We are in the midst of our study of the seven churches of Revelation. Today we will examine what Jesus has to say to the fourth of these, the Church at Thyatira. Listen for God’s word to you from Revelation 2:18-29…
“To the angel of the church in Thyatira write:
These are the words of the Son of God, whose eyes are like blazing fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze. I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first.
Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols. I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling. So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds.
Now I say to the rest of you in Thyatira, to you who do not hold to her teaching and have not learned Satan’s so-called deep secrets, ‘I will not impose any other burden on you, except to hold on to what you have until I come.’
To the one who is victorious and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations—that one ‘will rule them with an iron scepter and will dash them to pieces like pottery’—just as I have received authority from my Father. I will also give that one the morning star. Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
Context
“To the angel of the church in Thyatira write…”
It is interesting that the longest of the seven letters is written to the least important of the seven cities. Thyatira was not as well-known as the locations of the other six churches mentioned in Revelation.
Thyatira lay on the road that connected Pergamum with Sardis and went on to Philadelphia and Laodicea. The same road linked up with Smyrna and Byzantium, modern-day Istanbul. This was the road by which the imperial post travelled. Thus, Thyatira was known first and foremost as a commercial town.
Thyatira was the gateway to Pergamum, the capital of the province. At one time it was the location for a manned garrison of Macedonian troops placed there to protect Pergamum.
Thyatira was known for her trade guilds and for the smelting of copper and bronze. Thyatira was also a center for the dyeing industry and for trade in woolen goods. Lydia, the seller of purple cloth in Philippi, who we read about in Acts 16, came from Thyatira. The good news of Jesus Christ may have come to Thyatira, originally, through Lydia, but we do not know for certain.
The local deity of the town, who was the patron deity of the bronze trade, was “Apollo Tyrimnaeus”, the sun god, who appeared on local coins grasping the hand of the Roman emperor who was considered to be “the son of god”.
However, Thyatira had no special religious significance. It was not a center of either Caesar or Greek worship. Thyatira did possess a fortune-telling shrine, presided over by a female oracle called the Sambathe. No threat of persecution hung over the Church at Thyatira for not worshipping the local, Greek, or Roman gods.
Chief Characteristic of Christ Applied
“These are the words of the Son of God, whose eyes are like blazing fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze.”
Jesus has eyes like blazing fire because he has piercing, penetrating, perfect knowledge. Jesus has thorough insight into all people and into all things.
Bronze feet may be the characteristic of Jesus applied to Thyatira because Thyatira was known for its bronze works. Jesus spells out for the Church at Thyatira that he is the true Son of God, not Caesar, and the real “sun God” Apollo Tyrimnaeus. All others who claim to be gods are mere counterfeits of him.
Commendation
“I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first.”
This is a wonderful list of virtues. It is almost like a Pauline list of virtues describing a growing Christian and/or a growing Church. The Church at Thyatira is praised for her love, whereas the Church at Ephesus had lost her first love.
The love and faith of the Church at Thyatira weren’t just a matter of words. The love and faith of this Church were fleshed out in deeds of service. Not only that, but this Church was persevering. She was not giving up even though she was living in the midst of a very difficult environment. And, to top it all off, this Church was doing more than she did at first. This was a growing Church in many ways. Like all good churches and Christians, this church had both faith and deeds. One would be tempted to think that this Church was complete.
But all was not well in Thyatira…
Critique
Jesus says, “Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel…”
The story of Queen Jezebel and her husband, King Ahab, is told in 1 Kings 16-22. Jezebel was a foreigner who introduced the worship of the false god Baal to Israel. Her many evils are summed up under the categories of “whoredoms and sorceries” in 2 Kings 9:22. “Whoredoms” in that passage, like “fornication” in Revelation, was a metaphor for the spiritual “playing around” of communing with other gods. This may have involved physical immorality with temple prostitutes in Thyatira as well, but we don’t know.
There was a woman who was a type of Jezebel in the Church at Thyatira who was misleading Christians into sexual immorality and eating food sacrificed to idols. Jesus’ words against her can sound very harsh. But it is clear Jesus had no patience for those who lead others to sin. In Mark 9:42 he says, “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck and they were thrown into the sea.”
Most likely, temptation came to the Christians in Thyatira through involvement in the various trade guilds. The Christians in Thyatira may have been tempted to worship materialism.
To refuse to join one of the trade guilds in Thyatira would be like refusing to join a union today. It might mean giving up all hope of commercial success. The Jezebel of the Church in Thyatira may have asked with seeming innocence, “Why should a Christian not join one of these guilds?”
The problem was that these guilds held common meals, often in a temple, and even if not, the meal would begin and end with a formal sacrifice to the gods, and the meat eaten would be meat which had already been offered to idols. These communal meals were often the occasion of drunken revelry and loose morality. Jezebel pled for compromise with the culture around the Church in Thyatira. But Jesus said a firm “no” to this. With such things a Christian must have nothing to do.
Jesus says here something very interesting about himself. Literally, he says, “I am the one searching kidneys and hearts.” This is a quote from Jeremiah 11:20 which says that the Lord Almighty is the one who tests heart and mind. Jesus takes over this prerogative—a clear claim to divinity. And the statement is a distinctively Jewish one. The Jews thought of the lower abdomen as the seat of the emotions—the kidneys and the bowels. Today we would talk about feeling things at gut-level. For the Jew, the heart was the center of thought. So, this was a distinctively Jewish way of saying that Jesus is the one who searches our thoughts and our feelings. Everything is laid bare before him.
The Church at Thyatira appeared ok on the outside. But Jesus is saying that he sees the inside. He sees the way we really are.
Counsel
Jesus’ counsel to the Christians in this Church is: “Hold on tight until I come.” The modern saying is apropos: “When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on.”
Perhaps we should not be too critical of any of these seven churches in Asia Minor in the first century. If nothing else, these letters reveal how difficult it was to be a Christian at that time. We really have no idea how easy we have it by comparison. Our society still has traces of the influence of Christianity. The society around Thyatira had no such traces.
The reference to “Satan’s deep secrets” is interesting. The Gnostics of the second century tried to snag new adherents by saying that they had secret “gnosis” or “knowledge” on offer. They claimed it was secret knowledge about God. Jesus here calls a spade a spade. The only thing these proto-Gnostics in Thyatira have to offer are “Satan’s deep secrets”. Jesus urges the Christians in Thyatira to not be sucked in by Jezebel’s slick advertising.
Of course, Jesus’ words to the Church in Thyatira are of more than historical interest. As with the letter we looked at last week, this letter poses to us the questions: How are we to relate to the culture around us? How much and in what ways may we participate in that culture? How far should we accept and adopt contemporary standards and practices?
Confirming Word to Conquerors
The first part of Jesus’ confirming word to conquerors contains a quote from Psalm 2 which was a messianic Psalm. “Ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage.” This Psalm can be thought of in a very militaristic fashion—Israel conquering the nations and extending her borders. But many a Christian missionary over the last two thousand years has prayed this psalm asking the Lord for converts from the nations. Ultimately, the Christian is called to win the world to Christ by a demonstration of Christ’s love in word and deed.
The second part of this confirming word contains the promise of the morning star. This promise may have a multifold meaning.
First, this is seen by some as a promise of the resurrection. Just as the morning star rises after the night, so the Christian will rise after the night of death.
Second, this may be the promise of conquest over Lucifer. Lucifer is, of course, another name for the devil. The devil was, originally, a proud angel, so proud in fact, that he rebelled against God and was cast over the battlements of heaven, according to Isaiah 14:12. Lucifer literally means “star of the morning”.
Third, we have Daniel 12:3 which says, “and those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament; and those who turn many to righteousness like the stars for ever and ever.” The morning star may represent the glory that will come to those who, unlike Jezebel who led others astray, instead lead many to righteousness.
Fourth, and perhaps most important, Revelation 22:16 calls Jesus “the bright morning star”. So, it may be that the promise of the morning star is the promise of Jesus himself. If we remain true to Christ in this life, then in the end we will possess him just as he possesses us, and we will never lose him. Jesus promises never to leave us or forsake us. As Michael Wilcock has said, “to the church which is a faithful gospel-lamp in the dark night of this world Christ also promises himself as the morning star, the assurance of the coming dawn, when lamplight will be swallowed up in the light of eternal day.”
Finally, I cannot go without mentioning something C. S. Lewis wrote on this point. In a sermon entitled The Weight of Glory Lewis talks about the morning star. He writes…
We do not merely want to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words – to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. That is why we have peopled air and earth and water with gods and goddesses and nymphs and elves – that, though we cannot, yet these projections can enjoy in themselves that beauty, grace, and power of which Nature is the image. That is why the poets tell us such lovely falsehoods. They talk as if the west wind could really sweep into a human soul; but it can’t. They tell us that ‘beauty born of murmuring sound’ will pass into a human face; but it won’t. Or not yet. For if we take the imagery of Scripture seriously, if we believe that God will one day give us the Morning Star and cause us to put on the splendour of the sun, then we may surmise that both the ancient myths and the modern poetry, so false as history, may be very near the truth as prophecy. At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.[1]
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