192. The Forgotten Church Jesus Couldn't Ignore

Hello everyone and welcome back to the podcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 192 the letter to Thyatira part one. Well, hello everybody and welcome back to the podcast. My name is Kendall and I'm so glad that you're here today.

Pergamum, Thyatira, and Why the Smallest City Gets the Longest Letter

Because today we're gonna begin a brand new mini series. Looking at the letter to the church in Thyatira. And like all of the churches in all of the Asia minor cities that we've looked at so far. This one is Incredibly fascinating now the last time that we were together.

We stood up on the top of a thousand foot wall of this imposing Volcanic rock on this citadel aloft this imposing impenetrable mountain hovering over the valley below. Pointing upwards to the heavens to the pantheon of demonic gods who lord their power over you.

You remember How we were back in time imagining climbing up the Acropolis at Pergamum standing at the Monumental altar of Zeus that was going down into the lower city and listening to the hissing sounds of the serpents that are echoing out of the Asclepion healing temple and we beheld the Agora the temple of Athena the theater dedicated to Dionysus and all of the drunken orgies and service to that God and we did our best.

To actually feel what it was gonna feel like to be in that city. And also what it would be like to watch our pastor a man named Antipas. To be murdered right in front of us in the streets. Which would have been obviously life-changing and horrific.

We also saw how Jesus saw their situation and how Jesus was working to overthrow their enemies and to feed his Saints and to comfort them with assurance even while he was purging this little flock of Enemies that were existing inside the church the Nicolaitans and those who follow the doctrines of Balaam.

That's what we saw over the last four weeks in the letter to the church in Pergamum. Well today we're gonna come to our next city on the poster carry a postal carriers route. Excuse me, which is Thyatira, which is nothing at all.

Like Pergamum or any other city in the seven as a city it had nothing remarkable about it. It did not have an Acropolis. It did not have an Agora. It did not have any famous altars that you can see from a distant horizon.

It didn't have any special connection with the chief God Zeus or any library or 200 ,000 scrolls or any temple to Augustus that made at the envy of the province. It was just plain old Thyatira and by any honest ranking of the seven churches.

It was the least significant town on the whole Letter route that John was writing. It was smaller than Ephesus. It was smaller than Smyrna. It was smaller than Pergamum. It had no skyline that you were gonna write home about it had no thriving economy.

Nothing special by the way of exports or produce no reason any tourists would ever travel there and Because of this I want us to begin asking ourself the question why does this Magnificently insignificant city in Asia Minor one that barely even belongs on the list if it even belongs at all.

Receive the longest letter from King Jesus. It's the longest and most detailed letter and he gives it to the most insignificant church. And there's a whole lot more that we're gonna talk about and we're gonna explore about that in this little series on Thyatira, but Before we get there I do want to say a thank you to Everyone who makes this show possible if you if you watch it if you like it if you subscribe to it if you remember I just want to say thank you because you're making it possible for us to continue doing this to continue Broadcasting that Jesus is not leading the world into defeat doom and ruin but Jesus is leading the world to ongoing victory and That this world is going to bow the knee to Christ.

It's not gonna collapse in a fantastic explosion of defeat. It is going to redound the glory of Christ and we get to share that message in Chapter 1 chapter 2 chapter 3 of Revelation. We get to share that message in chapter 24, which is one of our previous series.

If you haven't seen it, you should check it out. I still consider it to be some of the finest work that I've ever done on the show we also been able to declare that from Genesis to Revelation and our practical post-millennium series and everything in between we get to declare the victory of Christ to men and women who need to be Encouraged by it and hear it because as Calvin said we're a forgetful people.

Our hearts are idol-making factories and we need to constantly remember to mortify our cowardice and to mortify our Defeatism and to mortify our fear and to embrace the fact that Christ has called us to live and to move and to have our being In him and that his kingdom will not fail the gates of hell will not stand against it the stone will become a mountain the leaven will live in the entire lump and The world will eventually become Christian through ordinary means of faithfulness like you and like me.

So thank you so much for subscribing to this show. Thank you so much for encouraging me along the way. Thank you for sharing it for commenting on it. All of it actually helps us get this content out to more people now.

One thing I would like to say if you want to help even further if you want to make sure that this show Continues to be possible then join as a member of the channel. There's three different ways that you can do that.

There's like I don't know even know the names anymore. There's low medium and high. There's one that is less than a cup of coffee another one. That's less than a Starbucks cup of coffee. And then there's one that's twenty four twenty five dollars a month whatever it is all of its helpful because it allows me to be able to hire a Videographer or a video team to be able to produce this show.

It helps me to be able to advertise the show it helps me to be able to make cool Merchandise for the show it helps me to be able to buy equipment for the show. I don't know if you've noticed. But about a year ago if you've been watching the show that long We got a new camera and that camera is so much better than the one that we had before the video quality is better.

The production is better. All of that is brought to you by our members. So thank you to every single person who's a member of of the podcast whether it's defender insider or prod squad. I did remember the titles now finally Thank you so much to you.

You make this show possible the last thing I want to do is I want to thank wrath and grace our Partner in this channel and for I want to thank them for being able to help me. Have the help that I need to produce this show and to get in front of more and more and more people.

So a huge thing to our channel partner wrath and grace. You could go to their website www .wrathandgrace .com. Check out their app check out their website. Check out their merchandise. Check out their sermons.

All of it is excellent and all of it. I commend to you. So I'm thankful for you wrath and grace. I'm thankful for you members and and subscribers to the podcast and if you're new I'm thankful for you as well now with that.

Thyatira’s Geography, History, and the City With No Walls

Let us get into the letter to Thyatira which comes to us in Revelation chapter 2 verses 18 through 19. This is what the Word of God says and to the angel of the church in Thyatira right. The Son of God who has eyes like a flame of fire and his feet are like burnished bronze.

Says this I know your deeds and your love and faith and service and perseverance. And that your deeds of late are greater than at first. But I have this against you that you tolerate the woman Jezebel who calls herself a prophetess and she teaches and leads My bond servants astray so they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols.

I gave her time to repent and she does not want to repent of her immorality. Behold I will throw her on a bed of sickness and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation unless they repent of her deeds and I will kill her children with pestilence and all the churches will know that I am he who searches the minds and hearts and I will give to each one of You according to your deeds.

But I say to you the rest who are in Thyatira who do not hold this teaching who have not known the deep things of Satan as they call them. I place no other burden on you. Nevertheless what you have hold fast until I come.

He who overcomes and he who keeps my deeds until the end to him I will give authority over the nations and he shall rule them with a rod of iron as the vessels of the potter are Broken to pieces as I also 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 seven churches Revelation 2 18 through 19 and now with that. Let us jump into this city of Thyatira and I want us to to dive into the history of it.

I want us to see it. I want us to walk in the streets. I want us to understand what is going on there. Because everything that was happening in that city was what caused Jesus to dictate this letter and to do that.

I want to begin with Part one the city with no walls now only about 40 miles separated Pergamum the city that Christ called the throne of Satan from Thyatira a city that seemed to sit on the throne of nothing.

Pergamum was famous. It's that high on a great hill crowned with temples and monuments and altars and political power. But Thyatira had none of that. It had no towering Acropolis. No celebrated University.

No world-famous temple no natural defenses that were even worth mentioning. It was not the kind of ancient city that travelers wrote home about to say the least. To reach it you would have to leave Pergamum on foot and you would have to follow a Roman Road Eastward along the southern bank of the Caicos River.

Now for a while the road would carry you through the rural open country past local farms and past a litany of grazing mooing batting animals quite Literally and you would have to go past vineyards and expansive fields that were all being watered by the river and then as you traveled through the low country the elevation would begin to rise ever so Slightly and you would climb through a low line of hills not mountains exactly but enough to burn the calves and to get the quads going right and Enough to slow the travelers pace who was carrying their goods or they were meeting their pack animals or anything like that.

Now once you crossed over the ridge The land would open up in front of you and you would descend into a very long but a very broad fertile Corridor known as the Lycus Valley. Now this wasn't the better known Lycus Valley.

There was another Lycus Valley and it was far better known and that was further to the south near Laodicea and Colossae and Hierapolis this was the other Lycus Valley the lesser known Lycus Valley. Which is an apropos metaphor for the city of Thyatira.

Because they are the ones who were overlooked ignored insignificant second place just like the second place Lycus Valley or Lycus Valley. But for what it's worth the valley was no less green than the more productive and more prestigious and more prominent one to the south.

The river that went through there the Caicos River it cut through the land and to the north and to the south and it was sort of like a Dark seam that was sewn through the very hide of the countryside.

The farms were spreading out on either side grain grew thick in the open fields and then herds were Grazing in the open land and merchants moved along this road with things like wool and dye and cloth and leather Pottery food and all sorts of metal goods.

So you have this river that was cutting the land almost in half, which is really important. Now if you were traveling at an average speed on foot The journey would take you about a day and a half to walk from Pergamum to Thyatira perhaps two full days if you were hauling merchandise or traveling with small children or animals and then Somewhere near the middle of that valley you would begin to notice a change.

The road would suddenly grow a bit busier before you hadn't seen anybody for the first day and a half of travel. You hadn't seen a single soul. But then all of a sudden you start seeing more foot traffic.

You hear the sound of hammers and workshops as they were carrying the noise was carrying through the air you would see farmers and craftsmen and slaves and traders and soldiers who would move past you in both directions and the road itself would Begin to widen almost like a road widens when you go into a major city.

I remember you drive on 77 it was 85 south from Charlotte and you end up getting into Four lanes of traffic then six lanes of traffic and eight lanes of traffic as you approach the city of Atlanta in a similar But smaller way this is what was happening.

The road would widen shops and houses would gather along the edges showing signs of life in the midst of a very barren road and the steady traffic of The countryside would become a crowded movement of a town now.

Interestingly, there would not be any dramatic moment when you realize that Thyatira suddenly appeared upon the horizon. Because there were no fortified walls for the city. There was no great entry gate.

There was no hilltop temple Overlooking you from above because the city actually didn't rise above the landscape. It's set flat down in the middle of it. Which was quite rare in the ancient world because that meant you were vulnerable to attack.

If you placed your city up on top of a hill you really said fortification. This city was sat right down in the middle of a plane, which again was abnormal. This city simply spread out across the flat ground and before you had even noticed That that you had you were having an uptick in foot traffic and villages and and carpenters and all that stuff before you even noticed that you would already be standing somewhere near the city of Thyatira and This was kind of like an old winding road somewhere in the country.

Bumbling upon some little township and before you know it you're in and out you pass the one stoplight that was in the town. The post office in the ABC liquor store and you're done. That was sort of what Thyatira was like.

By the time you happened upon the first couple of houses. You were already in the city limits without a single welcome sign telling you that you had arrived now as You came into Thyatira. The first thing that you would have that would have stuck out to you is how little there was to actually look at in the city.

Ephesus had the Colossal temple of Artemis, which is one of the ain't one of the wonders of the ancient world. Smyrna climbed Beautifully from its harbor towards the hills with broad streets of public buildings skylines.

Its city proudly was called the crown jewel of Asia Minor. Pergamum as we just learned a couple weeks ago rose a thousand feet in the air on this huge massive wall. It's a croppolis crowded with all different kinds of people temples palaces theaters and altars.

Sardis as we're gonna look at in the future stood beneath a nearly unapproachable Citadel perched high above the plain like a fortress built in the mountain itself. Philadelphia sat in a very rich wine country region beneath the slopes of Mount Timeless and then later to see a spread out across a commanding plateau across.

It was wealthy enough to even boast of its banks its medicine and its famous black wool. So out of all of these Thyatira is the runt. Even the smallest cities had something to point at something to brag about.

Something Natural or civic some monument that told the traveler. Hey this place matters. This is why we're here. This is what we stand for but Thyatira had none of that. They had no famous monuments. No buildings.

No celebrated temple. No famous Harbor. No commanding plateau. No mountain fortress, no monumental gate announcing that you've entered in one of the great cities of Asia. They didn't even have walls. Thyatira set flat on an exposed plain with no hill worth noting.

No natural barrier. No defensible Ridge no Dramatic silhouette to carve onto a cone it was simply a working-class city stretched along the road surrounded by fields and workshops built where it was for the unglamorous reason that made the location Useful.

And now among the seven cities Thyatira again, like I said before it was the runt of the litter. Ephesus inspired all Smyrna displayed beauty. Pergamon projected power. Sardis recalled the memory of ancient.

Well, Philadelphia occupied the very strategic doorway to the east Laosia. Practically sweated money. They were rich beyond imagination. Thyatira on the other hand they made stuff. They sold some things and they tried not to get conquered again and again because they had no defensible structure.

And if you ask anyone in the market in Thyatira, hey just out of curiosity. Why is there no wall? You know, that's kind of a big deal even the ancients knew that you should have a border wall. So you ask someone in the market?

Hey, why do you not have a wall and you probably get some version of the same old depressed shrug that they've given a thousand Times before perhaps somebody would tell you that that the truth that they've never actually had a wall there.

There's never been one built never been one started never had any plans for a wall, which is depressing and sad. About two centuries before John wrote to the letter in Thyatira the city Was planted in the wreckage of Alexander the Great's fallen Empire.

So when Alexander died the enormous kingdom that he had conquered didn't pass over peacefully to some capable son. He'd had no heir. So his generals began carving it up and dividing it among themselves and before long the men who had once marched together Unified under Alexander's banner were now fighting over one piece of this territory or another two of these men son Lucas and Lysimachus.

Were two of the ones who were especially important in this particular region of Asia Minor. So Lucas had commanded soldiers in Alexander's army. Lysimachus had served even closer to him as one of his elite personal bodyguards.

So they had fought for the same King same effort same battles. They had crossed the same battle lines. They'd helped conquer the same people to build up the same Empire. But now they ruled rival kingdoms on the opposite sides of Asia Minor.

Lysimachus controlled much of the territory to the north and to the west so Lucas ruled the enormous kingdom that stretched into Syria Mesopotamia and beyond and right where these territories butted up against each other Pressing dangerously against one another where all-out war could break out at any time.

Was this open road? That went through the Lycus Valley where Thyatira would eventually be planted as a strategic outpost. So Lucas in a brilliant move Needed someone to watch over this little border and to defend it.

So so Lucas took a gaggle of mess of Macedonian veterans. They were hard men who had fought with and who had won battles and campaigns for Alexander the Great and the wars that followed his Death and he stationed them on this flat Exposed little plane in order to guard it and defend it from Lysimachus to the north now in exchange for their service.

He deeded over a parcel of this land to them and he promised them Citizenship. If they would just move there and defend it They would be like a living Fortress a a living sort of outpost where they were gonna be living there and also pulling guard duty there.

So that was the foundation of Thyatira. But what he apparently didn't provide them with was any architect or city planner who would actually come and help them establish this new city. So what I want you to do is I want you to imagine for a second a bunch of hardened veterans of military war people who probably have PTSD from seeing all sorts of blood and guts and mangled warfare and all of that and and you've got them coming to set up a city and They have no idea what they're doing.

These guys are used to living outdoors in the rain and in the and in the snow. They were used to living in the most perilous in the most dire and the most threadbare Circumstances living out in open fields exposed constantly to the elements ready to fight at a moment's notice.

But without an ounce of experience in making a city or making it look nice. And then when you understand who it was who established this city, you'll understand why Thyatira looked like it did. It was sort of the ancient equivalent of a bachelor pad.

Only the essentials of life were even present. But not a whole lot else because why? Soldiers are the ones who are doing it soldiers are used to living in in awful squalor Circumstances and they don't really care.

When I was in the army I lived for 12 months in Iraq and I barely had any luxuries whatsoever. I slept on a cot. I slept out in the middle of the Sun a lot of times. We finally got shade when we took over a military hangar, so I got to sleep inside of a hangar.

But it was still a hundred and twenty degrees. We had no air conditioner for most of the time I was there. It was awful, but we dealt with it because we're soldiers. Do you think we decorated that hangar?

Do you think we made it look nice? No, we're soldiers. We don't do that. That's exactly what happened in Thyatira soldiers came. Soldiers put up the most essential basic practical needs that they needed to defend the city and they didn't take any time to make it.

Look pretty in fact a couple of centuries later the geographer Strabo summarized the entire founding of Thyatira and for Wonderously glorious unimpressive words by saying that it was a colony of Macedonians.

That's it. That's all that this famous Geographer had to say about this city. He said Voluminous things about other cities, but this city he said four words. It was a colony of Macedonians. It was an overlooked stain on the map.

That's what he's saying. It was inhabited by a group of redneck soldiers from Macedonia. And and here's the part that I actually find remarkable about the founding of this city in a in a region that was rich in a region that had all sorts of glorious cities and temples and and all sorts of different tourist attractions this city was the most meager and Unimpressive city in all of the region and yet it worked it worked.

Ancient sources described the population of Thyatira as being unusually militant for a trading town which apparently if You have soldiers who are the ones who are starting a city and they train up their children to act like soldiers.

Well, you're gonna have a city full of militant people you're gonna have a city that was That kept their edge and kept their grit about them for generations because they were defending a city with no walls.

Now, I don't know why it never occurred to them to actually go and build up the walls to put up a fence to Put up some sort of defensive structure. I mean you can't imagine why they didn't get the radical idea of trying to fortify the city in some way.

But no one did so they grew up on edge. They grew up a militant people who are ready in a moment's notice to fight. I think the reason probably they did not build the walls is because they liked it. They liked fighting.

They liked defending. They liked all of that. They liked the excitement in their life. So they didn't build any walls. Well in addition to all of this I want you to consider the irony of the town's name because the name Thyatira itself is generally understood to mean in Greek something to the effect of the castle of Thaya.

Which is actually pretty funny because if you think about it castles have walls. Castles have fortifications castles have structures that are gonna protect the people inside. And yet the city had none of that.

This was a flat wall a soldier infested shantytown in an open plain. That was being called a castle which is either the most overly optimistic delusion of grandeur that that whoever founded this city could have come up with or it was the complete and total Lack of understanding and ignorance of what a castle is.

Somebody a very long time ago either had a very weird sense of humor or a serious case of false Advertising the kind where a vacation and family is promised that sunshine and beaches and swimming pools hot tubs and spacious rooms that only to end up in a motel six.

Someone got hoodwinked and all of this and it was the city of Thyatira. But in spite of the humorous and ironic Namesake so Lucas didn't plan his soldiers on empty ground because long before Thyatira became a Macedonian garrison.

People were actually coming to this little specific plot of earth in order to worship. Because the settlement had once been called Pelopia and the ground beneath it appears to actually been associated with an old Lydian Sun God named Teremnus now at other points in history the town carried names such as Semiramis and the legend after the legendary Assyrian Queen and Euphia either way.

The names changed as the kingdoms rose. Rumors rose rumors fell and new peoples took over and took control of this region. But one thing stayed the same out of all of it the worship before there were Macedonian soldiers here.

There was a shrine here before there were workshops and guild halls and Roman coins. This ground had already been claimed by a God and that matters because although the city would change its name Change its rulers even change the Empire to which was over it Thyatira would never stop being a place where pagan worship reached down into every facet of your life which we will certainly cover in future episodes, but You will be fascinated to know that the city did not remain under the control of son Lucas or those heirs Who followed after him.

The city's next change of ownership happened in roughly? 190 BC when the rising Roman Republic came in and Crushed the remnants of the fracturing little Greek Empire of Alexander the Great they devastated the Seleucid King Antiochus the third at the Battle of Magnesia Which was not far from Thyatira city limits and in what seems a little out of character for such an aggressive militant city Thyatira saw the writing on the wall that Rome was coming in they knew that they weren't gonna win.

So they surrendered and they handed over the city to Roman rule Roman Republican rule. And they even became close allies with Pergamum who had also aligned itself heavily with Rome and for 60 years that arrangement between Pergamum and Thyatira held which was also Ironic since the two cities were about as different as beauty was to the beast.

But even so the partnership continued on until about 133 BC when King Attalus the third you'll remember him of Pergamum when he died and he died without an heir and As we said before in one of the most baffling political decisions in the ancient world one that we spoke about several weeks ago Attalus simply wrote his city his famous rich Powerful city over to the Empire of Rome and he gave the Romans an even deeper foothold in the region.

Which is just not something that most people do. You would have found somebody to be your heir, but he didn't and Rome took it Obviously, but soon they discovered that inheriting a kingdom on paper and possessing it on the ground were two different realities.

Now not everyone accepted the dead Kings will and not everybody accepted the fact that he was just gonna hand over this wonderful magnificent city to the Romans. Almost immediately a man named Aristonikos stepped forward and he claimed that he was the illegitimate son of Eumenes the second who was an earlier king of Pergamum.

Which if that were true would have made him a member of the royal family and it would have made him a heir apparent to the throne. Now he didn't recognize Rome's right to take the kingdom because he wanted it for himself instead He took the royal name human in it.

Eumenes the third he gathered an army around himself and he announced in effect that the kingdom of Pergamum still had a king and the king was him and He was not gonna be giving it over to Rome which created a lot of drama.

Now at first the wealthy coastal cities wanted little to do with this man. But Aristonikos found supporters among the people who had the most to lose under this new arrangement with Rome laborers from the countryside and the rural poor and the displaced and dissatisfied men and slaves to whom he Apparently promised freedom if they would fight for him and soon What had begun as a dispute over a dead king's will became a full-scale rebellion that spread across Western Asia Minor and once again Thyatira found itself standing directly in the road Where they had to make a decision.

Aristonikos marched into the valley. He seized the city of Thyatira and he made it a part of his rebel kingdom and Starbo tells us that's the geographer. From before that he took possession of Thyatira before moving on to the neighboring city of Apollonius.

Now Imagine what that meant for the people who were living there. One month they belonged to Pergamum then their king died and informed them that from now on They're gonna belong to Rome and then before Rome could even arrive to collect their inheritance.

Now They're being overtaken again by Pergamum in their back in Pergamum's Control it would have been a little bit of a roller coaster for the city of Thyatira. The banners were shifting and changing soldiers filled the streets new orders were being Executed constantly and the people of Thyatira who had not written the will they had not chosen the heir or they have not invited Or or invited the Romans were now expected to survive whichever Ruler happened to be standing in the marketplace that morning.

It was chaos. It was pandemonium now Rome Naturally refused to let the matter stand they had been given the cities. They expected to take it and they sent an army east to put Arista Nike's down. Expecting that he would step away or that he would be put down quite easily well instead Arista Nike's defeated the Roman force and he and he killed the Council who was commanding it.

So this little war over the kingdom Rome had expected to receive quite easily now became a humiliating a very expensive Defeat so more armies followed because more Rome has more armies than Arista Nike's and then Cities eventually changed hands the fields were trampled the men were killed over the meaning of this dead Kings will and eventually Rome Overwhelmed Arista Nike's and he was surrounded and he was starved and surrender.

He was dragged back to Rome. He was paraded through the streets as a defeated enemy of Rome. And then finally he was strangled in prison. So that's what he got for his rebellion now the last pieces of his resistance were crushed around 129 BC and Only then could Rome begin turning the former kingdom of Pergamum into its new province in Asia.

And there stood Thyatira right in the middle of all of this when the dust settled Conquered transferred back and forth inherited by multiple people and then never Anything more than just a city that was passed like a hot potato.

They were never the capital. They were never the prize over which everyone was fighting for they were just an unfortunate little working-town Caught in the middle of a gunfight and they were the ones who were the losers.

They were just the unfortunate people who were sitting on the very road that every army needed to use to reach somewhere else that was Thyatira strange and unfortunate and sad place in history. Great kings were making their decisions royal families were fighting over thrones Rome was redrawing its map and Thyatira was caught in the midst changing masters changing Changing loyalties burying its dead reopening its workshops after they've been leveled to the ground.

They went back to making things after their things had been destroyed this was their legacy and when all of that history is gathered together the Personality of the city of Thyatira begins to come into pretty sharp focus because this wasn't a city that was accustomed to standing at the center of the world and being a part of the Intelligentsia or the power hungry or or anything like that.

It was accustomed to watching the world march through it and Hoping that they didn't notice them. The Kings had died the Empires had shifted the armies had crossed the valley banners had changed over the marketplace and Thyatira simply was Burying its dead reopening its workshops and going back to work.

Every other city that we've studied so far had some obvious claim to greatness that a Christian living in that town would have had to reckon with. Ephesus guarded the enormous temple of Artemis one of the wonders in the ancient world.

Smyrna was beautiful prosperous and fiercely determined to be known as Rome's most loyal city. Pergamum stood high above the valleys the political superpower and religious center of the province crowded with temples and monuments and imperial power.

But Thyatira had nothing. It wasn't the crown jewel of the Empire. It had no famous Skyline temple commanding Acropolis. None of it. It had no Marks of making it a significant city. It was just an exposed little market town on a useful little road repeatedly conquered repeatedly transferred and almost always overshadowed by somewhere else of all the seven cities addressed in Revelation Thyatira was the One that was the most insignificant as we've said.

And this is precisely why the letter that Christ writes to this church should seem a little more than just mildly interesting to us. Because if the length of each of these letters followed the reputation of the city within Thyatira should have received barely a Phrase or even an adverbial clause from the king of the world.

Instead it receives the longest letter with 12 full verses That are coming from the Lord over the cosmos. More words than Ephesus Smyrna and maybe even Pergamum combined. Jesus has more to say to this overlooked little working town than he does to cities filled with wonders wealth political power and imperial glory.

And now Understanding that it's time for us to understand why Jesus wrote the longest letter to them. And we're gonna begin looking at that in part two. The feast you cannot refuse. Now what held Thyatira together was work.

Wasn't marble or military power or some celebrated temple that was rising above the city. But the things passing through ordinary human hands every hour of the day. Wool was being pulled apart and spun into thread clay was being pressed and turned and fired and sold.

Leather was being cut and stretched and stitched and bread was being kneaded before sunrise. Bronze was heated and poured and then beaten and filed in the city. Cloth was lowered down in the vats and lifted out wearing some sort of color that it didn't have before.

Thyatira in that way lived making things and moving things and selling things. It was an industrial city. But it was a blue-collar city as well. Everyone in the city was connected to that kind of machinery in one way or another.

Now in Thyatira work didn't happen privately behind closed doors. It was a very public affair with workshops opening directly onto the street and evidence of labor spilling out everywhere if you walk through the city on an ordinary morning and No one would need to tell you what was going on.