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The Deep Things of Satan

Series: Revelation

by Liam Goligher January 31, 2021 Scripture: Revelation 2:18-29

We’re looking at a letter. The book of Revelation as a whole is a letter. It starts like a letter. It ends like a letter. But within the letter there is the account of Jesus speaking to seven churches. The number seven in the book of Revelation is a number of completeness, of wholeness, of perfection. So, whenever we’re listening to Jesus speaking to any one of these churches, we must understand that he is speaking to the church catholic, the church universal, in all places at all times, throughout all history. Because the kinds of experiences we find in these individual churches are replicated over and over and over and over again in the history of Christianity, from that day till our day, and on till Jesus returns. And the longest of these many letters within a letter, the longest of these is addressed to the least significant of the cities of Asia Minor. 

Thyatira was not known as a military garrison, nor as a religious or political hub. There were no architectural or cultural wonders there. If it was known for anything, it was known as a commercial center. And it was the home to a number of trade guilds. These trade guilds were associations of various crafts and artisans, of people who were potters, tailors, leather workers, linen workers, bakers, coppersmiths, dyers, and wool merchants. There was a very famous purple cloth company of Thyatira that was well known throughout the Mediterranean Basin. In fact, its representatives, its salespeople, would travel throughout the Mediterranean plying the wares of the purple cloth company. We know the name of one of these salesmen, by the way, who came from Thyatira and who we meet in Philippi. And the story’s told in Acts chapter 16. She was there on company business. She attended a service where Paul was preaching. The Lord opened her heart to believe, and she became a friend of the Apostle, and her name was Lydia. 

From what we’re able to tell, the church in Thyatira was a small affair. By the end of the second century, there was no church to be found in Thyatira. It was quite simply gone. People often ask me when they find out that I’m the minister at Tenth Presbyterian Church if it’s on 10th street. And I say, “No, it’s not on 10th Street. ‘Well, why is it called Tenth then?’ Well, because it was number ten of Presbyterian Churches that were planted in downtown Philadelphia. ‘Well, what about the other nine?’ Well, there’s very few of the other nine left. Some of them I think moved out to the suburbs long, long ago, and others have simply died, and even, even one or two that have retained their number have lost the faith in any significant way at all.” 

Well, the church of Thyatira disappears, and that adds seriousness then to this letter to the church at Thyatira. And that seriousness is introduced really in the very first verse: “The words of the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and whose feet are like burnished bronze.” The way Jesus introduces himself sets the tone of seriousness of what is being said to this church here, and the language that he uses is language taken from the Bible, from the book of Daniel, in particular. 

Daniel has a vision of one whose face had he says, “the appearance of lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze.” And you can see from the language of “like” and “the appearance of” that we’re not to take this as literal. This God does not literally have the appearance have eyes that are flaming torches, and nor is he made up of bronze burnished or otherwise. But these are metaphors which the Bible uses in order to indicate to us that it is describing the indescribable. This is the way God has described himself.  

This is the way God appeared, for example, to Moses, remember. When Moses has been away from Egypt and he has got a life for himself, he’s married, he has a family, he has a job as a shepherd, and God appears to him in a burning bush. In fact, there’s a symbol of the burning bush on one of our Tiffany windows here, which you can look at after the sermon. God appears to him in a burning bush, and we read there of the flames of fire that appeared. The bush was not burned but God appears as flaming fire. 

But it also reminds us of the story of Daniel, in which three of Daniel’s friends were taken by the king and thrown into a fiery furnace. In fact, so fierce was the fire that the people who threw these men into the furnace were immediately burned and died instantly. In one of my summer jobs, I worked at a brick making factory. It was the toughest of my summer jobs. I never went back, but it was an endurance test. But one of my tasks was to take the formed clay bricks and put them on a pallet for half an hour, and then someone else would take my place, and for that next half an hour it was to pull these loaded pallets out of the where they were, the bricks were formed and into the oven itself. So I know a bit about ovens, and they were heated to hundreds of degrees. I don’t know how the people who worked in there did it. I think they were relieved every half hour as well, but even just pulling it in and feeling the heat makes me realize how strong the heat must have been when those three men were thrown into the furnace, and the people doing the throwing in were instantly killed. Well, we read in the story that when the king came to look in. He saw not three men — but four men – and one of them was like the Son of God. 

So we find in the opening of this, Jesus introduces himself with the language of Daniel chapter 10, and calls himself the Son of God, reminiscent of the description that the king gives of the fourth figure in the flames. And there’s a reassuring aspect to this that whatever trouble the church is in in Thyatira, Jesus is there too. Just as this picture applies to us today; it applies to us in the furnace of affliction in which we find ourselves along with the rest of the world in these days, that whatever we’re going through, brothers and sisters, Jesus is in it with us, just as he was with those three men in the fiery furnace so long ago.  

Well, back in chapter one, when John had his vision of Jesus, you remember that he saw him with human appearance. The word that’s used there “son of man”, it’s the word “anthropos” which gives us anthropology – human, he saw a human figure. That’s what Daniel saw in Daniel chapter 7, when someone with a, as a human figure comes to God and receives a kingdom. But here Jesus uses the phrase, the words “Son of God.” 

If in the vision of divinity in chapter 1, we were reminded that the one who is divine is also has a human nature, here Jesus uses the language of divinity and brings the focus to his divinity. He is the Son of God. Back in chapter 1, it refers to his God and Father. In chapter 2:27, he refers to his Father: “I have received authority from my Father,” he says. And in chapter 3:21, he has “sat down with my Father on his throne.” In fact, at the end of this reading we had a reference to Psalm 2. And in Psalm 2, we’re introduced to the Son of God. The Messiah is the Son of God, to whom God the Father says, “Today I have begotten you.” In the eternal today of God, he has given birth to the Son – an eternal birth without a beginning. An eternal begetting without ever a point where he did not exist, but nonetheless from all eternity the Father in an incomprehensible way to us, has given all that he is, and all that is in him to the Son in an eternal action.  

Everything the Father has in himself, he has given to the Son in that eternal action, so that we can say of the Father that he is the one who births or begets the Son, and that the Son is the only begotten Son. We can say that he is the Word of God, and that the Word is with God and the Word is God. We can say that Jesus is the “brightness of his Father’s glory, and the express image of the Father’s person.” So the Father has given everything that he is his and everything that he has to the Son, except that he is the Father. So it’s the Son then, in chapter 1, verse 8, who says, “‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ‘who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.'” 

Jesus is both son of man – human – and Son of God – divine. And it says, Son of God that “he has eyes of fire,” that is, fire that searches and scorches the hearts of men and women. Fire that knows the thoughts and the intents of your innermost being. “And his feet of burnished bronze” express his incorruptible character, his irresistible authority, and his incomparable power. Now this is the one then who speaks to this church.  

And first of all, we find in this church that this church began well. It began well. I think we would be happy if Jesus said these words to us verse 19.  

“I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first.” 

Revelation 2:19

Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if Jesus could say that of us? You see, if the church like a lampstand, and in chapter 1 the church is compared to a lampstand, if the church is a lampstand destined to bear upon it the light of Christ in the midst of this present darkness, then Thyatira had been a faithful and effective church. There had been no retreat as there had been at Ephesus – they had gone backwards. There’s no going backwards with Thyatira, they’d loved God they’d loved their neighbor, they’d loved one another as adopted siblings of Jesus. They’d served one another within the body of Christ, ministering to one another, meeting each other’s needs as they had means or opportunity. They’d kept the faith by keeping error out, and by trusting in Christ themselves, and living in daily dependence upon him. It’s the grace of faith that’s in view here, and we see the fruit of faith: patient endurance. Patience is the work of the Holy Spirit. It’s a supernatural gift that God gives to his people. It’s the patience that’s content to suffer inconvenience and trial and pain because it believes God and it has an eye to its future hope — the reward that God gives. These virtues were evident in this church. And Jesus adds that in recent times these virtues were super evident.  

“Your latter works exceed the first.”  

Revelation 2:19

Their displays of love, their life of faith, their acts of selfless service for one another had increased, not diminished with the passage of time. This triute of virtues, we find it in Paul’s writings: “your work of faith, your labor of love, your steadfastness or patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” Paul saw them in Thessalonica, Jesus saw them in Thyatira. Does he see them in us? Is our faith growing? Is our love increasing? Is our hope sustaining us in these dangerous times? This was a church that began well.  

Secondly, this was a church that tolerated syncretism. You see the threat to the church in Thyatira came not from outside but from inside. And the danger for Thyatira was that there was a passivity towards the behaviors of some of its members, a kind of rationalization that they were doing no harm, and so therefore they could be left as they were, unchecked.  

Now living in Thyatira was a complex business, as it is for us today in our society. Many Christian people in the church belonged to the wealthier class. They were business owners. They were living in a city where to succeed or even to survive in difficult days, you had to be part of the business community. In Thyatira, the local business, the better business bureau was heavily influenced by the trade guilds. So if you wanted to succeed or survive in your business, you had to be a member of the trade guild. If you wanted to get ahead, you had to be in the guild, and every guild had its guardian god. So if you joined the guild, you were expected to attend the guild’s business meetings and its social functions, especially the banquets. The food was usually good, the wine was probably the best they had. After all, they were trying to influence you one way or another. And the food had usually been dedicated to the guardian god of the guild that you were a member of and would be served at your table as a gift of the god to you. 

Well, what was a Christian to do? Well, enter a woman whose influence had an impact on the church in Thyatira. She called herself a prophetess. She claimed to have what John, we’re told in chapter 1, had. That was that he was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day. She claimed to have the ability to be in the Spirit. She claimed to have a superior and secret knowledge that she called “the deep things of God.” We assume that because Jesus sarcastically calls it “the deep things of Satan.” No doubt she called it “the deep things of God.” She had charismatic gifts that drew people to herself. And as she drew people to herself, she drew them into this new movement. Now this woman, by the way, was a real person. This is not a metaphor. This is a real person. Jezebel is not her name, however. Jezebel has been picked up as a name from the Old Testament, because by naming her Jezebel the signal is that this woman was as much of a threat to Thyatira as Jezebel had been to Israel. 

In the Old Testament, Jezebel was queen. Of course she was the wife of Ahab, who was the weakest or one of the weakest of the kings of Israel. She was a worshiper of Astarte or Ashtaroth. That was the Phoenician equivalent of the Greek Aphrodite and of the Roman Venus. The kind of religious practices that this goddess is associated with is a blend of immorality and piety. The real-life Jezebel persuaded Ahab to build a great temple to Astarte in the middle of Jerusalem. Then she personally hired 850 prophets of Astarte to work for her. She started a pogrom of sorts, killing as many of the prophets of the Lord as she could capture. Remember, she didn’t get Elijah. In fact, Elijah at one point thought he alone was left of all the prophets of God. But there was quite a group that Jezebel had not rooted out, and she cultivated a form of syncretism, that is, the worship of Astarte and the worship of Yahweh together. You didn’t have to give up worshipping Yahweh. You could worship Yahweh the way Yahweh wanted you to worship him, and you could worship Astarte as well. She’s bringing these two together.  

Jezebel had been dead for a thousand years by the time this prophetess came to Thyatira. But her influence on the church there was an influence that reflected the kind of effect Jezebel had in her day. And no doubt this prophetess leveraged teaching that was already available to the church in Thyatira. Hadn’t Paul said that the idols of the heathen were no gods at all? So it’s just a thing in your mind. It’s a mental thing, you’re not actually doing anything. If you acknowledge the god or if you go to the guild, it’s okay. You can rationalize it away.  

So she was getting people to allow themselves a pass on following the revealed law of God. This woman is suggesting that she and her followers are enlightened. I think her religion is a form of Gnosticism. In Gnosticism, there is a higher knowledge, secret knowledge. You have to be an initiate, somebody on the inside, before you know this stuff. And that was the way she was operating at that level. You could follow her, and you would learn the deep things of God. And so people were being admitted into the circle of truth. You see this: the followers of Jezebel thought they were kind of super spiritual intellectual elite. They knew that they could operate in the world in these guilds at their level in a way that the ordinary Christian would probably balk at, but they could do because they were enlightened. They were so much better than the ordinary run-of-the-mill Christian, and as they went to their guild were staying behind for the after parties that were downright immoral. But they were rationalizing it away that “God doesn’t know. God doesn’t understand. God is tolerant. We can do these things.” In other words, what they were doing is they were describing a more, a more tolerant ethic than that of the rank-and-file Christians. They were above that, they could do what they liked.  

Now here we are in our day and that kind of thing is still going on in churches. I know some of you have come from churches which has bought into the kind of morality, if we could call it that, of our age. And the morality of our age has been rationalized within those churches. Churches you once were members of, I know some of you, and there is no difference between those churches and the morality that you see in Hollywood, or that you hear in the news, or you read about in the papers, or that you follow on social media. No difference whatsoever. A Christianizing of immorality is going on all around us in our day, and we see it in other ways as well. People mixing Christianity with the world and the idolatry of the world. If the idols of the world are things like money, sex, and power, look at the ways in which large evangelical churches in our country in the last year have been brought low by engaging themselves, by leaders in the church engaging in these things – money, sex, and power – to the destruction not just of their reputation, but of the reputation of Christ in the country and the destruction of the church. 

So these things are not old. They are bang up to date. Mixing Christianity with the idolatries of the world leads to spiritual infidelity. The immorality that’s in view here is the immorality of the church against Christ. Why? Because the church is the bride of Christ. The church belongs to Christ just as, just as Israel belonged to her husband Jehovah. So the church is the bride of Christ. The gospels make much of this. They talk much about the wedding feast that we’re waiting for, when the marriage is at were, the wedding day comes, when Jesus returns again, and he presents his complete bride the church to himself, as a pure bride “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing”.  

That day is not this day, but that day is coming. And that day that is coming was foreshadowed by the Last Supper, which is not only a Passover meal, but it’s like the rehearsal dinner. In anticipation of the wedding, he gathers the disciples together there, and whenever we celebrate the Lord’s Supper it’s like having a mini-rehearsal dinner before the great day, of the great feast of God when Jesus returns, and the marriage we were made for begins. The church belongs to Christ. And Christ at his death is given his bride, from his death comes his bride. Tertullian, one of the great fathers of the church, recalled the way in which, you remember, Eve was formed from Adam’s side. Adam was put in to a great, great sleep, and while he was asleep God took a rib from his side and formed woman from his side. Not from his foot to be under him, not from his head to be over him, but from his side to be a companion and one like himself. In the New Testament, when Jesus died his side was pierced, and from his side blood and water flowed. And that blood and water ransomed, healed, restored, forgave a community of men and women and boys and girls who are the church of Jesus Christ. His new Eve, his queen. Eve was called the “mother of the living.” The church is the mother of those who have eternal life. The church gave birth to us. The church has brought us into our relationship with the king. She is going, she is the queen of heaven. The church sits at Jesus’ side, rules alongside Jesus in the eternal kingdom. The church made up of you people, like you and I, the church is the queen by Christ’s side.  

So when we as the church tolerate sin within the church, or complicity with sin and the world within the church, what have we done? We’ve committed spiritual infidelity. Here was a church that had begun well. Here’s a church that had countenanced and tolerated syncretism. And here’s a church that faces choices. It’s under the gaze of the Lord Jesus, “his eye is like a flame of fire.” He says to the church, “I know your works.” He goes on to say in verse 23:  

“I’m the one who searches the mind and the heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works.”  

Revelation 2:23

Let’s be frank, Jesus knows the church – this church, all the churches in America, all the churches around the world. He knows his church. This book of Revelation was written because Jesus is desperately concerned about his church. What he’s doing in the world, everything that’s happening right now, the world thinks it’s all about them, and all about vaccines, and cases, and deaths, and all the rest of it. We know that Jesus is getting the attention of his church. So what are we going to do? 

He’s watchful of his bride, he’s watching over individual members of the church. “He himself knew what was in man,” the gospels tell us. “Before him no creature is hidden, but all is open and laid bare before the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” The prophetess of Thyatira made her choice. Jesus says, “I gave her time to repent, but she refused.” So she’s left exposed to those flaming eyes and those feet of burnished bronze that can crush and destroy, and her children her followers have a choice. Will they stay with her? Because if they stay with her, they will have been thrown into great tribulation, they’ll be thrown onto a bed of illness. Do you think Jesus is being harsh here? Remember what happened to Ananias and Sapphira when they lied to the Holy Spirit? Remember the warning that goes along with every Lord’s Supper we have. There were people in the church at Corinth, who had because of their greed and irreverence at the Lord’s Supper had fallen ill, and some had died. Jesus is not beyond removing people from his church by illness and death because of syncretism with the world. 

Or will we be among those who have refused to learn the deep things of God, of Satan rather? Will we be among those who have refused, as there were in Thyatira?  

“Those who’ve refused to learn the deep things of Satan.” 

Revelation 2:24

That’s where I’m going to end this week. I’ve said enough. Jesus is taking up the mantle of Elijah, who back in the days of the real Jezebel confronted Israel, and said to them, “You’re limping between two opinions.” They’re kind of caught in the middle here. You don’t want to give up the world, you don’t want to give up all the connections the world has, all the things that the world offers you, and you don’t want to appear different from the world. You don’t want to be you want to be able to fit in there as well as fit in here. You have to make a decision. If the Lord is God, follow him. Or take the other road, but it’s a road to disaster. May the Lord write his word in our hearts, and shake us up where we need shaken up, and comfort us where we need comforted.  

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Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: By Liam Goligher. © 2024 Tenth Presbyterian Church. Website: tenth.org