Well, we are continuing the series
that I started inadvertently a few weeks ago on the letters
to the churches in chapters two and three of Revelation. Letters
to seven real historical churches, but symbolical churches, because
they cover everything that is a feature in the church from
when Christ ascended to when he'll come again. These letters
apply to all true churches throughout history from Christ's ascension.
And what is the church? The church is the bride of Christ,
it's the people of Christ, it's the people who believe the gospel
of God's grace and not some gospel distorted by men who twist the
truth to make it say what they want them to say. but they believe
what God has said in his word. And that church, that company
of people, small as it may be at the moment, is the manifestation
of the kingdom of God in this world. The manifestation of the
kingdom of God in this world is the church of God. And it's
against Satan's kingdom, which is the kingdom of Antichrist.
This world in which we are is the kingdom of Satan. And the
line of separation, as I've said several times before, but it's
worth underlining, the line of separation between the kingdom
of God And the kingdom of this world, the kingdom of Satan,
the line of separation is the righteousness and justice of
God. In this world's kingdom, the
righteousness and justice of God is irrelevant. It has nothing
to say to anybody. They don't want anything to do
with it. But in the Kingdom of God, it's absolutely vital. For God cannot be God and allow
anything which violates His righteousness and His justice. So how is it
established? It is established in the doing
and the dying of the Messiah, the Son of God, the Christ of
God, the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the line of separation.
The world thinks that Jesus, a lot of the religious world
thinks that Jesus was a very good man who came and did good
things and they're happy to say he's got some good things to
teach us. But that's not the point. The point that God reveals
in his word is that the difference between the kingdom of God and
the kingdom of Satan is the righteousness of God and the justice of God
that Christ has established and accomplished for his people.
It's established and accomplished and satisfied this righteousness
and justice of God, how? By his redeeming blood. He had
to die. Death was essential. Only by
death could the justice of God be satisfied. He had to shed
his blood. It's his precious blood that
he shed for the sins of his people, to establish righteousness and
justice, that God might be just in being strictly condemning
and punishing of sin, and yet justify the ungodly. Justify
sinners like you and me who believe the gospel. Justify, justify,
not just slightly improve, make fit for God. Make us the righteousness
of God in Him. This division This division between
the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Satan is not just something
that we've recently thought up. This is the underlying narrative
to the whole of world history. If you would understand, truly,
world history to any degree, you only truly understand it
when you understand the demarcation between the Kingdom of God and
the Kingdom of this world, the Kingdom of Satan. And it's no
more true than it is today. God speaks from heaven by His
Son. God, who at sundry times and
in diverse manners spake unto the fathers by the prophets,
has in these last days spoken unto us by His Son. He speaks
through His Word. He is the Word of God. He speaks
through His Word and His Holy Spirit comes and applies that
Word to His people. And He speaks in these chapters
2 and 3 of Revelation to His church in this world. He speaks
by His Son, the manifestation of God to His people in this
world. He speaks a message of commendation. He speaks a message of rebuke.
He speaks a message of encouragement. he speaks a message of warning,
in varying degrees, for varying situations. To the church at
Ephesus, he speaks a message that they've done so many things
well, but the vital thing, the one thing needful, the one thing
without which were nothing but noise, their love, their first
love, their love for Christ, their heart love for Christ,
had gone, and they needed to get it back. To the church at
Smyrna, he speaks no rebuke at all, but only alerts them to
the persecution which is coming and to be ready for it and to
trust him to keep them through it. To the church at Pergamos
he commends them for good things but also rebukes them because
they have been lax in discipline, in allowing people to remain
associated with them in fellowship in the eyes of the world around,
people who blatantly deny the truth of the gospel of grace.
and the way in which that truth of gospel grace causes the people
of God to live. And now we come to Thyatira.
All these churches, seven of them. Why seven? Seven, God's
number of perfection. It's symbolical. Just as there
are seven visions in the book of Revelation. Just as Christ
walks among the seven golden candlesticks. This is symbolical
of the Church of God in all ages. But these actual literal seven
churches are in an arc in modern western Turkey, starting at Ephesus
in the southwest and then going north and then starting to arc
backwards towards the area of Galatia which is mid-Turkey.
There's seven churches there. So you say, what's it got to
do with us? today, nearly 2,000 years on, written in A.D. 95, we think, give or take a
year or so, written 1,925 years ago, more or less. But this message
is from Christ, and being the Word of God, it's the unchangeable
Word of God. It doesn't change. Christ, the
same, yesterday, today and forever. The message speaks to us today,
so we need to listen. Because who is the speaker? You
know, with each of these letters we've looked first. Who is the
speaker? Look in verse 18 of chapter 2 of Revelation. And
unto the angel of the church in Thyatira write, These things
saith the Son of God. who hath his eyes like unto a
flame of fire, and his feet like fine brass, the Son of God."
The Son of God. Please, when I say this, please
don't think there's a hint of irreverence in me in saying this.
But please don't get the idea that when it talks about the
Son of God, that Jesus is God's little boy. Please don't think
that. The Son of God does not mean
that. The Son of God means God become man to manifest, to make
known God to men. That's it. The unknowable, unseeable
God. No man has seen God at any time,
said John in the first chapter of his Gospel. No man has seen
a God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is
in the bosom of the Father, He has made Him known. He has manifested
Him. God who became man to manifest
God to man. He is the expression of the mind
and the being of God. As Hebrews 1 says, He is the
express image of the person of God. Look at the other titles
in the other letters. In verse 1, to the church at
Ephesus, he is God in the midst of his churches. He walks in
the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. This is God speaking
who is in the midst of his churches in this world. Now, you know
he said, where two or three are gathered in my name, there am
I in the midst. He walks in the God of the universe,
the God who upholds all things by the word of the power of the
Lord Jesus Christ, the God who created, the God who is infinite
and unknowable, yet in Christ is the one who walks in the midst
of his churches and speaks to his churches. Look at verse 8.
to Smyrna. These things saith the first
and the last, the beginning of all things and the ending of
all things, the one who is the cause and the winding up of all
things, which was dead and is alive. This is the sovereign
creator. You cannot get higher. What does
it say in the epistles about the Lord Jesus Christ? That in
all things the Lord Jesus Christ should have the preeminence.
He has honoured His Word above all His name. Who is the Word?
The Christ of God is the Word of God. This is the one who is
the sovereign creator. And look, it says, which was
dead. which was dead. He died. He became a man that he might
die for the suffering of death, because only that way could he
redeem his people from the curse of the law. And in redeeming
his people from the curse of the law, he has justified and
qualified his people for eternal glory. This is the God who is
speaking. In verse 12, to Pergamos, these
things saith he which hath the sharp sword with two edges. What's
the sharp sword with two edges? It's the Scriptures. The sword
of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. This book, as God has
given it to us and has preserved it, as Peter's epistle said,
holy men, born along by the Holy Spirit, moved by the Holy Spirit,
this book God has preserved for us. This is the sword of the
Spirit. one of the weapons of the warfare
with the kingdom of Satan. Thus saith the Word, the Word
of God. And then in verse 18, these things
saith the Son of God. This is the Messiah. From the
beginning God promised the seed of the woman who would come and
who would bruise the head of Satan, defeat Satan in his rebellion
against God. This is the promised Messiah.
This is the messenger of the covenant. This is the Christ
of God who was revealed in chapter 1 of the book of Revelation as
the Ancient of Days, his hair white as snow, the picture of
the Ancient of Days that we saw a few weeks ago in the book of
Daniel. Could any speaker deserve more attention? He's got eyes
like unto a flame of fire. There's no hiding from His gaze. You may think you can do things
in secret and keep them from God. You cannot. Where can I
go from His presence, says Psalm 139? Wherever I go, He is there. He sees all things. There's no
hiding from His gaze. And His feet are like fine brass,
speaking of strength, speaking of... strong metallic strength. There's no dodging his justice.
You cannot dodge his justice. This is our God. This is our
God who is speaking. This is our God who is a consuming
fire. A consuming fire but the friend
of sinners. The friend of sinners. Is that
not amazing? You think of the huge great difference
that there is. A consuming fire but the friend
of sinners. He has irresistible power. but
He's merciful and gracious. God, who is irresistible in power,
is merciful and gracious. This is He who has promised to
be in the midst of gatherings such as ours today. And I know
there's just a handful of us here, but there are many, many
more. Many, many more outside of here.
There are many more who are watching this with us now, and will watch
the recording later. He is with us now. Now let's
look at the situation. Again, I'm following the same
pattern that we've done with the other letters. What's the
situation in this place, Thyatira? Look it up in your Bible maps,
you'll see it's there. I've already said you can visit
some of these places, Ephesus is there, Pergamos I believe,
am I right, Pergamos is... No, Smyrna is Izmir, modern-day
Izmir, I think. Thyatira, it's a place, you can
go to it. Right to the angel of the church
of Thyatira. The angel, the messenger, the
pastor. In each of these churches, God
had raised up a man. to be the one who delivers his
message to the church, and there may be others that helped, there
may be others who preached and taught, there may be others who
were elders and deacons and other offices in the churches, depending
on the numbers and the need, but there was one pastor per
church. You know, I really do have a
problem with these co-pastor type of situations. I just do
not see it in Scripture. God gives his message to one
man, Others can be in accord with that, but you don't have
a committee of leadership. He gives his message to the pastor
of the church. Now Thyatira was a prosperous
city of trade, like the other ones that we've seen already.
It was a prosperous city of trade in a world without God. There
was no thought for God there. There was complete disregard
for divine righteousness and justice. The people who lived
there, as in all these cities, were rebels against the rule
of God. They were prosperous. They were
lovers of sinful pleasure. They indulged without restraint
in the works of the flesh. It sounds exactly, doesn't it,
like the world that we live in today. God has left his church
in the world, in wilderness separation from it. If you read Revelation
chapter 12, and he's put the church in a place in this world,
because Jesus said, I pray not that you would take the church
out of the world, but you would keep them from the evil. And
in the place where God puts His people, He feeds and sustains
the church by His Word and His Spirit until Christ returns in
final judgment. Man shall not live by bread alone,
the food that we eat. Man shall not live by bread alone,
but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. God feeds
His people with His Word, and what What blessing we have in
these days. In days gone by, when there were
established churches faithful to the truth, of which there
are so few we see in the world today, then there was a pastor
preaching to a sizable congregation, mutually supporting one another.
And where has that gone? Well, it's gone. The church is,
as it were, lying dead in the streets. Again, if you read Revelation
11, you see the witness lying dead in the streets. The world
doesn't need anything to do with the Church of God. God, but God
feeds and sustains His people in this world, in their separation
from the world, until Christ returns in final judgment. And
because the church, by virtue of the teaching of the Word of
God, we see the things of God, and the righteousness of God,
and the justice of God, completely differently to the world around
us. Between the Church of God, the kingdom of Satan in the world,
and the kingdom of this world, there is a conflict of ideas.
And however much you think you can smooth it over and live with
it and get on well, you will find sooner or later You really
will. The days in which we live are
very good days for showing this truth. You will find a conflict
of ideas because you think, if you're a believer, you think
like the kingdom of God. You think like the citizens of
the kingdom of God. You cannot do otherwise. If you're
a true believer, you have the Spirit of Christ. If you don't
have the Spirit of Christ, you are none of His. If you don't
have that Spirit of God by the new birth, you are none of His.
But having Him, there will be a conflict of ideas. There will
be a conflict of principles. Even with loved ones, ones close
to you, if they're in this world, they don't think like you. in
behavior, the things you want to do and they want to do, you'll
find increasingly that you're on a parallel track. The kingdom
of God is a parallel track to the kingdom of this world, seemingly
going along side by side, but I tell you, they will diverge
infinitely, one to hell and one to eternal glory to heaven. It's
a sobering thought, but that's the situation. The situation
we're in is very similar. to the church at Thyatira, and
all these others, in terms of being the manifestation of the
kingdom of God in this world. But Christ commends them. He
says in verse 19, he says, I know thy works, and charity, and service,
and faith, and thy patience, and thy works, and the last to
be more than the first. The works, I think he speaks
of when he says, I know thy works. What is the work that we should
do to do the work of God? The Jews asked Jesus, and he
said in John 6, 29, This is the work of God, that you believe
on him whom he hath sent. This is a work of faith, believing
Christ. And people who have been given
faith to believe the gospel, to trust Christ for redemption
from the law's curse, These are the elect of God. Knowing, brethren,
your election of God, says Paul to the Thessalonians. In 2 Thessalonians
2.13 he says this, Knowing this, brethren, beloved of God, for
God has from the beginning chosen you to salvation. How? Through
sanctification of the Spirit, setting apart by the Spirit of
God from the rest and belief of the truth. I know you're the
elect of gods, says Paul, because you've believed the gospel of
grace. There was heartfelt love for Christ. I know thy works,
and thy charity, thy love, and thy service, and thy faith, and
thy patience, and thy works, that last more than the first.
Unlike Ephesus, which had lost its first love, these people,
it would seem, served the cause of Christ in this world. And
what's the cause of Christ in this world? the declaration of
the gospel of His grace. This is what the church is given
to do, to lift up the Lord Jesus Christ. I, if I be lifted up,
said Christ will draw all men unto me, all his elect he will
draw unto him. It's a declaration of the gospel
of grace that the church must do, and then be willing to wait
on God. Oh, the blessing of being given
patience by God. Thy patience to wait on God,
to trust Him when things don't seem to be progressing. Do we
trust Him? Do things seem to be progressing?
Do we trust Him that He is coming again? Peter wrote about people
who said, where's the sign of His coming? Is things are just
carrying on like they always have done? But no, He is coming. A day with the Lord is as a thousand
years and a thousand years as a day. And they were growing. Look, he mentions works again,
and I think these are the works that prove the faith. These are
the works of charity and service that prove the work of faith
that was done in them. The last to be more than the
first. It's growing, it's increasing. They were growing in the works
that they did. They were people living in the light and in the
good of gospel salvation. Very commendable. Oh, that that
might be said of us. But, verse 20, notwithstanding,
I have a few things against thee. Look down to verse 23. Because
thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess,
to teach and to seduce my servants, to commit fornication, to eat
things sacrificed unto idols. And I gave her space to repent
of her fornication, and she repented not. Behold, I will cast her
into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great
tribulation, except they repent of their deeds. And I will kill
her children with death, and all the churches shall know that
I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts. And I will give unto
every one of you according to your works." There's a rebuke. Ephesus, the first of the letters,
was doctrinally solid. Very solid. Based on the Word
of God. They'd tried people who said
they were apostles and found them liars and they'd kicked
them out. But they had lost their heart,
love for Christ. They were correct and cold and
objective when it came to doctrine, without any warm spiritual experience. That was the indictment at Ephesus.
The strictness of the letter constrained their behaviour,
rather than, what does the scripture say, the love of Christ. constraineth
us. It's the love of Christ that
constrains, that moulds our behaviour, that moulds our attitudes and
the things that we do. Thyatira seems to have been at
the other end of the spectrum to Ephesus, where it was all
feeling and experience and a lack of objective doctrinal standard. How do we know? They were tolerating
severe deviation. Although they were so warm in
their experience, and faithful, and doing works of charity, yet
they were tolerating severe deviation from God's Word. You know what
God's Word says? Isaiah chapter 8 verse 20, to
the law and to the testimony. If they speak not according to
this Word, it means the Word of God, there is no light in
them. There is no truth in them. You
have to examine what people say by the Word of God. What does
the Scripture say? What does God say in the Scriptures?
Not, what does some man think that they've discovered as a
result of some spiritual experience that they claim. No, don't listen
to that. That's what the charismatics do. That's the great error of
the charismatic movement. They're so full of emotion, there's
no objective scrutiny by the Word of God of the things that
they claim. They're all the time claiming supernatural experiences
and things which are outside of the Word of God. It's grave,
grave error. What did they allow to happen?
They had allowed a woman to preach and teach. I'm sure it means
a literal woman. I doubt whether her name literally
was Jezebel. what the Spirit of God is doing
here is alluding to the wife of evil King Abaham of Israel. Jezebel was that one in the days
of Elijah who'd encouraged the prophets of Baal, the 400 prophets
of Baal that Elijah had slaughtered when he'd had that great confrontation
with them on Mount Carmel. Jezebel was that woman, speaking
of everything that points to idolatry and departure from the
true God. God says to them, you're allowing
a woman to teach spiritual experiences she claims to have had without
the scrutiny and the standard of the Word of God being applied
to it. And she's leading the church and members of the church
into open sin. It seems what she was saying,
look, it says, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit
fornication. Number one, she claimed to be
a preacher, You know, I know in the world in which we live
today, the idea is that diversity of any sort doesn't matter. We
rejoice in the diversity that God has created. Male and female
created He then. This is what the Church of God,
the true Church of God, believes. It has no tolerance for the so-called
tolerance of this evil society in which we live. God created
people, men and women. And when it comes to the church,
God has given certain roles to men that he hasn't given to women,
and vice versa. There's things that the women
can do in the church that I can't do, and vice versa. But teaching
and preaching in the church is absolutely forbidden to women. It just is. You can twist the
word all you like, but you can't get out of it. It's what God
says. I suffer not a woman to teach. We each have different
roles. Men and women have different
roles, but this was one standing up and claiming to be a prophetess,
a preacher, with some spiritual insight to pass on, to teach
and seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things
sacrificed to idols. we can speculate that this is
the sort of thing she was saying. She would say, oh I've had such
deep, deep, deep spiritual experiences, I know so much of the redemption
that Christ has accomplished, because I see how deep is the
sin from which he has saved me, and the way I did that was, I
had to go and commit that sin in order to see how deep and
grave that sin was. In order to experience the power
of redemption from sin, you need to experience its depth firsthand. You need to go and engage in
physical sexual immorality, but also spiritual idolatry, which
itself is spiritual fornication, it's unfaithfulness to the true
God and His Gospel. She and those that followed her
in the church at Thyatira claimed to be in God's kingdom. They
said to the world, we're in this church of Thyatira. But meanwhile,
they were cavorting with Satan's world and Satan's kingdom in
the most debased way. The most debased way, and the
church, the true believers, had let it happen. Notwithstanding,
I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest. You allow
that woman Jezebel. Someone once said, and it's not
clear who said it, you look it up on Wikipedia and you'll struggle
to find whether it was John F. Kennedy or somebody before him,
but he said this, the only thing necessary for the triumph of
evil is for good men to do nothing. The church at Thyatira had done
nothing to stop Jezebel and her followers committing gross acts
of sexual immorality, religious immorality, religious idolatry,
they hadn't put a stop to her. How had they not stopped her?
They hadn't subjected this woman's claims to the standard of God's
Word. That's what they hadn't done.
We're going to sing for our last hymn, How Firm a Foundation,
Ye Saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith in His excellent
Word. What more can He say than to you he has said, you who unto
Jesus for refuge have fled." This is the standard, this is
the objective standard. Any of you that have got good
memories will see that I've left in the little tiny piece by Don
Faulkner that I put in three weeks ago, which is that what's
the standard of our doctrine? It's the Word of God, and nothing
else. Absolutely nothing else. And
which Word of God? This Word of God. Why this Word
of God? Because it's the only version
that we've got that is correctly translated. The vast majority,
I might be doing a disservice to certain, like the American
Standard Version or something like that, but most of the others
have got the thoughts of man in it, rather than the committee
that translated this King James Version, it's as good as it can
get. I know it's not 100% perfect,
There are one or two places where it could have been put better
or differently, but we're aware of those. But the vast majority
of this is the objective, true Word of God, and this is the
standard. Not the thoughts of man that you find in so many
other so-called Bibles. Paul's epistles would have circulated
to Thyatira by A.D. 95. In his epistles, what does
he say? Shall we sin that grace may abound? His letter to the Romans would
have got there by A.D. 95. Shall we sin that grace may
abound? Of course not, God forbid. They
were saying, let's sin that grace may abound. The Word of God was
there, clear before them. In 1 Corinthians chapter 6 and
verses 9 and 10, Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not
inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived, neither fornicators,
nor idolaterers, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of
themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards,
nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of
God. Oh, you know you can only really experience redemption
if you experience the sin that Christ has redeemed us from.
And, no, what does the word of God say? What saith the scripture? Paul's letters, the scripture,
Peter says Paul's letters, as all the other scriptures, Paul's
letters are scripture. He says you should have subjected
what this woman was claiming to the scrutiny of the Word of
God, and it would have been absolutely clear, she was teaching error,
she was teaching vile error, terrible error. damning error,
that sort of error which if you live in it, as with the verses
we've just read, those that commit these things shall not inherit
the kingdom of God. No. We don't follow fables and
accounts of experience, we read that in 2 Peter chapter 1 and
verse 16. We have not followed cunning
fables when we made known to you the power and the coming
of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
He's talking about the Transfiguration, when Peter, James and John went
up the mountain with Christ. See, that's the Holy Mount, the
Mount of Transfiguration. But as wonderful as that experience
was, it pales into insignificance compared with, look, verse 19
of 2 Peter chapter 1, we have a more sure word of prophecy. What's that? The scriptures,
the written scriptures. Where unto you do well to take
heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place until the day
dawn and the day star arise in your hearts. Did you notice we
sang hymns talking about Christ being the day star? He is the
Word of God. We have this written Word of
God as a sure word of prophecy to guide us until the day dawn,
when He comes again, and the Day Star, Christ, arise in your
hearts, and we're with Him in glory. And we don't need the
Scriptures then, because we're with Him who is the perfect manifestation
of the truth of God. He's the Day Star in our hearts. Knowing this first then, Verse
20, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation.
You can't make it up as you go along. It's absolutely objectively
clear. You know, there are those that
say, oh, you really ought not to read the Scripture that way.
Don Faulkner always used to say, and he was so right, what the
Scripture means is what it first appears to mean to you when you
first read it. Don't try bending it round to
get round it and make it say something else. It means what
it says. No prophecy is of any private
interpretation. It didn't come by the will of
man, the whim of man, but holy men of God spake as they were
moved by the Holy Ghost. So the error at Thyatira was
that they hadn't applied the standard of God's Word, and they
hadn't put out of fellowship this woman and her followers.
except they repent. If they repent, no, embrace them,
bring them in, but except they repent, and Jesus says, the Lord
says, I've already given her space to repent and she hasn't.
This was their error, they hadn't tried the spirits. 1 John chapter
4 verse 1, whether they be of God, whether they were preaching
the truth according to the standard of God's word. It's the error
of most so-called Christianity today. They think they can mix
worship of the true God with their erroneous, idolatrous religious
practices. When we were away we listened
to a message by Clay Curtis on Exodus 32 about the golden calf. You know when Moses went up the
mountain and didn't come back for a while and the people said,
we don't know where he's gone, make us a guard Aaron. And Aaron
No, he was the priest of God. Aaron said, give me your earrings
and all the gold and he melted it down and fashioned it into
a golden calf and the people worshipped it. And in there,
I'll just refer you very quickly to this because it's important,
because it illustrates the point. In verse 3 of Exodus 32, Aaron
said unto them, break off the golden earrings which are in
your ears. The Egyptians had lent them lots of jewellery.
It was like payment for all of their work. which are in your
ears of your wives and of your sons and your daughters and bring
them to me and all the people break off the golden earrings
that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron and he received
them at their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool after
he had made it a molten calf he melted it down and made a
calf and they said these be thy gods Oh Israel this calf is your
God which brought you up out of the land of Egypt and when
Aaron saw it he built an altar before it they already had an
altar And Aaron made a proclamation and said, tomorrow is a feast
to the Lord. We're going to worship God here
around this false god. That's what religion does all
of the time. Not according to the word of
God. Christ promises judgment if they
continue without repentance. We And all of the true churches
we know, and the many that we don't know, we must strive to
eradicate that which teaches people to sin in contradiction
to God's Word. You know what it says elsewhere
in the Scripture? A little leaven leavens the whole lump. You put
a pinch of yeast in a big ball of flour and water, and that
will spread through the whole thing and leaven the whole lump.
We must not tolerate a departure from the truth of God and the
practice of God's Word at all. He promises judgment. We must
avoid thinking, which is what religion teaches, that if we're
kind and gentle and tolerant, we'll bring them round to the
truth. It's always wrong to think that. This is what God's Word
tells us to do. We must have no tolerance of
it, except they repent, they must be put out, they must be
excommunicated from fellowship with the true church. But then
he finishes with a word of encouragement, I'll be very quick, verse 24.
But unto you I say, and unto the rest in Thyatira, as many
as have not this doctrine of Jezebel and her followers, and
which have not known the depths of Satan, this is how bad it
was, the depths of Satan as they speak, I will put upon you none
other burden Christ's burden is light. His commandments are
not grievous. They're not grievous. To the
child of God, they're not grievous. But that which he have, already
hold fast till I come. You've got the gospel of God's
grace. Hold it fast. Stay true to it. Cling on tightly
to it. And he that overcometh, and keepeth
my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations.
And he shall rule them with a rod of iron, as the vessels of a
potter shall they be broken to shivers, even as I received of
my father. And I will give him the morning
star. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith
unto the churches. There were true Christians at
Thyatira. They had kept themselves from
this evil woman, and from her followers, and from their teaching.
To them he has a gentle word of encouragement, a light burden. You know when the apostles wrote
to the Gentile believers in Acts chapter 15 at the Council of
Jerusalem. They said, we lay on them no
other burden than this, just abstain from meat sacrificed
to idols. We don't put any heavy burden
on you at all. Just avoid that which the world and false religion
will see as compromise with the world of false religion. Abstain
from any association with things idolatrous. the Lord's commandments
are not grievous. Remain faithful to the truth
of the Gospel. Grasp it and hold it tight. Because
why? Not in your own strength, it's
Him that holds you. He holds you and will never let
His true people go. None can snatch His people out
of the Father's hand. My Father is greater than all,
He said. In verses 26 and 27, He paints us a picture of what
eternity's like. Christ and his people in him,
because we're in eternal union with him, have power over the
nations, the kingdom of this world. So don't fear what they
might do now. You know, we're living in what
many would regard as perilous, fearful times. Don't fear that.
The other article I put in the bulletin by Frank Tate, The perilous
times, it isn't this pandemic that's the peril, it's drifting
away from Christ that's the peril. Don't let that happen. Don't
fear what they might do, this world. Christ and his people
will judge the world. Will judge the world. It's the
Father's decree. We have the Word of God now,
until the Day Star arrives. That's what we read in 2 Peter
1, 19. The Day Star is Christ come in His glory to take His
people to be with Him forever. And then there will be perfect
knowledge of God in eternity. There will be nothing hidden.
He is the bright and morning star, He says in Revelation 22,
16. The bright and morning star. I'll close with this. I think
I've said enough. Look at the signs of the times.
See the hopeless state of this world and its society. You know,
do you remember them singing 13 years, no, 23 years ago, when
the Blair government came into power, things can only get better
and they've gone on and on and on, thinking that they can build
a utopian bliss, and things only get worse and worse and worse. What are believers to do? hold
tight, hold fast to Christ, looking for his return and the bliss
of sinless glory with him. Amen.