Revelation 2:18-29

Mark Smith preaching from Revelation 2:18-29

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Our passage this morning is in Revelation chapter 2. If you want to flip there on your phones, or if you want to, the Bibles are just outside uh nowadays, but uh yeah, we're gonna be reading from uh Revelation chapter 2, verse 18. So let's uh let's read it together here. I'll check it out. It says, And to the angel of the church in Thyatira, write, the words of the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and whose feet are like burnished bronze. I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first. But I have this against you that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality. Behold, I will throw her onto a sick bed, and those who commit adultery with her, I will throw into great tribulation unless they repent of her works. And I will strike her children dead, and all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works. But to the rest of you in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching, who have not learned what some call the deep things of Satan. To you I say, I do not lay on you any other burden, only hold fast what you have until I come. The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father. And I will give him the morning star, he who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

SPEAKER_02 2:12

Welcome to you. If you join us while we're singing, my name is Mark. I'm the lead pastor here at City Church. You're very welcome uh to be here with us. Let me commend uh what Marianna was uh announcing uh this morning. If you didn't hear it, we have a brand new prayer ministry. The elders are always down the front uh for counseling and for prayer. Uh, but as more and more people are coming along, uh Marianna uh felt uh called, and indeed it was something that the elders were praying for uh to develop a prayer ministry on a Sunday morning. And so, as she said, volunteers will be over on this side. If you would like any prayer after the service, you can go down to your prayers, uh will be uh will be held with discretion, and uh you can go and speak to somebody over there and have them pray uh for and and with you. And also uh just to say that after the service at around about half past 12, we're gonna have our the first of our two uh new to city meetings. We do these periodically, usually kind of once a term or so. And that is for anybody who's joined City Church over the last little while, basically since the last one happened. So if you're like, I have no idea what this is, then you've probably joined since the last one happened. And we'll be meeting upstairs in the mezzanine for about an hour after the service to hear more information about what it is that City believes and what it would look like to be a uh to be a member uh of City Church. So if you'd like to know that, uh come and join me uh up in the mezzanine, which is out that door up there at half past 12 today, like I say, for about uh an hour. Let me encourage you to turn up Revelation uh chapter two, that passage that Ben read for us. Uh, this is the longest letter of the seven that we've been going through. We're kind of at the halfway point now, the church to the letter in a place called Thyratira, uh, again in uh modern day Turkey. And this church, this letter asks a question of all of us that we instinctively have to have to answer. Maybe you haven't thought about it before, maybe it's just something that you've been uh navigating, but it's something that every church has to contend with, and it's this it is what sort of relationship does the church and do Christians have uh with the outside world and with the the values and belief system of the world around us? Because we're all in the world, you're in the world in uh in your in your work and in college and uh and in your family life. And so the question then is the cultural values that our society has, uh to what extent do we accept those and to what extent do we reject them? And there's always been a kind of pendulum swing in various churches, various Christians, uh, at various times in history. And so you may know some churches and some Christians where the the disposition essentially to uh to oppose everything that the culture offers. If it's coming from society, we're against it. Okay? We stand in opposition to everything that's going on in the world. And we kind of we pull up the drawbridge and we want to keep everybody safe. And so we have this kind of uh this defensive posture against uh the uh the wider society. And then there's another extreme which it says, well, well, actually, we want to we want to welcome and affirm and invite in everything. We want to celebrate whatever the culture is bringing to us. And so there is a um, there's almost like there's no membrane uh between the church and the wider society. It's just we exist to be cheerleaders for whatever the world is is doing, and we want to participate in the things that they that the world considers celebratory or cool in order that we might be celebrated or regarded as cool. Now, we don't exist on either one of those extremes, I don't think, and I don't think that most Christians do. Most Christians try to approach it at least with a degree of thoughtfulness, which is to say, well, actually, yes, there are some things that we can accept and celebrate for sure, and then there are some things that we want to oppose, that we want to stand against, and it's good to stand against them. But have you ever thought about how you navigate that? What are some of the guiding principles for for working that out? The issue in Thyrotira is kind of the mirror image of the letter to the church in Ephesus, the very first letter of our series, right over here, the symbol of the tree. The church in Ephesus had taken that defensive posture. Okay, they had uh they had tightened up their theology, they knew what it was that they believed, and so they kept everybody safe and kept the world out. Thyroid is moreover on this end. Thyratara is accepting of everything that's coming in. They're lacking in discernment, and what they're lacking in is courage. Courage to say, no, no, that's that's actually not right. That's not worth celebrating, that's not what the Bible teaches. The church in Thyroti had not lost its love, it's lost its courage. They had become so loving that they never confronted anyone. They never confronted any false teaching, any sinful ideas, any destructive leadership or practices. And as a result, Jesus says, Oh, you've been you've been seduced. You've been seduced by teaching and by practices that are ultimately dishonoring to Jesus. Now I ask yourself, how does that happen? How does that happen in a church community? Because I suspect that a church doesn't wake up one morning and we all collectively decide, you know what, I'm going to uh abandon Jesus. We're all going to abandon Jesus and we're going to uh take pride in uh sin. No, that's that compromise begins much earlier. Do you know how it starts? It starts when the approval of Jesus becomes less important than the approval of others. I feel that. It starts when belonging, being part of the structures of our culture of society, when that becomes more important than faithfulness. It starts when avoiding conflict, avoiding those uneasy social situations, displaces the importance of standing for the truth. It starts when we fear losing something because obedience is costly. And it starts slowly, and we justify it in our own minds, and we lose our courage. The church in Thyre Tire was listening to the wrong voices, and it was being led astray into sinful practices. But before Jesus addresses their behavior, he reminds them who he is. Each one of the letters does this. He has a different description of himself. You can go back and read at the start of each of the letters. He describes himself in different ways, and and each of the descriptions of himself kind of match up with uh with what is being um with what is being talked about in the body of the letter. First of all, he describes himself as the son of God. Now, in Thyrotara, uh the patron deity was the god Apollo, who was the son of the god Zeus. Apollo was worshipped as the son of God, and social life, economic life, political, and cultural life revolved around that. And Jesus comes along and says, No, no, your ultimate allegiance is to me. I am the son of the one true and living God. He then goes on to say that he is the one who has eyes like a flame of fire. Why does he have eyes like fire? Well, it's a it's an evocative image of being able to see below the surface, to be able to see beneath external appearance, external reputations, apparent health within a church community, public image. You go and you go to the doctor looking for a scan, everything looks okay on the surface, and then uh he puts you into that giant poliment and does the MRI scan and sees below the surface what is really going on. Jesus is saying, I have that sort of perception for this church, for every church, for you. Because I am the one who sees below the surface. And then he says, I'm the one who have who has feet like burnished bronze, that is, bronze metal that has just been freshly refined and strengthened in the fire. It's probably picking up an image from uh from the book of Daniel, from Daniel chapter 3, but it is a symbol of unwavering, unshakable authority and judgment. He is saying that his verdict is the one that matters. Which means that the question for the Christians in Thyratara, and the question for us this morning, is not quite so much what does the culture think about us, what do our friends think about us, what do the influential voices around us think about us, but what does Jesus, the one who sees all, the one whose judgment is final, what is his verdict of us? Now, as we get into it, he does first recognize that there's something really encouraging about this church before looking deeper and seeing things that are deeply concerning. But first, let's look at the encouragement. This is a church that is marked by love. That's our first point. This is a church that's marked by love. Do we want City Church to be a church that's marked by love? Yes, that would be nice. More of that, please. And Thyratara was that. He begins. He says, I know your works, your love, your faith, your service, your patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first. So you're leveling up, you're doing better and better. It's actually one of the strongest commendations in all of the letters to the seven churches. And again, it's a mirror image to Ephesus. Ephesus started loving, started really zealous, and then Jesus comes and says, You've forgotten it. You've left your your love behind. You've become defensive, you've become reactionary. He comes to Thyrotira and says, in love sticks, you guys are doing better and better and better. This church was loving more, serving more, enduring more. Jesus genuinely commends them and delights in what he sees. This is something that we ought to reckon with, right? Are our love works increasing? Our service, our endurance. Can we say that a city church uh moves into its thirteenth year from September? Are our works of service and endurance and love increasing? Jesus sees it and commends it. It is entirely possible that you would go to the church in Thyratara and you would come away saying, those people are so nice. Those people are so nice. Everything that I said, they smiled affirmingly, they nodded. They were great people to be around. The sermon was encouraging and celebratory and motivating. Not like those sermons at City Church Dublin. There was no negative vibes. I think that's part of the problem in Thyrotara. Not just to kind of now turn the good thing into a bad thing, but I do think that it's part of the issue. The issue, I think, is that niceness can be a snare. This is something that various writers have observed. Somebody like C.S. Lewis certainly spoke about this and observed that people often confuse niceness for goodness, for genuine virtue, that a person can be pleasant and agreeable and compassionate and respectable, and still actually very far from God. Still actually maybe not very good, is a quote from Lewis. He says, a world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world, and might be even more difficult to save. Nice people don't know why they need Jesus because they're so nice. Like Glinda from Wicked. Some people over here get that reference. That's okay. They're my people over there. Me and Isla will come over later. Completely devoid of eternal, weighty truth. Jesus is not looking to make us nice people. Jesus is not looking to commend nice churches. He's looking for faithful churches. Churches, yes, that are growing in love and service and patient endurance, but are doing so with an unwavering commitment to him. The one whose feet of burnished bronze. And to think that niceness is the same as goodness or true virtue. Because niceness will stop you from having hard conversations because you want to be nice. It will stop you from encouraging godliness where you see ungodliness. It will stop you from confronting falsehood where you see error because you want to be nice and seen as a nice person. One of the little uh phrases that um that me and the other elders have come to kind of um half jokingly but somewhat seriously, begin to kind of say to one another uh is run to the tension. Because oftentimes if we feel tension with one another, and that does happen from time to time, you kind of run away because you just you don't want to you want to upset your friends, like your brothers and sisters. But running to the tension, having those difficult conversations actually creates a deeper unity, a deeper understanding, a deeper commitment to Jesus. We're not doing it perfectly. Love and goodness will and should motivate us to do all of these things. And courage, yes, should always be wedded to gentleness and all of the other gifts of the Spirit. I'm not saying that, okay, well, if this is the one sermon that you hear from Mar from me this morning, you just go around sledgehammering people with the truth. That is not what I am saying. That all of those things, yes, should be tempered with gentleness, but often we can lose our courage, can't we? Jesus looks at this church and how it acts in the world, and he says, Yeah, look, your love, your love matters, your service matters, your compassion matters. But they're all nothing if you've abandoned faithfulness to me, if you've taken on error, Ephesus had truth without love. Thyatira had love without a courageous commitment to the truth. And the healthy church needs both. That's why these letters are in the same chapter in the Bible. Because I have been saying since we started this series, these seven letters give us a rounded picture of the church in every age. And so we don't want to, we don't want to fall into the ditch on one side of the road in Ephesus, but nor do we want to fall into the ditch on the other side of the road with Thyatira. Because without this courage, this commitment to who Jesus is and what he teaches us, Jesus says, You be seduced. You can be seduced by a poisonous tolerance. And this is our second point. They were a church that was seduced by tolerance. Um quick sidebar on that word tolerance. Because tolerance is a word that's changed its meaning. It's changed its meaning over the last 30 years or so. Tolerance used to mean, uh, like the old quote that was attributed to Voltaire uh I disagree with you, uh, I disagree with what you say, but I defend to the death your right to say it. Right? So that's uh disagreement at the level of ideas, tolerance at the level of persons. So I tolerate you because you're an you're a human being with value made in the image of God, right? But disagreement at the level of Ideas. Now, tolerance today has changed to say that it's um well, what a person thinks and who a person is are kind of all mixed up together. So to disagree with a position or a belief or an action that somebody is or does is to not tolerate them as a person, right? Now, what I'm talking about here is disagreement at the level of ideas. It's the old form of tolerance. The church in Thyratar had been seduced by lies. Jesus is not saying anything about hating people. He's saying about no, we must oppose ideas and oppose the people who teach those ideas, but there's still a uh a loving commitment to actually their image bearers of God, and we'll see some evidence of Jesus' mercy as we go through through the letter. But notice what Jesus primarily calls out. It's not really that this teacher, this Jezebel, is doing false teaching and uh and causing sinful actions to occur in the church. The first thing that he calls out is you're tolerating it. But I have this against you, verse 20, that you tolerate that woman, Jezebel. The church is allowing it to continue unchecked. That's the thing that Jesus is taking umbrage with. The issue is not simply the false teaching, but that the false teaching is tolerated in the church. Not simply that there's error, but it's tolerated error. Everybody seems to be okay with it. It's not simply that there is compromise in the church, but that it's tolerated compromise. The church has mistaken tolerance for genuine love. Who is this? Jezebel, this woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. Most likely it's not her name. Again, Jesus is probably referencing an Old Testament reference. Uh, Jezebel was a uh a queen who had married in to the people of Israel. She was a foreign queen and she was extraordinarily wicked. Uh, you can read her about her during the ministry of Elijah in the book of Kings. And she seduced her husband Ahab and she seduced Israel into the worship of the false god Baal and into idolatry. And Jesus is essentially saying, This woman, she's doing the same thing. I notice Jesus says she calls herself a prophetess. So she's claiming authority, she's claiming special divine insight, she's claiming to speak for God. And the people are listening. Of the seven letters, this is the only one that calls out a false teacher by name. Yeah, it's okay, it's a pseudonym, but Jesus has a particular person in mind, it seems, here, in the church in Thyatara. This person has influence, there's a person in leadership. And so it's worth noting before we move on how leadership can be used in the church to harm the church's witness and to harm people within the church. Over and over again, churches become beguiled by gifted teachers, popular leaders, influential thinkers, personalities. And many of whom sadly end up leaving God's people away from Jesus and towards themselves and towards their own following. You may have experienced this in your in your life, and it begins with a kind of an uneasy feeling that something's not quite right. You notice a lack of accountability, of secrecy. You notice that there's some manipulation going on, an overbearingness. Excuses are often made for leaders like this because their ministry appears successful. The person's influential, the crowds are growing, the results look impressive. The dollars or the euros or the pounds are rolling into the church's bank account. And these scandals happen not because nobody knew, they happened because nobody wanted the conflict. That nobody wanted to have the awkward conversation, that nobody wanted to challenge the leader. Thyatara's problem was not a lack of love. It was a lack of courage. You tolerate that woman, Jezebel, and as a result, they had been seduced. Now, why is it that her teaching was so attractive? Why did it garner such a following? Well, the answer lies in the culture around them. In the city of Thyotara. Thyotara, like many cities in the ancient world, its economic life was built around guilds. Guilds are basically like trade unions today, right? You needed to be part of the union or the trading guild in order to be able to work, in order to be able to advance in your career. And those guilds, those unions, were always bound up with false worship, with the worship of a pagan deity, with idolatrous rituals, and with sexual immorality. They were necessary for advancement, for social networking, for business opportunities. So if you were in ancient Thyatara, you go to dinner with your boss, and he wants to talk about your place within the organization, opportunities that might be coming your way. And as the food arrives, he looks at you and says, Why don't you propose a toast to our patron Apollo? Or to the god of wine, Bacchus, pour out a libation. And you're sitting there thinking, I'm I'm here with somebody who has power to make my life better. And I don't really like social awkwardness. And he's saying, Why don't you do this? What are you gonna do? Um it's very easy. Jezebel, like the Nicolaitans before in previous letters, was about making Christianity just a little bit more accommodating, just a little bit easier, less costly, less countercultural, less defensive. You can just imagine the church in imagine her teaching, the church in Ephesus, they're actually they're so bigoted, constantly kind of telling them what they're against. Whereas we, you know, Jesus calls to love everyone. And you know, if that means kind of loving your boss and uh and affirming him, and you know, maybe he might be invited into our community at some point, it just makes it a little bit more palatable. That's why it was so seductive. False teaching rarely announces itself as false teaching, it presents itself as wisdom, it presents itself as a balanced approach, it presents itself as compassion, it presents itself as nuance, or that the thing that you're engaging in that it doesn't really matter, that everyone does it. What are you tempted to tolerate that you don't have the courage to root out? That might even be true in your own life. That actually need to face up that there are things that you're allowing to stew away in there that need to be confronted, that you need to have courage to face up to, to own up to, to, and maybe the first step is actually to go and speak to an elder or to somebody in the prayer ministry team and say, I have lacked the courage to confront this way of thinking, this way of acting in my life. Please, would you pray for me and help me begin to address those things? What are we tolerating as a church? We're tolerating the things that our world and things that were going on entire time. Are we tolerating drunkenness? Are we tolerating sexual immorality? I hope that you know me well enough to know that I'm not just a moralistic uh uh preacher and always just kind of laying down the law. But what are we tolerating that we don't have the courage to confront? Jesus is the one who has the eyes of flaming fire. He sees it all, and he would call us from our destructive tolerance of sin and of falsehood. Jesus later on in the in the letter, in uh in verse 24, describes the teaching of this prophetess, this Jezebel, as the deep things, maybe she was claiming a greater insight, hidden knowledge. Lots of people in the ancient world were doing this, a deeper wisdom that uh that God had only given to them. How do you know you're in a cult? You know, this is this is cult 101, that you got a leader who's saying, Don't listen to anybody else, just listen to me. I've got I've actually got the the real insight. This is what you really need to know. I've got some secrets. It's how you this is how abusive leaders actually uh garner a following. And maybe you've experienced this, I know that I have. They'll start telling you secrets. They'll love bomb you. You know what love bombing is, right? They'll tell you how brilliant you are, you're the most effective server, you're the best person here. Um more than uh X, Y, and Z person. So do the love bombing. You're really getting it, you're really, you're really growing. So you know, all of this stuff. And then, and then it's the secrets. Let me let me tell you, let me tell you what I'm what I'm thinking at the moment. Or let me tell you something about this other person. Deeper thing. Do you know what Jesus calls them? The deep things of Satan. The one who comes to kill and steal and destroy. Brothers and sisters, beware of a teacher who says, I know you've grown up believing this, but actually, let me tell you a different. Jesus' response is devastating. What they were calling, perhaps, the deep things of God, he calls the deep things of Satan. Christianity is not a secret religion, it's not a mystery cult, it's not built on hidden knowledge. There are no inner circles, it's not Masonic in that sense. C. S. Lewis wrote a tremendous essay on the uh called the inner ring. And again, just on the kind of tempting, beguiling nature of wanting to be on the inside and have that kind of hidden knowledge. Because you can use it as power against people who are on the on the outside in a way of kind of bolstering your own identity. Biblical Christianity is not that, but that temptation does infect the church for sure. Biblical Christianity is not based on secret revelations or spiritual elites. Indeed, Christ in his own ministry. He came publicly, lived publicly, died publicly, rose again publicly. It's not a secret religion. We do not need to kind of, we do not need kind of decoders to kind of look through and go, okay, well, what is the hidden meaning in the in the Hebrew here? It's publicly disclosed. The gospel is proclaimed openly to the world. Beware those who tell you otherwise. And notice this teaching doesn't end just with an intellectual change. It actually ends in our actions. What we do in the world is always fueled by what we believe about the world and what we believe about ourselves. And what it was doing in Thyatara is that this error, this false teaching, was leading to immorality, to idolatry, to what Jesus calls adultery. Now, it may well be literal adultery that this teacher was sleeping around with other people in the church. I think probably Jesus is actually picking up a really evocative word from the Old Testament for idolatry. That when the children of Israel, the children of God, as we are here today, gathered in the church, were turning away from God and worshipping false idols, the Old Testament image for that is that of adultery, of faithlessness to God, who is the uh the husband of his people. You see that played out in the book of Hosea, the minor prophet, who is actually told, commanded by God to marry a woman who would go off and who would sleep around. Gomer. Why? So that Hosea would come to really appreciate what it is like for God to remain faithful to his people despite their faithlessness. That is what was happening in Thyatara. False teaching is never merely intellectual, it always reshapes our hearts. The lies that they embraced were leading them away from Jesus. And so Jesus asked this church, why are you tolerating this? Why are you allowing this voice to keep on pulling people away from me? Why are you confusing love with passivity? Why are you sacrificing faithfulness in the name of tolerance? But there is mercy here, even in Jesus' words. He begins in his judgment of them. Verse 21, he says, I have given her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality. Behold, I will throw her onto a sick bed, 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. So where's the mercy in that mark? It's all the way through it. I have given her time to repent. It doesn't just immediately come in. It's not one strike in your eyed. I've given her time. And her heart is hard, and actually she needs to move on now. I've given her time to repent. He had been patient, but she has refused. His judgment is severe on her because her false teaching is destroying people, as false teaching always does. He offers mercy to her followers, what he calls her her children. By beginning to say, he says, first of all, before he says, I'll strike her followers dead, her children dead, he says, I'm going to throw them into tribulation so that they repent. So I'm going to put them into a difficult situation to try and wake them up from their stupor because they're just blindly, deafly, just stumbling into more and more error. And often what suffering does is it's used by God to wake us up. And Jesus said, I'm going to do that. I'm going to wake these people up and I'm going to encourage them to repent. It's mercy. Going to give them time. They've got another chance. I hope that they don't end up like the leader. Because the judgment is terrible. This is the tragedy of Thyatara. And at this point, we might expect Jesus to prescribe some sophisticated solution, a new strategy, a new program, a deeper spiritual experience. Maybe he would come with his own insights. But Jesus offers none of those things. The answer to seduction is not innovation. It's perseverance. The answer is not discovering something deeper, but holding fast to what they already have. And this brings us to Jesus' final word. To those who are faithful in Thyartara. He calls them to courageous faithfulness. Look at what he says. But hold fast, verse 25, to what you have until I come. Cling to me, Jesus says. The answer to seduction is not novelty. It's clinging on to what we have received. The Christian life often feels less dramatic than we imagine. Most faithfulness is just simply a refusal to let go of Jesus. Somebody described, and I think very aptly the life of a Christian as long obedience in the same direction. That's basically kind of it. It's long obedience to Jesus. Plodding along with him one step at a time, continuing to obey Jesus, continuing to trust Jesus, continuing to believe that he is who he says he is, that he sees you and that he knows you and that he loves you in whatever circumstance you find yourself in. Even when compromise seems easier, even when faithfulness is costly, even when the culture offers us ease and congratulation and celebration, if only we were to follow it. Just two in in this letter, he says, verse 26, To the one who conquers, 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 earth and pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself received authority from my father. What is he saying? He's saying, Hold on to me, persevere with me, and you will reign with me. These verses that I just read are steeped in the language of Psalm 2. Psalm 2 is a Psalm where God says, I have enthroned my king. He is my beloved son. And there is a commandment there to say, Come, come and cling on to the son, kiss the son, lest he be angry with you and you perish in the way, but blessed are those who take refuge in him. He is the one who executes perfect judgment. These verses are steeped in that kingly language. And what is Jesus saying? Jesus is not applying these verses to himself. He's saying, to the one who conquers, he will reign. She will reign with me. Why keep on going? Why keep on going? Because it's costly? Why cling to Jesus even when there's so much celebration and advancement and affirmation out there? Why turn aside from all of it? Because you will reign forever with him. The victory of Jesus. It becomes the victory of his people. His kingdom becomes our kingdom. And then he says, finally, he says, and I will give him or her the morning star. He who has an ear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches. You'll receive the morning star. Well, uh, where's where's Sam? You're over there. Hey Sam, what's the morning star?

unknown 44:28

Venus.

SPEAKER_02 44:29

Venus! It's the astrophysicist over there. Um, so you're gonna receive uh a planet that reigns uh acid um as your reward for persevering with Jesus. Excellent. That sounds fantastic, doesn't it? Uh you can hear more about Venus. There's gonna be prayer over here, astrophysics lessons over here with Sameon. Or maybe Jesus is referring to something else because actually later on in the book of Revelation, in Revelation 22, right at the end of the book, in verse 6, he says, Jesus says, I am the bright and morning star. It's me. It's me. You'll have me. I will give myself to you. A reward and greatest gift. The greatest gift of our salvation is not heaven, it's not authority, it is not blessing, it is not health, it is not riches, it's Jesus. Jezebel offered acceptance, Jesus gives you himself. Jezebel offered comfort, Jesus gives you himself. Jezebel offered advancement, Jesus gives you himself. The tragedy of Thyotar is not that they stopped being loving, it's that they'd lost their courage. They became unwilling to oppose what Jesus opposed to challenge, what Jesus had to come then and to challenge. Unwilling to confront what is harming the church, harming its witness and harming those within it. So the question that Thyatara forces us to ask is what am I tolerating that Jesus opposes? What voices am I allowing to shape me? What compromises do I justify? And the answer is not to become harsh, the answer is not to become combative or suspicious or defensive. The answer is to a courageous faithfulness to Jesus, no matter what. A courageous faithfulness that becomes possible when we remember who is speaking, that he is the Son of God, whose eyes see perfectly into each of our hearts, into each of our circumstances. The one whose judgment is true and just and gracious and merciful, the one who sees both every compromise and every act of faithfulness, the one who has given himself for the church and who is Lord of all who and who invites you to sit with him on his throne forever. Every compromise ultimately asks, what are you afraid of losing? Jesus says, Hold fast to me, and you will lose nothing that matters eternally. And you will gain everything that does. For the reward at the end of the Christian life is not merely a place. It's a person, the morning star, Jesus Christ Himself. Let us pray. To see clearly into our own hearts, into our own thinking, our own ways of of acting. And to reckon with ourselves those ways in which we take the easier path. Help us to know the beauty, the goodness, the realness, the certainty of our future hope that clinging to Jesus means that we will reign with him forever and that he will be ours. Help us as a as a church not to become coldly defensive, nor unthinkingly open and affirming. But to be wise, to be gracious in our commitment to the truth, loving, in our holding out of the gospel of the Lord Jesus. Help us, we pray, in his holy name. Amen.