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Revelation - Chapter 2 (C. Trimble 8-4-24)
Good morning, everybody. Okay, you guys doing well? (audience applauding) Good, glad you guys are here this morning. So we have a lot of ground to cover today. Like last week, the next couple of chapters, we just have a lot of information and not a ton of time to cover it. So let's go ahead and start moving that direction. We just started the book of Revelation. If you weren't here the last two weekends, two weeks ago we did kind of a preface or an introduction. Last week we did chapter one. This week we're gonna do chapter two. And again, there's a lot of information just in chapter two. If you were not here, where we find ourselves, last week in chapter one, John, who is the author of the book of Revelation is he has been exiled to the island of Patmos, which is off the coast of Western Turkey. He is there, it is a Sunday, probably the morning. He is worshiping, he is praying, he is by himself, and all of a sudden, and John at this time would have been quite an older man. He is interrupted by a voice that he says sounded like a trumpet, it was loud, it startled him. God, his attention, he turns around to see the risen Jesus Christ. He proceeds to try to describe to the best of his abilities what Jesus looked like, the resurrected Jesus. And then Jesus tells him that he has a job to do, essentially, that John is going to document this revelation, this, which is what we're gonna be studying for the next couple of months, four or five months, this one complete revelation. And as a part of this complete revelation, there are some different components. And the first component is going to be chapters two and three. It is going to be Jesus telling John to write seven specific letters to seven different churches to send to these different churches throughout the region of what is now Western Turkey, okay? And we'll talk about that a little bit here in a second. So chapters two and three are important because they are quite a launching pad, if you will, for the rest of Revelation. And what I mean by that is this, Jesus is going to give us kind of the fundamentals of what the church should look like. And if the church doesn't listen to chapters two and three, the church is not going to be prepared for the rest of what's going to happen throughout Revelation, okay? So it's very, very important. And we talked about this last week and it kind of goes throughout the first three chapters that if we do not address internal things, right, our heart, if we do not address the inside, repent of sin, give our lives to God, make sure that we have the right motives, our heart, external things are going to crush us. We're gonna subdue or be subdued by external cultural societal pressures, okay? That's basically chapters one through three in a nutshell. What we are specifically going to talk about today in chapter two, and again, we have a ton of information, is we're gonna talk about maturity, which is something we need to talk about more. We live in a society that is not very mature. We're the society that's going to tick, talk, dance our way into oblivion. That's who we are. So we need to talk about maturity a little bit. Some of you guys like that. That was good. I've been thinking about that a lot. And so we're gonna talk a little bit about maturity. We're gonna talk about listening, the mature believers, right? We listen, listen, and we respond to what we hear. Simple, man, simple stuff. We listen, we respond to what we hear, and that is a sign of spiritual maturity. That's where we're gonna kind of focus a little bit today. So you should have gotten a notes handout. Everything will be in there, keep those. Everything will be on the screen. Everything is on the app, and everything is on the website. If you need any of those notes, any of those sermons, any of that, it's all available on those things. If you have a Bible, very easy to find where we're at. We're in the very last book in chapter two. This is all Jesus speaking, which is really unique and different. Very, very interesting. So let's pray, glad you're here. We'll run through a lot of stuff in a little period of time. And I'm sorry about that. I'm just trying to fit as much in as I can in the time I have allotted. So let's pray, and let's dive into chapter two. Okay? Father God, we love you. Lord, I thank you. Thank you so much for everyone in the room this morning. Thank you, God, that these individuals have made it a priority to be here, God, to worship, to hear your word, to commune with each other and to commune with you, God. Thank you for that. I pray, Father, as we get into Revelation two today, God, that you bless your church. Keep your hand on us, God, protect us. Give us wisdom, give us discernment, and God draws closer to you. And we pray that not only for our church, we pray that for every single church in our city, we pray that for our other campuses, the churches in those cities, Lord, and Father, we pray that we are a blessing to you. We pray that we honor you, that we're a blessing to our city, God, that we make you proud, Father, Lord, we love you. We thank you. Give us ears to hear today. Give us hearts that wanna respond today and keep your hand on us, Lord. We love you and thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, let's rock and roll. Again, a lot of stuff to cover. Let's work our way through, okay? Now, this is Jesus speaking. He says, "Right to the angel of the church in Ephesus. Thus says the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand and who walks among the seven golden lampstands. I know your works, your labor, your endurance, and that you cannot tolerate evil people. You have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and you have found them to be liars. I know that you have persevered and endured hardships for the sake of my name, and you haven't grown weary. But I have this against you. You have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember then how far you've fallen, repent, and do the works you did at first. Otherwise, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent. Yet you do have this, you hate the practices of the nicholations, which I also hate. Let anyone who has ears to hear listen to what the spirit says to the churches, to the one who conquers, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God." Okay, so like I kind of said earlier, these seven letters are literally gonna be sent to seven different churches in Asia Minor, Western Turkey is what we call it nowadays. Now, and it was specifically for problems they were having in those churches. But these seven letters also have stood as kind of the template for all Christians and all churches for the last 2000 years on how they are to function, how they are to live, okay? So what we are called to do is we are called to evaluate our personal walks of faith and our public witness. What that means, like I said last weekend, is we have to make sure that the heart and the mind are set on God, right, personally, that we're walking in a relationship with Jesus and we need to make sure that our witness out in the world is a good reflection of Jesus. So these letters are to be addressed to the angels of these churches. Last week we said, is that talking about literal guardian angels or is that referring to pastors? Here it looks like it's referring to pastors, that these are going to be literal letters sent to angels, pastors of these churches for them to read to their congregations. Now, in these letters, there are seven components to each of these letters. I say that two of the letters really only have six components, but most of them have seven components in these letters. So in chapter one, Jesus was standing by these lampstands, these that represent churches. Here, it looks like he's kind of, we get this imagery of him kind of walking in between them, weaving in and out of them. And the reason why that imagery is giving is Jesus is looking at the church. He is evaluating the churches. He's taking a good look at the churches. And he writes down seven ways that he wants to address the church. Now, the ones that we are really going to focus on are these three of these seven components. The approval of Jesus of the church, right? What you're doing good? The accusation of the church, which you're not doing good, and then the advice, basically what I want you to do. Here's what you're doing good. Here's what you're not doing very well. Here's what you need to change. That's what we're going to focus on with each one of these letters. Also, all of these letters contain the phrase, "I know," and then he goes into something. So Jesus says, "I know." This is very important for all of us in this room, for all Christians. What Jesus is saying when he says, "I know," is he's saying, "Regardless of how much "of a religious facade that people put on, "I see their heart." You guys with me? That means that churches can have the appearance of health, right? Maybe they can have large congregations, they can have neat buildings, they can have really cool and personable speakers, they can have, that was a joke. They can have great music, they can have all these things, but the health of the church really isn't that good, there's a facade, right? And that goes, it's easy to pick on churches, let's talk about ourselves as individuals. We have a lot of people who profess to be Christians, they wear the right shirts and have the right bumper stickers and listen to the right music and do all these things, but they may be living in secret sin or maybe they treat people like garbage and maybe there's all these unresolved issues of the heart. The thing is this, I'm not trying to scare anyone, God sees through our facade and he sees the real us. So the approval of the Ephesians, the church and Ephesus, is that they were doing some pretty good stuff. I think this, I'm not trying to be boastful, reminds me of our church, they were heavily involved in the community, served the community, gave to the community, they persevered in their faith, they believed in the word of God, they taught the word of God, they held on to the truth, they rejected false teachers and false prophets and they rejected anything outside of the biblical teaching of what faith is supposed to be. And these are great and wonderful things. And what we're gonna see throughout all of Revelation and a lot in chapters two and three is we see that Jesus affirms and praises works. Whenever I say works in church, man, people start to squirm and they get uncomfortable and they're like, wait a second, are you saying that Christians have to live a certain way? I'm gonna remind everyone, I didn't write any of this. Chapters two and three is straight from the mouth of Jesus and he talks a lot about works. We are not saved by our works, but Ephesians two, 10, we are saved by God's grace for good works. Jesus has saved us for the purpose of honoring his kingdom and being in a relationship with him and those things produce works. This is why Jesus said you'll know a tree by its fruit, you'll know a tree by its works, what it produces. Are we saved by that? No, but we are called to produce that. Works matter greatly to God. We're gonna get to the end of this and he's gonna say, I'm gonna judge you by what you've done. Works. So not only service and hard work ethic, but testing teachers, not tolerating evil. These things are praised by Jesus. So again, the book of Revelation is going to affirm the fact that we need to back up our belief with action. True belief will have action behind it. So he says this, this is another compliment of Jesus to the Ephesians. He says, you hate the practices of the nicoleations and most of you are like, what is it? I didn't know what this was until I really studied this years and years ago, but this is more than likely referring to a Christian that became a heretic. His name was Nicholas from Antioch. Some of you are like, I know, I know a heretic named Nick from Antioch as well. This is another Antioch, a long ways away. (laughing) And what happened was this guy started teaching heretical stuff, anti-biblical stuff, and a lot of so-called Christians started following him. And so what that made me think of is this, there are so many people that claim to be Christians that teach a lot of things. I'm not even talking about religious leaders. I'm talking about celebrities. I'm talking about some people that you may know. They claim to be believers, but they propagate things that are anti-biblical. And the things that this guy Nicholas promoted was that there are multiple ways to heaven besides Jesus and that there is no restraints on sexual indulgence. Those are the two things that he taught. And so we think there are so many people that claim Christ but they say things that aren't biblical, which is a subtle reminder that if I call myself a Christian, my thoughts and beliefs have to align with the word of God. You guys still believe that, right? Okay, okay. If I claim to be a Christian, I am claiming to adhere to this book. And so if I propagate things that this book says or wrong, I'm not being a Christian. I'm not following the words of Jesus and that's a problem. Now the accusation against the Ephesians, the Ephesians was this, that they had abandoned the love they had at first. That is not their love for Jesus. They love Jesus. Their problem was they're having a hard time loving people. Get conviction early on in this lesson. Some of us, like me, I fall into this camp sometimes. I've never struggled loving Jesus. There have been times, especially as a minister where I'm like, man, it's really hard to love people. We have done amazing things for people only to have them turn around and just say awful things and slander and gossip and write ugly things on the internet and all kinds of stuff like that. And what was happening to the Ephesians is they were starting to get a little cynical of humanity, skeptical of humanity. Man, I find myself sliding that way sometimes. The problem with that is Christians are marked by their love for each other. But sometimes, if we're being honest in this room, even when we do good things, we're doing them not because we love people. We're doing them because we feel obligated. And that's a problem. And Jesus had that against them. So he says, remember, this is the advice. Jesus says, remember how fallen from your first love. Go back to that. Go back to loving people, Jesus is saying. And what we learn from this is, listen to me, this is very important. The Ephesians were doing the right thing, but they were doing it for the wrong reason. And what we get here is Jesus is saying, we need to repent of that. If we're even doing things that are right, but we're doing them for selfish or wrong reasons, that is sinful. I'm not trying to be mean. That means if we go on the mission trip so we can just post pictures on Instagram of how good we are, we're going on the mission trip for the wrong reason. You guys are with me this morning, right? Okay, I just wanna make sure I'm not alone in the room that we need to periodically step back and go, why am I doing this? Why, it's not just what I'm doing, but why am I doing it? I think a lot of us probably need to step back and go, why do I go to church? Is it just for me or is it that I want to contribute to the kingdom of God? Do I just wanna go consume and be blessed or do I want to be a blessing, right? Why are we doing the things that we do? Why are we in this room right now? And so motive matters to Jesus we learn. So if they chose to listen to Jesus, they would have the right to eat from the tree of life and the paradise of God. That's not a hard one to decipher. If they listen to Jesus, they're gonna be blessed with heaven. They're gonna be with Jesus forever. If they refused, Jesus said, I will take your lampstand. That means I will remove your church, your light, your ability to touch the community. Now what's interesting that history has told us is there is no church in Ephesus anymore because there's not even an Ephesus anymore. There is no city, there is no church there. And we have seen that they did not heed the words of Christ and their lampstand was taken. The next one is Smyrna. Right to the angel of the church in Smyrna. Thus says the first and the last, the one who is dead and came to life. I know you're affliction and poverty, but you are rich. I know the slander of those who say they are Jews and they're not but are of the synagogue of Satan. Don't be afraid of what you're about to suffer. Look, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison to test you and you will experience affliction for 10 days. Be faithful to the point of death and I will give you the crown of life. Let anyone who has ears to listen to what the Spirit says to the churches, the one who conquers will never be harmed by the second death. Now this is the shortest letter to all seven of the churches, this is the shortest one. And that's a good thing. The reason why it's the shortest is there is no accusation. We'll get to that here in a second. Jesus commends Smyrna for their endurance and their affliction and in their poverty. I'm gonna pause here for a second, get a little off script here and say, whenever people talk about a prosperity gospel, if you ever wanna place in the Bible to debunk prosperity gospel teaching, it's in Revelation chapter two. The most praised church by Jesus was the poorest church by the world standards. So whenever people say, hey man, just be a Christian and God's gonna drop money on you. You're gonna have everything you want. It's all about you. You're never gonna get sick again. You're never gonna have to worry about anything ever again. You're gonna be too blessed to be stressed. All that kind of bull crap, right? If you have one of those mugs, you should drive down a road and just chuck that thing out the window. It's stupid, right? So here's, (laughs) shouldn't have said that. I'm sorry. What we learn in chapter two is the most blessed church that Jesus talks about is the one going through the hardest things and in the most poverty. But what he says, he reminds us, Jesus reminds us, wealth is not contingent on what the world values. Jesus says the world thinks you're poor, but you are rich. And so the slandering that was coming at the church in Smyrna, Jesus says this from the synagogue of Satan. What is that? This is a group of Jewish individuals who thought they knew God and were working for God, but they rejected Christ and they persecuted Christians, therefore doing the work of Satan. And Jesus says they think they're a synagogue, but they're a synagogue of the devil is what Jesus says about these people. Like I said, there is no accusation of Smyrna. Imagine being a church that Jesus has nothing bad to say about. That's pretty amazing. The only other one of the seven besides that is Philadelphia. So because they're living the way that they're supposed to be living, they're doing what Jesus told them to do, and Jesus tells them not to be afraid. And Jesus doesn't say, hey, it's gonna be all okay. He just says, don't be afraid. It's actually not going to be okay. There's going to be suffering. There's going to be persecution. But he says, don't be afraid of that. He says, for 10 days, you're going to suffer. Now that could be a literal 10 days that there was intense persecution that led to even some of them being killed. It could have literally been that. Some people also believe that that is a metaphor for the 10 emperors that were in charge while Smyrna was still a booming city, that there were 10 Roman emperors that were in charge during that time that persecuted them, more than likely it was more literal, that there was a short blast of intense persecution on them. And he also tells them to be faithful. The fact that they were going through affliction would solidify to them that the crown of life is not just given to anyone. The crown of life, heaven, is not just given to anyone. Heaven is given to the faithful followers of Jesus. This is going to sound so stupid but we forget this sometimes. The only way to get to the kingdom of Jesus is by following Jesus into his kingdom. And a lot of people think there is a way to get to heaven other than Jesus and that is not true. It is only by the allegiance to Jesus Christ. And so here's what Jesus says to them. You're going to suffer some of you death, right? You're going to be killed for your faith. But he says, even though you're going to experience death at the end of this life, he goes, you will never experience the second death. The second death is eternal separation from God, right? That doesn't mean that people in hell are going to be dead. It means that they just live for eternity apart from God. But we will never experience that if we are faithful followers of Jesus, okay? You guys still with me, everyone good? All right, some of you didn't know we were doing Revelation this morning, walked in here. You're like, what the heck? We're almost through chapter two, we got a little bit more. Right to the angel of the church in Pergamum. Thus says the one who has the sharp double edged sword, I know where you live where Satan's throne is. Yet you are holding on to my name and did not deny your faith in me, even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness who was put to death among you where Satan lives. But I have a few things against you. You have some there who hold to the teaching of Balaam who taught Balaam to place a stumbling block in front of the Israelites to eat meat, sacrifice to idols and to commit sexual immorality. In the same way, you also have those who hold to the teaching of the nicholations. So repent, otherwise I will come to you quickly and fight against them with the sword of my mouth. Let anyone who has ears to hear, listen to what the spirit says to the churches, to the one who conquers, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give him a white stone and on the stone, a name is inscribed that no one knows except the one who receives it. So Pergamum was the capital of Asia Minor, Western Turkey. This was the capital city. And Jesus opens up with a reminder that Jesus is the one that has a sharp double edged sword that comes out of his mouth. We hear about the sword several times start revelation. Couple of times in the beginning, one really profound time at the very end, the sharp double edged sword that comes out of his mouth. This is a metaphor, obviously. So he reminds them of the sharp double edged sword because what was happening in Pergamum, the church, is false teaching was starting to slip in. Now, false teaching makes Jesus very, very angry. The first way that we know that is in the gospels, Jesus says this. He says it is better for someone to tie a millstone around their neck and plunge themselves into the sea than it is to mislead my children. Jesus essentially says in the Bible, so if you didn't know this, this is pretty heavy stuff. Jesus essentially says it is better for you to kill yourself than to mislead my children spiritually. That's what he says. And so here in Revelation chapter two, we also see that the people being misled spiritually angers Jesus. Jesus takes it very, very seriously. And how will he deal with that? He will deal with it with the sword that comes out of his mouth. That is the word, that is the truth, that is his ability to judge. What does a sword do? It cuts, it divides one thing from another. And Jesus said, I will come and I will divide the righteous from the unright. I will deal with this. It's a very stern warning. So Jesus does have some really good things to say about Pergamum. He mentions that they are in a place where Satan lives. This is very interesting imagery. He mentions it twice. Then he says the throne of Satan is in Pergamum. What does that mean? Pergamum, it was a capital city and like most big cities, there was a very high concentration of pluralism. What that means is all kinds of people worshiped all kinds of gods. Greek gods, Roman gods, there was all kinds of different gods from the Mesopotamian area and things like that, all these people, all these different temples and statues. And one of the most defining statues was a statue of Zeus that overlooked Pergamum. And so more than likely when he says the throne of Satan, he's referring to this statue of Zeus that looked out over the city. And so Jesus commends them. He says even in a city that is so religiously divided is that. There's so much demonic activity happening that they never wavered from their faith. Not only did they not wavered from their faith, there are even some of them like Antipas who gave his life for his faith. Imagine if you were Antipas and you were in heaven, like maybe everyone in heaven was witnessing him talking to John, Jesus drops Antipas' name. He's like, yeah, come on, right? And now it's in the Bible and we read it and we study it, that's pretty neat. So the accusation though against Pergamum is though they had remained Christians, again, false teaching was slipping in. The false teaching, the teaching of Balaam. Balaam was someone in the Old Testament in the book of Numbers who knew the truth, but was starting to let in things like that there are multiple pathways to heaven besides the true God. That sexual lines started to get blurred, right? Under Balaam, those things started to creep in. Same thing with the teachings of the Nicolations. These things were creeping into the church. So the subtle inclusion of other religious ideas started coming into the Christian church and then the lack of sexual boundaries started to come into the church. And not only that, there was a violation of conviction. Now, hear me real quick, this is important. Oftentimes, I don't know if it's, I think it's often ignored as well, but oftentimes in Christian churches, we draw pretty clear lines when it comes to sexual sin. Most of the time, we draw pretty clear lines with particularism. What that means is this, as a Christian, and I hope you agree with me, 'cause if you don't, you can't really call yourself a Christian, if you're a Christian, you are claiming you believe that there is only one pathway to heaven, Jesus Christ, that's it, we're exclusive in that matter. The reason why we believe that is because Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, the life, no one gets to the Father except through me. That's very exclusive, very particular, right? We teach those things. What we often ignore in church is Christians is the conversation of personal conviction. What does that mean? What that means is the Bible instructs us in a lot of universals. The Bible says we should not lie. That means regardless of who you are, where you're from, what your background is, what's happened to you, it is a sin to tell lies, okay? That's what the Bible says, and that's universal. That's for all of us. We all have to follow that. God will also personally convict us to do some things. Let me give you an example. It is not a sin for you to drink alcohol if you're over the age of 21 in the United States. It is not a sin for you to drink alcohol. There's nothing in the Bible that says it's wrong for you to have a beer or to drink a glass of wine with your wife on a date. There's nothing in the Bible that says that's sinful. It is sinful for Corey Trimble to drink alcohol. Why do you say that? I say that because a long time ago, Jesus convicted me and told me that I am not to do that. And it's not because I'm a pastor. It's because I used to be addicted to cocaine. And the last time I tried to take my life, I was drunk. And so Jesus said, this is something you don't need to be around, something you don't need to touch, something you don't need to dabble in. Now, does that apply to all of you? No, I cannot put my personal convictions on you. Nor can you put your personal convictions on me. That's between me and the Lord. Now look, is it a sin if you have a beer tonight with your pizza, right? Not a sin at all. But if I break that, it's not the beer that's the sin, it's my disobedience to Jesus that's the sin. And the people in this area of Pergamum were not submitting to personal conviction. And when we're disobedient to God, we are sinning. So Jesus tells them you have to repent. That if they would humble themselves, if they would confess, if they would turn from their sin, they would receive hidden manna, which means they would be given everything they need until they get to the promised land. Just like in the Old Testament, same thing now, right? God gives us what we need until we make it to our promised land. Jesus also assures that they will get a white stone. You can research the heck out of this as I have, and no one knows definitively what Jesus was talking about with the white stone. No one knows that we'll get a name that no one can decipher except for ourselves, no one knows exactly what that means. There are a couple of things, it could be like an admission ticket, like basically this is your ticket to heaven type thing, or some people believe like in the games and the Colosseums and the Roman Empire back at this time. Sometimes the people who are victorious would get a white stone with their name engraved on it. It's like a trophy, like a reward. So maybe that's what it means. If they refused to listen to Jesus, Jesus says, I will come and fight against you. You don't want that. So God is quick to forgive, but God ultimately resists the proud, and he says, if you wanna be prideful, we're gonna butt heads. That's what he says, okay? Last one. Right to the angel of the church in Thyatira, thus says the Son of God, the one whose eyes are like a fiery flame and whose feet are like fine bronze. I know your works, your love, faithfulness, service, and endurance. I know that your works are greater than your first, your last works are greater than your first. But I have this against you. You tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and teaches and deceives my servants to commit sexual immorality and to eat meat, sacrifice, to idols. I gave her time to repent, but she does not want to repent of her sexual immorality. Look, I will throw her into a sick bed and those who commit adultery with her into great affliction. Unless they repent of her works, I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am the one who examines minds and hearts, and I will give to each of you according to your works. I say to the rest of you in Thyatira, who do not hold to this teaching, who haven't known the so-called secrets of Satan as they say, I'm not putting any burden on you. Only hold on to what you have until I come. The one who conquers and who keeps my works to the end, I will give him authority over the nations. He will rule with an iron scepter and he will shatter them like pottery, just as I received this from my father. I will also give him the morning star. Let anyone who has ears to hear listen to what the spirit says to the churches. Now, this one's probably the most interesting. This is the longest letter, ironically to the smallest church. And the thing that Jesus leads off with at this church is he reminds them of two attributes of himself. He says, I have eyes like a fiery flame. That means that Jesus knows all, he sees all, that there is also righteous anger in him. We're gonna see that more and more as revelation goes on. He also reminds them they has feet like fine bronze. We talked about this last week. That means feet that can trample any evil. Feet, as Isaiah says, like God can kick his feet up on the earth like a footstool. He has all power, he's completely omnipotent, completely omniscient, knows all, has complete power over all. So the approval of Thyatira is very interesting. Jesus commends them. He says, you have loved, you have been faithful, you have served, you have had endurance. He says, your last works are greater than your first works, which means they're maturing. They're doing more for the kingdom of God than when they first started. They were maturing in their faith, they were doing good works for others. They had good intentions, this is so important. They had good intentions, but they forgot the Bible was the anchor. What that means is this, a lot of times I have seen over the years, there are people who have good intentions, but they don't go to the word of God to tell them how to act out those good intentions. Like if you, and I'm not trying to be a jerk or rude or any of that, if you have a cousin who is living in extreme poverty because he's addicted to crack cocaine, the best thing to do is not go to his house and be like, hey man, here's a thousand dollars. That's not the best thing. The heart may be in the right place, but there's no wisdom in that. Because they have to have a desire to want to change and to work. That's actually a biblical principle. If a man doesn't want to work, right? Bible says, then a man doesn't get to eat. If there is no desire to work at it, there are no rewards for that. And so we have to be careful to make sure that we balance things with biblical wisdom, but they forgot that the word of God was their anchor. And so, because they forgot the word of God as their anchor, the criticism of this church is extremely severe. What happened is all of the success of the church of Thyatira was overshadowed by the fact that they tolerated, remember that word, the woman Jezebel. So Jezebel, if you've never heard of Jezebel, that comes from First Kings. She was an interesting woman. By interesting, she was awful, a terrible woman. Maybe one of the biggest infamous people in the entire Bible. She was the queen of the Jewish people for a while. Her husband was the king. She allowed all kinds of false gods and false teaching. And she was murderous. And she promoted just completely limitless sexual expression and sexual sin. She was a very, very evil woman, very, very bad. And there's even comments that we make today, like that's even like a colloquialism. And our current culture will be like, oh, she's just a Jezebel. Most people don't even know what they're talking about, but that is referring to an evil person, right? An evil woman or an evil intention. And we get that from First Kings. So what was happening is the people in Thyatira were starting to let in things into the church that resembled Jezebel. Now we don't know if this Jezebel that Jesus was talking about was a literal person who was misleading people in the church in Thyatira, or it was just false teaching that was creeping in. Jezebel, like you've probably heard this term, Jezebel's spirit that is coming into the church. Now, whoever Jezebel was or it was, it was convincing the church, please read this blue part, it was convincing the church to fit in with the non-Christian culture and society around them. It was trying to convince the church to blend in with culture and society. Now the two ways that it did that was through accepting all sexual expression and not being staunch on believing that Jesus is the only pathway to be saved. Universalism and complete open sexual sin, right? And limitless sexual expression in the name of tolerance and the name of not hurting people's feelings. You guys are with me this morning, right? Jesus himself warned the church to never let this happen. Not only that, they were also dabbling in the occult, which means, so the Bible doesn't contradict itself. What Jesus talks about is is that they were going and they were eating meat that was sacrificed to idols and they don't need to do that. Now Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 8 that it was okay to eat meat sacrificed to idols. Now just the Bible contradict, no, no, no, no. Here's what Paul means in 1 Corinthians chapter 8. In 1 Corinthians chapter 8, the people in Corinth ask Paul, hey, we gotta eat, but when we go to the market in Corinth, all of the meat has been sacrificed to idols. What do we do? If you go back and read chapter 8 of 1 Corinthians, Paul goes, don't worry about it. You're Christians, you know that there are no other gods besides the one true God. You have to eat, right? So go to the market, buy the meat that you gotta buy, buy the vegetables you gotta buy and eat it, because you know there are no other gods, right? So you don't have to worry about it. And what essentially Paul was saying was this, we live in a world that is non-Christian. Man, I hope you guys don't take this out of context. If we as Christians think that we can function in this world without touching anything that disagrees with our beliefs, we're fooling ourselves. Let me tell you what that means, right? If we go down the road of, well, I'm not gonna use any product that has anyone in their corporation that doesn't agree with my value system. If you go down that road, you're not gonna be able to do anything. In the 1980s, a bunch of Christians boycotted Proctor and Gamble, because the CEO contributed to the Satanic Church or something crazy like that. They're all like, we're boycotting Proctor and Gamble. And then all these Christians realized, uh-oh, they make my deodorant, my toothpaste, my toothbrush, my shampoo, they make everything, right? So I can't escape Proctor and Gamble. And so we do that all the time, and what Paul is saying is, look, you know there are no other gods. You gotta eat, go buy your groceries, go get your stuff. The difference between 1 Corinthians 8 and what was happening in Thyatira is they were purposely seeking out meat that had been sacrificed to idols because they were intrigued by the idols. Again, everyone's with me this morning, right? It's like if you drive a, anyone drive a Mazda in here? You made it to church, okay? All right, okay. (congregation laughing) So, no, that was a bad joke, I'm sorry. So if you drive a Mazda in here, you're okay, but I'm gonna tell you, Mazda is the creator God of Zoroastrianism. That's the name of a false God. Most people don't know that, right? And so that doesn't mean you're bad if you drive a Mazda. There's a difference between driving a car called Mazda, right, which means creator God and Zoroastrianism. That doesn't make you a bad person, but if you bought that car specifically because you're intrigued with foreign deities, the heart is in the wrong place. I doubt any of you did that. But what Jesus is saying is this, what we're learning is this, that spiritual immaturity, not knowing the word of God and dabbling in the occult, when inevitably open up the door for demonic doctrine to slip into the church. Now, when I say things like demonic doctrine, people like whoa, demons, we talking about that in church, Paul said to Timothy that any other belief system beside, listen to me, this is offensive, listen. Any other belief system besides this belief system, the Bible says is a doctrine of demons. Do you hear me? That means that we can't, this is where you can't dabble in Hinduism. You can't dabble in Buddhism. You can't dabble in Baha'i, and that's offensive, and people are gonna say awful stuff about me online about those things, but as a Christian, we have to understand that the Bible says any other doctrine besides that one has demonic influence. That's not popular, that's not cool. I know that makes some of you uncomfortable. Again, I didn't write any of this, that's in 1 Timothy 1. And so the advice from Jesus is very stern. Like Jezebel, firetira was given the chance to repent. And God says if you don't repent, if you refuse, you'll be thrown into great affliction. Jezebel refused to repent, and she was thrown out of a window and eaten by dogs. And Jesus says we will be thrown into great affliction if we don't repent, and I will strike her children dead, her followers dead. That means that tolerance of evil must be repented for, and we have to be careful not to entertain non-biblical teaching. Jesus says some of you have avoided the so-called secrets of Satan. What a lot of people are going to tell you is that your faith restricts you, and if you will just get out of your faith, there are all these things that will be known to you in the world. This is what happened in Genesis chapter three. The devil walked up to even go, "Hey, are you sure you can't eat that fruit? You can eat that fruit." There's a knowledge that God doesn't want you to have. Those are the so-called secrets of Satan. And we need to be careful not to get intrigued to buy those things. So Thyatira was encouraged to go back to the truth, to hold on to the truth. If they hold on to the truth, they'll have authority over nations. We're not going to unpack that today, we're going to unpack that later. They'll receive the morning star, which means a relationship with Jesus, but in order to inherit what God has for them, they have to endure until he returns. The true Christian will hold on to the principles and teachings of Jesus. Jesus even says, "My works." He will hold on to those things until we either die, or he comes back for us. That's what the true Christian does. They hold on, they endure. Okay. Jesus told the church in Thyatira. He says, "I am the one who examines minds and hearts, and I will give to each according to their works." I know that word works makes a lot of people uncomfortable. Corey, are you saying we have to live a certain way to be a Christian? Jesus is saying that. Jesus is saying that. That's a direct quote, right from Jesus. And this should remind us that, listen, being a Christian is more than just what we believe. Being a Christian is acting on that belief. It is living a certain way. It is what we say, it is what we do. Yes, is it our belief system? Yes, but our belief system should put us into action. And this reminds us that Jesus will righteously judge. That can be a good thing or a negative thing. Plus based on how we have lived. Well, I believe this, well, that's great. Put it into practice. Put it into practice. That's what true Christianity does. Now, some things that you and I, that chapter two brings up that typically trip us up from being the kind of followers of Jesus that we're supposed to be, some things that trip us up. The first one is, it is very easy for us to lose our love for people. We talked about this briefly last week. Everyone's criticizing everyone about everything. And we should do, it's not that we don't determine that things are right and wrong. We should use more energy praying for the lost than criticizing the lost. So many of us who claim to be Christians have lost a genuine love for people. And sometimes we do good things, not because we love people, but we do them with improper motives. Whether that be selfish motives or just out of legalism, I have to do this. And that's not right. I can fall to that. I'll go ahead and tell you guys. Another thing that we can fall to is we ignore personal conviction. The reason why so many of us ignore personal conviction is because not only culture, but church culture has told you that everything is all about you. Even coming to church is all about you. I'm not trying to be rude, but a lot of us are in this room, not to be a blessing to the kingdom, but just to get blessed. It's about me, I just wanna get blessed, right? People who've never served given, they're here sporadically, they're not committed to this church at all. They're always the first ones to complain because their heart is postured in a manner to where it's about you serving me. It's about everything about me. And that shouldn't be the posture of a mature Christian. And we often ignore personal conviction from God because we're like, I'm gonna do it my way. What do you mean I can't do that? And we ignore that conviction. We also allow false teaching to slip in. I have a really good, I say a really good friend. We talked about a month ago, it was his birthday, but a buddy of mine has been in the Secret Service for a long time. He's been in Washington, DC for about a decade. He's been in the White House under several different presidents, but anyways, we'll talk periodically. And when he lived here in Nashville, he went to church here and I'd go down to Nashville and eat lunch with him periodically in downtown in an unmarked building where I'd get patted down a lot. But I'd go pick Kelvin, my buddy up. And I remember one time I went and picked him up and on his desk, he had a stack of counterfeit $100 bills. And he goes, here, see if you can tell a real one from a fake one. I'm looking at him like, man, I cannot. I said, Kelvin, how do they train you? How to identify what's counterfeit? And he says, the only way to identify what is fake is you have to handle what is real a lot. The only way for us to know that false teaching has crept into the church is we better know real teaching. Do you understand me? The reason why so many Christians believe things that are non-biblical is because they don't value reading their Bible. That's why. That's why. And we allow false teaching to slip in. We start to condone anti-biblical sexual expression. And right now, a lot of people are like, that's right, Cora. You get the LGBT community. You get 'em. You get 'em. 2% of the United States claims to be gay or trans. 95% of all professing Christians lose their virginity before they're married. So what we have done, that's called hypocrisy, by the way, brothers and sisters, it's what Matthew chapter seven, Jesus said, you keep trying to pull a splinter out of everyone's eyes, but you have a log in your own. There's been a sexual problem in the church for decades and decades and decades and decades. And because there's been a sexual problem within the church, now all these things are happening in society and we're like, oh, look at them, look at them, look at them. Never mind my porn addiction and the fact that I'm lusting after women all the time, look at them. And I'll tell you, all sexual sin will distance you from God. All sexual sin. And whenever the church starts turning a blind eye to sexual sin, there is a big problem, big problem. Dabbling with the occult, I'd never do that, Cori. Sometimes I think we need to be wise as Christians tap into the Holy Spirit and listen, I'm not trying to be legalistic, there's some things you don't need to watch. There's some things you don't need to listen to. There's some ideas you don't need to entertain. There's some things that we need to be careful and guarded about. And now again, that's between you and the Lord. But we need to be close enough to Jesus to where when these things start to slip in, that are not of him. Any other doctrine besides the doctrine of the word of God, so the Bible says is a doctrine of demons. And we need to know that. In essence, what happens is we have a tendency to look a lot like the world. And the Bible says that we are to be a peculiar people. Does that mean we all start making our own pants and live in a commune and rock veil? No, that's not what that means. If you make your own pants and live in a commune, that's fine, but I'm just saying. That's not what that means. To be a peculiar person means that we live counter-cultural to the world around us. If the world is materialistic, we are not. That the world is selfish, we are not. That we live in contradiction to the principles of the world. We don't blend into that. We're to stand out from that. So Jesus appeals to us through chapters two and three to turn from anything that would separate us from him, to properly acknowledge and turn from things that will separate us from God. We first have to be humble. We are a people that struggle with humility. Hubris oozes out of people in the Western world, especially the United States. We are an arrogant, self-righteous, self-centered people. But we need to find humility. That's the key that turns everything on. We have to repent of all sin. That doesn't just say, it doesn't mean we just say we're sorry. We have to turn from it. And we have to take action, which means we pray. We read the word of God. We obey what the word of God tells us to do. And if we do these things, what happens? Maturity happens. We start to mature as believers. And maturity is extremely important. If we are to conquer evil, as Jesus tells us to do, if we were to hold on to his works and his teachings until the end, whatever the end is, our death or his return, if we're to conquer evil, hold on to his teachings and works until the end, we have to have endurance. Here's the thing. Endurance and victory only come with maturity. We cannot endure unless we've built up that muscle, our spiritual muscle until we have matured our thinking. If we haven't matured our soul, we're not going to be able to endure. How do we do that? Well, Corey, I want to do that. How do we do it? It's so easy. We lean on Jesus Christ. We pray, we read the word of God. We lean on Jesus. We rely on the word of God as an anchor. If I believe something that is contradictory to this, I have to align myself with this. And we have to have the support of the local church. Lean on Jesus, lean on the Bible, lean on the church. That is how we endure. And so how Jesus ends all of these seven letters is he tells John, write this down. Anyone who has ears, listen. Jesus knew that they all had ears. What Jesus is saying, anyone who is willing to hear the voice of God, listen. Anyone who is willing to heed my warning, right? Anyone who is willing. Listen to what I'm going to have to say. So we have to ask ourselves, we said this a couple of weeks ago, are you and I positioning ourselves to even listen? Do we have ears to hear? Are we even positioning ourselves? Well, God's never spoken to me. Have you ever read the word of God? That is God speaking to us. Do you get quiet and listen? Are we being selfish with our prayers? Are we trying to just get to know him better and grow closer to him? He will talk to us the way he talks to us. But we have to listen. Not only are we listening, do we have ears to hear? And do we have a heart that is willing to change to be in alignment with Jesus' heart? Not only do we have the ears to hear, but do we have the desire to change? Do we have the desire to align ourselves with Jesus? And here's what Jesus said in Matthew chapter 16. This is so easy, but it's also very, very deep. Jesus said to the church in Smyrna, some of you are going to lose your life, but don't worry about it. You're going to get the crown of life. One of the biggest, most interesting paradoxes, maybe I'm going to call it a paradox, and the entire Bible is this. Jesus tells us the only way you can live is you must be willing to die. And this paradox is so fascinating. What that means for us practically this morning, and I hope you guys are listening to me this morning, what that practically means for us is I may not be a complete dirt bag. I may not be overtly rebellious to God. I might be doing good things. I might be growing in my faith, but when it comes down to it, am I willing to give everything? Everything, everything, everything. If Jesus told me to quit it all and move, if Jesus told me to cut this person out of my life, if Jesus told me to get a different job, or move to a different state, or sell everything I have and give it to the poor, whatever, am I positioned in a manner to where I would lose everything? So I could find him. So I would lay down everything. Now, will Jesus ask us to do that? I don't know. Speaking of personal conviction, a man ran up to him one time. He's in the gospel of Luke and says, "I'll go wherever you want me to go." Jesus, and he goes, "Awesome. Sell everything you have, give it to the poor. Let's go." And then it says that the young man walked away, discouraged, 'cause he wasn't willing to give it all. Now, that was just his thing. What's your thing? What's my thing? Man, Jesus, I'll give you everything. Except I won't give you every single weekend. We have travel ball. I'll give you everything. I won't give you everything. I don't want to give to the church, because I want to get that house, right? Or I want to buy that nicer car. So I'm not going to contribute financially. But hey, I'll give you everything else. I'll give you it all, Jesus. I won't give you my marriage. I'm not going to treat my wife like you treat me. But hey, everything else, no, no, no. Jesus is not content with 98% of you. Jesus says you have to be willing to lose your life in order to find it. Now, I don't know where you're at, but I have to make sure that I'm positioned in such a place to where if Jesus tells me to go, I'm ready to go. Wherever going is, whatever it is that I'm ready. Now, can I honestly say I'm like that all the time? No, I'm selfish sometimes. But I need to make sure I go back to my own heart and go God. I want to make sure that I'm still in a position to where I'd let it all go for you if you asked me to. Would you buy your house with me, please?