Bible Study Library

Dear Disciples:

The personality of a church is influenced by the slice of the world immediately surrounding it. Having lived in major cities, suburbs, and small towns, I can tell you that there is a vast difference between churches in each place.

For example, though we support a homeless ministry an hour north in Cleveland and a jail ministry an hour west in Ashland, OCC doesn’t have a strong urban focus. Our little town isn’t surrounded by a great deal of crime, we don’t have sex shops or strip clubs, we only have 2.5 bars, someone’s lawnmower getting stolen still makes it into the community newspaper, and most of our members live near each other and within a few miles of our building.

On the other hand, OCC doesn’t get together for barn raising or field plowing parties. We’re a small town church — not a city church or country church — and we have small town concerns and activities.

The first three letters from Jesus were to churches situated in major religious, political, and trade centers - Ephesus, Smyrna, and Pergamum.

The letter to Thyatira was different.

Thyatira was too far inland to be a major import/export location like Ephesus and Smyrna. No significant religions were based there as in Smyrna and Pergamum. Nor was it a political power center the way Ephesus and Pergamum were.

It was an unassuming, blue-collar town.

The one thing Thyatira was known for was its trade unions, about which we have extensive knowledge from second century writings. Acts 16:14 mentions a woman named Lydia, “a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, who was a worshiper of God.” This purple cloth was a major product of Thyatira, and a large trade union was formed around it.

The importance of these unions to our study will become clear shortly.

In 2:19, Jesus begins by commending the Christians for growing in their Love and Service (which go together), Faith and Perseverance (which also go together). This is a wonderful compliment coming from our Lord Himself!

If Jesus were writing to you or to me, could He say that our love, faith, service, and perseverance continually grow - that we are “doing more now than we did at first?” Or have time and familiarity caused us to slow down to a steadier, comfortable pace?

As wonderful as that was, though, the defect in this church was huge - so huge that those who refused to repent would “suffer intensely” and be “struck dead” (2:22-23)!

What was the defect? It was that the church tolerated a false prophetess whom Jesus names “Jezebel.” But to fully understand the problem we have to first refresh our knowledge of the real Jezebel in 1 and 2 Kings.

Here’s a quick summary:
Jezebel was the Queen of Israel, the wife of King Ahab. Ahab was a good king who was devoted to God. However, King Ahab married Jezebel, a princess from Phoenicia who worshipped the pagan god Baal.

Jezebel openly promoted and funded Baal worship and was able to influence her husband away from worshipping the true God. It got so bad that King Ahab - the king of God’s chosen people - built temples and idols to Baal and gave Jezebel authority over many pagan priests.

This wicked woman was self-centered, self-absorbed, and seductive. She led Israel into idol worship and pagan practices.

Do you have a clear picture of that Jezebel? Then you have a clear picture of Jezebel of the church of Thyatira many centuries later.

This Jezebel not only was corrupt like the other one, it was even worse because she claimed to be a prophetess -a mouthpiece for God Himself. Those who followed her in pagan worship and practices were convinced that God said it was OK.

But Jezebel’s teaching wasn’t the biggest defect in the church at Thyatira. The real defect was that the Christians there tolerated her (2:20). It was not that the Christians taught falsely or lived wrongly, it was that they were tolerant of someone who did.

Can we see clearly now how this applies to a 21st century church? As Christians, we simply must clearly understand what is morally right. We simply must have a firm grip on true, biblical doctrine. And we simply must refuse to be wishy-washy. When we encounter sin and doctrinal corruption, we simply must engage in the fight against it! That attitude isn’t popular in our relativistic, postmodern, live-and-let-live culture. Tolerance, diversity, and inclusion are our society’s buzzwords. But our love and outreach must be coupled with unwavering certainty and firmness about what is right and what we believe.

Jezebel basically taught the same thing that the Nicolaitans taught in Ephesus and Pergamum. Remember Thyatira’s trade unions? These unions met for meals that served up the meat sacrificed to pagan gods. Just like in Pergamum, it was nearly impossible for a Christian to work in a trade without being part of the union. They had to deal with the question of whether it was OK to eat at the meals. These meals would often be followed up by a period of unrestrained sexual immorality.

Jezebel taught that God said it was OK to participate in pagan worship — just like the Nicolaitans taught in Ephesus and Pergamum.

But notice the contrast in how each church reacted:

• The church at Pergamum bought into the false teaching
• The church at Ephesus fought for truth, but in fighting lost the ability to love
• The church at Thyatira continued to grow in love but refused to fight for truth!

God patiently gave Jezebel a chance to repent, but she refused (2:21). So God said He’d “cast her on a bed of suffering” (literally, a “bed of sickness”) since she seemed to like beds so much. Those who participate with her would suffer the same punishment if they refused to repent, and “her children” would be struck dead (2:22-23).

“Her children” could mean literal children born from her immorality. More likely it is a play on words for the offspring of her immoral teaching - those she leads astray, the children of her false teaching.

As a prophetess Jezebel claimed to know the deep things of God, but she really taught the deep things of Satan (2:24). If faithful Christians accepted the burden of fighting against her teaching, God would not burden them further. They could then remain as they were - growing in love, faith, service and perseverance (2:25). He would also give them “authority over the nations” (2:26).

Jesus will give us this same authority just as the Father gave Him the authority (2:27).

This idea was first mentioned in 1:6 and we’ll expand upon it later. In short, someday Christians will share in Christ’s kingly rule over the world. Remember Jesus saying that the meek will inherit the earth (Matt 5:5) and Paul saying that the saints will judge the world (1Cor 6:2)? Those are related to this.

We won’t answer right when that will happen. We’ll talk more about that in later studies.

—–

Whew!

Catch your breath, have a great rest of the week, and thank God for giving you the Holy Spirit to understand these things!