descendants into headlong depression.
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In this case, Jesus comes in on the scene and he does what
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Adam could not do. Trust and obey. Trust and obey.
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What are we to do? The same thing Jesus did. Trust and obey. And then verse 28 says, and I will give him the morning star.
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He will give him light in darkness. I know we talked briefly about the word morning star and then sometimes that word was translated in the
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Latin Vulgate, luciferium. That is not the word that you used here. This is two words put together to make the word morning star and it's actually showing there's going to be light in darkness.
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When it's dark, I'm going to show you light. I'm going to give you the brightness of a new day.
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And he who has an ear, this is that constant statement we've heard, just like he who overcomes, he who has an ear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches.
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Who has an ear? Who has an ear?
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Anybody with a spirit? Anyone with a spirit? I'm not talking about this here. Yeah, I'm deaf in this one.
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So it's not this. If you hear it, do not harden your heart.
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The book of Hebrews says, if you hear my voice, do not harden your heart like they did in the time of the prevocation and when they caused my wrath to be incited against them.
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Do not harden your heart. Do not harden your heart. These people in the church of Thyatira, in the church of Ephesus, Pergamum and Samaria, they were all to hear.
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If you hear what the spirit is saying and if this is a call to repentance to you, do not harden your heart.
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Look, if a person continues to hear the word of God, call him to repentance. A woman continues to hear the word of God, call him to repentance and they refuse to do that.
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What does that do to the conscience? Yeah, Scripture said it's like an iron.
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It sears that conscience. You go, okay, I know this is what God's telling me to do. I know what he's telling me to do, but I'm going to continue to go on this way.
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How long before you do not hear the voice of God anymore? How long?
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We don't know. Could it be 17 years like it was with Jezebel?
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Or could it be a day and a half, two days, a week, a month and God says, I'm done. And don't think for one second that God won't do that.
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We were just talking last night. We often don't think about God saying, okay,
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I'm done with the believer and taking him out. You understand that taking the table in an unworthy manner,
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God says, some of you are asleep because of it. So what did God do? Okay, you haven't examined yourself.
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You continually walk in sin. You know that this is what you need to correct and you have been unwilling and God says, okay,
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I'm done. I'm done. You're not going to heed my voice. Whether it's 17 years, 17 minutes, 17 months.
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God can do what he wants when he wants. He didn't consult sinful man on the timeline in which we want it.
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And he can do that. So if you hear what he is saying, if you hear what the
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Spirit is saying, repent. There's only two churches here that don't get a call to repentance.
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Only two. All the others are called to repentance for some very rough things.
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I mean, this one here, sexual immorality, and I know there's somewhat of a parallel between Pergamon and Thyatira.
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Though one of them I do believe is more speaking of actual sexual immorality and the other one dealing more so with spiritual immorality.
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But at the end of the day, what difference does it make? Both of them are damnable before God.
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Both of them deserve the justice and wrath of God. Both of them deserve the judgment of God and both of them deserve a call to repentance for the believers that are involved in it.
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Any questions? Comments? Would it be safe to say that this church was probably a
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Jewish church for them? Because, I mean, as a Jewish person, regardless, prior to the coming of Jesus, they wouldn't have let a woman talk to him anyway.
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It is, it's hard to, when you say Jewish as in, there was probably
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Jews within the church. Yes, there probably was. Next week we're actually going to talk about, in Sardis, there was a large synagogue there.
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So we do know that in these areas there was synagogue. Remember, the Jews had religious freedom in the sense of they did not have to be engaged in any of the pagan idolatry that was common with all the other
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Greco -Roman part of the Empire. They could go to Thyatira.
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The Jews could set up a synagogue there and be left alone because they were under Roman protection at that time because of Julius Caesar, then
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Caesar Augustus, and Tiberius. Both, all of them gave edicts to protect them in that.
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But Christians did not have that protection.
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Once they figured out that Christians were not part of Judaism, that's when persecution began.
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And in this case, to say that, hey, are these, was this primarily a
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Jewish church? No. Jews in it? Sure. I mean, the gospel went first to the
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Jew. What did Paul do when he went to Asia Minor? What's the first places he went to? Synagogue. Yeah, synagogue.
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Went to the synagogue. I mean, how did every one of these churches get planted? Paul. It said that when,
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I think it was back in Acts 19? 18? That said that when he was in, when he went to Asia Minor for those years that he was there, three years in Ephesus, that all of Asia Minor heard the word.
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All of it. But to say that all this was maybe a Jewish, no. Jews within it that had been converted?
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Yes. Yeah. Did they know that a woman was not supposed to usurp the authority of a man even in the synagogue?
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Yes, they did. But we do know that as grace comes in, we go, okay, well, maybe
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I'm being just a little hard -headed. Maybe I need to show them some grace. Maybe I need to extend some tolerance.
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And actually, that's the word that's used here in verse 20 is they weren't extending grace.
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They were being tolerant. Tolerant. Should we as believers be tolerant with one another?
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Of course we should. Y 'all are probably being tolerant of me this morning. Okay, yes.
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We should be tolerant of one another. When we sin against one another, that is not every time we sin against one another, and which we do, that does not require a time for church discipline.
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Or, if there's something we sin against one another, we ought to be able to let that be covered under love.
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Love covers a multitude of sins, but there are sins that we commit against one another that are too grievous.
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And we go, you know what, I need to go to that person and ask for forgiveness. Okay, that is, that's the case. So when we do sin against one another and we are tolerant of one another, we should never be tolerant of false teaching.
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And that's what this is saying. Look, if I'm up here and I start teaching some type of heretical thing, heretical in a sense of, it attacks the deity of Christ, attacks the person and work of Christ, attacks the character and nature of God, and it attacks the
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Holy Spirit, I should be removed from my position. Okay, should be removed. No questions asked.
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Yeah, keep the door open. That something is to be intolerant.
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But, what is the, what's the best way in our culture to show, quote, love to one another?
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Man, let's just be tolerant. Tolerance of virtue. Well, no, we shouldn't be tolerant of wrong thinking, wrong doing, wrong action.
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Especially within the church with a person who stands behind a podium or a pulpit or teaches in a small group, it has the potential to lead people astray.
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Now look, I'm all, physical harm to someone can be repaired to a certain degree.
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False teaching has a way of damning people's soul. I do understand under a sacralistic system, while Westerners' Confession, even in the time of early
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Reformation, while they were under a sacralistic, while they wanted heretics burned at the stake and removed.
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I understand why, because it damned people's soul. I don't agree with it. Okay, I don't agree with it.
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But under a different type of system, what's more important, taking from their perspective, taking care of physical harm or the harm that would damn someone's soul?
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They saw damning someone's soul. So yeah, if there's someone teaching, we should be intolerant of false teaching whatsoever.
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And I think it should be called out, whether it be people on TV, guy down the road, anyone.
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They should be called out. People need to know this person's a danger, not you. This person's a danger, that person's a danger, that person's a danger, and here is why.
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Because they teach falsely. Anyone else got any comments, questions?
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What are the parallels from this church with the other three so far?
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What about Ephesus?
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Ephesus, from every outward perspective, they looked like a good church as well, did they not?
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What did it say about their love? It was lacking.
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It was lacking. Now, did it say that they did not love one another? That's not what it said in Ephesus.
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It says that they had left their first love, therefore they weren't operating in the way that Christ said that they should be, which was loving
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Him first. Just like we can't love one another if we love one another more than we do Christ.
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What did Jesus say? If a man's not willing to hate mother, father, sister, brother, hate even his own wife, he can have no part of me. So that tells you our love for Christ needs to be higher than anything else.
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Wife, kids, all of it. Well, what do we see with Thyatira? They had love.
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Jesus commended their love. He commended not only from the reading of it, their love for Him, but their love for one another.
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And why? Because it says their deeds and their service. What about Smyrna?
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Do we see any parallels or comparisons with there? Yeah, they were going through tribulation.
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They persevered through tribulation. What does He say here in Thyatira they were doing? They were persevering.
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They were persevering. They were persevering. And then in Pergamum, what do we see?
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There was people that needed to persevere, be faithful, and we see that Antipas was faithful even to what?
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To death. And what does He say in Thyatira we need to be faithful to? The end.
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Faithful to the end. Well, that will finish up chapter 2.
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This is a milestone. And we'll pick up in verse 1, chapter 3 next week.
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I will do my best to do all of that church next week.
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Interesting thing about Sardis is its history of that city and the correlation in which
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Christ makes a correlation to what had happened in the past to the condition of that church.
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And if you read these letters, each one of them, he is giving either a correlation to something historical connected to that church or something that's directly connected at that moment to the church so that you would see the connection.
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Like in this case, he used Jezebel as a prophetess that led them away.
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And what happened? There's false teachers and he points back to the Old Testament. He points back to a historical time where Jezebel was a danger to God's people.
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Same thing we're going to see with Sardis. Sardis was the capital of Lydia, the old ancient city.
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And they became very prideful and they were thrown down several times.
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And we'll talk about that next week. We've got about three minutes. Any more questions?
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Anyone? Anyone? Andy, you'll close us out. Father God, again we thank you.
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Your Word doesn't change. Our Lord now has me continue in worship.
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That our singing, our praying, our thoughts, our fellowship, and our attendance to you, wherever you please in this society, just help us,
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Lord. Be more and more like the one who saw and loved us, that he gave himself for us. In his name we thank you.