Thyatira - The Danger of Tolerance | A Sermon on Revelation 3:18-29

Introduction
Have you ever been part of something that started out so well—full of love, faith, and good intentions—but over time started drifting in the wrong direction? That’s the story of the church in Thyatira. They were growing, serving, and enduring—but they were also tolerating serious compromise.

Today, we’re going to look at what Jesus says to this church, how He calls them back to truth, and the incredible promise He gives to those who remain faithful—even in the dark.

Let’s listen closely to Jesus, whose eyes are like flames of fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze.

Revelation 2:18-29
¹⁸ “Write this letter to the angel of the church in Thyatira. This is the message from the Son of God, whose eyes are like flames of fire, whose feet are like polished bronze:

¹⁹ “I know all the things you do. I have seen your love, your faith, your service, and your patient endurance. And I can see your constant improvement in all these things.

²⁰ “But I have this complaint against you. You are permitting that woman—that Jezebel who calls herself a prophet—to lead my servants astray. She teaches them to commit sexual sin and to eat food offered to idols. ²¹ I gave her time to repent, but she does not want to turn away from her immorality.

²² “Therefore, I will throw her on a bed of suffering,^[c] and those who commit adultery with her will suffer greatly unless they repent and turn away from her evil deeds. ²³ I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am the one who searches out the thoughts and intentions of every person. And I will give to each of you whatever you deserve.

²⁴ “But I also have a message for the rest of you in Thyatira who have not followed this false teaching (‘deeper truths,’ as they call them—depths of Satan, actually). I will ask nothing more of you ²⁵ except that you hold tightly to what you have until I come. ²⁶ To all who are victorious, who obey me to the very end,

To them I will give authority over all the nations.
²⁷ They will rule the nations with an iron rod
    and smash them like clay pots.^[d]

²⁸ They will have the same authority I received from my Father, and I will also give them the morning star!

²⁹ “Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches.

Jesus Sees Who We Really Are

Here we have Jesus, the son of God, the one who has flaming eyes, which means that he can see into our very soul down into the depths beyond the persona that we put on and the masks that we wear. He sees down into our hearts who we really are and why we do what we do. And it says that he has feet of bronze, meaning that he stands firm on eternal

truth that does not change with the whims of society around us that says one thing is fine is is abhorrent, you know, in one decade and then in  another decade they say that it's fine. It's okay. But Jesus' teachings and his character and his  expectations do not change. They do not change with the whims of society, but they are eternal.

Jesus Commends Thyatira

Jesus commends the people of Thyatira. He commends them for their love and their faith and their service and their patient endurance. Despite the troubles that they face and the persecution and the darkness that is around them, they continue to be loving, faithful people who serve. And that's a

wonderful thing to commend them for. And not only are they doing those things, but he also commends them for their constant improvement in these things. So, they don't settle for just doing them.  They are getting better and better and better at them. And I like that because I'm a Methodist and Methodist, we want to uh emphasize this is I think the gift that Methodism brings to the Christian world. We emphasize sanctification, growing in perfection and holiness or as some people would put it becoming more and more like Christ. And the people of Thyatira were doing that. They were growing in sanctification, becoming holier and holier, more and more like Christ, which we should always seek to do. Not just settling for salvation.  "I have received Christ and I know I'm going to heaven."  Well, that's wonderful. But we should also become more and more like Christ and grow in holiness.

Tolerating Sin in the Church
Jesus commends them. But He also corrects them. He tells them you are tolerating sin in your church and that is not a good thing. He's not happy about that. Now we talk a lot about tolerance. Tolerance can be a good thing or it can be a bad thing. Tolerance is a buzzword that we hear a lot in our world today. And it's important because we live in America which is a melting pot of all kinds of different people. And when different people all live together, we have to learn tolerance so that we can tolerate different ways of thinking and speaking.  And we have to do that. And it's a good thing when we're thinking about it in those terms. But when it comes to being a church, we have to hold to the firm teachings of Jesus Christ.  In the world around us, we can't expect everyone to believe and act the way we do as Christians. I mean, recognize that according to surveys that only about 62% of Americans claim to be Christians. And that's not asking them like, "Do they believe a certain set of beliefs?"  That's just them saying of themselves, "Yes, I'm a Christian." Only 62%. That means around 40% don't claim to follow Christ, don't go to church, don't claim to believe the way we do. We can't expect them to  follow Christian rules if they don't even identify themselves as Christian. We have to learn to tolerate and let you know people live the way they're going to live. But if someone says that they're a Christian, then we have to hold them to a higher standard. We have to hold ourselves to a higher standard. And what is the standard according to our faith?  Everything that we believe and how we act is based on  God's holy word in the Scripture. And so we have to study this. We have to know it and we have to hold firm to it. We cannot tolerate beliefs that are contrary to Scripture. Now, there might be different ways of interpreting it. Our Baptist friends across the street may look at baptism differently than we do as Methodists. That's okay. We can allow for that different interpretations based on the same scripture. But as Christians altogether, there must be some things that we cannot compromise.  And the church in  Thyatira, Jesus says, was tolerating false teaching in their midst and false teachers.  It almost reminds me of some of the things that we hear in our world today. These false teachers in Thyatira would say they were teaching "deeper truths". They were looking at those who were holding to the the biblical way of thinking and Jesus' teaching. And the false teachers said, "Well, we have a 'deeper truth'. Those views in the Scripture, they're kind of old and outdated. We've discovered a higher path, a deeper truth." 

Jesus says their deeper truth is actually depths of Satan. Depths of Satan! He says it because it's not truth.  It it's trying to rewrite what God has said and twist it and say that any of the ones who were holding firm to the Scripture is just old and outdated and obsolete.  

We have already talked about sexual immorality. Other churches that Jesus wrote letters to were struggling with sexual immorality. And this was common because the pagans around them practiced all kinds of different sexual immorality. And so the Christians within the church were constantly being tempted to do what everyone else was doing. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? In the world we live in, I don't have to tell you the ideas of our society about human sexuality have changed a lot through the decades and Pleasant Grove Methodist has already made our decision as a church to stand firm on traditional, biblical orthodox Christina teaching.  And so what we know believe and where we are going and I don't  want to a horse that's already dead.

But those in Thyatira were also struggling with teachers who were telling them to compromise about idol worship. And that's what I want to focus a little bit more on today. What is idol worship?

Modern Idol Worship
The common way that we look idolatry is someone bowing down to worship an idol or a statue or a false god. And that was certainly the case sometimes in the ancient world.  But the problem for Christians in the first century was sometimes more nuanced.  

The majority of people that lived in Thyatira were not Christians. They were pagans. And they worshiped gods and had religious festivals. And they sacrificed animals to their pagan idols. And then they would have a festival and eat the meat of the sacrificed animals. And who doesn't love a good steak or a good hamburger?  And so these Christians were smelling this wonderful meat roasting. And maybe their pagan neighbor was bringing home some leftovers from the feast and offering it to their Christian neighbors. And the Christians were faced with a dilemma. Should I eat this meat that has been sacrificed to a false god, to an idol? And what does that say if I do?  By partaking of that food, they were not only eating food that had been sacrificed to an idol, but it was sort of making a statement to their neighbor who was a pagan that they also were participating in this religious ritual of eating meat that had been sacrificed to an idol. 

And Christians around the ancient world had already had a big council in Jerusalem decades before and discussed this and agreed Christians should not eat meat sacrificed to idols, consume blood, or participate in sexual immorality.  

But there were some in the church of Thyatira that were saying "No, it's okay to do it."
Jesus was not okay with their false teaching.

Well, that was what they struggled with in the first century. We don't really have that problem today.  I don't know of anybody who is sacrificing meat to idols. Is that something that you deal with on a regular basis? I don't think so.

So, does that mean we don't struggle with idolatry today?  Absolutely not.  We we struggle with idolatry even more in other ways.

We studied a great book called, Counterfeit Gods on a Wednesday night here at the church about 10 years ago. It's by the late, great Timothy Keller--a wonderful preacher, teacher, Presbyterian

actually. He had some a really good points about idolatry and what that means in the modern context.  Timothy Keller defines idolatry as anything that is more important to you than God,
anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God,
or anything you seek to give you what only God can give.

And I think this is something people today right here in Dalton, Georgia, struggle with a lot all the time.  We are constantly being tempted to put something else before God or to expect other things besides God to fulfill us in ways that only God can. And so the questions I would put before you three question today as you consider whether or not you personally are struggling with idolatry.

First, what if anything is more important to you than God?  And that could be anything.
Second, what if anything absorbs your heart and imagination more than God?
Third, who or what, if anything, are you seeking to give you what only God can give?

And when we're thinking of idols and idolatry, it's not necessarily a bad thing that becomes an idol in our lives.  A lot of times it is a very good thing, but it becomes bad for us because we treat it as the ultimate thing.

So I'll just give you one example.  Our children.
We love our children and we're supposed to love our children. For many of us, they're the most  important thing in our life. But listen to what I just said. Are your children or your grandchildren the most important thing in your life?  

That sounds good. And the world would say they should be the most important thing in your life.  But they cannot be more important than God because your children cannot fulfill you in ways that only God can. 

And as a matter of fact, if you try to use your children to fulfill you as if they were God, that's not fair to them. That's putting a burden on them that they cannot fulfill. 

How awful if you're doing that to your spouse or your job or your church or your pastor or your friend or anything.  They cannot be God for you.  It's not fair to expect created things to be God for you. That is idolatry and it is a sin. And sin not only hurts you, but it hurts the one whom you are treating as an idol.

Now, most of us would not say or think consciously, "I put this thing above God."
We don't think about things that way.  But you have to ask yourself the honest question, Where are you really keeping your treasure?"  

You know what Jesus said? When He was teaching about money, which is a common idol for people, He said, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

You can look at your bank account. What do you spend most of your money on?  That's an indication of what you highly value. What do you spend most of your time on? That is an indication of what you highly value. What do you spend most of your energy on? That is a top priority in your life.

And of course we know intellectually, logically, that God is supposed to be the most important thing for us or else we have broken one of the first commandments:  "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."

So we have to ask ourselves and we have to think honestly as we evaluate our life and our spirit.  Is God really first or are we guilty like the people of Thyatira of worshiping an idol?

Now sometimes we can't answer those questions for ourselves. We have a way of rationalizing things in our own mind and that's why it is important that we are part of a Christian community with other people who we give permission to hold us accountable. Do you have a friend, a partner in Christ in whom you can confide and whom you can trust with the wisdom and the permission to share with you how you're struggling?

You know, I was thinking about it.  It's kind of tricky, isn't it? I mean, if somebody comes to you, even if it's somebody in the church you like, and they come to you and they say, "Amy, you know, I just want to tell you I love you and I see you struggling this, this, and this."

If someone says that, immediately we're like, "Well, who asked you!  Mind your own business!"
Well, I thought about that and I said, "You know, perhaps we should give someone permission to say those things by asking them."

Perhaps this week you should go to someone that you truly trust and and look up to as a Christian with wisdom and ask them ask them, "Hey, I want to grow in holiness. I want to become more like Christ, but I can't always see my own faults. So, I'm asking you, what do you see in me? What's one thing that you see in me that I need to work on?"

Boy, that's getting real, isn't it?  See, this holiness thing, this growing and becoming more like Christ,  it's serious.  The Christian life. It's not all about just coming to church and hearing an awesome song by the choir and getting goosebumps. That's the fun part.

But the challenging part, the real part, is where we grow.  Jesus commended the people of Thyatira for growing and he challenged them about idolatry.

What would He say to us today?   

Jesus’ Message to the Faithful

Jesus said, "The faithful will rule the nations with the authority of Christ." This is a quote from Psalm 2:9 where it's talking about how David is going to rule as king. But he's also mysteriously talking about the Messiah who will rule for all time. And it's also talking about the kingdom of Israel and the people of Christ, us, the faithful, who will rule the nations with all authority.

This is God's ultimate vision for His people, that we would rule over the nations.  What is it that God told Adam and Eve? He said, "You will rule over the birds of the air and the fish of the sea and the animals of the land." It's the wonderful privilege God invited humanity into.  He invites us, even though we were made from the dirt, to be co-rulers with Him over all creation.  

Ultimately, this is God's plan for us to return to this. We're not just going to be in heaven playing harps. We're going to rule over the all creation with God.  We will have the same authority as Christ. 

And Jesus also says, "I will also give those who remain faithful a morning star." And I love that. Always wondered it meant. So I looked into it and it makes a lot of sense. 

The first star you see in the morning after it's been dark all night is the morning star.  What a beautiful image for these people of Thyatira struggling by being a tiny minority of faithful godly people in a pagan society. Darkness is all around.  Persecution  is heavy. People being arrested, tortured, and murdered because they believe in Jesus Christ. It was very, very dark. And Jesus says, "Just hang on. If you'll just hang on through the darkness, I will give you the morning star." 

It's kind of like that saying "The light at the end of the tunnel." The morning star is that first star that you see right before the darkness is over. Right before the darkness fades away, I will give you that morning star. 

But it goes even deeper than that. Jesus actually said in Revelation 22:16, "I am the bright morning star." So he's saying, "If you'll just hang on, then you will have me." When you cling to Christ in the darkness, He will be there when the darkness ends.  And He will continue to be your light and your hope and your forever king. 

So if you're facing darkness, if you're facing some kind of suffering, hang on!  Because guess what? Jesus has already won the victory and you will win the victory, too. 

Now, some people say, "Well, I'm sick. What if I die? Does that mean that I didn't win the victory?"

And that's the beautiful thing of our Christian faith. Even if you die, you still have the victory because it's not over.  This life will come and go for all of us. Even if you never struggle with cancer or kidney disease or lymphoma or anything, everyone faces death.

But the Morning Star, comes when the darkness is over and the darkness will end.
The darkness of this world will end. And then there will be the Morning Star and light eternal as we walk with Christ and rule with Christ over all creation for all eternity. 

Conclusion & Closing Challenge
We live in a world not so different from Thyatira’s. There is pressure to compromise—on truth, on holiness, on what it means to be faithful to Jesus. Sometimes it doesn’t come with loud rebellion but with a quiet tolerance of sin, false teaching, or the idea that deeper spiritual “truths” can somehow bend God’s Word.

 But Jesus sees. His eyes are like flames of fire, burning through every appearance and straight to the heart. He sees your love, your service, your faith, your perseverance—and He also calls you to holiness. 

So I ask you today:

• Is there anything you've begun to tolerate that Jesus would call you to turn away from?
• Are you holding fast to Christ in both your heart and your actions?
• Are you walking in the light, even when the world feels dark?

Because here’s the promise: if you stay faithful—even when it’s hard, even when others fall away—you will reign with Christ. You’ll share in His authority. And best of all, you’ll receive the Morning Star. You’ll receive Jesus Himself.

So hold on. The night is almost over. The Morning Star is rising. Stay faithful—and you will shine with Him.