In the Word

Pastor Mike Warren: Each one of these churches has been taking about an hour and 15 minutes. That's why we're shortening up the song service and that's why we're starting it - if you'll notice, we've been starting two minutes early at 9:28 instead of waiting until 9:30 because there's a lot that needs to be said, and we need to listen to what the Holy Spirit is saying.

It's interesting when we come to Chapter 2 and Chapter 3, just make note of this. This is unlike any other section of Scripture because the Bible tells us that those men of old, the prophets and the apostles of the New Testament, were moved by the Holy Spirit, and they wrote, as it were, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. That all graphē, what they wrote - not them especially, but what they wrote - was inspired, inerrant, and authoritative, and so as they put pen to paper, it became the Word of God.

We're in a unique situation here when we come to the letter of the seven churches because Jesus himself is speaking. So, it's from his lips to John's pen to the paper. This morning as we study the next of these churches, Thyatira, this is the Lord Jesus Christ speaking to the church. We need to have ears to hear as to what he is saying. Amen?

So, let's pray. Father, we thank you this morning for your word. We thank you this morning that you love us so much. You desire us to walk in holiness and purity before you, that we would have this intimate relationship with you, that nothing would come in and separate us from you. You write us and you warn us throughout the church age from its inception to the time you come and take it home. From the first century to the 21st century - Lord, as we look around today, we believe that you're coming soon.

All of the main prophecies that need to be fulfilled, the indicators that we're living in the last days, have certainly been fulfilled. They're before our eyes. Then again, you need to give us eyes to see and ears to hear and a heart to understand what it is that the Spirit is saying. This morning, you're going to speak to us again about something we need to be alarmed of and concerned about.

In fact, this is the first letter where you give a warning but you pronounce a judgment. This is the first time - in Ephesus, Smyrna, and Pergamos, you warned. When we come to the church at Thyatira, you're going to warn and then you're going to pronounce a judgment because they didn't heed the warning. They didn't turn at the warning. Father, when we come to Thyatira, it's a turning point in these seven letters to the seven churches.

There's some 'firsts' we're going to see this morning that happen in your writing to the church at Thyatira. It is a system that you're warning about. We're going to see this morning that will carry on all the way through into our time. Each one of these systems - Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea - will be the things that are existing in the world today at your return.

Each one of them, as we have seen, Lord, kind of lays out a timeframe. Those things that have come into the church don't go out easily. Father, give us ears to hear. Give us ears to hear what it is that your Spirit is saying to the churches at this time. Then, Lord, may those things go deep into our hearts that we wouldn't just be hearers but responders, doers of your word. You are warning us, Lord, and may your servant hear. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.

If you get your notepad out and your pen, again, it's interesting as we're going through these seven churches, there's a pattern to them. If you track and trace church history, they follow quite well. If you take them out of order, they really don't fit. The church at Ephesus really represents the first-century church all the way to the end of the first century.

We understand at the end of the first century the church began to cool. False teaching for the first time begins to enter into the church. The Lord has to write to the church at Ephesus, which means 'desired' because the Lord desired a relationship with them. God the Father sent his son to bleed and die out on Calvary's cross to remove the sin from our lives that we could be brought back into a relationship with the Father.

God the Father did not send his son to bleed out and die on Calvary's cross to create a religion. He sent his son to bleed and die to purchase a bride, to bring us into relationship with the Father through the work of the Son. That for all time and eternity we could be the bride of Christ, so we would be God's people and that we would spend eternity in our Father's house. Never to create a religion.

Like I said last week, whenever relationship cools, whenever relationship dies, whenever that intimacy with the Lord wanes or falters or fails, what happens is that religion comes into that vacuum and takes its place. You can trace it through church history. What I want you to know this morning is that the Lord wants your heart. He's more concerned about your heart than he is about your hands or your head.

He's more concerned about your heart than what you do or what you think because he knows if he owns your heart, if your heart is converted to him, then your hands and your head will follow. At the end of the first century, that church that was desired to be the bride of Christ begins to cool and false teaching begins to come in and he warns them. "You've left your first love. Repent. Repent from where you have fallen. Go back, remember, go do your first works over again."

Because there didn't seem to be that transpiring, we come to the second church, Smyrna. Smyrna comes from the word "myrrh," this plant, this herb that when it is crushed, it puts out this fragrance. The Lord allows at the end of the first century to the next 200 years persecution to come on the church. The early church father said that the blood of the saints became the purifying factor for the church.

You went to church under the penalty of death. Christians were being hunted down by the Roman Empire. They were being fed the lions, they were being used as fodder in the arenas, they were being burned at the stake. For the next, from the first century to the third century, for 200 years, the Christians were being persecuted, but they were never more impactful in the world. They were never more pure. They were never more holy. They were never more focused.

Because they understood what it cost to be a Christian. It wasn't a light thing. It could cost you - certainly if you didn't burn that pinch of incense to Caesar, it could cost you your livelihood, but more importantly, it could cost you your life. You went to church, you went to worship. Your faith was alive, your prayer life was intimate. You were plugged into a source.

At the end of the second century into the third century, Constantine comes along and feigns to have this vision. I think it was feigned. He supposedly heard these words: "In this sign, conquer." And it was the sign of the cross. I believe he duped the Christians to join in this battle where he would become the next emperor.

When he became the next emperor, as we move into the church of Pergamos, we find there that he makes the Catholic - which we all were Catholics. We're all Catholics this morning. Catholic just means universal. There is one church that is scattered around this world that is connected to the true and living God through the blood of his son, that are born of the Spirit.

What Constantine did is he made the Catholic the state religion and renamed them the Roman Catholic Church. With that, all of the idols of paganism came into the church. That's why Pergamos means "mixed marriage." For the first time, the church was married to the world. That the church was married to a system that the church-state ran.

All of this vile stuff came in and we're going to see some of it because in the Old Testament, God warns his people. He said, "Don't be married to Gentiles. Don't be married to pagans." One of the imagery he's going to bring before us this morning is Jezebel. When you go back and you study Jezebel, you find out King Ahab, one of the kings of Israel, married a Phoenician. He married a Gentile.

When he married her, she came in and brought idolatry and her priesthood into Israel and brought all kinds of false gods into Israel. He's going to use this as an example this morning because this is what happened at this period of time. Now as we move into the church of Thyatira, Thyatira means "continual sacrifice." One of the ways that the Roman Catholic Church holds control over - and we're going to see the false teaching that came in.

If you're offended this morning that I'm talking about the Roman Catholics, just come next week and we'll talk about the Protestants. Because God is against every religious system. He's an equal opportunity offender because he hates religion. Religion is the most damning thing in the world today because it's a system that you worship instead of the Lord Jesus Christ.

He came to bring you into relationship with him. That's why in the church of Pergamos, toward the end, he says, "I hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans." It's two words put together: Nikos (or Nike) to conquer and laitos (the laity). When man gets between God and his people, God said, "I hate it."

As Jesus rent the veil so that we could come boldly into the very throne room of God to receive help and mercy in a time of need, that we now have a high priest that's put his hand on God - he's our daysman, he's our mediator - and put his hand on man so that we could come back into this intimate relationship with the Father through the work of the Spirit.

Man began to sew up the veil and say, "No, no, no, you've got to come through our system. You can't confess your sins to Jesus. You've got to come to another man and he will take them. In fact, you can't pray to Jesus. You've got to pray to Mary, and Mary will pray to Jesus for you." God says, "I hate it." We ought to hate the things he hates and love the things he loves. Can I get an amen?

That's up to you if you allow it. He's going to tell us that you have suffered this woman Jezebel. You've allowed it. You've allowed it and you keep allowing it. It doesn't just have to be the Roman Catholic Church. It could be the Mormon church with their priesthood there in Salt Lake City. It could be the Baptist, it could be the Methodist, it could be Calvary Chapel.

I pray you don't come to this church because of Calvary Chapel. I pray you come to this church because Jesus Christ is in this place and his Holy Spirit is working here and his word is being honored. That's the only reason to be here. Because he's here. And we come to seek a relationship with him, not with a denomination, whatever it might be. Not through a man, whoever he might be, but in the person of Jesus.

Jesus is here this morning. He said, "Where two or three are gathered, I'm in your midst." I'm here. Have you sensed him? Do you feel him? Does he own your heart? It's relational. There's some 'firsts' here in Thyatira. Just so you understand, if you're a note-taker, the name means "continual sacrifice."

This church will continue until we get to Sardis next week, which is what we would call the Protestant movement, the Reformation. Some Catholic priests finally came to their senses during this time of the Dark Ages when, as we're going to see this morning, the Roman Catholic Church took the word of God away from the common people. They set up all of these transubstantiation, purgatory, indulgences - things the Bible knows nothing about - to control the people.

They would say that if you didn't come to the priest and receive the wafer and the cup, which literally turned into the literal blood and body of Jesus Christ, then you weren't saved. So, if the church excommunicated you and didn't give you communion, then you weren't saved and they could keep you from heaven. They got between you and your savior. That's why it's called "continual sacrifice."

It's about 35 miles southeast of Pergamos in location. It is the least of all of the cities in significance of all the seven cities of these seven churches. It's the smallest, it's the least significant of the seven churches that Jesus writes to, and it had the smallest, as it were, congregation. It was the least populated. It's where Lydia came from, the seller of purple, that was the convert there in Philippi.

When Paul finally heard from the Holy Spirit to go over from Asia Minor into Europe for the first time. There he met this woman down by the seashore because there was no Jewish tabernacle. You had to have 10 Jewish men to form a synagogue, and there was no synagogue there. So, he went down to the river where they had a practice of praying and he met Lydia and she gets saved.

No doubt she goes back to Thyatira and maybe is an instrument that God uses because we find out the Macedonian man that Paul sees in the vision turns out to be a woman. It's Lydia. And she goes back to Thyatira as a seller of purple. Because in Thyatira, they had these guilds and every guild had a god and every god had to be worshiped.

You would have to worship in the way of that god if you are an ironworker, you had a guild and you had a false god over that guild. If you were a worker of leather, you had a guild. Pottery, whatever it was - and for her, it was the guild of dyeing. It was the guild of dyeing these clothes red and they would get this dye from this clam called a murex.

You'd have to choke the throat and a drop of it would come out. One pound of this red dye is equivalent today to about $200,000. It was three years' wages. At this time comes in the red-dyed robes and all of the outward righteousness. Dyed red on the outside, but not dyed red on the inside. It was an outward, not an inward thing.

The problem with man has always been the heart, and the heart of the matter is a matter of the heart. God looks past the outward appearance, as he told Samuel when he chose King David. A man who struggled with the flesh, but a man who never changed gods. A man who God himself said, "There's a man after my own heart" because there was something inside of David.

At the end of King David's life, he never says that "I was the great king of Israel." He could have said that. Nor did he say, "I was the mighty warrior of Israel," because he was a warrior. He was a man of valor. He was a hero in many ways in the battles that he fought, first of all by killing Goliath. He didn't say, "I was the slayer of giants."

You know what he says at the end of his life? "The sweet psalmist of Israel, the worshiper of God." It was things like he would write that "as the deer panteth for the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God, that I might come before thee, that I might be in your presence." That should be the cry of every person here this morning.

But when that dies, when that wanes, when it grows cold, religion will always come in with its priesthood, with its works, with its efforts. It will become acceptable to you, something that should never be acceptable because it's not acceptable to our Father. Our Father says, "I hate that." I rent the veil. I destroyed the priesthood for a reason, because Jesus Christ is your high priest.

The Word of God is your authority. I am your life. I'm the way, I'm the truth, and I'm the life. No man goes to the Father but by me, Jesus would say. Now as we come to Thyatira, we understand the name means "continual sacrifice." It is the smallest because for the first time - and I want you to pay attention to this.

We're going to see this as we go through this. For the first time, no longer is he warning like he did in Ephesus, like he did in Smyrna, like he did in Pergamos. He's not warning the church of things coming into the church. He's actually warning a church that's inside of this system. It's the beginning of what we're going to see next week is the remnant church.

God still has a remnant church that knows nothing of religion but knows everything about relationship. There is still a bride of Christ that loves the Lord their God with her whole heart that's inside of this religious system, whatever it might be. The Protestants have it just as messed up as the Roman Catholics do because it's still a system. It's a system with works instead of relationship.

It's a system with do's and don'ts instead of reality in Christ. If you're born of the Spirit and you're walking in the Spirit, the flesh won't have any attraction to you because you're so satisfied in your relationship. When that wanes, then you've got to do certain things to make yourself feel better. That's what happens. And God says, "I hate it."

So, there's some 'firsts' here. This is the first time that, like I just said, he's writing to a group of people, a remnant church as it were, inside of this religious system. Before he was warning, "Don't let this in." You've got the doctrine of Balaam there, the doctrine of the Nicolaitans. You've got this false teaching coming in. Stand firm.

Now he's having to write to a remnant church inside of a system that's dominating the world. The second thing we see is it's the first time he mentions his return. So, he's telling us that whatever this system is, this religious system, it will be in existence when he returns. It will be alive and well in the world. It's a counterfeit. It's a substitute. It's the spirit of Antichrist instead of Christ. And it will be in the world when he returns because he says, the first time he mentions his return, it's the first time he uses the term "adultery."