MESSAGE TO CHURCHES IN REVELATION
THYATIRA
DR. JIM DIXON
APRIL 18, 1982
Just this past week, Barb and I found a little booklet in Heather’s room. It’s her first book. She made this. She just made this book this week. Heather is in first grade and she’s learning to write. She glued some pages together. On the front page, she has a drawing of a little girl. Above that she has the word— this is the title of her little book— he has the words “YOU ARE IT.” I think she means “You Are Special” but she didn’t know how to write special, so she put “YOU ARE IT.” You turn the page, and it says, “You eat” and it has a little girl eating. You turn the page again and it says, “You drink” and it has a little girl drinking. Then you turn the page again and it says, “You have names” and it just has a little girl standing there. Then you turn the next page, and it says, “You sleep” and it has a little girl sleeping on her bed. You turn the final page, and it says, “People smell.” Kind of an interesting ending there in her book. Not too bad for a first grader and kind of cute. When she’s 25 years old, if she’s still cranking out stuff like that, we’re going to be concerned.
God knows everything about us. We are children and He wants us to grow. He wants us to become everything we are meant to be. You know, Michelangelo completed fourteen different sculptures. Most of them are famous. I’m sure many of them are well known to you. His David. His Moses. His Pieta, which was a sculpture of the Virgin Mary holding the crucified Christ. But what a lot of people don’t know is that Michelangelo worked on thirty other sculptures that he never finished. Great blocks of marble were the beginning of a human form to take shape—a face, a hand, a foot—but Michelangelo could look at a crude block of stone and he could see a great work of art just waiting to be released through the work of his hands. And God is like that. He looks at the baby Christian and He sees a great work of art just waiting to be released through the work of His hands. He has a plan for you if you belong to Him and that plan is marvelous. It’s beyond our comprehension. He doesn’t want to simply keep us alive through endless generations like that little tree though He has given us eternal life, but He wants our lives to be abundant and full. He wants us to reach the fullness of the measure of the stature of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
As our Lord Jesus said, “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vine dresser. Every branch that is Mine which bears no fruit, He takes away. But every branch which does bear fruit, He prunes it, that it might bear more fruit. You are already made clean—that is to say you have already been pruned by the words God has spoken to you. Abide in Me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine. You are the branches. He who abides in Me and I in Him, it is He who bears much fruit. For apart from Me, you can do nothing.”
We have a part in this growth, in this maturing, in this bringing to adulthood. God looks at a newborn baby and He sees a mature child. A newborn Christian is even a pure child, glorious and eternal, just waiting to be released. But we have a part in our growth. We must want to grow. We must desire it. We must want to abide in our Lord Jesus Christ. We must hunger for the fruit of His word. We must drink the water of His Spirit. We must receive the nourishment of prayer, a great deal of time in prayer. We must be sustained by fellowship with our brothers and sisters in Christ. God wants us to grow. The Christians at Thyatira were growing, and for that, God saved them.
Secondly, Christ said to the Christian church at Thyatira… He gave them a warning. He warned them of the cult of Jezebel. He said, “I have this against you: That you tolerate that woman Jezebel who is teaching and beguiling my servants to practice immorality and to eat foods sacrificed to idols. I gave her time to repent but she refuses to repent of her immorality. Behold I will throw her on a sick bed and all those who commit adultery with her. I will throw on the great tribulation unless they repent of their doings. I will strike their children dead, and all the churches will know that I am He who searches heart and mind.”
Here, then, is a warning against spiritual apostasy. It’s not new to us. God warned the church at Ephesus regarding the apostasy of the Nicolaitans. He warned the church at Pergamum regarding the apostasy of the Balaamites. Here he warns the church at Thyatira of the apostasy of the cult of Jezebel. Now there was no name given to woman more hated, considered more heinous by Jews or Christians than the name of Jezebel.
It was hundred and fifty years before Christ when Ahab came, King of Israel, took Jezebel for his wife. Jezebel was the daughter of the king of Tyre and Sidon. She was a worshipper of Baal. She practiced immorality. She came to Israel as queen, and she seduced and beguiled the children of Israel into Baal worship, into fornication, into adultery. Elijah, the prophet, raised up in righteous indignation. You will recall that he defeated the 450 prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel. But Jezebel still lived like a hideous cancer in the land. She continued to do her evil work through the consecutive reigns of her sons, Ahaziah and Jeroboam. Finally, through Jehu’s rebellion, Jeroboam was overthrown, and his mother, Jezebel, was cast out of the window of the temple by her own servants and she was devoured by dogs, but her memory lingered. Her memory lingered in the minds of Jews and in the minds of Christians.
In the first century, in the church at Thyatira, there was a group of men and women who called themselves Christians, but in God’s mind, were just like the Jezebel of old. They were apostate. We know from historical records that the cult of Jezebel gave three false teachings. First of all, they exalted business over Jesus Christ. In Thyatira there were many trade guilds, more trade guilds than any other city in Asia. If you were a worker, a trade worker, or a bronze worker, or a linen worker, a leather dealer, a painter, no matter what you did for your work, there would be a trade guild for you to belong to. If you didn’t belong to that trade guild, you had no opportunity for economic prosperity. But the trade guilds were corrupt.
They met in the temple, and they began their meetings with sacrifices to heathen gods and they concluded their meetings the same way. At noontime, they shared a common meal where they brought in temple prostitutes for fornication and adultery.
There was a great dilemma facing the Christians. Should the Christian worker compromise Christ, join the trade guilds for the sake of economic expediency and prosperity, or should the Christian worker refuse to join the guild, be faithful to Christ and trust God for every material provision? The cult of Jezebel said, “Go ahead. Join the trade guild.”
The cult of Jezebel exists today whenever a Christian places business over Jesus Christ. Wherever a Christian is dishonest in business, wherever a Christian is so preoccupied with work, so preoccupied with business that he has no time for the word of God, no time for prayer, no time for fellowship with the body of Christ, there is the cult of Jezebel. Wherever a Christian is so busy with business that he has no time for family, no time for children, there is the cult of Jezebel, because Jesus Christ has called us for a balanced lifestyle. He wants us to work. Laziness is condemned in the scriptures. Paul condemned those people who were “ataktos,” which means “working around working.” He condemned them. He said if anyone would not work, let him not eat.”
But God hasn’t simply called us to work. He has called us to the body of Christ. He has called us to the church. He has called us to our families, to our spouses and to our children. He has called us to a balanced lifestyle, and he wants us to obey Him and trust Him to provide for our needs. “Do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat, what you shall drink, what you shall wear for the Gentiles seek after such things and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them all but seek first the kingdom of God and My righteousness and all these things shall be yours.”
Secondly, the cult of Jezebel was promoting polytheism. They were actually saying—and remember, these were people who said they were Christians—that two gods are better than one. They were saying “Why can’t we have Jesus Christ as Lord and still sacrifice to the Greek and Roman gods? How can it hurt, and it might help. Maybe we’ll get double the divine protection, double the divine permission.”
In 1978, Barb and I were in Israel, and we had an Arab tour guide, kind of a neat guy but a little strange. He said that he accepted Christ by the River Jordan, that he was baptized there when an evangelist spoke, but he seemed to still be very much a Muslim. When we got to Jerusalem, he told us that the Dome of the Rock was a holy and sacred shrine for him. When we got inside, he pointed to the rock and said, “That’s where Abraham sacrificed his son, Ismael.” Well, we said, “Now the Bible says Abraham sacrificed his son Isaac there.” He said “Well, the Bible says Isaac, the Koran says Ishmael. Isaac, Ishmael, what does it matter? Christ, Mohammed, what does it matter?” The cult of Jezebel, and it exists today in the United States, in the lives of Christians wherever Christians place hollow gods alongside of Jesus Christ.
Astrology is one such hollow god. Do you realize that there are thousands of Christians who are addicted to astrology? Millions of people in this country read their horoscopes every day. There are computerized horoscopes that provide 24-hour services. You can buy everything from zodiac cookbooks to zodiac comic books. Almost every daily newspaper carries astrological columns. More than 200,000 people in this country make their living off astrology. In Britain, 68% of the population read their horoscope every day. In France, 53%. In Germany, 63%. It’s an epidemic. But for a Christian, it is tragic. It is hard to believe that someone who takes the name of Christ could allow his or her life to be guided by the stars rather than by the one who made them. But it happens. Jesus Christ said, “No man can serve two masters. I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except by Me.”
Finally, the cult of Jezebel was actually encouraging sin. It actually was saying to Christians in the church that the more you sin, the better chance you have to grow. Now this is kind of strange. You see, they were influenced by a group called the Gnostics. They believed in a Platonic dualism that separated the spiritual and material aspects of man. They said, “Whatever you do in the body doesn’t necessarily effect what you are in the spirit and in the soul. You can be pure in your spirit and do whatever you want in the body. In fact, the more you sin in the body, the more you test your soul, the more you test your spirit, the more you potentially make it strong.” And they said, “Actually if you delve into the deep patterns of sin and still keep your soul pure, then you’ve conquered.” Sounded like the guy who was speaking to a group of alcoholics. He wanted them to know that drinking in moderation was one thing but drinking to excess was wrong. It was dangerous. It was destructive.
You may have heard this story. A man took two glasses and he put fresh water in one glass, and he put alcohol in the other glass. He took a worm and he put it in the fresh water. It swam around in there. It was vigorous and healthy, doing alright, having a good time. He took the worm and he put it in the alcohol, and it just fizzled and died. He said to the alcoholics, “Now what does that show you? What does that illustrate? What does that demonstrate?” A man in the back said, “Well it looks to me like the more you drink, the less likely you are to get the worm.”
If you want to do something bad enough, you can twist the thinking to support it. If you want to sin bad enough, you can find a philosophy to support it. The cult of Jezebel was such a philosophy. But our Lord Jesus Christ warns us against sin, and He warns us against apostasy. He wants us as those who believe in Him to learn to obey Him for our sake because obedience leads to blessing. God says “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of mockers but is delighted in the law of the Lord. On His law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by rivers of water that runs forth its fruit in its season and its leaves have not withered. In all that he does, he prospers.” That’s what God wants for you, to grow deep.
He warns us of apostasy and He say that He will judge Jezebel wherever she is found. He will “throw her on a sick bed and all those who commit apostasy with her. He will throw on the great tribulation. He will strike her children dead.” Here is a warning that sin leads to sickness, tribulation and ultimately death.
Finally, Christ addressed the church at Thyatira and He gave them this great promise. He said, “To him who conquers and who keeps My words until the end, I will give him power over the nations. He shall rule them with a rod of iron, shepherd them. I will give him the Morning Star. He who has an ear to hear what the Spirit says, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”
Here, then, is a promise that as Christians we will reign and we will rule forever. He will give us power over the nations.
I’m sure that many of you are familiar with the story of Worthy Taylor. He was a farmer in the 19th century. One day a young man named Jim, a boy, came by his farm and this boy Jim was poor. His clothes were shredded. He needed a job. He asked Worthy Taylor is he could work on his farm. The farmer had a daughter, but he had no son, so he was happy to have this boy Jim work on his farm because he needed additional help. He told Jim that he would have to sleep in the loft of the barn, that he could not sleep in the house, but he could come into the house to eat. Jim said that was alright. He was to work the farm, so he worked in the fields and do the various chores around the farm. As a couple of months passed by, Jim came to love the farmer’s daughter. He went to the farmer, and he asked if he could have his daughter’s hand in marriage. The farmer became angry. He said, “You do not deserve my daughter. You’ve done nothing in the past, you will do nothing in the future. You are nothing.” The farmer made Jim leave.
It was thirty year later; the farmer had never seen Jim again. Worthy Taylor was old, and his barn was old, and he needed to rebuild it. He was up in the loft where Jim had slept, and he was tearing down rafters. He noticed that Jim had carved his full name on one of those rafters. When the farmer saw it, he couldn’t believe it. James A. Garfield. At that very moment, Jim was President of the United States.
There’s no way anyone could know that that boy Jim, could ever guess that one day he would come to head a great nation. There’s no way anyone could look at us as the children of God, as believers in Jesus Christ, and ever guess that one day we are destined to reign and rule but it is true.
In the first chapter of the book of Revelation, we are called kings. In the third chapter of Revelation, Jesus Christ says, “To him who conquers, I will grant him to sit down with me on my throne even as I conquered and sat down by My Father on His throne.” In the fifth chapter of Revelation, it says that He will “grant us a kingdom and we shall reign.” In the twenty-second chapter of Revelation, we are told that “One day we shall see His face and night shall be no more. We shall reign and rule forever and forever.”
Through His parables of the kingdom of God, our Lord Jesus Christ taught that he who is faithful over little in this life will be put over much in the next life. He told His disciples that they would one day sit on thrones. When Paul wrote to the Christians at Corinth, he told them that one day he would rule over angels. Towards the end of his life, he wrote to Timothy, and he said “This much is certain. If we die with Him, we shall also rise with Him. If we endure, we shall also reign with Him.”
There’s lots of things that we would like to know about heaven. Some things we don’t know, but this teaching is clear. As Christians, we are destined to reign, and we are destined to rule, and it should not surprise us because God gave dominion to man in the beginning. He said, “Let us make man in our own image, after our own likeness, and let him have dominion over the birds of the air, over the fish in the sea, over the beasts of the field and over everything that moves upon the face of the earth.” But that dominion once given to man is beginning to tarnish. It has been corrupted. It has been lost through sin. We have become corrupt without thinking and our senseless minds have been darkened. Claiming to be wise, we have become fools. We have exchanged the glory of the immortal God.”
There is no way that any of us here could ever imagine what we were meant to be except through Christ. The scriptures promise that every person who believes in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior will one day have that dominion restored. Not only restored but also extended for we will reign and rule not only on the earth but throughout the new heavens and the new earth.
As you sit there right now, you probably have very little desire to reign or rule because you’re thinking of it in an earthly sense, but the reign and the rule that will be given to us will be a reign of love and it will be a rule of service.
You know how John and James, the sons of Zebedee came up to Jesus and they said, “Master, we want you to do for us whatever we ask you to do.” Jesus said, “What do you want Me to do?” They said, “When You come in Your glory, grant that one of us would sit on Your right hand and the other on Your left.” The other disciples heard it, and they were jealous, and they were angry. Jesus stood before them, and He said, “You know how the rulers of the Gentiles love to lord it over them, and their great men loved to exercise authority over them. This shall not be so with you. He who would be the greatest among you must be a servant of all. He who would be first must be the slave of all. Even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give His life, a ransom for many.”
Our Lord Jesus Christ gives a new definition to reigning and ruling. He reigns over the church as His body, but He does it in love and He does it to serve us, to exalt us, to make of us everything we were meant to be. That’s the way He reigns and that’s the way we’ll reign by His spirit.
This life is a time of preparation. Wherever you have been given reign, wherever you have been given dominion, God wants you to learn to use it in a spirit of love and in a spirit of service. If you’re a mom or a dad, if you have dominion over children, He wants you to learn to use that reign lovingly, to use it to serve your children, to bless them. Whatever you do, if you have authority in work or in business or in any other concept, He wants you to learn to use that lovingly with an attitude of serving, for we will be given a reign to serve and a reign. This life is a time of preparation for that. Paul wrote to Timothy and said, “Train yourself in godliness. Physical training is of some value, but spiritual training holds value in every way, as it holds promise not only for this life but also for the life to come.”
And so, God wrote to the church at Thyatira and Christ said, “First of all, we praise them for their faithfulness. He warned them of sin and apostasy, and he challenged them to prepare for a glorious future and in God’s grace, they would reign and rule forever and ever in the spirit of Christ and the spirit of love. Shall we pray?