Dear Anglican friends,
There are things we don’t like to talk about. One source of hope for me is that we may be getting better at talking about them. Sometimes it is easier to talk about them as an outsider. Sometimes it is only when we invite someone to visit that we get more insight into our strengths and our blindspots. I’ve noticed a lot of invites we get to speak include a hope that we may spot and say the things as outsiders that it can hard for a local church leader or Bishop to say. This usually includes holiness and forgiving.
I imagine many a preacher has started out on a series in Revelation and quickly run into things they don’t want to talk about. Maybe they decided it was easier to focus on Revelation 1-3 and the 7 letters to the 7 churches, but when they got past the nice one about Ephesians returning to their ‘first love’, they gulped at the ‘longest of the letters’ despite knowing that they had a knockout message up their sleeves about ‘lukewarm Laodiceans’.
The longest of the letters is our text for this chapter. Counterintuitively it is written to perhaps the least significant of the places, Thyatira. Like Pergamum they have people straying into that heady combination of revelling in ‘food sacrificed in idol worship’ and ‘sexual immorality.’ These are both symptoms of pagan worship that remind us of the Golden Calf in Exodus 32, Moab in Numbers 25 and Paul’s admonition to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 10.1
But whereas Pergamum has gone astray because of enticing external influencers – preachers encouraging people to indulge their passions – Thyatira had a self-appointed prophet resident among them. She was a leader who through her teachings misled the people. Like the external influencer in 2:14 she gets a biblical pseudonym. He was a Balaam – an enticer to sin. She is a Jezebel, named after the domineering, Baal worshipping Queen, who scared off Elijah the mighty prophet, and kept her seemingly weak husband Ahab firmly under her idol worshipping thumb. [1 Kings 17f].
This 1st Century Jezebel has likewise misled God’s people into idol worship and immorality. Whether she was sexually immoral as well is a point of some debate. She is given time to ‘repent of her immorality’ and the text talks of ‘those who commit adultery with her also needing to repent lest they suffer intensely.’ But Ian Paul, a longstanding member of the Archbishop’s Council of the Church of England, (who was sometimes accused of talking too much about sex as he defended the doctrine of the church), actually argues that this reference to committing adultery is pointing to idolatry (rather than sex). An Old Testament parallel would be the book of Hosea. There God states that Israel has prostituted herself and become an adulterous wife by going after foreign gods again and again and again. The image is metaphorical.
What we think is trivial, when God has weighed the heart behind it, can expose deep seated rebellion within us. Cain’s unrighteous sacrifice, which leads to murder. [Gen 4]. Miriam complaining with Aaron about Moses’ wife [Num 12]. David conducting a census to check his power base [2 Sam 24, 1 Chron 17], Ananias and Saphira lying to God and the apostles about the scope of their offering having sold land to give to the church [Acts 5]. Or it might expose fear, a lack of trust, a prideful insistence on getting our own way. The list goes on.
However a majority of commentaries on my shelves did suggest that sexual immorality was part of the 1st Century Jezebel’s idolatrous influence on the church. That immorality would fit as a parallel to what we know about the Baal worship of Elijah’s day. Orgies in the temple were part of its fertility rites and the original Jezebel would have sponsored and probably participated in them.
Whatever this 1st Century Jezebel was doing, she was spiritually aping her namesake. There is every chance that her idolatry was compounded by immorality – which could have been hidden or blatant. For the church – the bride of Christ – to be following her was adultery. And that doesn’t make a comfy Sunday sermon for anyone.
I popped in to see a clergyman today who I have come to admire hugely. He’s written a little book on human sexuality in which he points out that there is no more sensitive topic than sexuality, as raw nerves will be touched as we bring our emotions and experiences to the subject. He raises issues of culture, cross-culture and then gives space to telling the stories of five precious people all of whom had various struggles including pornography, fitting new beliefs into old ways of thinking, facing rejection from families for same-sex attraction, heavy handed (deliverance) ministry from unthinking pastors, a cross dressing father transitioning and more. He then walks through the big biblical themes of 1) Creation – We must delight in God’s design; 2) Fall – We must be humble and compassionate and 3) – Redemption – We must embrace Christ’s revolution – whatever our sexual story, journey or experience.
It’s a wonderful little book commended by Femi Adeleye, and the Archbishops of Chile and Rwanda among others. As Sri Lankan author Ajith Fernando puts it:
It gives clear guidance and hope to those seeking to be faithful to God but faced with a confusing array of voices calling for their attention.2
The heart of compassion that this book is written in is the right way for us to pastor (or try to live up to). It echoes the heart of Jesus who has given time and opportunity even for the 1st Century Jezebel to come back to him. Whatever our struggles he longs for us to seek for our hearts to be softened and receive the grace to turn and come back to him.
And the church in Thyatira get an A* for effort on their divine report card:
I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first. [Rev 2:19].
But there remains a problem that undermines their growth. The diagnosis is a big challenge for us in the West. The challenge Jesus gives is to what we consider a ‘value’. He challenges them about tolerance.
As Nicky Gumbel puts it in his Bible in One Year commentary:
‘The word ‘tolerance’ is regarded as one of the great virtues [of our culture] and only seen in a positive light. Tolerance is an extremely important quality. But, there are limits to tolerance and some forms of tolerance are not good.’3
The issue here is tolerating a leader whose life, teaching and actions will lead the church into destruction. Here’s how Jesus puts it in Revelation 2:
Nevertheless, I have this against you: you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols. I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling. [Rev 2:20-21]
In Thyatira the disaster might have snuck up on them. There is a contrast with Ephesus worth us bearing in mind.
The Thyatiran’s ‘love has grown stronger whereas the Ephesians had lost their first love.’ But while the Ephesians had made a stand against false teaching even if that had made them battle weary and blocked their love tanks from refilling, in Thyatira the Christians hadn’t stepped up to the fight. They ‘tolerated the woman Jezebel, whose teaching leads some of God’s people astray, a serious charge suggesting major error (Mark 12:24, 27) which in Revelation is characteristic of the work of the devil (12:9; 20:10).’
Love covers over a multitude of sins, but if you are sweeping false teaching under the carpet it will pile up and eventually make you fall flat on your face.
Dear friends, this isn’t to speak doom and gloom over our church or nations. We are ‘Jesus-died-for-our-sins-and-rose-again-ists’ after all. Death and despair are just dry bones in his hands that he can bring back to life with a word and a breath [Ez 37]. We have seen that in countless contexts and people around the country and world. We are all in need of a resurrection, but we serve a resurrecting God. The Lamb wins.
And when we put together the letters to Ephesus and Thyatira we realise we need that breath and that word. We need our first love rekindled by the Holy Spirit who pours love into our hearts [Rom 5.5] and our lives built on the rock which is a firm foundation – the words of Jesus [Mt 7:24].
As Nicky Gumbel concludes:
These aren’t simply words of condemnation, as they are accompanied by a call to ‘repentance. In fact, even ‘Jezebel’ has been given a chance to repent (v.21). Where we have sinned sexually, it is so important to remember that we can be forgiven – our response to passages like this should not be despair, but repentance and gratitude. The church is called to holiness. Jesus promises, ‘To those who overcome and do my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations … just as I have received authority from my Father. I will also give that one the morning star.
Dear friends, might it save us long-term spiritual pain if we find ways to talk about this more, not less? The Lamb Wins and he sees everything through ‘eyes that are like burning fire.’ But when we bring our stuff to him, he promises to gives us the grace to do his will to the end to overcome. And more than overcome. To be people he can give authority over to work and act in his name. And that is an exciting hope for the future.
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- Paul, Ian, Revelation TNTC, 2018, 91-92. ↩︎
- Ajith Fernando in Roberts, Vaughan. Full of Grace and Truth: the gospel and sexuality in the global church. ↩︎
- Gumbel, Nicky, BIOY, 2019, 738. ↩︎
Read More in this Series
The Lamb Wins Whole Series Catch Up : Introduction: Chp 1: Hope is Here | Chp 2: First, Love: Ephesus | Chp 3: Fear Not: Smyrna | Chp 4: I Know: Pergamum | Chp 5: Tolerate This: Thyatira | Chp 6: Wake Up: Sardis | Chp 7: Hold On: Philadelphia
Your name is like honey 