August 14 2022
Revelation 2:18-29
The past week I had a chance to spend some time with a good friend of mine. We talked about all that was going on in our lives and how we both are dealing with some difficulties in our personal situations. As we talked a bit more, my friend turned to me and said, “You know when you go through these hard things you begin to realize that everybody is dealing with something.” I thought to myself, how true that statement really is. There are a lot of things that make us different but what we can all say, with full honesty, is that we are all dealing with situations that are sometimes hard to figure out; we are scraping by instead of sitting on top of the world; we have more questions than answers to all of the stuff we find ourselves in the middle of. So, while we don’t like having to find ourselves knee deep in the alligators, at least these times remind us that we are most definitely not alone in our struggles. We need to come to the conclusion that these times, then, are to temper us when we deal with the people that we come in contact with and before we want to fly off the handle we are to remember that they most likely are already in the middle of a whole host of issues that are weighing heavy on their hearts and minds.
I have this idea that it is our hurting, our difficulties, this is what unites us, on my mind because of something Jesus said, that we are blessed when we weep in this age, yes, blessings are ours in our sorrow not in the good times when laughter comes easy. I wonder if the blessing that Jesus is speaking of is the blessing of knowing that weeping seems to be more universal in this age, that where our common ground is is that place that has been stomped down in our anger and made wet with our tears. What good news it is that Jesus is a man who knows our sorrows, a man acquainted with our grief for this tells us that not only does our hurt and pain unite us together but there in that place we find we are united with the God who saves us.
As we come to what the living Christ has to tell us about the church at Thyatira, this theme of living together in a hurting world is there in the background of what is being said. As the living Christ has done in several of the previous churches, he here in addressing the church at Thyatira first complements them as being a church whose works, whose love, faith, service and patient endurance were all on his radar. Yet in spite of what seems to be going quite well in their fellowship, the living Christ informs them that all is not well. They have allowed a serious cancer to come and grow and fester right in their midst. As the living Christ puts it, “they tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess…” Here, the living Christ expects us to understand that this woman who has been allowed to spew forth her false teachings to the unwary souls of this church at Thyatira is comparable to the most evil queen in Israel’s history. We first learn of Jezebel in the sixteenth chapter of First Kings where we are told that Ahab, a king who did more evil in the sight of the Lord than any other ruler, continued in his rebellion by marrying the daughter of the king of the Sidonians. This was most likely a political move that insured that there would be peaceful relations between Israel and Sidon. The cost of that peace, though, was that Jezebel worshipped Baal and all of Israel followed her lead. We also know that she understood that the whole point of being royalty was that she had enough power to have whatever she wanted to be happy. When Jezebel heard that her husband Ahab wanted the neighbors vineyard for his garden, she was appalled when the neighbor refused to sell it to him. “Do you now govern Israel?” Jezebel asked him. She then told Ahab to go eat bread and be cheerful because she was Jezebel and she would make it happen. She set up the neighbor who had refused to sell to Ahab, telling the village elders that this neighbor had cursed God and he deserved to be stoned to death. And so the neighbor fell victim to trumped up charges and was put to death all so Ahab at last might have his garden.
So, when you hear the living Christ state that this prophetess in their midst might as well be Jezebel, this tells us we need to slow down and consider just what are we being told. We know that what must be implied is that what this prophetess was teaching had to concern the status of those within the church, that they must consider themselves to be empowered in some way, to have power that was theirs to get whatever they desired which would make them happy. What might help us understand what was going on in the church at Thyatira is something Paul writes about in First Corinthians where in the fifth chapter he sarcastically lays into his audience, saying to them, “Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings! And would that you would reign, so that we might share the rule with you!”. What Paul was alluding to is that the people of this church at Corinth thought of themselves as having achieved a great status on account of believing in Jesus Christ. They knew the promises of their inheritance and decided that because they were going to be rich and powerful in the age to come then, hey, why not live as though they were rich and powerful now. We cannot be sure exactly what this so called Jezebel was teaching but we know that she started out as just another fine church going folk who loved the Lord. I mean, she would hardly be tolerated if she had set up an idol shrine in the middle of the sanctuary. No, she took right teaching and slightly twisted it so that it better suited just how she felt those who followed Jesus ought to live in the world. It is not hard to understand that like the church at Corinth, that she might come to the conclusion that if we have an inheritance waiting for us in the age to come why not get started today living the high life. Why not consider ourselves kings and queens today because hey, that’s what we are going to be in the age to come? If this is who we are going to be in that age then why shouldn’t we be justified in believing that we could begin with a little bit of heaven right here, right now? You see, it doesn’t take much to convince people that heaven should be ours right now to people who are patiently enduring suffering on account of Christ. The only problem is that the promises of the next life are just that, something to be received as a gift not something to be demanded as if they were our right. When we somehow believe that we can demand God to give us today which he has said would be ours tomorrow we are on dangerous ground because when we demand anything of God we have lost our fear of God. Its sometimes hard for us to understand just what is meant when we are told that we are to have the fear of God but perhaps the best way to understand it is that our lives are dependent solely upon the mercy of God. Only as we know that we live only by and through the mercy of God can we expect to have a right relationship with God, one where we approach God with the reverence that is due him.
This need to understand that we only live through the mercy of God, I believe, is the meaning behind being told that this address to the church at Thyatira is the “words of the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and whose feet are like burnished bronze.” This unusual description of the living Christ points us back to the tenth chapter of Daniel who had a vision as he stood along the banks of the river Tigris. There he saw a man clothed in linen, with a belt of fine gold around his waist. His body was like beryl, his face like the appearance of lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished brass…” To say that this was a terrifying vision is an understatement! Daniel fell on his face and fainted only to be awakened by the sound of this otherworldly man speaking to him telling him to not be afraid. Good luck with that! This one like the Son of Man told Daniel that from the first day that Daniel had set his heart to understand and he humbled himself before God, his words had been heard by God and he, the Son of Man, had come because of the words of Daniel.” When we hear this, we then are left wondering just what words did Daniel speak that were words that could cause this one like the Son of Man, to come and seek him out? The answer is found in the ninth chapter where we get to listen in on Daniel who is fervently praying for the people of Israel. As Daniel ends his prayer he pleads with God to incline his ear and hear. Daniel prays, “Open your eyes upon our desolations, and the city called by your name. For we do not present our pleas before you because of our righteousness, but because of your great mercy.” You see, Daniel did not demand that God fix the mess that the people of Israel had gotten themselves into; no, he presented his pleas only out of his knowing that God is merciful. This is why Daniels words were heard because when he relied upon the mercy of God then he proved that the fear of God was in his heart.
As we are told in this address to the church at Thyatira, our God is the God who searches us at the very center of our emotions and at the very seat of our will. This is a piece of scripture which points us back to the seventeenth chapter of Jeremiah. There we read, “I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give to every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.” You see, by teaching that as followers of Christ we are entitled to enjoy the pleasures of heaven now because we are promised that they will be ours later, this Jezebel was instilling in those captured by her nonsense that they no longer had to concern themselves with the hurting and suffering people in their lives. No, they had arrived and all they had to do is to wait around until the day came when they could go from pleasure and power in this world to even more pleasure and power in the next. Yet, what they had forgotten is that our God is the searcher of hearts, the one who tests our minds; there is no fooling God. The heart that seeks pleasure while the suffering world cry’s at their feet is a heart that is driven more by lusts and desires than love and mercy. The promise of God is that he will give to each person according to their ways, according to the fruits of their deeds. In other words, the question God expects us to ask is just what kind of ripple effect do our actions have? We are told that Jezebel’s actions brought her into the crosshairs of the living Christ. She refused to let her mind be transformed even after being confronted by the living Christ. When you twist the truth then it becomes hard to recognize the truth even when the truth is speaking directly to you. The answer to her blatant disregard to being confronted by Christ is that she would be thrown unto a sickbed and those who had united themselves with her were going to have to face great tribulation. Now, this sounds harsh, as if the living Christ is using some form of tough love but what Christ is actually doing is to bring Jezebel and her followers back to reality. Ours is a hurting world full of hurting people and its easy to forget this fact until you’re hurting yourself. Everyone gets sick and everyone faces trials of one sort or another and as followers of Christ we are not to think we are to be people of pleasure while the rest of the world is being swallowed up in suffering. No, we are to take our suffering and in it find ourselves as just part of the people of this hurting world we live in. This is exactly what Jesus has done for us. He left the pleasures and splendors of heaven to come and enter into our world of hurt and pain. Jesus came as one of us and lived among the sick, the hurting and dying and grieving people. He did not promise to take them out of their misery but instead told them that there in the very darkness of it all, there would be light, there would be hope. Jesus came so that those who suffered here might be in awe of the mercy of God which met them right in the midst of their pain and their struggles and gave them a promise to be with them in this life and offered them hope in the life to come. This life is the life of crosses, a life where the Judge of all took upon himself our judgment out of his great mercy for us so that we might never stand in judgment of others because as God has offered us mercy, we too are to offer others mercy. If we, like the children of Jezebel, refuse to repent of our doing works which do not offer mercy then we, like them, will face judgment instead of mercy.
There was still hope for the rest of the church at Thyatira because not all of them learned what the living Christ calls, “the deep things of Satan.” The deep things of Satan might refer to many different things but perhaps this refers to the lie that we do not have to live by the fear of God. If we live with a healthy fear of God then no other instructions are really necessary. But if we don’t have a healthy fear of God, we will refuse to listen to God, listening instead to the voices of our desires that call to us, longings that warp true beliefs into wrong mindsets. There were those at Thyatira who lived by that fear perhaps because in a time of sickness of distress they found that God, in his mercy, had given them a second chance or a way out of their dilemma. No one wants hardships but it is only then that we find ourselves longing for the mercy of God like no other time. As we experience mercy at just the time that it was so desperately needed, when that time has been seared into our memory, then God calls us to go and offer to someone else an act of mercy to someone who stands in need of it. This is the work that we are called to be about as citizens of the kingdom which is made up of priests. As his priests God invites those who love him to work together with him in doing good, the good works which are the very light of the world. The living Christ tells those at Thyatira that to hold fast to what they have until he comes again. He further goes on to give them a promise which begins by saying that this promise is for “the one who conquers and the one who keeps his works to the end…” This is different from all of the addresses to the rest of the seven churches because here the promise is not only to those who conquers but further for those who keep on doing the works of the living Christ to the end. This seems to be addressing the faction of Jezebel who were sitting back enjoying every pleasure and sensual desire because surely that is what heavens like, right? The living Christ says, no, the pleasures of heaven are for those who keep on working with God, doing good, offering mercy to those who weep now because this is the way evil is overcome, this is the way we overcome the world.
We are told that what the living Christ promises those who keep on, keeping on, doing his works, is that we will share his final authority. We are told that what will be given to the one who works right up to their end here on earth is that they will have authority over the nations even as the living Christ received authority from his Father. This is a quote from the second Psalm that was long used to describe the rule of the Messiah when he would at last come to rule.Yet, what we are told here is that the living Christ is now going to share that authority with us. So, yes, we are promised that we will rule and reign with Christ in the age to come but only if we continue in offering mercy to all just as Christ offered mercy to all upon the cross. This is a promise offered by our Heavenly Father to us by his mercy, not a position that we can demand be given to us as if we somehow deserved it. And there is more because the living Christ assures us that we will also be given the bright morning star. As we learn in the thirty-eighth chapter of Job, the morning stars sang at the beginning of creation. What this tells us is that we are going to be given a new creation, a new world where weeping will be no more and the mercy of God will have defeated evil forever. This is the hope which lies beyond these days of suffering. All praise to Jesus! Amen!
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