Hope From the Word

Guest (Male): Pastor Bill Lubkeman comments on the compromising church at Thyatira.

Guest (Male): When God tells you there's some problem in your life, you know, it's time to sit up and take notice. You better wake up in bed and pay attention ce here. Important lesson coming. The problem for this church was compromise. They had all these great things happening, but they were compromising their faith by tolerating evil in their midst. Calvary Chapel of Marlton welcomes you to Hope from the Word with our senior pastor Bill Lubkeman. We've been enjoying a fascinating study of the seven letters to the seven churches as recorded in chapters two and three of Revelation. We continue today with our examination of the church at Thyatira, known as the compromising church.

We encourage you to hold up a mirror to your own life as we move through the study. Again, we're in Revelation two.

Bill Luebkemann: Jesus is reminding these people in Thyatira exactly of who he is. These are the words of the Son of God, and he further describes himself as one who has eyes of fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze. So we get the picture with the eyes of fire. We certainly get the picture that he can see everything, that he knows everything, and that judgment is coming someday for those that fail to follow him. And when we see his feet described as burnished bronze, we get a further idea of more judgment, but we also get the idea that he's firmly planted, that he's not going to go over, he's not a pushover, he you know, you're not going to he's not going to change his mind.

That he's sure about what he says, that what he says is true. And this one who knows everything and who sees everything and who judges everything, whose eyes are like fire and whose feet are like bronze, he says. And then with regard to the Thyatirans, he says this, I know your deeds, your love and faith, your perseverance and service, and that you are now doing more than you did at first. In other words, Jesus is telling these people here, you folks are doing a lot of things right. There's much for them to be commended for.

They're busy about the Lord's work. They're doing things for him. You can only imagine that their church was a happening place. You can only get the idea that there were lots of programs going on, lots of things there. You could probably plug into this church and use your gifts and serve the Lord in a lot of ways. And even though it's an out of the way hole in the wall type of place, the Lord still took notice of what they were doing here. I know your deeds, I know your works. It's not lost on him when you serve him faithfully.

Even if it's some hole in the place, hole in the wall place like Marlton Thyatira, he sees all, he knows all, and he doesn't have any favorites. And these people were big also on love and faith. They probably could teach a lot of other people a lot of lessons about these things. Love and faith. You know, I was part of a charismatic prayer group when I first got saved back in the early '80s, and one of the characteristics of it was a lot of love and faith. Understanding the scripture, zero. Uh you know, there was no understanding very little.

I wouldn't say zero, but very little. But love and faith, never experienced anything like it since then. Man, they loved each other and they took care of each other like nothing I ever saw. And these people here in Thyatira, they were big on love and faith also. Their service and perseverance were notable. They served the Lord through thick and thin, up and down. They carried on no matter what. And you can learn a lesson there today. It's easy to give up and it's easy to toss in the towel, you know, when trouble or obstacles come along.

It's easy to say that's it, I've had enough, you know, this is too much work, this is too hard, I've been doing this long enough, I quit. We do something for a period of time and then we give up on that. We say I've been doing that for so long, you know, I'm just tired of it. And I wish someone else would do it. These people didn't have that problem, by the way. They persevered to the end. And if you have that problem, by the way, you need to look ahead to verse 25 which says, only hold on to what you have until I come.

They weren't slowing down, these folks. They weren't thinking about retiring. Their deeds were growing. They were doing more things for the Lord. And it seems to me their faith was growing also. I mean, did you know the Lord has works appointed for us to do for each one of us? He has works appointed for us to do. And you know, it's not like he needs us for anything because he could do the whole job himself if he wanted to. He could open up the sky, look down from heaven and say, hi, I'm God and you're not.

Hi, I am and you were. Poof. And we're gone, history. But he actually allows us to participate in what he's doing. He has things he wants us to do. He does things through through us. He uses us. He gives us an award because we let him use us to work through us. He does the work through us and then we get the reward. Isn't that crazy? And you know, the work of God is this, of course. We know the Bible says they went to Jesus one day and said, oh, show us the works of God.

What are the works of God? And Jesus said, the work of God is this, to believe in the one he has sent. But beyond that, once we believe, he has things for us to do. He has ways that we can serve him. And he's arranged for them from the beginning of time. We just have to walk the steps out. And these people knew this. They understood it. They had this part down down pat. He had no complaints with them. I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did it first.

They weren't slowing down either. They were speeding up. They were doing more things for the Lord. But big but here, big problem. Nevertheless, I have this against you. You tolerate that woman Jezebel who calls herself a prophetess. 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. The message here is one of this, compromise. They were compromising by tolerating this in their midst. Nevertheless, it says, in spite of all the good, in spite of all you're doing, there's still a big problem here.

There's this situation going on, and it's not a matter of the bad outweighing the good or the good outweighing the bad. It 's not a matter of being good enough, you know. It's not a matter of saying you have enough deeds on the good side to outweigh the deeds on the bad side. God's holy and righteous, and he calls us to be devoted entirely to him. You know, I've been reading Exodus this week and a little bit into Leviticus now, and you get the whole idea there. You can't help but get the idea that God is a holy God.

And I was praying about this this week as I was reading Exodus. Lord, you give all these details about how to build the tabernacle. Goes on and on and on and on. And then when I actually built the tabernacle, it goes through all the same thing again. It says they did this and this and this. And it's like I read it all once and I got to read it all again. It says build it this way and then it says they built it that way. And it almost word for word. Why did you put all those extra chapters in there?

And I just felt like the Lord was saying that he wanted us to see that the people did it exactly the way he said. He said, do it this way, and they did it that way. And he said, dot the i and cross the t, and they dotted the i and crossed the t. He's holy and righteous, and he calls us to be devoted entirely and completely to him. And when God tells you there's some problem in your life, you know, it's time to sit up and take notice. You better wake up in bed and pay attention here.

Important lesson coming. The problem for this church was compromise. They had all these great things happening, but they were compromising their faith by tolerating evil in their midst. Now as to whether this is a real person here or a type or a representation of a system or some type of combination, there's all different opinions there. And I just don't know. There could have been a a person here that was doing these things or it could have been representative of of a type of behavior that was going on. Certainly as you look at the religious systems in the world today, you see this is represented representative of some of them.

But it really doesn't matter because the lesson learned it's the same. So we're going to proceed here with the assumption that there was a real person who had these this name who he was calling a Jezebel who was doing these things. But we're going to keep in mind um that the same types of things have been done over the years by many people, by systems, denominations, organizations, and what have you. And the Lord the first thing we see is the Lord refers to this as this Jezebel. You tolerate that woman Jezebel. And he's naming her after one of the most wicked people in the Old Testament.

She was the wife of Ahab, by the way, and he was one of the worst kings that Israel ever had, and she may have been the worst wife of a king that Israel ever had. Um and you think about when you hear someone referred to by another person's name, for example, if you hear someone described as a Judas, you know, that person's a Judas, we all know that means well, they're a traitor. And if you hear someone described to us, well, they're a Hitler, then it probably means they're dictatorial or something. It's it's back to what I said before about the nature of the person.

When you refer to someone by someone else's name, you are sometimes referring to the nature. So when the Lord refers to this person or this system as a Jezebel, it means that he sees in her the nature of Jezebel. And uh so just to review uh a little bit about Jezebel, just for two minutes, though being the wife of Ahab, what kind of things did she do that were so displeasing to the Lord? Well, one of them back in uh First Kings chapter 16 to 21 is basically where she comes along. Um she set up worship of the Baal.

So she encouraged the Israelites to worship idols, false idols. And uh you remember the story of Elijah uh being up on Mount Carmel there and slaughtering all the priests of Baal. Then she was after Elijah trying to kill him, and he wasn't afraid of he wasn't afraid of 480 priests of Baal. But when she came after him, he flees. You remember that? And then um another thing she did, she encouraged her husband to take the vineyard of Naboth. Remember uh her husband wanted to buy this vineyard, and this guy wouldn't sell it to him. And and he said, well, look, I'll give you a better vineyard.

I'll give you a bigger vineyard. If you give me your vineyard, I'll give you one twice as big in a better spot. And you know, this guy said, no, this vineyard's been in my family for 100 years, you know, I just uh sentimental reasons. I just don't want to sell it. So what did she do? She wanted to help her husband the king out. So she had Naboth killed. And then she said to her husband, he's dead so you can have his vineyard. So this is the kind of person she was. She was encouraging the Israelites to worship idols.

She was seeing people get killed. And eventually, you know, she was tossed out of a window and the dogs ate her body, which was prophesied by the Lord was going to happen, and it did happen. That's in Second Kings chapter nine, by the way. So the Lord here is comparing in this church in Thyatira this woman. He's refer comparing her to perhaps the most evil woman in the Old Testament. And what exactly is she doing that makes her deserve that title? Well, the first thing is she's calling herself a prophetess. You tolerate that woman Jezebel who calls herself a prophetess.

Now, you know, there's nothing wrong with being a prophet or a prophetess. It's an honor or a privilege, and there's nothing wrong with being a woman prophetess either. That's there's there's numerous female prophetesses in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. The problem here is that she was calling herself a prophetess and was not one. So she was claiming to be one, but she wasn't one. In other words, she's a liar. She was one of those people that always says, I have a word from the Lord, something the Lord told me to tell you.

I want to tell you something the Lord told me to tell you. Only she was making it up as she went, and it was her opinion or something. The Lord told me this, the Lord told me to tell you this, the Lord told me to tell the whole church this. But the truth of the matter is the Lord didn't tell her anything. She was just making it up as she went along just to suit her own purposes. And what is she making up? She's making up that it's okay to eat the food that's been sacrificed to idols, and it 's okay to engage in sexual immorality.

So she's telling God's people it's okay to do these things that he abhors. She's the opposite of a pastor, if you will. And most likely most people feel this was related to the trade guilds we discussed earlier, and their pagan practices were associated with the various gods. So a conversation might have gone like this, oh, Jezebel, you know, I'm in the union here with the bakers cuz I bake bread and you know, they do all these things and you know, if I if I if if I don't go to the meeting, I won't have any business.

But when I go to the meeting, they they engage in immorality and they eat the food sacrificed idols, and she might say, well, I have a word from God and he wants you to know that's okay. You know, you should do that. It's not a problem. He doesn't care. God doesn't care about those things. They might be sitting there eating their nice juicy steaks, but they've been sacrificed to idols. And the Lord said not to do that. The sexual aspects of a union meeting of worshiping some of these gods might have been more like an orgy.

The temples, like we said, they had prostitutes in them that served their gods, and and prostitution was part of their worship. So you're a Christian, you're a member of the trade guild, you're kind of in this quandary. You have the monthly meeting. If you don't go to the meeting, you know, you won't get any referrals. What do you do? Do you stick to your beliefs? Not attend the meeting, therefore risking the loss of your career and your income, or do you go and take part of a compromising what you believe in? And it seems that this Jezebel was prophesying.

This is okay. I have a word from the Lord. You can do this. The Lord doesn't mind. It's okay. He doesn't care about it. He wants you to do whatever you want, have a good time and so on. And in so doing, she was leading the people astray. She was leading astray the ones that were following her, and and some of them were true believers, but she was leading them astray. And even worse than that, the rest of the church was tolerating it. They were allowing it to go on in their midst. They weren't stopping it.

Maybe not everybody participated in these practices, but the ones who didn't participate were allowing this to go on. The shepherds of this flock, they weren't tending the sheep very well, and this false prophetess was leading them down the wrong road. No church should put up with this kind of stuff, but even many do today. In the name of tolerance, there are churches today that embrace homosexuality. Premarital sex, that's old news, man. That's a long past. I wonder how many pastors today, if counseling an engaged couple that's living together would tell them move apart until the wedding.

If they were living in sin, shouldn't they be told of their that their conduct does not meet God's approval? Get right with God first. And then enter into the holy estate of matrimony. I wonder how many churches have counseled unwed unwed pregnant girls and allowed abortion as an option. You wouldn't want to ruin your life with a baby, would you? Certain notable politicians says, well, his girls he's training right, but if they made a mistake and got pregnant, he wouldn't want their life to be ruined with a baby. This woman was leading the sheep to the slaughter, this Jezebel.

And the church was putting up with it, and there are people today who do the same thing with impunity. And there's a representation in these verses of religious systems here that lead people astray, systems that teach you that you can get to heaven based on good works or that you can buy your way in or that you can get there quicker for the right price, you know, systems that teach you if you're a member in good standing of their system, then you're guaranteed admission into heaven. Or even that they're members of their system are the only ones that will get in.

They're the only true believers or whatever. In reality, there are systems out there that are not telling people how to get into heaven. In fact, they're really helping them well along on their way to hell. And for a real believer to tolerate such fakery is unconscionable. So there's a warning here for these types of people and also for the churches that would tolerate them. Look, my daughter sang at every recital and the place uh she she takes singing lessons at the School of Music. They had rented a church just to use their facility uh to have their recital in.

And it was a universalist Unitarian church. So I need to get directions, and I got on their website for the directions. And of course, I couldn't help but read around and see, you know, what do they believe in? And they basically believe in whatever you believe in. Whatever you are, we affirm whatever you are. You believe this, we affirm that. You believe that, we affirm that. I thought, well, what if the two things are contradictory? You know, do you guys care if what you believe is right? Or you just confirm and affirm? Everybody has the right to believe everything they do.

Well, one believes one thing and one believes the opposite. They can't both be true. So shouldn't we find out what the truth is and believe that? Oh, no, we wouldn't want to be bothered with that. We we affirm the individual to believe whatever they want to believe in. I'm an engineer. You know, if you build a building, you have to have the numbers right or it'll fall over. Now, I'm an electrical engineer. I don't know anything about building buildings except how to wire them. But sometimes when I go through a big city and I see these long skinny buildings standing up, I sometimes think, I don't understand why it doesn't fall over.

And the answer is, you know, somebody bored down into the ground real deep and put in all kinds of anchors, and they they worked out lots of mathematics. And most of the time they do it right. There's not too many buildings that fall over. Take bridges, for example. When they built the Ben Franklin Bridge in the 1920s, I'm told they hired like 1000 high school students after school to work out the math equations. And every equation was worked out by multiple groups of students. Of course, you know, you don't need to do this anymore. They knew how to do the same math back then that we could do today.

They just had to do it all by hand or slide rules or something. And they worked them out and they had different groups of students work out all the same numbers. Back in the '60s, my dad worked for RCA, and they were hired by NASA to figure out the orbital parameters of how to get the Apollo missions to the moon and back. And NASA hired 14 companies to check to to work out the same equations. And my dad told me, no one ever did it before. They want to see if everybody gets the same answer.

They don't want to send the guys to Mars if they want them to go to the moon, you know? I mean, if you if if you want to get to a certain place, you have to figure out the trajectory and the velocity and all that stuff. If you want to build a bridge, you have to figure out how the numbers work so it doesn't sway or bounce around, fall over. If you want to build a building that stands up, you got to find the facts. You can't just say, well, you know, I don't want to build it that way.

I want to build it a different way. If the numbers don't work, it's going to collapse or fall over. Well, if you're thinking about what to believe as quote religious beliefs, shouldn't you find out what the truth is instead of just believing whatever you want, instead of just affirming people who are going to go to hell because they're believing the wrong thing? Why not And they specifically said, oh, we don't want to tell you what to believe. We you know, that that's a bad thing. I'd like to see people get a job working in uh any technical field or almost any kind of field.

Can you imagine someone who's a nurse? Yes, we like to hire nurses. You're you've applied to be a nurse, you know. Did you go to nursing school? No, I learned how to do it myself. But I don't do it the way everybody else does. Uh you know, I do it my own way. Well, that's good. We want to affirm you doing We We'll hire you at our hospital. You can come in and be a nurse and do it your own way. Who do you want to have cutting you open? The guy that has done it before and learned how to do it or somebody who just says, well, I do it, you know, I just do it whatever way comes to mind that day.

This day we're not going to put you to sleep. You know, I don't think so. These people were being led into idolatry and immorality, and the Lord says, I've given her time to repent of her immorality, but she's unwilling. Look, he doesn't just come along and just pull the rug out from under us. He gives time. And for each one of us, the time we have to repent and come to him is the time from when we're born till when we die and when we leave this place. That's the time we have. The only problem, of course, is we don't know when that time is going to end.

So this woman here is leading people astray. She's still doing it. She's been doing it for a while. The Lord's given her time to repent. She won't do it. So what's the what's the problem? What's going to happen? Verse 22. 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 their ways. Look, there's sexual adultery going on here. There's spiritual adultery going on here. Spiritual adultery, sleeping with the wrong God, if you will. And a sickbed, it's kind of funny here because uh it's kind of ironic.

I will cast her on a bed of suffering. It's kind of like the Lord says, you want to make your own bed great. I'm going to make it a bed of suffering for you. And you're going to suffer for your decision. And people today suffer in the world for their decisions, and you can see it all around. I'm not saying everybody that's suffering made the wrong decision. There's a lot of people that are suffering for decisions they have made. And it can be anything from getting drunk and getting in a car accident and killing somebody to uh having an abortion that you spend the rest of your life uh regretting, getting AIDS or some other disease because you were sleeping around.

Most of which diseases you wouldn't get if you if you didn't do those things. So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, he says, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely unless they repent of her ways. The idea here is to bring about repentance. That's what the Lord is looking for. He's looking for repentance. He don't want to make people suffer. He wants them to repent and change their ways, and he'll allow the suffering if that will help him in his goal.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Hope from the Word. We're currently in a Through the Bible series. You can hear this message or more Hope from the Word with Pastor Bill Lubkeman by going to ccmarlton.org or wherever you find your podcasts. Pastor Bill's messages can also be found by downloading the Hope FM app on your smartphone or tablet. And finally, if you'd like a CD copy of the message, please call 856-983-1662. Again, that's 856-983-1662. We'd love to have you join us at Calvary Chapel of Marlton either in person or online. Our Sunday service begins at 10:00 a.m., and there's a Wednesday evening service at 7:00.

To catch us online, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel at Calvary Chapel of Marlton or just go to our website for the link at ccmarlton.org. And if you take a moment to write to Pastor Bill, it would be such a blessing to us. We're thankful each and every time we hear what God is doing in our listeners' lives, and we want to pray for you, too. Either email us through the website at ccmarlton.org or call 856-983-1662. We'll continue our Through the Bible series next time on Hope from the Word with Pastor Bill Lubkeman, a presentation of Calvary Chapel of Marlton.