Revelation 2:18-28, “Intolerable Tolerance” (Thyatira)

Hear the word of the Lord. 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 patience and 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, but 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 earth and 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. Well how tolerant are you? Are you tolerant of your spouse's quirks? How about of your children's noise? Are you tolerant of waiting too long at the grocery store?

Or how about of a driver in front of you who is going 45 in a 50 mile-hour zone? Are you tolerant of people who vote differently than you do? How about of telemarketers? How about of long-winded sermons?

Now you draw the line right there, everything else but no. Are you an easy-to-get-along-with kind of tolerant person, respectful of those who disagree.

With you?

Or can you be too tolerant? A lot of people today pride themselves on their tolerance as if that were the greatest virtue that one could have. So would they approve of you? One major denomination advertises itself as a place of open minds and open doors.

In other words, the thing that they most want you to know about them is that they are tolerant. When I was in seminary in California, I once flew back to Alabama and sat next to a man who talked to me almost the whole leg of the journey from LA to Phoenix about how great his unitarian faith was, how enlightened and tolerant it was.

Now when we were near the end of the flight, because he did almost all the talking, and I thought, you know, I kind of paid my dues now, right? I should get a word in now. And so I simply said, I believe the Bible.

And despite all his talk about how tolerant he and his faith were, and how much he loved diversity, he scoffed and he goes, huh, one day you'll see. In his mind, I was an immature bumpkin who hadn't learned the secret of tolerance yet.

Over ten years later, I was living in Chicago and would regularly pass by a Christian seminary that flew off their building, supposedly Christian, but Christian in quotation marks, I think, would fly off their building with a rainbow-colored flag symbolizing their love of tolerance and diversity, especially tolerance for homosexuality.

Now today, accepting homosexuality is the test of whether you are a sophisticated, enlightened, quote, tolerant person. And they won't tolerate you disagreeing with them about that subject. In modern minds, tolerant is the best thing you can be, and intolerant is the worst, except, there's a little exception, one little exception, you are allowed to be intolerant of those people who aren't tolerant of exactly the same things you aren't tolerant of.

Does that make sense? Did I say that right?

I don't know.

But you get the point, right? Otherwise, they're very tolerant, unless you disagree with them, which way? And actually, it's a kind of ironic, really kind of dogmatic, tolerance. Now the church in Thyatira here has so much going for it.

I mean, you get praised for the things they get praised for, you're doing well, right? They hadn't lost their first love like the Ephesians had. The Lord Jesus commends them, He says, first for their works, for their love, for their faith, for their service, for their endurance, and then He says, your latter works exceed.

The first.

In other words, the things you've been doing lately are even better than the things you.

Did at first.

Wow!

They're growing more energetic, more works, more love, all the time.

Unlike the Christians of Smyrna and Pergamum, they didn't live in a major center either of pagan worship or of the political capital, you know, right under the eye of the governor, and so they weren't in as much danger of persecution there.

So they have a lot going for them. Not like a great church, great place to be, but they were tolerating something that was killing them. Despite everything else that is good about them, the Lord Jesus has against them in verse 20 that they tolerate.

How strange this must sound, you know, to modern people. You know, the Lord Jesus here is saying that what I have against you is you're too tolerant, at least tolerant of the wrong things, because we have it now drilled into our minds, all ideas of right and wrong are all equally true, and you should tolerate them all.

Different points of view, but to claim to have the truth and be intolerant of others' truths is unenlightened and even dangerous. We're supposed to love diversity about ideas about everything, especially morality and religion and pretend that none is better or truer than the other.

It's better for society, it's better for peace, we think. If no one believes they have the truth, to be intolerant of something is dangerous. Something's wrong with you. That they call tolerance. It's actually just a dogmatic relativism, and they call it tolerance and exalt it as the highest ideal.

Now, Christians, especially Baptists, have believed in a certain amount of true tolerance that is allowing for differences, you know, not imposing our way on others, as our statement of faith says, it's borrowed from the 1833 New Hampshire Baptist Confession.

Our Lord Jesus Christ is the only Lord of the conscience. Now, that means we don't want the government telling us what to believe, you know, making laws imposing our beliefs on us or imposing our beliefs on others.

We won't tolerate it. We demand a society in which we are free to believe as Jesus tells us, where we are tolerated. And it also means that we won't use the government to try to force non-Christians to believe something that we want them to believe, but we're not going to use the government to make them believe it or make them worship in a way that they don't want to worship.

Or in a church, support a church, maybe with their money to, you know, tax them, take their tax money away, and support our churches if they don't believe in it. Because now, we will tell them that they are wrong.

We will tell them that their worship isn't biblical, or if they have no worship at all, that their non-worship isn't right, that their religion or lack of one is leading them astray. We will tell them those things, but we will tolerate their right to be wrong.

Jesus is the only Lord of the conscience. We can't use the government or force or political power or compel people to believe even what we think they should believe. Now, that's society at large. In the church here, it's different.

Yes, we will tolerate liberty in some non-essentials. We have a statement of faith, these are essentials. Other things are not. We can tolerate some differences of opinion. Some tolerances, differences, you know, and other points of view, really is a secret to living together well as a church.

Sometimes you have to tolerate each other. But unlike our society today, tolerance is not the highest value. It's not what we seek first. Jesus did not say, seek ye first tolerance. In fact, to tolerate in the church where Christ is to rule, that's what the church is supposed to be, the kingdom of God where Christ rules, he's the king.

And so to tolerate here either teaching or living that is clearly in rebellion against him, that's not a secret to a deeper truth. That's not a virtue, shows how tolerant we are.

We open doors, open minds.

It's just a lie of Satan. Thyatira was getting a lot right, getting so much right. They had so much going for them. But the Lord Jesus has it against them that they tolerate the wrong things. They were tolerating the idea that they could be faithful Christians, washed in the blood of the lamb, they would say, and yet not really have to be any different than the society.

Around them.

They don't have to be set apart. They don't have to sacrifice. They don't have to be sexually pure. They can take part in all the festivities and the rituals of society around them. False teachers were telling them that they could attend every festival, go to every party they were invited to, be respectable, be social, no longer outcasts or those weirdos who are so standoffish and so uptight about sex.

Why are they so uptight? A teacher there was telling the Christians that there's a secret, there's a deep truth. You know, we mature, we have it. Those simpletons, those immature people, you know, they're a little legalistic.

They won't understand it. But you can handle it. You're wise. You're insightful enough to be in our inner core. You can know the secret, the deep truths of God.

Some believed it. Some didn't.

But even those who didn't tolerated it. You know, they'd say, we can agree to disagree over this. And the Lord holds that tolerance against them. The Lord Jesus here is kind of angry with this church, isn't he?

This is the longest of the letters. Although he talks about it with high praise, the rest of it is just severe criticism,.

Of some of them.

He's so angry at the false teacher, one in particular here, one person who's a false teacher, who is poisoning his church, that he gives her, female false teacher, he gives her a nickname that she probably won't like.

Jezebel. Now imagine what the scene was like, the first scene in the Thyatira church, when the messenger arrives from the, probably from, probably from what came first earlier, Pergamum. You know, the guy from Pergamum comes, here's this letter.

We've got revelation. John got a vision. Jesus got a letter for your church too. They read it, probably out loud.

Everyone's assembled.

And then they read, you know, they're reading about Ephesus and Smyrna in Pergamum. And then they hear their name called. Everywhere there would, you know, they would get excited, right? This is us. And it starts with Hut's high praise.

Wow, look at that. We're growing. We're out doing everybody, at least that first verse, to them. And then you tolerate that woman, Jezebel, and everybody there would know exactly to whom they were referring to.

They're probably like trying to look at her, but not trying to look too obvious about it. Now we don't know her real name. We don't, but they did. And they would know her well. They saw her every time they assembled for worship.

She was a very influential member of the church. She probably had her own little cell group thing going on. And she was regarded as a true prophetess. That was the title they gave her. She's a prophetess.

She would claim to be inspired by the Holy Spirit to speak to the church. And she was regarded as a true one, a reliable one by many of the members there. She had a following. Some followed her so closely, Jesus calls them her children.

I don't think that means literal children. It just means her followers, her little disciples. In verse 23, her children. And even if some or most of the members didn't quite agree with her, they thought the differences were minor.

We can tolerate her. But Jesus doesn't tolerate her. He finds her so intolerable that he gives her a name that makes her look as bad as possible. With her there in the congregation, her devout followers there probably eager for her next teaching.

And the rest tolerating her. They get this writing from John containing a letter from the Lord Jesus himself directly to them. And they're so excited as they start to read it. And then they hear themselves praise some of the highest terms.

But then you tolerate that woman, Jezebel. Imagine how uncouth, unsophisticated, intolerant. Even most of us would regard that. Call a woman in the church, Jezebel. Naming her after that pagan queen from Sidon who tried to convert Israel to the worship of a Baal.

And Baal worship had a lot of sexual immorality involved in it. Now, imagine how, that's just rude. We might try to tell Jesus, this is Jesus doing it. No, sure, sure. Wait, wait. I have my reservations about her too, understand.

I don't agree with every little thing she says too. But, you know, a little of her theology, I have some qualms about. But politely point out how her teachings might, just might, tend to encourage behavior she probably doesn't mean to encourage because we all know she means well, right?

Besides, if we want to correct her, let's not offend her like that. Giving her name like that. She's our friend. She's our sister in the Lord. And we love her. Let's be tolerant and live together. To the tolerant, the highest goal is to live together.

That's the goal. Whatever else happens, we have to live together. So we'll tolerate anything we have to, to live together. To the one who loves Jesus, the highest ideal is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

To seek first the kingdom of God. Now, when the Southern Baptists were having their battles over in the 80s and 90s, whether they were going to hold to the authority of Scripture, a liberal or moderate, whatever, they call themselves moderates, probably really liberals.

He told Adrian Rogers, having discussion with Adrian Rogers, who was the leading pastor from Memphis, he's really the leader of those who held to the inerrancy of Scripture. And he told him, you know, trying to, you know, let's basically make peace.

You can believe in inerrancy, but we don't have to and we'll tolerate each other, right? Adrian, if you just drop this insistence on inerrancy,.

We can all live together.

And to which Adrian Rogers replied, we don't have to live together. Now, the plea of the church in Thyatira was,.

Let's all live together.

But Jesus says, we don't have to live together. In fact, if some of you don't repent, you won't be living, period. You know, look at the passage carefully. The Lord Jesus himself addresses a seemingly faithful church, so much going for it.

He singles out someone who appeared to be a charming lady, calls her Jezebel, and says he is going to kill. Did you notice that? This is Jesus speaking. And verse 23, I will strike her children dead. Okay, again, I don't think that means they're literal children.

It probably means, maybe included some of those, but it means probably her followers. He's going to kill them. That's pretty intolerant, isn't it? Killing people is usually a sign of intolerance, I think.

That's the way I would interpret it. He's going to kill her children, her followers. Now, that should finally wake up. That's what, this is Jesus talking.

You understand.

This should finally wake us up out of this kind of sleepy spirituality, you know, that says, whatever we do, whatever we do. Sure, we can disagree, and I think you're doing this wrong, and you think I'm doing whatever.

But whatever we do, we have to be nice. Friends, do we see how different the Lord Jesus handles sources of sin? Are we beginning to understand why the Lord Jesus has revealed himself, here, not as this kind of meek and mild gentleman, but as the Son of God.

You know, isn't this how he introduces himself, in the beginning of the letter? Son of God, with feet and legs as strong as brass, who has authority from God to rule. Do we see that sin is not to be tolerated, even under the rainbow-colored banner of diversity?

Do we understand why the Lord Jesus, earlier in the Gospels, you know, said it would be better to cut off your hand than to allow it to drag you into hell? If it's your hand that's really causing the problem, understand, don't go out there and cut off your hand, because it's never your hand that's really doing it.

It's the heart. It's what needs changing. But if you could, it would be better to cut off your hand. Do we see why the Apostle Paul describes spiritual growth? What is spiritual growth? He describes it in 2 Corinthians 10, verses 5 to 6.

You know, not as many people think of it today as kind of experiencing more and sweet feelings about whatever spiritual things, just loving to sing gospel songs more than you used to. It's certainly not tolerating more in diverse things, but he says in 2 Corinthians 10, it's destroying, he uses that kind of language,.

Destroying arguments.

And I think he means arguments in our own heads that are arguing with us, you know, arguments of the flesh to get us into sin. We have to destroy those arguments with the Word of God and every lofty opinion that sets itself up against the knowledge of God.

And our own mind, our own pride says, I won't submit to that. I won't do that. This other way of living is better than God's. We have to destroy those ways of thinking.

With God's Word.

And take every thought captive to obey Christ. That is, you use the Word of God to make your mind and your opinions and to obey what God has said. Even sometimes when you don't feel it, right? This is very aggressive kind of language.

Do you see that the worst thing that you can do to a person is not to hurt their feelings? Think how Jezebel felt. Okay, understand her name wasn't really Jezebel, whatever it was. I mean, he hurt her feelings.

And by telling them that their beliefs or their lifestyle are wrong, do we finally see that the kind of modern etiquette that instills in us the idea that sensitivity and tolerance is kind of superficial niceness which most of the time is just fakery anyway, just faking each other.

Because behind their backs, we say crude things. Those are not the greatest virtues. That's simply wrong. Those are, they say, the greatest virtues. That idea is just wrong. Notice who she's teaching.

She's teaching his servants. Jesus' true people. She's teaching them to commit, Jesus says, immorality, take part in pagan festivals, participate in the worship of other gods, the eating the sacrifices made to them.

Now, I know this doesn't sound relevant to us, but it will be. Put like that though, you're teaching, teaching the people to commit immorality and worship pagan gods. That sounds awful. How could they possibly tolerate that?

Well, remember, she didn't put it like that.

She and her followers put their spin on it. In verse 20, she is teaching and seducing my servants, but being subtle, looking for weakness, drawing in, using things you'll be attracted to, seducing them into sin.

She is able to allure people into sin by making it sound so right, even noble. It was the deep things, profound things, great things. It was, she said, the secret to maturity. This is it. She and her followers made it sound so good.

It's freedom in Christ, liberty from the law, whatever. You know, enjoying God's creation, however she said it. Jesus calls her Jezebel. But to those around her, she was the nice lady with a warm smile and gentle manners who spoke elegantly and sweetly of the love of God.

It set us free. Oh man, she was persuasive and powerful in a charming kind of feminine way.

What was not to like?

She probably claimed that she understood what Paul called in 1 Corinthians 2, the deep things of God. You know, Corinthians weren't able to handle the deep things of God, but you, you can handle it. There's things for the mature.

She had the knowledge.

It freed her. And she taught others that knowledge. You know, they could go to these pagan festivals and silently believing in their minds that because the idol was really nothing, it stood for nothing.

There was really no Apollo or other such God. And so they didn't have to miss out on the social events of their society.

You know, they could go, enjoy.

They didn't have to miss out on all the friends they could make or the business contacts they could find. No more having to be aloof or alone, you know, on an evening when everyone else was at the temple, eating and drinking and have a good time.

They can be there too.

Enjoy, enjoy. And when the party degenerated into an orgy, well, they had the secret. They could rise above it. Or maybe she said it didn't even matter what you did with your body. Who knows what she said?

They were now mature. No need for simplistic, you know, simple-minded people and their ideas of abstention, separation for the world. That was for the immature. They could now live in the world, even in the pagan temples.

And not be of it. They probably even made it sound like a virtue. They would be a witness.

Think of it.

You could be right there witnessing to the freedom of Christ in Apollo's temple, sharing the gospel in between bites of sacrifice meat to your drunken friends as they chase girls around Apollo's temple.

What great witness you could be. Yes, they were so confident.

They could do it.

They had the secret that unlocked the power to do it. Just like some have tried to tell, to our day Chinese Christians, that you can be a Christian and you can participate in ancestor veneration. You know, at a funeral or what is it?

The hungry ghost, usually September or whatever the name of that is. And you can be a Christian. You can participate in all that. You can stand there with the rest of your family before the Taoist priest holding a jaw stick.

When it's your grandmother or father who's died and you don't have to kind of painfully explain,.

No, I can't.

Well, you know, you don't have to look like you don't care. You can even say this is a way. The jaw sticks going, the gonging of the gong. This is a way of honoring your father and mother. It keeps you in the Ten Commandments.

What could be wrong with that? And then Jesus speaks to them. Your teacher is Jezebel and the deep things you think are from God are really from Satan. That's what Jesus says, doesn't he? I was there.

Deep things of Satan. Don't tolerate it. The true deep things are not the lies of tolerance of Jezebel, but the truth that we're called to be holy. Sometimes it means separation. Sometimes the Lord Jesus says he has given Jezebel time to repent.

Notice that? He gave her time to repent, but she hasn't repented. And the implication in verse 21 is that time's up. That's what's implied. Judgment on her is already passed. Jesus says he will throw her onto a bed of tribulation.

Her children and those especially close to her, Jesus says he will kill. And literally verse 23 says in Greek that he will kill them with death. That sounds pretty bad. You know, however you are killed sounds bad enough, but to be killed with death, that sounds really bad.

I mean, it just leaves no doubt about how the end result is going to be. For Jezebel and her children, you know, time has run out and Jesus gave them time to repent, but that's over. Now, people today often assume that, you know, there's this assumption that as long as I'm alive, they have time to repent.

And so they put off getting right with God. Maybe after a while, maybe after I get married.

Or after I have children.

Or, you know, maybe nearer the end, maybe when this fun time with sin is over, then I'll repent. When I've had my fill of sinful pleasures, then I'll take care of spiritual things. They think they know the secret that God is, you know, always there for them.

Never running out of patience, always offering another chance as long as they're alive. Time can come up before death too. Like for these people, for Jezebel. And so people like that, they're just assuming going through life, soaking up their sin, oblivious thinking they always have a chance, but they're oblivious to the fact that, you know, just one car accident or heart attack away could end it all without warning.

Even in their ways of thinking, they should, their theology, they should take that into account. And they're also oblivious to the fact that their very assumption is wrong. People can be like Jezebel here,.

Alive, but doomed.

The time for repentance has passed. No more tolerance for them. Now, certainly God is slow to anger and long suffering and patient. And yet, as we see here, those who have time after time turned away from God, who have refused to repent, especially from their self-righteous, self-deceived religious sin, there are those on whom God passes sentence already for whom the window of opportunity to change and be saved has closed.

That's pretty severe. Now, I'm not saying I know who those are, those people are.

I don't think any of us do.

And there's people, therefore, we say, oh, time's up for them. So we don't even witness to them or ask, you know, hope they repent. I don't know that. Jesus knows that, though. And there are such people.

And that should be a frightening thing, especially if you're being tempted. Hey, let's play with sin a little bit. You know, you might get caught up in it. And the time to repent might close on you before you think it will.

Now, some of her followers still have, some of her followers still do have time. You notice that because they are his servants. In verse 20, there are those whom Jesus calls his servants and who have been enticed into compromise and into immorality.

And Jesus is angry at Jezebel for being the source of that sin. Remember what he said about woe to those who cause his little ones to sin. Be better for them to be millstone tied around their neck and thrown into the sea.

OK, that's Jezebel here. And he is, he's seeking to, there are those others, though, who are his people who have been deceived and fallen into sin. And he's going to rescue them. Jezebel and her followers told them that, you know, they can learn the deep things.

They can feast right in the middle of an orgy and still be a good witness. Like being told you can play in the middle of the busiest interstate and not get hit. What really happens, of course, is that they found themselves tempted like David on the housetop and they fell.

There are some teachers who would tell us that, you know, old fashioned ideas about separation and holiness, sexual purity, whatever. Those are not really necessary. Not necessary, not for the truly mature, that we can, that we know, they would say, we know we are saved by grace and once saved, always saved, right?

And so we need not worry about a thing. Grace is confused with tolerance and they take many truths and weave them together to form a lie. Friends, we're facing the same teaching of Jezebel today. Put a cross as if it were the gospel.

They have the secret, they say, that to be a Christian,.

They can love Jesus,.

They can go to the end, they can still go to that party where they know there'll be drunkenness and drugs and sex will be easily available or they think, I can carry on that relationship that drags me into immorality.

It's okay for whatever reason. You fill in the blank, provide the reason, it doesn't matter.

I know the deep things.

That keep me from falling even when I'm surrounded by sin. And then they wake up, perhaps with a hangover or perhaps in a crash car or in a jail cell, charged with DUI or perhaps pregnant or with a disease or perhaps worst of all, they get by with it.

And after spurning offer after offer to repent, they never wake up in this life to the fact that they're doomed. Notice here for the third time out of the four letters we've read so far, Jesus warns his churches about sexual immorality.

Now today, someone's sexual preference is called as the term is foremost of the things we're supposed to tolerate if we're a nice person, right? Sexual preferences, whatever you like. To make someone feel bad for their sexual choices is we're now told intolerably intolerant.

Even in the church,.

People misuse the story of the woman caught in adultery to imply that what we should do now is we should go around and tell those legalistic intolerant savages who are disapproving of adultery or whatever they're disapproving of, put down those, your stones of those hurtful words, affirm people's lifestyle choices, you know, charm them with your tolerance and niceness.

Ignoring the point that he always, even in that story, Jesus tells the sinner.

To sin no more.

Now here for the third time in this letter, in his letter to the churches, in the midst of a culture, this Greek Roman culture that tolerate even celebrated all kinds of sexual immorality, Jesus makes clear that sexual immorality is not tolerated among his people.

As much of us like the society around them, Jesus said,.

It's not,.

You can't do that here, not in my church. Now, sure, Christians can stumble into sin, but they can't live in that kind of sin. They can fall, but they can't stay down in that. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6, 9, do not be deceived.

You know, he opens it that way for a reason because there are a lot of people who are trying to deceive us. Maybe they're trying to deceive themselves often because they're looking for a way to justify their own sexual immorality.

Do not be deceived.

Because among others,.

A whole list of people,.

But among others,.

The sexually immoral, using the very same word that's used here in verses 20 and 21, will not, he says, the sexually immoral.

Will not enter,.

Inherit the kingdom of God. Okay, let me put that starkly and boldly so it sticks. I don't mean to offend anyone, but this is, I think, accurate interpretation just so it sticks. Those who live in sexual immorality will go to hell.

That's what it means. Anyone who tells you differently is a deceiver, the kind of person we're warned against in 1 Corinthians 6, 9. A Jezebel, like this woman whom Jesus threatens to put on her sickbed.

She's been leading others to bed.

Oh, yeah.

Now she'll be going to bed herself, to a sickbed.

Yes,.

You can be given a time to repent. If you fall into sin, but be careful that you stay in it so long that the window closes on the time to repent. There is zero tolerance of sexual immorality in the church, especially of any kind of justification for sexual immorality.

And people can be.

Very creative.

In the ways they come up with to justify sexual immorality, which is any sex outside of marriage. But it's all,.

All deception.

And Jesus will hold it.

Against the church.

That allows anyone to teach it. But the good news is, as Paul says in the same passage, we just read, cited before 1 Corinthians 6, such, you know, sexually immoral, sexually immoral will not inherit the kingdom of God.

But such were, past tense, some of you, that you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified. Jesus saves people from that, not for that,.

From that.

Or as Jesus himself would say later in the book of Revelation, behold,.

I make all things, even a life broken.

By sexual immorality, all things new. But before he makes new,.

He makes you admit.

How old and rotten your sin is. And that is what's called repentance. People want to avoid doing that today. They want to win people with sugar and not offend them with vinegar. And so we sound as if we tolerate all kinds of sin.

But here Jesus is the one with eyes like fire.

That pierce through.

All of the facades, the deception, the veneer we put up.

He's the one,.

He says in verse 23, who searches mind and heart. He might not sound very sophisticated or enlightened or like he's celebrating diversity. But Jesus tells us, I'm the son of God.