Jesus, Our Judge
July 11, 2021
Preached by David McHale
Scripture Reading
Revelation 2:18-29
18 “And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write: ‘The words of the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and whose feet are like burnished bronze.
19 “‘I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first. 20 But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. 21 I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality. 22 Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation, unless they repent of her works, 23 and I will strike her children dead. And all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works. 24 But to the rest of you in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching, who have not learned what some call the deep things of Satan, to you I say, I do not lay on you any other burden. 25 Only hold fast what you have until I come. 26 The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, 27 and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father. 28 And I will give him the morning star. 29 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’
About 10 years ago, a dear person in my life was diagnosed with cancer. A disease had been growing in secret, a disease that threatened, not just his well-being, but his life. Maybe some of you have had a close encounter with cancer, whether in a loved one or in you. Cancer is dreadful and often deadly. Thus, treatment is swift, severe, and very invasive. A surgeon’s knife. Chemotherapy. Radiation. Treatments often pummel the body with harm.
Why? To kill the disease and so that the disease might not kill the person. The immediate harm of the treatment does not reflect the sadism of the surgeon but reflects the severity of the disease and when seen rightly, the good heart of the one who gives it.
The letter to the church in Thyatira may be the most severe of those in Revelation. The church in Thyatira was very similar to a cancer patient and the way in which Christ deals with them matches their condition.
These are the words of Jesus to Thyatira. And what Jesus says reveals who he is. So, who is Jesus according to this letter?
18 “And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write: ‘The words of the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire and feet of burnished bronze.’”
He offers these two images that come from chapter 1 to describe himself, which informs what He does in his letter to Thyatira. As the Son of God, Jesus does three things – (1) Jesus Sees (2) Jesus Judges (3) Jesus Promises.
1. Jesus Sees
19 “‘I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first.
Jesus begins his letter by affirming the church for their virtuous living, they’re recent works are better than before – here in Thyatira, they are growing and bearing the fruit of the spirit – serving the Body of Christ sacrificially, trusting in Jesus in the midst of suffering – steadfast and patient in affliction – they are becoming more like Jesus together – Jesus sees and affirms the living love in Thyatira – notice that he starts with encouragement (very much like Paul) – he is keen on finding the good, then he moves to rebuke
20 But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols.
They are tolerating suffering, but also false teaching that is leading some of the congregation into sin. They are a fit marathon runner (full of love) who is then diagnosed with cancer.
They tolerated “that woman Jezebel” – which was necessarily her actual name, but is a clear allusion to another Jezebel. In 1 Kings 18, Queen Jezebel, who married Ahab, the king of Israel, lured God’s people away from worshipping YHWH to worship false gods, specifically, Baal.
The worship services of Baal were marked most notably by debauchery, sexual immorality, of all kinds, men with women, men with men, women with women, prostitution, all manner of sexual perversion. Sex is sacred to God. It was, is, and will always be set apart for a covenantal marriage between one man and one woman, within which it is beautiful and holy – furthermore, marriage reflects the relationship between God and His people – Israel was God’s spouse – and the Church is the Bride of Christ – the prophets in the OT used the image of adultery to describe idolatry – To worship other gods is to cheat on the Lord
And this is exactly what the Jezebel in Thyatira was doing – as a self-appointed prophetess, she was claiming that she spoke for God and seduced the church to assimilate to the culture’s idolatry – Thyatira idolized two things: money and sex – and they were nearly one and the same.
The city was renowned for its trade guilds – To thrive in trade a one had to participate in the festivals devoted to the city’s various deities, which included eating food that had been dedicated to an idol and sexual immorality, which meant having sex with whoever you needed to in order to gain the favor of the “right people” – it may have been that the reason her teaching gained so much traction was because it was financially advantageous – so sexual immorality had become not just normal in the culture, but essential to its prosperity
Is this not the state of our culture? In our society, sex is king. It is everywhere. To our culture, sex is not something to be cherished in the safe setting of marriage, but something to be bought, sold, or stolen; something to be flaunted flippantly. You can’t watch a Netflix original movie without being inundated by sexually explicit scenes. You can barely drive down the highway without seeing women sexually objectified on billboards. In a matter of seconds, anyone who has access to the internet has access to pornography. Pornography is one of the leading industries in our world today. The leading pornography website sees more traffic in a day than Amazon, Twitter, and Netflix combined.[1] It is a 97%-billion-dollar industry worldwide.[2]Surely, sex is king.
Furthermore, sexuality is no longer something that is defined by our Maker, but it is defined by whoever wants to define it, however they want to define it. Sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman, whether that is heterosexual or homosexual, is considered applaudable. This posture toward sexuality has not only become commonplace in our culture, but for some Christians, it has become compatible with what the Bible has to say about it.
I know that I am walking into a delicate subject from some of us and something that requires a robust conversation. So, let me just say, if you would like to dialogue more about what our church believes about sexuality and what we believe the church says about sexuality, please approach any of our pastor-elders and we would love to talk with you more.
This is weighty. Jesus shows us how weighty it is.
2. Jesus Judges
21 I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality. 22 Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation, unless they repent of her works, 23 and I will strike her children dead.
Jesus is severe toward Jezebel and her followers. Jesus is not just a gentle savior, but as the Son of God, he is also the Judge of all the earth. He is perfectly merciful, and he is perfectly just. Mercy isn’t less right than justice. He knows the truth and he always does what is right about it, and in this case the right thing is throwing Jezebel on her sickbed. She is a cancer that Christ is prepared to cut out of His Bride. Jesus is putting an end to Jezebel masquerading as His mouthpiece and degrading his name. Jezebel has been stealing his wife! And the living Jesus says enough is enough.
He is protecting his church, his Bride. He is loving her by clearing away the temptation to commit adultery with other gods. God’s wrath always reveals His love – The things he hates are the things that assault what he loves – He hates murder because he loves life, he hates lies because he loves the truth
He hates sexual immorality because he loves the sacred sexual union of a man and woman in marriage, which is maybe the most radiant image Christ’s love for the church, His bride.
He hates sexual immorality because it distorts God’s good gift into a means of objectifying another person, rather than a means of giving your whole self away to your spouse in purity and love
He hates sexual immorality because it turns something that was meant to bring us deeper into communion with God, into something that separates us from Christ and brings shame and death.
The severity of Christ’s punishment for Jezebel rises out of the severity of his love for His Bride and her fidelity to him. And this Jezebel is foreshadow of the woman in Revelation 18, the Great Prostitute who is slain, who represents the nation of Babylon who was marked by the same sin we see here in Thyatira. And what is the outcome of Christ’s judgment?
23b And all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind (kidneys) and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works.
All the churches are going to know that Jesus has flaming eyes, hot and bright, with which he examines and inspects their every belief, intention, and practice – the good, the bad, and ugly. He searches to see and sees to expose and exposes to sift the churches. In Hebrews 4:13 “no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”
We ourselves are inescapably laid bare before Him. He sees through our brightest façades into the darkest corners of our lives, into the hidden pathways of our hearts. There is no place that he does not see. There is nothing that he does not know. He knows everything we have done. And we are accountable to Him for all of it. The church in Thyatira was – and so are we. God’s lavish unmerited, reviving, saving, eternal grace does not free me from that. What we do matters, before God.
And so what do we do? We join the Psalmist when he prays – “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting!” (Ps. 139:23-24)
In Christ, we can pray such a pray because we know that he is for us and any searching He does is for our good, to rid us of the cancer of sin. As he reveals ways we have turned away from him, we are invited into return. And we have confidence that he will receive us. Maybe the most astounding is what Jesus says in v. 21 “I gave her time to repent.” Jesus reserved an wide-open door of repentance to a woman who was teaching “the deep things of Satan.”
She gives the same open door to us. As he exposes us and sifts our secrets, he calls us to the light – John, the author of the book of Revelation, wrote in his first epistle that “if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 Jn. 1:7).
The door is open wide for all those who would receive the penetrating and exposing gaze of Jesus, turn to Him, trust in Him, and seek to walk with Him. The light of Jesus is available to you today.
If you are caught in pornography, run like your life depends on it into the light, confess to a brother or sister. Talk to me, one of the pastor-elders, if you’re a student, a student ministry volunteer
If you are sleeping with your boyfriend/girlfriend/fiancé, come into the light.
Husbands and wives, if you are drawn away from your spouse in any way, even if it seems small, turn toward them, pursue them, if there is unresolved conflict, resolve it.
If you are dealing with SSA, please talk to someone, I personally would love to talk with you about that, our pastor-elders are available to you – if you are a woman and dealing with SSA, there are many ladies who would love to walk with you and if they aren’t sure how to do that, they can find one of our women who does – if you are dealing with SSA and you are walking with someone here in our church, we honor you for your courage
If you have been on the receiving end of sexual immorality in the form of abuse, whether in your distant past or present, talk to someone, we want to walk with you and/or connect you with someone well-equipped to do so.
We need to be a church that is eager to recognize that these things are not just “out there,” but here. We must be a church that welcomes the weak, wounded, wayward into the light that they might experience the love of the living Jesus and be transformed into His likeness
Shame says to hide these things, it says “I can handle it on my own.” We cannot handle it on our own. But Jesus invites us into the light to experience full forgiveness, acceptance, and cleansing, which may burn, but will ultimately bring new life, because Jesus was laid on his sick-bed, struck dead, facing the judgment for the sin of the world, that we might be healed.
This is the open door that was available for those in Thyatira who were abiding by the teaching of Jezebel. And the call to the rest of the church is to persevere without assimilating to a pagan culture. Christ’s promise is grand if they do.
3. Jesus Promises
26 The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, 27 and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father.
The one who conquers is the one who does not compromise the truth of God in the midst of a culture fraught with idolatry. The one who conquers faithfully endures pain and persecution for the sake of Christ. The one who conquers is the one who walks in daily repentance and faith. Conquering, according to Jesus, is not thrusting a sword into the enemy’s side, but standing firm on God’s promises and living a life of sacrificial love for His people and the world.
And Christ who stands with all the nations under his feet of burnished bronze will give them authority over the nations. Those who conquer will inherit the earth and rule it as Adam and Eve were always meant to do – to be fruitful and multiply, to have dominion over the earth à that they might bless and be a blessing to the nations
28 And I will give him the morning star.
What is this morning star? In that period, the morning star was another name for Venus. The reason why it bore that name is because when Venus rose in the night sky, it meant that the Sun was soon to follow – it was a signal that morning was coming
Jesus, at the end of the book of Revelation, says this: “I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.” Jesus is the morning star. Jesus is going to give them Himself.
He will do so when he comes and His return will proclaim the day of the Lord when all will be exposed – all will stand before the judgment seat of God – for those outside of Christ, this Day will be one of shame. For those in Christ, it will be one of glory and the fulfillment of all we have hoped for – the Bridegroom we have been waiting for will be ours forever
As we wait for the day of the morning star, we welcome His all-seeing and searching eye and invite him to sift us in love, to remove the cancer of sin and beautify us as His Bride and enable us to resist adultery against the Lord, but to stand firm in the face of temptation in our hearts and in our culture
Reflection, prayer – “search me” – respond to conviction – what is the sin you have tolerated? What love have you left on your to-do list? What sin or shame have you locked up in the basement of your soul?
If God is leading you to talk to someone, respond to him. If the Lord is exposing something in you that isn’t related to sexual immorality, but takes the shape of some other form of idolatry, whether at work, at home, in your relationships, respond to his leading
29 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’
[1] Alex Kleinman, “Porn Sites Get More Visitors Each Month Than Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter Combined,” Huffington Post, last modified December 6, 2017, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/03/internet-porn-stars_n_3187682.html. Quoted by Jay Stringer in “Unwanted: How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing.”
[2] “Things Are Looking Up in America’s Porn Industry,” NBC News, January 20, 2015, https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/things-are-americas-porn-industry-n289431. Quoted by Jay Stringer in “Unwanted: How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing.”
