Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth, where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. And today I want to challenge you to think through the issue of what does it feel like not to be able to work, to provide for your families, to be excluded from the economic system under which we live. Well, that doesn't have to wait until the Great Tribulation, supposedly. That happened back in the first century in a city in Asia called Thyatira.

And I want to read to you the letter that our Lord wrote to the church in Thyatira, because so many of the men and women of the church of Thyatira were experiencing the very thing that they'll talk about later with the mark of the beast, such that you wouldn't be able to buy or sell. We don't have to wait until the supposed Great Tribulation for that to happen, because it happened in the first century church, dear listener. As we explore this theme, the idea that although you live in a pagan town, church in Thyatira, you still embody six sterling qualities that shine out in the darkness. That's the theme for today's message.

And first of all, then, I want to read for you the letter in the apocalypse, in the book of Revelation, the letter to the church in Thyatira. And here it is. Enter 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 sickbed 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 to 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 earth and 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." Unquote.

This is the letter to the church at Thyatira, found in Revelation chapter 2, verses 18 to 29. And there we find that indeed this union town, if I can put it that way, where the guilds thrived, and we have seen in earlier letters that this was indeed the state of affairs for the working man in those days, that the working man, the skilled craftsman, uh, belonged to a guild, or it didn't work, right? You are out of a job. Stronger than unions are today, or ever have been, were the guilds, the craft guilds of the ancient world. And they thrived in the town of Thyatira, as we'll see as we move through this.

But we have to put this in context, dear listeners. We have to put these letters in their context, uh, in which they were written. And, uh, John was writing to a particular church with particular characteristics and culture and so forth. Um, I myself, if you can just project, uh, with us, uh, the union, uh, shops that we have, the union culture that we have in so many of, of our states, uh, you can maybe help imagine what the church in Thyatira was facing. I'm now, personally, I grew up in a union town that is Grand Rapids, Michigan.

And my uncles used to joke that in Michigan, you were issued two documents at birth, your birth certificate and a union card. That's how deep union culture goes in Michigan. The United Auto Workers and the Teamsters are very strong in my state, the state of Michigan. I worked for two years in a steel fabrication yard, and I belong to the iron and steel workers union. And one summer we went on strike and poof, there went my college money for the next year.

But I also got a sense for the brotherhood of the union too, hanging out on the picket line. The older guys stopped treating me as a temporary college kid and treated me as one of them as we all hung together to get a better contract. But on the other hand, I also know what it means to be a strike buster, a scab, if you will. That's a terrible, derisive term in Michigan. You don't want to be labeled a scab in a union state like Michigan.

The summer after my wife and I were married, I got a job at the Oscar Mayer meatpacking plant before shipping off to seminary. Now, the plant was in the midst of a hostile negotiation with the union, and I was a summer higher at slightly less pay than full-time. Well, tensions were very high that summer. They were threatening to go out on strike, and I was not welcome. And twice that summer, someone threw steel bolts into the meat grinder and spoiled thousands of dollars of ground meat with each batch.

Police were criminally investigating the whole summer. Well, this added another layer of tension since no one knew who were undercover cops amongst the new hires. And one day, in a remote part of the plant, one of the guys took a swing at me. He soon realized, though, that he wasn't going to win this one, and he walked away. It was a long summer, and I knew how it felt to be on the other side of the union brotherhood, too.

As we will see, Thyatira was a union town, a guild city, not a union town as we know it, but even stronger in its culture, a guild city whose loyalties to the respective brotherhoods outshone even Ephesus. In fact, Thyatira took pride of place throughout Asia for her craft guilds. Their festivals to the respective gods, each craft guild held up a particular god, worshiped a particular god, honored a particular god, and their festivals to these respective gods were lavish. Their dedication to them were famous, and these guilds thrived. This city in Thyatira particularly thrived as a work town, consequently.

It was, if you will, Michigan on steroids. And one can only imagine what it was to trifle with the stability and order of these guilds as a Christian who would not and could not really participate in guild life if he was to maintain his faith to the extent of his pagan counterpart. And being ostracized, as I was, is mild compared to what our Christian brothers of the first century experienced. But our Lord knows this, and he responds with both commendation and condemnation to their situation. He has for them both commendation and condemnation.

Let's begin to look then at these verses, shall we? And my first point I'd like to make with you from verses 18 and 19 is that Thyatira, although you live in a pagan town, you embody six sterling qualities that shine out in the darkness. That's the point that verses 18 and 19 make for us. And once again, those verses to the church in Thyatira 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, unquote.

That is verses 18 and 19, which makes the point that although you, church in Thyatira, live in a pagan union town, you embody six sterling qualities that shine out in the darkness. Our Lord begins again here in this letter by hearkening back to the founding vision of Revelation. He is, and once again, we told you back when we covered that in chapter one, that the initial vision of the Lord casts its shadow throughout the book of Revelation, especially here in these opening letters. And here our Lord hearkens back to those qualities that he evoked for us in chapter one. Eyes like a flame of fire.

We saw that in chapter one. Eyes like a flame of fire. Scripture wide, this is a metaphor for God's omniscience. He sees and he judges, does he not? He sees and he burns away the dross of works.

And if there's nothing there, then you are lost. But if there's silver and gold indeed, then you are silver, gold, precious stones, as Paul says, then you are indeed a child of God. Our Lord sees all that transpires as well as the heart and the will, which motivates the actions of men. He sees these things. He is omniscient.

Your good is not lost on him, no matter how insignificant it may seem to the world, but also your evil is not lost on him. Likewise. Secondly, we see the image of feet like burnished bronze. Our Lord has feet like burnished bronze. And we saw once again, this is not just some odd cartoonish vision of our Lord.

No, it is a metaphor, scripture wide metaphor for God's presence. The presence feet like burnished bronze. Our Lord is at all points of his creation at every moment with the full force of his being to bless as well as to judge. That is the fire which purges dross and refines precious metals. It is here in the feet like burnished bronze, pure burnished bronze.

There is a title employed by John, which we haven't seen before and which we'll not see again. And that is the son of God. He is indeed the son of God. Why is that included here for us, dear listener? Why this title, the son of God, number three.

We know from archeology that Thyatira had a lavish temple to the son of Zeus, chief of the gods, whose name was Apollo Tyrumnos, the pagan son of God. Apollo was the pagan son of Zeus. Rivaling it in splendor was the temple to the emperor whom the citizens of Thyatira had no problem worshiping. In fact, from the days of the current emperor, Nero, and from him on, the emperor would be called the son of Apollo. Apollo, the son of Zeus, and the emperor would then be subsequently called the son of Apollo.

Son of a son of a son, huh? There was a lot of deification going on in Thyatira. But here, for the benefit of his saints and to the consternation of pagan neighbors, our Lord lays exclusive claim to that title, son of God. It will be reinforced then in the citation of Psalm 2 at the end of this letter, that is, the Lord said to me, you are my son. Today I have begotten you.

Ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel, unquote. We need to keep this letter in its context. Too many commentators just slide right over this kind of setting on the way to the good stuff, supposedly, and they miss the true meaning of this letter. We must always keep it in its cultural context.

Well, in the midst of this, in the midst of this city of Thyatira, with temples right and left, dedicated the son of Zeus, Apollo, and to the chief god, Zeus, and then to the emperor as well. In the midst of all this, our omniscient, omnipresent Lord highlights those precious Christian attributes which the church at Thyatira possesses. And he has a kind of a catalog of Christian virtues for which he commends the church in Thyatira. Number one, your works. He commends them for their works.

Faith without works is dead. Works matters in the book of Revelation. You better be about your work, dear listener. Faith without works is dead. But Thyatira is living because when they see a brother hungry, they feed him.

When he's thirsty, they give him a drink. When he's a stranger, they welcome him. When they see him naked, they clothe him. When he's sick, they visit him. When he's in prison, they come to him.

All of those from Matthew 25 in Jesus' parable of the sheep and the goats would have been pertinent to the Christians at Thyatira, given their circumstances. He commends them also for their love. Unlike those at Ephesus, the Thyatira's love. Its love had not grown cold. Their agape, which is Greek for love, their agape love, was strong and warm for God and his people.

Our Lord also commends the church at Thyatira for their faith. Faith without works is dead. But correspondingly, works without faith is liberal and progressive and accomplishes no end for the kingdom either. Faith must have her proper object. And that is nothing less than the Lord Jesus Christ, the very one speaking to them in this letter.

And faith must have its proper object, the Lord Jesus Christ, and those things that he teaches too, which is oftentimes called the faith, right? The teachings that issue from the mouth and heart of our Lord is called the faith. That is the doctrines and central truths of the Christian faith. All of these things the church at Thyatira had. Well, the church in Thyatira is also committed for its service.

It's diakonos. And you can hear the word deacon coming from the idea of service there, right? Diakonos. You hear the English derivative. Well, it represents the ministry of the whole church here as a body, as it shares of its abundance with not only its members, but also the wider community.

As Tertullian puts it, he says, we Christians share everything but our wives. You pagans share nothing but your wives. So in that little memorable saying, right, he encompasses the difference between the Christian culture and its pagan counterpart, right? We Christians share everything but our wives. And this was known.

Pagan worldwide, too. Christians were generous and they shared of their means. But they didn't share their wives. That is, they were not adulterous. So it draws the morality line very clearly, doesn't it?

Tertullian does in describing the early church. Well, the church in Thyatira is also then commended for its patient endurance. It's patient endurance. This single word in the Greek, hupo, monolane, is translated variously as patient endurance in the ESV or patience in the King James or perseverance in the New International Version, patient endurance. It has come to be associated then with holding up well under persecution and suffering for the faith.

We have the example of John's patient endurance on the island of Patmos. We have the Ephesians patient endurance as they bear up for the name in the book of Ephesians. Well, this patient endurance will become its consistent meaning then in the rest of the apocalypse, too. Patience under suffering and persecution. This church was not raptured out and no other church will be raptured out of suffering either in days to come.

Number six, the church at Thyatira then was also commended for your growth and maturation. That's the sense of the phrase, your latter works exceed the first. The church in Thyatira was maturing and it was growing in all of these works. Your latter works exceed the first. That is, you are commended for your growth and maturation.

Now, as we Christians as well, as we grow and mature in the faith, we tend to become more effective in what we do, hopefully. I am more effective now as a minister than when I was first licensed in 1996 in the Evangelical Free Church. New Geneva is more effective as a church than when we first started in the year 2000. My prayer is that New Geneva will be even more consequential in southeast Idaho 10 to 20 years from now. Hopefully, we grow and mature, not only as individuals, but as ministers and as churches too.

That can't always be said, can it? That can't always be said of the churches just because they've existed for many generations, right? Well, at the time of the writing of the apocalypse, the church at Thyatira was one of those consequential churches. It was one of those consequential churches. But in addition, then, to these very commendations, our Lord has expressed to the church at Thyatira, to which they can take heart and encouragement.

In addition to these commendations, our Lord has a condemnation which threatens her very existence. Oh, yes, not only are there commendations for many of these churches, but there are also condemnations our Lord has for them. Not to discourage them, but to cause them, hopefully, then, to buck up and to correct those errors. And so we come to point two. Point two encompasses verses 20 to 25.

Because you live in a pagan union town, you are liable to the pressures of compromise, which undermine everything good you do. Oh, yes. We're going to read those verses again in here. But they express out of our Lord's mouth that to the church in Thyatira, that because you live in a pagan union town, you are liable to the pressures of compromise, which undermine everything good that you do. And once again, then verses 20 to 25 read, 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 sickbed, 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 to what you have until I come."

Unquote. Those are the verses that express our Lord's mind on this, and that is, church in Thyatira, because you live in a pagan union town, you are liable to the pressures of compromise, which undermine everything good you do. Now, most sentences roll along smoothly in a single direction until they butt into the little word, but, right? The word but here in verses 20 is an adversative, it's called. That is, it alters the flow of a sentence in another direction.

In English, we have one word, but. But in Greek, there are two words for the word but. One is a mild adversative. Indulge me as I make this point of grammar, because it's important in the Greek. One word is a mild adversative, that is, it tweaks the direction of the sentence, and one is a strong adversative, that is, it turns the direction of the sentence 180 degrees.

And the but, in verse 20, is a strong adversative. God is saying that although you have all of these sterling attributes that we've just articulated for you, this thing I do have against you, and it militates so strongly against you that it threatens all the rest of what you do and all the rest of what you are. Our Lord spends a lot of time elaborating on what it is, too. What is it? First of all, it is religious tolerance.

Tolerance. We would express it today as religious tolerance. We must be tolerant of other perspectives and other religions. This phrase encapsulates everything we mean negative by it in conservative evangelical circles, which our Lord means when he is talking to the Thyatirans. Literally, he says, you treat in a loose fashion that loose woman, Jezebel.

There's a play on words there, and a deliberate pun. Your threatening condemnation is that you treat in a loose fashion this loose woman, Jezebel. Jezebel, of course, is a metaphor for all that was corrupt in Israel before the conquest. In lamenting the fate of the righteous, Isaiah alludes to her in this way. He says in Isaiah 57, the children of Jezebel, indeed, but you draw near, sons of the sorceress, offspring of the adulterer and the loose woman.

So John is alluding then to Isaiah here when he calls her the loose woman. Jezebel was the queen of Israel, and even over her husband, Ahab, who was the weak-willed son of David, who married this Sidonian woman in a gesture of peace with her father, Ethbaal, king of Sidon. But Jezebel immediately led Israel into idolatry with Baal, where amongst many other things, Isaiah 57 says, you burn with lust among the oaks under every green tree, who slaughter your children in the valleys under the clefts of the rocks. Oh, yes. Ancient abortion that was sacrificing children then to the god Baal, slaughtering them and burning with lust among the oaks.

Immorality and idolatry. Immorality and idolatry would characterize Israel and Judah ever after. And ever since, Jezebel has become synonymous with deceit, debauchery, and decadence. It is heavy artillery that our Lord breaks out to get the attention of his saints in Thyatira. Well, we're going to have to pause here then and take up the rest of this section then next week.

But we want to make sure and have you join us next week as we continue to look at the cultural background to the city of Thyatira that will inform the rest of the letter of the apocalypse too, because we're going to see how they were threatened with exclusion from the life and culture of Thyatira, that indeed they would not be able to buy or sell, that they would bear the mark of the beast, if you will. And we'll see in greater detail what that means to what that meant to first century context, not just some far off future casting context. No. Well, this has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

And we meet for holy worship on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. And we urge you to join us. We're preaching through the book of Revelation now. It's been a great series. I've really enjoyed it, and our people have been edified.

I hope you have been too. But come and see us. Come and worship with us personally and engage with us in this series. New Geneva meets for holy worship at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. And you can call us for more information or give us some feedback on this series at area code 208-523-0196. That's area code 208-523-0196.