December 12, 2024 • 45 mins
Summary
In this episode of the Kathy Barnett Show, Kathy delves into the Book of Revelation, focusing on the Church of Thyatira. She discusses the characteristics of this church, which is marked by tolerance towards sin, and contrasts it with the other churches previously examined. Kathy emphasizes the importance of obedience over mere sacrifice and the need for repentance in the face of cultural pressures. She highlights Jesus's message to the church, calling for a return to faithfulness and warning against the consequences of complacency.
Takeaways
The Church of Thyatira is characterized by tolerance towards sin.
Jesus introduces himself based on the needs of the church.
The church is facing cultural pressures that challenge their faith.
Obedience to God is more important than sacrifice.
Tolerance can lead to a dilution of faith and morals.
Repentance is necessary for spiritual renewal.
Jesus promises authority to those who overcome.
Cultural acceptance can lead to spiritual compromise.
The church must discern between true and false teachings.
God's mercy is extended, but has limits.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to the Church of Thyatira
02:52 The Context of Thyatira: A Prosperous Community
06:11 Jesus's Introduction and His Message
08:52 The Challenges Faced by the Church
12:10 The Tolerance of Sin in the Church
15:03 The Call to Repentance and Obedience
17:59 The Consequences of Tolerance
20:51 The Promise to the Overcomers
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello, everyone.
This is the Kathy Barnett Show and I am Kathy Barnett.
Thank you so much for listening today.
We are going to jump right into the Book of Revelation, Chapter 2, The Church of Thyatira.
So here we go.
We've looked at three churches.
(00:20):
Today we're going to look at the fourth church out of the seven churches Jesus sent aletter to.
So.
What have we talked about so far?
We've already talked about the joyless church that was Ephesus.
They had lost their first love.
They had no joy.
We talked about Smyrna.
This is the persecuted church.
(00:41):
And wherever there's persecution, there's going to be purity because you have no time tobe about a church where you're being persecuted.
You would just leave the building, right?
Then we talked about Pergamum.
This was the compromise, the worldly church.
They were trying to fit in.
(01:02):
And today we're going to talk about the tolerant church.
Sounds familiar?
All about tolerant, all about love, love, love.
This is the church of Thyatira.
So we're going to start by first reading the passage.
This is the letter, Jesus's letter to the church in Thyatira starting,
(01:24):
In chapter two, verse 18, to the angel of the church in Thyatira, write, these are thewords 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 arenow doing more
(01:53):
than you did at first.
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 foodsacrificed to idols.
(02:15):
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 withher suffer intensely unless they repent of her ways.
I will strike her children dead.
(02:37):
Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds and I willrepay 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 deepsecrets.
(03:00):
I will not impose any other burden on you.
Only hold on to what you have until I come.
To him who overcome and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations.
He will rule them with an iron scepter
(03:20):
and he will dash them to pieces like pottery.
Just as I have received authority from my father, I will also give him the morning star.
He who has an ear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches." Whoa.
(03:41):
It is getting real intense in here.
And in fact, when I, you know, just to be...
completely transparent when I knew I was coming to the Church of Thyatira to begin toteach it before you, I felt some kind of way.
Because this is not an easy lesson to walk through or an easy passage to study and toparse, especially given where we find ourselves today and our culture.
(04:17):
of extreme tolerance on things we should not be tolerating whatsoever.
So let's jump into this.
If you recall, as I've said, when you're looking at these seven letters that Jesus wroteto the seven churches, they follow a very specific structure.
(04:38):
You have an introduction, hello, my name is Jesus.
And we would notice the way he introduces himself
is based on whatever their need is.
That is how he introduces himself.
He is whatever you need him to be.
That is one of the lessons to be gained from how he opens up each of the seven letters tothe seven churches.
(05:06):
He says who he's writing the letter to.
I'm writing a letter to the church of Thyatira.
It is coming from, let me introduce myself to you based on what I know you need.
Then he follows each of the seven letters, the structure is after the introductions, hesays something favorable.
He finds something favorable about them before he critiques them.
(05:29):
And he critiques all seven churches with the exception of two.
We've already talked about one of them, Smyrna.
We will talk about the other one, Philadelphia, shortly.
But Smyrna is a...
persecuted church, they are pure because with persecution comes purity.
It drives out all the foolishness within the body.
(05:52):
So he starts off by saying, this is who I'm writing the letter to, this is who the letteris coming from, and who is coming from is based on what you need.
Then he goes straight into, this is what I find favorable, followed by, these are theissues I have with you, followed by what-
causes this and the remedy to this.
(06:14):
And then lastly, he ends with either a warning or promise or a combination of the both,right?
A warning and a promise.
If you have an ear to hear, then you need to do this.
But if you don't, then these are the consequences that you're going to ultimately suffer.
So let's start off the Church of Thyatira.
(06:35):
So he is writing this letter to the Church of Thyatira and it's coming from
The son of God is the first way he introduces himself, whose eyes are like blazing fireand whose feet are like burnish bronze.
One of the things you have to know about just the setting of Thyretira, let's just startthere.
(07:00):
Thyretira was a...
prosperous town.
was a major commodity.
It didn't have the extreme wealth of a Ephesus or a Pergamum or even a Smyrna.
It was kind of like a bourbon middle income kind of country.
And he is writing to this prosperous, not extreme wealth, kind of a place probably youcame from, you lived.
(07:28):
A major commodity was textile and
Thyretyra, their waters were so rich in minerals that no place in the world could make thered textiles so brilliant and so bold as those in Thyretyra did them.
(07:50):
So as a result, it provided a very lucrative market for them.
It was desired around the world.
Their bronze and silversmith were famous.
had their pottery was coveted.
The entire social and economic and religious structure in Thyra Tyra was built around theguild.
(08:14):
So this is a suburban middle of the road, but prosperous community.
And
It was, and the primary industry was textiles, bronze and silversmithing.
so this is, so it was a lot of labor intensive and with most labor intensive industries,you have unions.
(08:42):
Their unions were called guilds.
And it wasn't just for labor, did they have these guilds that were formed, but
these guilds really comprise their entire social, economic, religious structure.
So again, it was more than just labor union.
(09:04):
It was the heart of every function that they did, whether it was social, whetherreligious, whether it was labor, work, it was the heart of that community.
So here you have Jesus introducing himself.
in a way that these particular people would relate to.
(09:26):
Thyretira was also founded by Alexander the Great as a garrison, as a military garrison.
His soldiers worshiped Apollo, and if you know anything about Greek mythology, Apollo wasthe son of Zeus.
Zeus was the god of gods.
(09:47):
He...
was the God over all the other gods, which made Apollo the son of God.
Who else carries that title?
Well, Jesus carries that title in the Bible.
He is the son of God.
And so these gills, where they had their, which encompass their entire being, right?
(10:12):
Not just labor, but their social, their playtime, their religious.
they would have these functions and in these functions they would go to the temples, theywould hold these large festivals and they would have them in the temples that were
dedicated to the son of God, Apollo.
(10:34):
And that was a problem for Christians because the problem for us, the first centurychurch, is that these festivals were held in the temple of Apollo.
who's called the Son of God, they would know the Son of God, that that was a title forJesus.
But now here you have Apollo being called the Son of God.
(10:55):
They would worship Apollo within these guilds.
They were often performed sexual acts as reverence to, as a sacrifice before Apollo.
I mean, what's a Christian to do?
What is a Christian to do?
Because if you say, don't want to participate in these activities, well, the members ofthe guilds feel as though, well, Apollo is not going to be happy with us and with our
(11:31):
guild.
You know, if it's the bronze guilds or the silversmithing guild or the textile guilds.
Well, and if something went wrong, well, it's because
Apollo is unhappy with us because we have these unfaithful Christians who won't sacrificebefore the one true son of God, Apollo.
(11:57):
And so what would the people do?
Well, they would routinely kick the Christians out of the gills, which meant you were nowkicked out of the job market.
you would lose your business.
And so what is a Christian to do?
Now in Pergamum, as we talked about, and you can go, you can look in the show notes andclick on the link to go through our study of Pergamum.
(12:26):
With the church in Pergamum, if they did not bow down and worship, the penalty was theirlife.
They could lose their life.
But with the church of Thyatira, you weren't
going to lose your life, but you are going to lose your job, your income, your ability totake care of yourself, your status in the community.
(12:50):
And it really hit people where it hurts.
And we see that today.
We see a lot of people who are going along to get along because I don't want to lose myjob.
I'm going to get whatever job, I'm going to do whatever I need to do.
I'm going to acquiesce, I'm going to use the right pronouns, I'm gonna put it on my ownprofile because it's what is being required of me.
(13:19):
So this is the environment in which the first century, the first and second centurychurch, the Thyatira was in.
And this goes to how Jesus introduces himself.
He says, one,
I'm the son of God, not Apollo.
(13:41):
Don't give your fidelity to Apollo, but you need to give it to me.
Who do you really believe in?
Are you going to trust in Apollo or pretend you're trusting in Apollo because you don'twanna get kicked out of the guild?
(14:02):
You don't wanna lose your job, your home, your status, living on the street.
because you're fearful of man or are you going to acknowledge that I am the son of God,Jesus is saying, and that I will protect you and keep you and provide for you?
(14:23):
Who are you going to fear?
The one who can destroy the body or the one who can destroy both the body and the soul?
So,
This is why Jesus is introducing himself in the manner in which he is.
He says, one, I'm the son of God, not Apollo.
Two, my eyes are like blazing fire and my feet are like burnished bronze.
(14:50):
Well, the bronze and silver, Smith, would readily understand this blazing furnace.
His eyes are looking at me.
His eyes are watching me.
His eyes are judging me.
They are purifying me.
(15:11):
His feet are like burnished bronze.
They're hot.
And he is ready to act.
He is ready to judge.
Fire signifies judging.
He comes to purify.
But how can Jesus purify?
(15:33):
can anything be purified unless you acknowledge or judge the blemish, the sin, that thisis wrong, that we don't do it like this, right?
We tend to want to skip the judging part because, you know, that's just not, that'suncouth.
And the culture in which we find ourselves in today, we want to skip the judgment partbecause that's so like old, that's so like 1800.
(16:02):
We want to go straight to the purifying and all the blessings and all is well and good.
That's not how it works.
So Jesus says, listen, I'm going to use language that you can understand.
One, I'm the son of God.
You will understand that because of Apollo.
I'm the one true God.
Secondly, I, my eyes are watching and see everything.
(16:27):
There is nothing that you can do and thought or in work.
that I won't see and I'm looking and I'm judging and my feet are ready to act.
I am ready to hand down my judgment because through that judgment comes purity.
Now, warning, in our country today, our first order of business, as I said, is not tojudge, is to skip the whole thing of judging and acknowledging that we have done wrong.
(17:00):
And let's go straight to all is well.
All is good.
We're all purified and clean.
We live in a country today where our first order is tolerance.
Everything, we tolerate everything.
We are strongly encouraged and bullied oftentimes to accept everything, to judge nothing,and to judge anything is synonymous
(17:30):
with being hateful.
To judge anything is synonymous with hate, with intolerance, with bigotry, with bullying.
And what do we mean by judging?
Essentially, there is a way to go, and then there is a better way to go.
And I have to make the decision, which way am I going to go?
(17:54):
Am I going to go this way, or am I going to go a different way?
And why am I choosing one over the other?
There's the moral aspect to it.
Meaning one way is bad or one way is better, right?
One way may be okay, but another way is a better way.
(18:14):
And I'm going to make the judgment that this way is a better way and I'm gonna move inthat direction.
Now we don't live in that kind of culture.
Our country is not tolerant.
of those of us who acknowledges that there are some absolute truths, some objectivetruths, and it's my responsibility to seek out what is true and when I discover it, to
(18:41):
stand on it.
No, you're not encouraged to do that in our culture.
You are encouraged to do as you're told.
Don't dead name somebody.
You use whatever name they want you to use.
You better do what you need to do.
Say what you need to say to align yourself with the culture, with the culture wants you todo.
(19:05):
Well, Jesus has come to examine their lives.
And as he examines our lives today, he has come to judge.
Go figure.
Judge.
Jesus is not tolerant.
I know that's a newsflash, right?
Like Jesus, baby Jesus.
(19:25):
Jesus, love, love, love.
Jesus is not very tolerant, but instead he comes to judge.
I'm gonna take you guys just to a few passages, not a lot in this week's study.
And the first one is 1 Corinthians chapter three.
Let's start out with verse 11.
(19:47):
For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.
So boom.
Before you can build a house, what do you have to do?
You have to lay down the foundation.
And in Christianity, the foundation is Jesus Christ.
First, you gotta lay down the foundation.
It is Jesus.
(20:07):
But guess what?
Jesus is not enough.
I know, go figure.
my God.
I know that's wrecking so many of you of your theology right now.
If Jesus was enough, Paul would not have written the rest of what I'm about to read now.
The foundation is Jesus.
(20:27):
That's the bare minimum, Jesus.
But once the foundation is laid, who wants to live in a house that's just the foundation?
No.
And the word of God equates us to being a temple, a house, a building.
(20:48):
The foundation of that building is Jesus.
But who wants to live on just the foundation?
No, we want some walls, we want a roof, we want some rooms, we want to partition therooms, we want some windows and doors, right?
So once the foundation is laid and you don't die, you need to get up and start building ahouse.
(21:11):
And Paul begins to tell us the quality of the material we use.
There are five different qualities we use on building that house.
Verse 12, if any man builds on this foundation of Jesus using gold, silver, costly stones,wood, hay, or straw, so there's six.
(21:41):
So you lay down the foundation and then you begin to build.
And the material we can use to build will be one of these six.
We're either using to build on this foundation, the walls, the roof, the window, the doorof material that is made out of gold or silver or costly stones, wood, hay or straw.
(22:06):
Now look at these six things.
What do they have in common?
It's interesting that they all respond a particular way to fire.
Jesus said, I am a blazing fire.
This is how he's introducing himself.
(22:27):
I come here to judge.
If you have a straw, which is just one little piece of straw, you throw it into a fire,boom, it's gone within half a second.
Hay, well, a hay, a bell of hay, now you get a lot of straws.
thousands of straw and bundle them together, well, they're still gonna burn up, butthey're not gonna burn as fast as one little piece of straw.
(22:53):
Wood, well, wood is gonna burn a little bit slower than the hay, but it's still gonna burnup, right, and turn into ashes.
Stones, you can burn a little bit longer, but it is going to eventually, you know,depending, like lava is going to melt stones.
Silver and gold.
(23:14):
The longer you leave silver and gold in the fire, don't go away.
They don't turn into ash.
Instead, they become more pure.
That's the reason why Smyrna, the Church of Smyrna, the persecuted church, is a purechurch.
Because when you're under persecution or in the fire, you're pure.
(23:38):
It dissolves all the foolishness, all the gossiping, all the bad
fighting all the sleeping around all the foolishness when you're in the fire, you'rebecoming purified.
Right.
And Paul is saying when we build on the foundation of Jesus Christ, we are using one ofsix qualities.
(24:02):
You're either using the quality of pure gold, refined silver, or it's a bunch of hay.
Verse 12.
If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay orstraw, his work will be shown for what it is.
(24:25):
Your work is one of these six.
Your work has the quality of one of these six.
Either your work is pure or your work is a bunch of hay and worse yet, a straw.
Verse 13, his work will be shown for what it is because the day, the judgment day willbring it to light.
(24:48):
Everyone's gonna know your business.
It will be revealed with fire and the fire will test the quality of each man's work.
If what he has built survives as pure gold, he will receive his reward.
If it is burned up,
He will suffer loss.
(25:09):
If everything you bring before Jesus is hay or straw and it burns up, you're saved becausethe foundation was laid and the foundation is Jesus.
If it is burned up, he will suffer loss.
When you get to heaven, you will suffer loss.
You're saved, but you're gonna be in a deficit up there.
He himself would be saved because Jesus is the foundation.
(25:34):
But,
only as one escaping through the flame.
There are going to be a lot of smoke-singed Christians when we get to heaven.
We're going to get to heaven and see somebody and be like, what are you doing here?
You lived like the devil when you were on earth, cussing and fussing, drinking andsleeping around, just doing the most, a coward, never standing up for anything.
(26:03):
backbiting, gossiping, but you're here?
Well, yeah, because once saved, always saved.
That's the way of saying it.
But the foundation of Jesus Christ has been laid.
So you're saved, you're in, but as Paul said, barely.
You're in as one barely escaping the flames.
(26:26):
We're gonna have a lot of smoke, sins, Christians, eyes.
bug nose flared, like, my goodness, I barely made it in here.
Yeah.
And that is going to come for each and every one of us.
We are eventually, unless Christ comes beforehand, we are going to, according to the wordof God, take our last breath on this side of heaven and immediately step into eternity.
(26:56):
And we are going to stand before this God.
who is describing himself here to the church of Thyatira.
He says, I am the son of God.
I'm the true God.
And my eyes are like blazing fire.
I'm judging.
(27:18):
I'm judging your works and whose feet are like burnished bronze.
I'm ready to act.
I know your D's.
He knows your works.
He's looking at all of it.
and he's judging it.
And he says, moving to the favorable, your love and faith and service and perseverance andthat you are doing more today than you did when you first believed.
(27:47):
So go start to you, you are doing it.
And I find this to be good.
They have works, they love the Lord, they have.
faith, are persecuting, they're persevering in hard time, they're not giving up.
Jesus commended them.
It was a church on an upward trajectory.
(28:08):
They were increasing their good works for Christ.
They were doing more today than they had at the start, which is impressive given thepersecution they were facing.
But sacrifice is no substitute
for obedience.
(28:28):
The word of God says obedience is greater than sacrifice.
Unlike Ephesus who had lost their first love, this church was doing great works thanbefore and Jesus commends them.
But then he says, this is what I have against you.
You are too tolerant.
(28:52):
You don't discipline sin.
I know that's a word that almost gets caught in my throat because who says anything aboutsin?
Who uses the word sin?
Does anyone use the word sin anymore like that?
Again, that's so 1800.
Like no one uses the word sin.
And to say it, it almost gets caught in my throat because who says that?
(29:15):
But Jesus says, you're too tolerant.
You don't discipline.
You allowing people to just sin and do things they shouldn't do.
You're not just tolerating the sin, but you're mingling with it.
You're intertwining yourselves with it.
(29:35):
And I completely understand why.
I understand why, don't you?
It was going to cost them something to stand up and say no.
can understand it because we're living in it.
And I'm watching people, good people, as we would define good, who are just choosing tostick their head in the sand instead of standing up, instead of getting a backbone and
(30:05):
saying, I'm gonna put my stake in the ground.
I am not moving.
This is what I know to be true.
Well, it's gonna cost you something today.
to put a stake in the ground and say, I'm not using your preferred pronoun.
I'm not calling you anything other than your biological sex.
It's gonna cost you something today.
It's gonna cost you something to even say the word sin.
(30:29):
It's gonna cost you something.
And so these people were being not only tolerating sin, but when you start toleratingthings, you eventually,
become intertwined in that thing.
It's very difficult not to become so, not to become dulled and open and receptive to howyou see a thing, right?
(30:56):
If you see it all the time, you become desensitized to the fact that this is something youshould really be rejecting.
So if it's constantly in your face and you're watching it and you're seeing it, you becomedesensitized.
to it and it becomes normal.
And for someone to come and say, this is not right, it's like, what are you talking about?
(31:18):
Don't be so 1800.
I keep using that example, but it's true.
Like don't be so old fashioned.
We've evolved.
We're progressive, right?
And so it's gonna cost them something.
And apparently the head of this church in Thyatira could have restrained this woman
(31:41):
Jesus calls a Jezebel.
And this woman was using apparently some kind of intellectual
of intellectual reasoning.
to persuade the first century Christians in Thyatira, listen, don't lose your job.
(32:08):
That is silly.
Don't try to be so righteous.
Don't do too much.
You're doing too much.
Go to Apollo's temple.
God knows your heart.
You don't have to say anything.
Just go and stand.
(32:30):
You don't have to participate.
Just go and stand and let people see that you were there so they can't say anything to tryto kick you out of your job.
You're gonna lose your job.
You're gonna lose your business.
You've been in your family for years, for thousands of years.
You're gonna lose everything.
You're gonna lose your wife.
(32:50):
You're gonna lose your children.
You're gonna lose everything.
Like that's silly.
and all you have to do is just show up and be in the temple.
I mean, yes, you're probably gonna have to eat the food that they just sacrificed toApollo because you can't bring in your own salad.
(33:12):
You gotta eat what's there.
You don't wanna look weird.
And yes, there are gonna be some people who are going to be immoral doing things that youknow the word of God says you shouldn't do.
But just go along with it.
Just go along with this.
It's okay.
God knows your heart.
He doesn't want you to lose your job.
(33:32):
And how do we know she says something like this?
We don't know exactly what she said, but what we know that one, Jesus calls her Jezebeland that ain't a good thing.
There is nobody naming their daughter Jezebel.
That's a bad sign right there.
Jezebel used immorality.
(33:53):
Sexual immorality, sexual immorality is very different from some of the others, right?
Because it requires your body and our bodies are supposed to be a temple and Jesus lives,God lives within our body according to the word of God.
And I believe the word of God.
And so now you're bringing your body and Christ who now dwells within you into this verysexually immoral activity.
(34:21):
But it was Jezebel who led the Jews astray and got them to worship false gods.
And so Jesus calls whoever this woman is, she's in the church, she's a prophetess,supposed to have the deep thing, know the deep things of God.
He calls her, no, she don't know the deep things of me.
(34:44):
She's a Jezebel, she's not a prophetess, not one from me.
And he says she is misleading people into sexual immorality and eating of food sacrificeto idols.
He said, I done gave her time to repent, but she ain't listening.
(35:04):
I'm about to judge her.
And I'm gonna cast her on a bed of suffering, but I'm not just gonna cast her onto a bedof intense suffering.
I'm gonna cast her children, meaning her children are the ones
She is reproducing of herself.
So those who are listening to her and following her advice, he is calling them herchildren.
(35:26):
I'm gonna cast all of them into intense suffering unless they repent.
And those who are following her, I'm gonna strike you dead, he says.
And then everybody's gonna know that I am who I am.
I am who I say that I am.
(35:46):
And he says, and now I say to the rest of you and Theratira, don't listen to her so-calleddeep secrets that she's gotten, that she's learned from Satan.
So she's giving, you know, she's a prophetess and people are thinking she's a prophetessfrom God, but no, she's a prophetess of Satan.
(36:11):
And these so-called deep
things or deep understandings that she is giving to you about co-mingling with Apollo andeating the food that is being offered to him and watching the sexual, immorality that is
going on, maybe even part participating in the sexual immorality that's going on.
(36:34):
He said, I am watching.
Those are not the deep things of me.
Those are the things she learned from Satan.
And God is saying, I am going to judge.
I know we don't use the word sin very often in our culture today.
And we certainly don't use the word judging anybody.
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Like you're not supposed to judge, love, love, love.
God doesn't say judge anyone.
As soon as someone says, you're not supposed to judge, doesn't the Bible say you're notsupposed to judge?
I know immediately you have not read the Bible.
You are reading, you're regurgitating something you memorized off of the back of a box ofCheerios.
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This is not Bible.
Yes, we are to judge rightly.
I cannot judge your soul to hell.
That's not my job.
I don't know who is saved, who's not saved, but I can look at a tree and say, that's anapple tree.
That's a peach tree.
That's a plum bush.
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can look at, I can look and say, and for Christians in Galatians chapter five, we knowthere are some fruits we are supposed to be bearing.
And if you are not bearing those fruits, then I can look at this tree and say, that's nota tree, that's not a tree that is producing the kind, that's not a life that is producing
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the kind of behaviors and works that God would be pleased with.
I'm judging.
So yes, we are called to judge, rightly judge, but God is judging.
And so what caused this?
Lack of faith.
You don't really believe.
You don't really believe that God is who he says he is.
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I suffer from this.
I know you suffer from this.
We all have our moments when we suffer from this because this world is in your face andeither you're going to fear man or you're going to fear God, but you can't do both.
Right?
You're either going to compromise in the moment because I want to keep my job.
I want to keep my standing in the community.
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I want to keep my family intact.
I just want these people to leave me alone.
And so you bend the knee and do whatever you need to do.
Or you bend the knee to Christ, which means you may be out of favor with man.
And there's a cost.
And I acknowledge that cost.
The cost is real.
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But the reason why this church has become a tolerant church and the reason why this churchis standing in judgment before Christ is because this church does not really believe.
They have more fear of Apollo than the real Son of God, Jesus.
So we don't really believe that God is real or that he will help us.
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We don't really believe he will help us.
We don't really believe he's gonna move fast enough.
So we try to help them or we go along to get along because I don't really know God ifyou're going to help me, if you're gonna get me out of this situation, if you're really
gonna provide, people are homeless, good people end up homeless, good people end up losingeverything.
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I don't want that.
I don't know if I can trust you God.
That's really what we're saying even though you may not say it.
So be aware of those who claim to have some deep secrets.
They don't.
What do you need to do to change it?
You need to repent.
He's very clear about this.
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to those who are listening and intermingling, listening to this Jezebel and interminglingwith the culture just to get along.
He said, I've given you time to repent, repent.
That's what you have to do.
You need to repeat.
Now I say to the rest of you and theratira to you who do not hold.
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So to those who are listening to this Jezebel to those who are being tolerant and thinkingtolerance is the order of business today.
He said you need to repent.
You need to stop what you're doing.
You need to repent.
Repent doesn't just mean saying I'm sorry, but it means you now do a 180 and you begin todo works.
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actual works, deeds, things that will call you're going in one direction.
repent and now you turn around and now you go in the opposite direction.
I was going this way, but now I'm gonna do a 180 and I'm gonna come back this way.
Not just in my thinking, but in how I show up and what I do and what I don't do.
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I'm not gonna go where I shouldn't go.
I'm not gonna co-mingle with people I shouldn't be co-mingling with.
Not that I'm trying to live an Amish life because I'm not.
We are in the world.
I know people from all spectrums.
I actually have more friends who aren't Christians than those who are.
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I intermix with all kinds and I love it and I love them and I want good for all of them.
but I don't lose who I am to fit in or to be accepted.
I am who I am.
This is who I am.
I don't require others to change for me and I expect them not to require me to change.
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I am going to be who I am and I'm going to show up and my little light is gonna shine inwhatever room I find myself in that
is what I believe we are called to do.
But he says to those who are listening and intermingling and weaving themselves into theway of the world, repent, turn, and come back, work, start walking and doing things all
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the way back, right?
To those who are already not listening and intermingling, he said, just hold on.
I'm not gonna impose anything else on you.
Just hold on to what you have fiercely.
What is the warning?
How much is Jesus worth to you?
How much value do you place on him?
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Would you value your job, your career, your economy more than him?
These are hard questions.
You don't have to answer it now.
Take it to the Lord.
Take it to the Lord.
I remember when I was running for, you know, even before I started running for US Senate,my constant prayer as I started moving into this Ram is that, God, when it is my turn to
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stand, let me stand.
I don't want to bend the knee to what I know to be wrong, just to save my own skin.
And I am just trusting God that he will keep me, he would keep my family, he would keepthe things that are important.
to me.
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I am not perfect in that, but I believe this is what we are to strive for.
And I want to encourage you to do the same.
To those who overcome, Jesus will give them authority.
These are people with very little authority to control their own state of being.
That's why they're so afraid.
He said, I will give you me, like the Father gave me authority, I'm going to give you me,the morning star.
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and then you will have authority and I'm going to give you rule over nations.
God's great mercy was shown even towards Jezebel and her followers.
God does not wish that anyone should perish.
He is long suffering, but his long suffering has an expiration date.
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So that is the Church of Thyro-thyro.
Make sure you share, hit the subscribe button, followed by the notification button, sharethis podcast with others.
Just copy the link and send it to your family and say, you need to start listening tothis.
This will become your weekly Bible study.
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And then leave a comment.
I would love to hear your thoughts and what God is revealing to you.
Blessings and take care.
Hello, everyone.
This is the Kathy Barnett Show and I am Kathy Barnett.
Thank you so much for listening today.
We are going to jump right into the Book of Revelation, Chapter 2, The Church of Thyatira.
So here we go.
We've looked at three churches.
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Today we're going to look at the fourth church out of the seven churches Jesus sent aletter to.
So.
What have we talked about so far?
We've already talked about the joyless church that was Ephesus.
They had lost their first love.
They had no joy.
We talked about Smyrna.
This is the persecuted church.
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And wherever there's persecution, there's going to be purity because you have no time tobe about a church where you're being persecuted.
You would just leave the building, right?
Then we talked about Pergamum.
This was the compromise, the worldly church.
They were trying to fit in.
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And today we're going to talk about the tolerant church.
Sounds familiar?
All about tolerant, all about love, love, love.
This is the church of Thyatira.
So we're going to start by first reading the passage.
This is the letter, Jesus's letter to the church in Thyatira starting,
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In chapter two, verse 18, to the angel of the church in Thyatira, write, these are thewords 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 arenow doing more
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than you did at first.
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 foodsacrificed to idols.
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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 withher suffer intensely unless they repent of her ways.
I will strike her children dead.
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Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds and I willrepay 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 deepsecrets.
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I will not impose any other burden on you.
Only hold on to what you have until I come.
To him who overcome and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations.
He will rule them with an iron scepter
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and he will dash them to pieces like pottery.
Just as I have received authority from my father, I will also give him the morning star.
He who has an ear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches." Whoa.
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It is getting real intense in here.
And in fact, when I, you know, just to be...
completely transparent when I knew I was coming to the Church of Thyatira to begin toteach it before you, I felt some kind of way.
Because this is not an easy lesson to walk through or an easy passage to study and toparse, especially given where we find ourselves today and our culture.
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of extreme tolerance on things we should not be tolerating whatsoever.
So let's jump into this.
If you recall, as I've said, when you're looking at these seven letters that Jesus wroteto the seven churches, they follow a very specific structure.
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You have an introduction, hello, my name is Jesus.
And we would notice the way he introduces himself
is based on whatever their need is.
That is how he introduces himself.
He is whatever you need him to be.
That is one of the lessons to be gained from how he opens up each of the seven letters tothe seven churches.
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He says who he's writing the letter to.
I'm writing a letter to the church of Thyatira.
It is coming from, let me introduce myself to you based on what I know you need.
Then he follows each of the seven letters, the structure is after the introductions, hesays something favorable.
He finds something favorable about them before he critiques them.
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And he critiques all seven churches with the exception of two.
We've already talked about one of them, Smyrna.
We will talk about the other one, Philadelphia, shortly.
But Smyrna is a...
persecuted church, they are pure because with persecution comes purity.
It drives out all the foolishness within the body.
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So he starts off by saying, this is who I'm writing the letter to, this is who the letteris coming from, and who is coming from is based on what you need.
Then he goes straight into, this is what I find favorable, followed by, these are theissues I have with you, followed by what-
causes this and the remedy to this.
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And then lastly, he ends with either a warning or promise or a combination of the both,right?
A warning and a promise.
If you have an ear to hear, then you need to do this.
But if you don't, then these are the consequences that you're going to ultimately suffer.
So let's start off the Church of Thyatira.
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So he is writing this letter to the Church of Thyatira and it's coming from
The son of God is the first way he introduces himself, whose eyes are like blazing fireand whose feet are like burnish bronze.
One of the things you have to know about just the setting of Thyretira, let's just startthere.
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Thyretira was a...
prosperous town.
was a major commodity.
It didn't have the extreme wealth of a Ephesus or a Pergamum or even a Smyrna.
It was kind of like a bourbon middle income kind of country.
And he is writing to this prosperous, not extreme wealth, kind of a place probably youcame from, you lived.
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A major commodity was textile and
Thyretyra, their waters were so rich in minerals that no place in the world could make thered textiles so brilliant and so bold as those in Thyretyra did them.
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So as a result, it provided a very lucrative market for them.
It was desired around the world.
Their bronze and silversmith were famous.
had their pottery was coveted.
The entire social and economic and religious structure in Thyra Tyra was built around theguild.
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So this is a suburban middle of the road, but prosperous community.
And
It was, and the primary industry was textiles, bronze and silversmithing.
so this is, so it was a lot of labor intensive and with most labor intensive industries,you have unions.
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Their unions were called guilds.
And it wasn't just for labor, did they have these guilds that were formed, but
these guilds really comprise their entire social, economic, religious structure.
So again, it was more than just labor union.
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It was the heart of every function that they did, whether it was social, whetherreligious, whether it was labor, work, it was the heart of that community.
So here you have Jesus introducing himself.
in a way that these particular people would relate to.
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Thyretira was also founded by Alexander the Great as a garrison, as a military garrison.
His soldiers worshiped Apollo, and if you know anything about Greek mythology, Apollo wasthe son of Zeus.
Zeus was the god of gods.
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He...
was the God over all the other gods, which made Apollo the son of God.
Who else carries that title?
Well, Jesus carries that title in the Bible.
He is the son of God.
And so these gills, where they had their, which encompass their entire being, right?
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Not just labor, but their social, their playtime, their religious.
they would have these functions and in these functions they would go to the temples, theywould hold these large festivals and they would have them in the temples that were
dedicated to the son of God, Apollo.
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And that was a problem for Christians because the problem for us, the first centurychurch, is that these festivals were held in the temple of Apollo.
who's called the Son of God, they would know the Son of God, that that was a title forJesus.
But now here you have Apollo being called the Son of God.
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They would worship Apollo within these guilds.
They were often performed sexual acts as reverence to, as a sacrifice before Apollo.
I mean, what's a Christian to do?
What is a Christian to do?
Because if you say, don't want to participate in these activities, well, the members ofthe guilds feel as though, well, Apollo is not going to be happy with us and with our
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guild.
You know, if it's the bronze guilds or the silversmithing guild or the textile guilds.
Well, and if something went wrong, well, it's because
Apollo is unhappy with us because we have these unfaithful Christians who won't sacrificebefore the one true son of God, Apollo.
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And so what would the people do?
Well, they would routinely kick the Christians out of the gills, which meant you were nowkicked out of the job market.
you would lose your business.
And so what is a Christian to do?
Now in Pergamum, as we talked about, and you can go, you can look in the show notes andclick on the link to go through our study of Pergamum.
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With the church in Pergamum, if they did not bow down and worship, the penalty was theirlife.
They could lose their life.
But with the church of Thyatira, you weren't
going to lose your life, but you are going to lose your job, your income, your ability totake care of yourself, your status in the community.
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And it really hit people where it hurts.
And we see that today.
We see a lot of people who are going along to get along because I don't want to lose myjob.
I'm going to get whatever job, I'm going to do whatever I need to do.
I'm going to acquiesce, I'm going to use the right pronouns, I'm gonna put it on my ownprofile because it's what is being required of me.
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So this is the environment in which the first century, the first and second centurychurch, the Thyatira was in.
And this goes to how Jesus introduces himself.
He says, one,
I'm the son of God, not Apollo.
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Don't give your fidelity to Apollo, but you need to give it to me.
Who do you really believe in?
Are you going to trust in Apollo or pretend you're trusting in Apollo because you don'twanna get kicked out of the guild?
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You don't wanna lose your job, your home, your status, living on the street.
because you're fearful of man or are you going to acknowledge that I am the son of God,Jesus is saying, and that I will protect you and keep you and provide for you?
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Who are you going to fear?
The one who can destroy the body or the one who can destroy both the body and the soul?
So,
This is why Jesus is introducing himself in the manner in which he is.
He says, one, I'm the son of God, not Apollo.
Two, my eyes are like blazing fire and my feet are like burnished bronze.
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Well, the bronze and silver, Smith, would readily understand this blazing furnace.
His eyes are looking at me.
His eyes are watching me.
His eyes are judging me.
They are purifying me.
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His feet are like burnished bronze.
They're hot.
And he is ready to act.
He is ready to judge.
Fire signifies judging.
He comes to purify.
But how can Jesus purify?
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can anything be purified unless you acknowledge or judge the blemish, the sin, that thisis wrong, that we don't do it like this, right?
We tend to want to skip the judging part because, you know, that's just not, that'suncouth.
And the culture in which we find ourselves in today, we want to skip the judgment partbecause that's so like old, that's so like 1800.
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We want to go straight to the purifying and all the blessings and all is well and good.
That's not how it works.
So Jesus says, listen, I'm going to use language that you can understand.
One, I'm the son of God.
You will understand that because of Apollo.
I'm the one true God.
Secondly, I, my eyes are watching and see everything.
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There is nothing that you can do and thought or in work.
that I won't see and I'm looking and I'm judging and my feet are ready to act.
I am ready to hand down my judgment because through that judgment comes purity.
Now, warning, in our country today, our first order of business, as I said, is not tojudge, is to skip the whole thing of judging and acknowledging that we have done wrong.
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And let's go straight to all is well.
All is good.
We're all purified and clean.
We live in a country today where our first order is tolerance.
Everything, we tolerate everything.
We are strongly encouraged and bullied oftentimes to accept everything, to judge nothing,and to judge anything is synonymous
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with being hateful.
To judge anything is synonymous with hate, with intolerance, with bigotry, with bullying.
And what do we mean by judging?
Essentially, there is a way to go, and then there is a better way to go.
And I have to make the decision, which way am I going to go?
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Am I going to go this way, or am I going to go a different way?
And why am I choosing one over the other?
There's the moral aspect to it.
Meaning one way is bad or one way is better, right?
One way may be okay, but another way is a better way.
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And I'm going to make the judgment that this way is a better way and I'm gonna move inthat direction.
Now we don't live in that kind of culture.
Our country is not tolerant.
of those of us who acknowledges that there are some absolute truths, some objectivetruths, and it's my responsibility to seek out what is true and when I discover it, to
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stand on it.
No, you're not encouraged to do that in our culture.
You are encouraged to do as you're told.
Don't dead name somebody.
You use whatever name they want you to use.
You better do what you need to do.
Say what you need to say to align yourself with the culture, with the culture wants you todo.
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Well, Jesus has come to examine their lives.
And as he examines our lives today, he has come to judge.
Go figure.
Judge.
Jesus is not tolerant.
I know that's a newsflash, right?
Like Jesus, baby Jesus.
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Jesus, love, love, love.
Jesus is not very tolerant, but instead he comes to judge.
I'm gonna take you guys just to a few passages, not a lot in this week's study.
And the first one is 1 Corinthians chapter three.
Let's start out with verse 11.
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For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.
So boom.
Before you can build a house, what do you have to do?
You have to lay down the foundation.
And in Christianity, the foundation is Jesus Christ.
First, you gotta lay down the foundation.
It is Jesus.
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But guess what?
Jesus is not enough.
I know, go figure.
my God.
I know that's wrecking so many of you of your theology right now.
If Jesus was enough, Paul would not have written the rest of what I'm about to read now.
The foundation is Jesus.
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That's the bare minimum, Jesus.
But once the foundation is laid, who wants to live in a house that's just the foundation?
No.
And the word of God equates us to being a temple, a house, a building.
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The foundation of that building is Jesus.
But who wants to live on just the foundation?
No, we want some walls, we want a roof, we want some rooms, we want to partition therooms, we want some windows and doors, right?
So once the foundation is laid and you don't die, you need to get up and start building ahouse.
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And Paul begins to tell us the quality of the material we use.
There are five different qualities we use on building that house.
Verse 12, if any man builds on this foundation of Jesus using gold, silver, costly stones,wood, hay, or straw, so there's six.
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So you lay down the foundation and then you begin to build.
And the material we can use to build will be one of these six.
We're either using to build on this foundation, the walls, the roof, the window, the doorof material that is made out of gold or silver or costly stones, wood, hay or straw.
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Now look at these six things.
What do they have in common?
It's interesting that they all respond a particular way to fire.
Jesus said, I am a blazing fire.
This is how he's introducing himself.
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I come here to judge.
If you have a straw, which is just one little piece of straw, you throw it into a fire,boom, it's gone within half a second.
Hay, well, a hay, a bell of hay, now you get a lot of straws.
thousands of straw and bundle them together, well, they're still gonna burn up, butthey're not gonna burn as fast as one little piece of straw.
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Wood, well, wood is gonna burn a little bit slower than the hay, but it's still gonna burnup, right, and turn into ashes.
Stones, you can burn a little bit longer, but it is going to eventually, you know,depending, like lava is going to melt stones.
Silver and gold.
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The longer you leave silver and gold in the fire, don't go away.
They don't turn into ash.
Instead, they become more pure.
That's the reason why Smyrna, the Church of Smyrna, the persecuted church, is a purechurch.
Because when you're under persecution or in the fire, you're pure.
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It dissolves all the foolishness, all the gossiping, all the bad
fighting all the sleeping around all the foolishness when you're in the fire, you'rebecoming purified.
Right.
And Paul is saying when we build on the foundation of Jesus Christ, we are using one ofsix qualities.
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You're either using the quality of pure gold, refined silver, or it's a bunch of hay.
Verse 12.
If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay orstraw, his work will be shown for what it is.
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Your work is one of these six.
Your work has the quality of one of these six.
Either your work is pure or your work is a bunch of hay and worse yet, a straw.
Verse 13, his work will be shown for what it is because the day, the judgment day willbring it to light.
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Everyone's gonna know your business.
It will be revealed with fire and the fire will test the quality of each man's work.
If what he has built survives as pure gold, he will receive his reward.
If it is burned up,
He will suffer loss.
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If everything you bring before Jesus is hay or straw and it burns up, you're saved becausethe foundation was laid and the foundation is Jesus.
If it is burned up, he will suffer loss.
When you get to heaven, you will suffer loss.
You're saved, but you're gonna be in a deficit up there.
He himself would be saved because Jesus is the foundation.
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But,
only as one escaping through the flame.
There are going to be a lot of smoke-singed Christians when we get to heaven.
We're going to get to heaven and see somebody and be like, what are you doing here?
You lived like the devil when you were on earth, cussing and fussing, drinking andsleeping around, just doing the most, a coward, never standing up for anything.
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backbiting, gossiping, but you're here?
Well, yeah, because once saved, always saved.
That's the way of saying it.
But the foundation of Jesus Christ has been laid.
So you're saved, you're in, but as Paul said, barely.
You're in as one barely escaping the flames.
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We're gonna have a lot of smoke, sins, Christians, eyes.
bug nose flared, like, my goodness, I barely made it in here.
Yeah.
And that is going to come for each and every one of us.
We are eventually, unless Christ comes beforehand, we are going to, according to the wordof God, take our last breath on this side of heaven and immediately step into eternity.
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And we are going to stand before this God.
who is describing himself here to the church of Thyatira.
He says, I am the son of God.
I'm the true God.
And my eyes are like blazing fire.
I'm judging.
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I'm judging your works and whose feet are like burnished bronze.
I'm ready to act.
I know your D's.
He knows your works.
He's looking at all of it.
and he's judging it.
And he says, moving to the favorable, your love and faith and service and perseverance andthat you are doing more today than you did when you first believed.
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So go start to you, you are doing it.
And I find this to be good.
They have works, they love the Lord, they have.
faith, are persecuting, they're persevering in hard time, they're not giving up.
Jesus commended them.
It was a church on an upward trajectory.
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They were increasing their good works for Christ.
They were doing more today than they had at the start, which is impressive given thepersecution they were facing.
But sacrifice is no substitute
for obedience.
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The word of God says obedience is greater than sacrifice.
Unlike Ephesus who had lost their first love, this church was doing great works thanbefore and Jesus commends them.
But then he says, this is what I have against you.
You are too tolerant.
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You don't discipline sin.
I know that's a word that almost gets caught in my throat because who says anything aboutsin?
Who uses the word sin?
Does anyone use the word sin anymore like that?
Again, that's so 1800.
Like no one uses the word sin.
And to say it, it almost gets caught in my throat because who says that?
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But Jesus says, you're too tolerant.
You don't discipline.
You allowing people to just sin and do things they shouldn't do.
You're not just tolerating the sin, but you're mingling with it.
You're intertwining yourselves with it.
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And I completely understand why.
I understand why, don't you?
It was going to cost them something to stand up and say no.
can understand it because we're living in it.
And I'm watching people, good people, as we would define good, who are just choosing tostick their head in the sand instead of standing up, instead of getting a backbone and
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saying, I'm gonna put my stake in the ground.
I am not moving.
This is what I know to be true.
Well, it's gonna cost you something today.
to put a stake in the ground and say, I'm not using your preferred pronoun.
I'm not calling you anything other than your biological sex.
It's gonna cost you something today.
It's gonna cost you something to even say the word sin.
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It's gonna cost you something.
And so these people were being not only tolerating sin, but when you start toleratingthings, you eventually,
become intertwined in that thing.
It's very difficult not to become so, not to become dulled and open and receptive to howyou see a thing, right?
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If you see it all the time, you become desensitized to the fact that this is something youshould really be rejecting.
So if it's constantly in your face and you're watching it and you're seeing it, you becomedesensitized.
to it and it becomes normal.
And for someone to come and say, this is not right, it's like, what are you talking about?
(31:18):
Don't be so 1800.
I keep using that example, but it's true.
Like don't be so old fashioned.
We've evolved.
We're progressive, right?
And so it's gonna cost them something.
And apparently the head of this church in Thyatira could have restrained this woman
(31:41):
Jesus calls a Jezebel.
And this woman was using apparently some kind of intellectual
of intellectual reasoning.
to persuade the first century Christians in Thyatira, listen, don't lose your job.
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That is silly.
Don't try to be so righteous.
Don't do too much.
You're doing too much.
Go to Apollo's temple.
God knows your heart.
You don't have to say anything.
Just go and stand.
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You don't have to participate.
Just go and stand and let people see that you were there so they can't say anything to tryto kick you out of your job.
You're gonna lose your job.
You're gonna lose your business.
You've been in your family for years, for thousands of years.
You're gonna lose everything.
You're gonna lose your wife.
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You're gonna lose your children.
You're gonna lose everything.
Like that's silly.
and all you have to do is just show up and be in the temple.
I mean, yes, you're probably gonna have to eat the food that they just sacrificed toApollo because you can't bring in your own salad.
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You gotta eat what's there.
You don't wanna look weird.
And yes, there are gonna be some people who are going to be immoral doing things that youknow the word of God says you shouldn't do.
But just go along with it.
Just go along with this.
It's okay.
God knows your heart.
He doesn't want you to lose your job.
(33:32):
And how do we know she says something like this?
We don't know exactly what she said, but what we know that one, Jesus calls her Jezebeland that ain't a good thing.
There is nobody naming their daughter Jezebel.
That's a bad sign right there.
Jezebel used immorality.
(33:53):
Sexual immorality, sexual immorality is very different from some of the others, right?
Because it requires your body and our bodies are supposed to be a temple and Jesus lives,God lives within our body according to the word of God.
And I believe the word of God.
And so now you're bringing your body and Christ who now dwells within you into this verysexually immoral activity.
(34:21):
But it was Jezebel who led the Jews astray and got them to worship false gods.
And so Jesus calls whoever this woman is, she's in the church, she's a prophetess,supposed to have the deep thing, know the deep things of God.
He calls her, no, she don't know the deep things of me.
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She's a Jezebel, she's not a prophetess, not one from me.
And he says she is misleading people into sexual immorality and eating of food sacrificeto idols.
He said, I done gave her time to repent, but she ain't listening.
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I'm about to judge her.
And I'm gonna cast her on a bed of suffering, but I'm not just gonna cast her onto a bedof intense suffering.
I'm gonna cast her children, meaning her children are the ones
She is reproducing of herself.
So those who are listening to her and following her advice, he is calling them herchildren.
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I'm gonna cast all of them into intense suffering unless they repent.
And those who are following her, I'm gonna strike you dead, he says.
And then everybody's gonna know that I am who I am.
I am who I say that I am.
(35:46):
And he says, and now I say to the rest of you and Theratira, don't listen to her so-calleddeep secrets that she's gotten, that she's learned from Satan.
So she's giving, you know, she's a prophetess and people are thinking she's a prophetessfrom God, but no, she's a prophetess of Satan.
(36:11):
And these so-called deep
things or deep understandings that she is giving to you about co-mingling with Apollo andeating the food that is being offered to him and watching the sexual, immorality that is
going on, maybe even part participating in the sexual immorality that's going on.
(36:34):
He said, I am watching.
Those are not the deep things of me.
Those are the things she learned from Satan.
And God is saying, I am going to judge.
I know we don't use the word sin very often in our culture today.
And we certainly don't use the word judging anybody.
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Like you're not supposed to judge, love, love, love.
God doesn't say judge anyone.
As soon as someone says, you're not supposed to judge, doesn't the Bible say you're notsupposed to judge?
I know immediately you have not read the Bible.
You are reading, you're regurgitating something you memorized off of the back of a box ofCheerios.
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This is not Bible.
Yes, we are to judge rightly.
I cannot judge your soul to hell.
That's not my job.
I don't know who is saved, who's not saved, but I can look at a tree and say, that's anapple tree.
That's a peach tree.
That's a plum bush.
(37:37):
can look at, I can look and say, and for Christians in Galatians chapter five, we knowthere are some fruits we are supposed to be bearing.
And if you are not bearing those fruits, then I can look at this tree and say, that's nota tree, that's not a tree that is producing the kind, that's not a life that is producing
(37:57):
the kind of behaviors and works that God would be pleased with.
I'm judging.
So yes, we are called to judge, rightly judge, but God is judging.
And so what caused this?
Lack of faith.
You don't really believe.
You don't really believe that God is who he says he is.
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I suffer from this.
I know you suffer from this.
We all have our moments when we suffer from this because this world is in your face andeither you're going to fear man or you're going to fear God, but you can't do both.
Right?
You're either going to compromise in the moment because I want to keep my job.
I want to keep my standing in the community.
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I want to keep my family intact.
I just want these people to leave me alone.
And so you bend the knee and do whatever you need to do.
Or you bend the knee to Christ, which means you may be out of favor with man.
And there's a cost.
And I acknowledge that cost.
The cost is real.
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But the reason why this church has become a tolerant church and the reason why this churchis standing in judgment before Christ is because this church does not really believe.
They have more fear of Apollo than the real Son of God, Jesus.
So we don't really believe that God is real or that he will help us.
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We don't really believe he will help us.
We don't really believe he's gonna move fast enough.
So we try to help them or we go along to get along because I don't really know God ifyou're going to help me, if you're gonna get me out of this situation, if you're really
gonna provide, people are homeless, good people end up homeless, good people end up losingeverything.
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I don't want that.
I don't know if I can trust you God.
That's really what we're saying even though you may not say it.
So be aware of those who claim to have some deep secrets.
They don't.
What do you need to do to change it?
You need to repent.
He's very clear about this.
(40:17):
to those who are listening and intermingling, listening to this Jezebel and interminglingwith the culture just to get along.
He said, I've given you time to repent, repent.
That's what you have to do.
You need to repeat.
Now I say to the rest of you and theratira to you who do not hold.
(40:43):
So to those who are listening to this Jezebel to those who are being tolerant and thinkingtolerance is the order of business today.
He said you need to repent.
You need to stop what you're doing.
You need to repent.
Repent doesn't just mean saying I'm sorry, but it means you now do a 180 and you begin todo works.
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actual works, deeds, things that will call you're going in one direction.
repent and now you turn around and now you go in the opposite direction.
I was going this way, but now I'm gonna do a 180 and I'm gonna come back this way.
Not just in my thinking, but in how I show up and what I do and what I don't do.
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I'm not gonna go where I shouldn't go.
I'm not gonna co-mingle with people I shouldn't be co-mingling with.
Not that I'm trying to live an Amish life because I'm not.
We are in the world.
I know people from all spectrums.
I actually have more friends who aren't Christians than those who are.
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I intermix with all kinds and I love it and I love them and I want good for all of them.
but I don't lose who I am to fit in or to be accepted.
I am who I am.
This is who I am.
I don't require others to change for me and I expect them not to require me to change.
(42:17):
I am going to be who I am and I'm going to show up and my little light is gonna shine inwhatever room I find myself in that
is what I believe we are called to do.
But he says to those who are listening and intermingling and weaving themselves into theway of the world, repent, turn, and come back, work, start walking and doing things all
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the way back, right?
To those who are already not listening and intermingling, he said, just hold on.
I'm not gonna impose anything else on you.
Just hold on to what you have fiercely.
What is the warning?
How much is Jesus worth to you?
How much value do you place on him?
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Would you value your job, your career, your economy more than him?
These are hard questions.
You don't have to answer it now.
Take it to the Lord.
Take it to the Lord.
I remember when I was running for, you know, even before I started running for US Senate,my constant prayer as I started moving into this Ram is that, God, when it is my turn to
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stand, let me stand.
I don't want to bend the knee to what I know to be wrong, just to save my own skin.
And I am just trusting God that he will keep me, he would keep my family, he would keepthe things that are important.
to me.
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I am not perfect in that, but I believe this is what we are to strive for.
And I want to encourage you to do the same.
To those who overcome, Jesus will give them authority.
These are people with very little authority to control their own state of being.
That's why they're so afraid.
He said, I will give you me, like the Father gave me authority, I'm going to give you me,the morning star.
(44:20):
and then you will have authority and I'm going to give you rule over nations.
God's great mercy was shown even towards Jezebel and her followers.
God does not wish that anyone should perish.
He is long suffering, but his long suffering has an expiration date.
(44:42):
So that is the Church of Thyro-thyro.
Make sure you share, hit the subscribe button, followed by the notification button, sharethis podcast with others.
Just copy the link and send it to your family and say, you need to start listening tothis.
This will become your weekly Bible study.
(45:03):
And then leave a comment.
I would love to hear your thoughts and what God is revealing to you.
Blessings and take care.
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