A Thinking Pawel

Life is Messy

2012-01-30T08:00:00.001-05:00

Luke 4:14-19 “And Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about Him spread through all the surrounding district. And He began teaching in their synagogues and was praised by all.

I find it interesting that this passage seems to be the beginning of the ‘ministry’ of the Savior in Luke’s gospel but we find that He had already been traveling and working in Galilee. This causes me to think two things- on the one hand I am confused when I try to order the events/ chronology of His travels and works in comparison to the other accounts, and then on the other hand, I am reminded that real life is very messy and often times the details do not always present themselves as nicely as one would like. God had to work our salvation through the created order of things and He had to use man as His vehicle for writing the history of it, therefore the messiness of life makes its appearance from time to time and clouds our vision. All the more reason to believe in Him and to hope strenuously for that day when our vision will be cleared and we will see Him and His Son in their glory!

Jesus lived and breathed every day of His life; He ate and slept, traveled and rested. He was alive like any other man, and was subject to the demands of nature, time, and the will of God. That we have any record at all is a great blessing. That we have four accounts is an abundant blessing. To expect a detailed, all answers given type of account is too much to ask. It would not be what we would expect from ‘real life.’

To Preach the Gospel

2012-01-29T08:00:00.001-05:00

Revelation 4:18-19 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.”

Isaiah 61:1 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners;

Isaiah’s prophecy in Isaiah 61 was intended for Israel first. It promised a day when all would be well again. A day when Israel would be restored and placed on a pedestal in the midst of all who had spurned her and abused her. Isaiah spoke at the time that Assyria was expanding and conquering. He told of the destruction that was sure to come. Isaiah also told them that they would then be restored and Cyrus is mentioned by name in Isaiah 45:1 as the Lord’s anointed to accomplish this.

But Isaiah also speaks of a future restoration beyond this of Cyrus- a day that will follow the day of the Lord’s judgment on not only Israel but all the nations. In this day he writes that the Anointed One will come to raise up Israel; not just to her former glory but to an everlasting glory. In this Isaiah is speaking of our Messiah and has expanded the definition of Israel to include all peoples. We know this because Jesus tells us that He is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy. Jesus has come, the day of judgment has come, all peoples now stand condemned unless they are the chosen people of God. And His chosen are no longer Israel but also the elect, the saints, the holy ones in Jesus Christ. Me!

Matthew 13:16-17 “But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear. 17 “For truly I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.”

Isaiah would have loved to live on this side of the cross. He felt the Messiah. He spoke of the Messiah; but the Messiah was always far off. Isaiah would never experience Him. How blessed are we to have Him- How for granted we take Him! We truly are stiff-necked people as the old Israelites were.

Letter to Laodicea/ Part IV

2012-01-23T08:00:00.001-05:00

Revelation 3:20 Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.

And then one of the greatest verses in all of Scripture; “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” Can it get any plainer than that? Jesus is as close as the front door. He has come to each and every member of the family of man. He has done the work. He has walked up the steps. He has come to me and to you. And what’s more He has knocked to let us know that He is there. What more could one ask for? He has purchased the present of our salvation, wrapped it up, and delivered it to our door and let us know that it is there. All we must do is open that door and receive our gift. We have only to open that door and ask Him in to dinner and He promises to dine with us. And then we can follow Jesus through that very same door and into a life that begins with repentance and ends in every tear and sadness forever being wiped away.

Will man do it? Will he decide to be ice cold and rock solid? Will He decide to be on fire and burning for Jesus? Or will He remain somewhere in between and aloof living his life as if the gift were unimportant and the things of the world much more interesting. The time for that man to decide is today while the knocking of Jesus can still be heard. The work of getting the present to your door has been done, scripture tells of that tale. Now Jesus is standing outside and waiting. Will you open your door and follow after Him?

Revelation 3:21 He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.

And to the one who does this, who returns to the Lord and continues steadfastly by His side, Jesus promises again that he will sit with Jesus on the throne in the new order. Jesus compares this to the way He Himself was welcomed into heaven by His Father and sat on His Father’s throne. We will share the intimacy and that exceedingly great feeling of power and importance that comes from sitting next to God on His very throne. Compared to this and to all the other rewards promised in these letters, how can one continue to look after money and possessions instead of at Jesus? Amen?

Letter to Laodicea/ Part III

2012-01-22T08:00:00.002-05:00

Revelation 3:17-18 Because you say, “I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,” and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent.

Jesus identifies the source of their problem as money. These believers were rich in material possessions and they had let that blessing turn to complacency in their hearts. They settled for the pleasure that their worldly belongings provided them and rested in the security that they felt their money gave them. They began to forget that their greatest treasure was the salvation that Jesus had provided them. They forgot that their true riches lay not in the bags of silver they hid under their mattresses but in the streets of gold that awaited them in the new world. Because of this Jesus calls them wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked. There is no getting around the fact that Jesus was not happy with these believers. He does not like it when He is forgotten in favor of things of the world that will never last in the end.

He offers them advice, which is to return to him and to trade in their riches for a form that that will truly last and will provide true security and everlasting peace. He offers them gold refined by fire, the fire that He Himself underwent in order to purchase their freedom, and white robes that He Himself washed clean in the blood of His sacrifice. He offers them a salve as He did the blind man in the gospel account so that they may lose the blindness caused by the lust for the world and begin to see again as they did at the moment of their first belief. Jesus admits that His tone is severe but He is rebuking them out of love for them.

The lesson for us is two-fold. We realize that at any point we may turn ourselves around and get back on the path that Jesus has made for us. And we realize that the harshness of the words of Scripture are there for our own protection and well-being. If we only would listen to His words and obey, then our future would remain secure and everlasting.

Letter to Laodicea/ Part II

2012-01-21T08:00:00.002-05:00

Revelation 3:15-16 I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth.

Ray Vander Laan visited the site of Laodicea and spoke of the contrast between the cold water that can be found there and the hot springs that are also found in that area. He makes the point that both of these sources of water can bring refreshment and rejuvenation to a body and both are much appreciated. But water that is simply lukewarm does not have these same qualities. It does not refresh the overheated laborer who splashes it on his face on his way home and it does not soothe that laborer’s muscles in the evening when he settles into it to relax for the coming day. To be lukewarm has come to mean that you are neither passionate about something nor dead set against it. You are not going to fight for it or against it. In this passage Jesus seems to be saying the same type of thing only it appears that He means that this church neither had the fire of the zealot nor the steadfast determination of a mature church. These believers were neither fired up nor rock solid. They were somewhere in the middle and Jesus tells them that He wishes they could be found as either one or the other.

Letter to Laodicea/ Part I

2012-01-20T08:00:00.002-05:00

Revelation 3:14-22 “To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: The Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God, says this: I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth. Because you say, “I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,” and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me. He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’”

What a great way to end this section of scripture. This letter sums up all that has gone before and hints strongly once again that in order to enter heaven one must conduct oneself zealously in the path of righteousness. Jesus is the true One whose Word speaks to all men of the condition of their souls and the condition of their fates. He is the Witness to the things of heaven and He was sent by His Father to the world of men in order to save them and to tell them of their coming judgment. He saved by offering Himself as the perfect sacrifice that met the demands of justice for man’s sinfulness. He offers to apply that salvation to all men if they would come to Him, walk with Him, stay with Him and love Him until the end.

Colossians 1:16-17 For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

Jesus was in the creation at the beginning and it was through his Word that the heavens opened up and the fruit of His Word was made manifest upon a formless and void world. Jesus spoke into being the sky and the land, the bird and the beast, and the fish and the insect. With His command and by His command the world came into being and it maintains its course. At His command the world that He created will be rolled up and disposed of in favor of a new one that He has prepared for us. In that new creation Jesus will stand as Ruler over all the nations and men will either be welcomed by Him or cast aside and doomed to live outside of that order. The choice, says the Amen, is ours.

2 Peter 3:10-13 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up. Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat! But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.

Letter to Philadelphia/ Part IV

2012-01-19T08:00:00.002-05:00

Revelation 3:12 He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he will not go out from it anymore; and I will write on him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God, and My new name.

A new name- just as in 2:17 where Jesus promises a white stone and a new name to the overcomer, here He promises a new name with which the believer will enter the temple of God and be known by God. The one who overcomes will stand in that holy place; Jesus calls him a pillar, and he will never have to leave. Once in heaven we do not have to fear leaving or being asked to leave. Our residency there is as assured as the pillars that hold up the dome of God’s house. If God’s house stands then Jesus promises that we will be found standing there with it and with Him.

The new name we will find emblazoned across our foreheads our upon our breast is the name of God Himself. We will carry his name forever after. No longer will we have to try and stand with the power of our own names and no longer will we have to live upon the earth with the name of Christ but amidst all of the trouble and turmoil that we must encounter daily. In that day, in the day when Jesus returns to take His place as the Ruler of a new creation, we will be removed from this place and watch it be destroyed. Out of heaven will come a new place and a new name for us to be known by. We will enter the new heaven wearing the name of Jesus’ God and our God, and we will be known forever as His precious children. Nothing will ever change that or take it from us. It is as assured as heaven itself is assured.

And we will be given the name of Jesus; but it will be a new name. It will not be the name Christian because that denotes the crucifixion and resurrection that we align ourselves with in order to be saved. To be named a Christian is a this-world name that will not have as important a meaning in the new order that will come when Jesus returns with His rewards. In that day Jesus will take up the mantle of Lord of lords and King of kings. He will be Judge over all of creation and He will bring to their knees those who have defied Him. His new name will identify the full revelation of His nature as the Son of God who has been given all power and authority over the world. It is this name that we will also be given- if we overcome and continue to remain steadfast to the end. This means that we will share an intimacy with Jesus in the new order. We will be close to Him and He to us. We will share in the new heaven and the new earth and we will share in the intimacy of God and the Son as we share their names.

Letter to Philadelphia/ Part III

2012-01-18T08:00:00.000-05:00

Revelation 3:10 Because you have kept the word of My perseverance, I also will keep you from the hour of testing, that hour which is about to come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell on the earth. I am coming quickly; hold fast what you have, so that no one will take your crown.

This is the result of the work of the Philadelphians; because they have endured the trials they have faced, because they have continued to stand even against the attacks of evil, because they have persevered they will be kept safe from what appears to be a reference to an even greater future time of trial and tribulation. The ‘hour of testing’ that Jesus refers to is a world-wide event for each and every inhabitant of the earth. But those who have stood with Jesus up to this point will be spared this new trial.

But what exactly did these believers endure? What is the “word of My perseverance” or steadfastness as it might also have been translated? The word of perseverance is the encouragement of Jesus to His followers to keep on the Way by obeying His desire that we love Him and love each other. It is more than an encouragement, it is a command given to all of us to stand firm in the faith in Jesus Christ. That they had done this even in a time of great persecution from the reigning empire is an enormous feat. It is this steadfastness, this constancy of faith that Jesus commends now. Because of this faith the believers are given a pass on the coming persecution. Is this coming time of trial to be even worse? Has the world seen this time yet?

This time will come quickly for we can assume that Jesus means that when He comes this time will come with Him. The believers in Philadelphia have been awarded a crown for their courage and faith. They are to be rewarded in the next age, the age when God rolls up this creation and brings down a new one from heaven. If they continue in this path they will not lose their reward. This is another unsettling passage because it implies that what we have been given might somehow be lost. We love the idea of forever saved and ‘once saved always saved.’ But what if our future state depends greatly on how we live our lives in this state? What if our rewards and crowns are able to be taken away? What if all believers will not share the same joy in heaven? One thing is clear from this passage- if one wants to follow Jesus then one must expect pain in some form. If one wants to receive the rewards of Christ then one must work hard and diligently toward receiving them. And one last thing is also clear- the gifts of God, although coming to us freely and without cost to anyone but Himself, are held by the believer at great cost.

Letter to Philadelphia/ Part II

2012-01-17T08:00:00.000-05:00

Revelation 3:9 Behold, I will cause those of the synagogue of Satan, who say that they are Jews and are not, but lie—I will make them come and bow down at your feet, and make them know that I have loved you.

The synagogue of satan was previously referred to in the letter to the Smyrnans. Presumably these were Jews who were giving the churches great trouble in this region. They were as the Jews at the time of Christ were; seeking primarily to hold onto the power and influence that they held over the people of their city and to enforce their religion on those followers. The church came into their city as an upstart that preached an entirely different way to God, one that left off their importance and the need for their ‘services.’ The church of Christ preached a way to heaven through Jesus, whom they claimed was actually the Son of the Almighty and who rose from the dead after He had been killed by these Jews' forebears in Jerusalem. To this synagogue of Jews the church was a thorn in the side that could not be borne. And so they reverted to the wiles of the evil one to rid themselves of it. They conveniently forgot all that the God of the Jews had taught them about love and charity and instead focused on hate and selfishness. In this way they earned the name of satan as their very own.

One commentator calls these Jews 'Hellenized Jews' meaning that they were Jews of the Diaspora (the dispersion of Jews from the various times Jerusalem was overtaken by her enemies). These were Jews who were themselves somewhat persecuted for not retaining their true Judaism but were slowly influenced by the Greek culture that they found themselves living in. But persecution tends to roll downhill with the strongest delivering the first blow and then each subsequent turn passing it on to the next. The new Christian church was the lowest rung in this persecution chain and the Hellenized Jews would not be diminished yet again by what they considered an upstart perversion of their own faith.

Letter to Philadelphia/ Part I

2012-01-16T08:00:00.000-05:00

Revelation 3:7 He who is holy, who is true, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, and who shuts and no one opens, says this: ‘I know your deeds. Behold, I have put before you an open door which no one can shut, because you have a little power, and have kept My word, and have not denied My name.

Another brief biography of Jesus; this time He is the one who holds the keys, a reminder perhaps of how He was described in the beginning of this book as holding the keys of death and Hades. Jesus is master over fate and He is the One to whom the entire population of the world will look when the time comes to find out the judgment. Here Jesus says that He holds the ‘key of David’ which is able to open and to shut and once that decision is made there is no one who can alter it. Matthew Henry describes this as a reference to doors of opportunity for this church in Philadelphia. The reference to David must be a reference to authority and that of divine right. David, the great king of Israel, is the epitome of a monarch and Jesus as man came from that direct line. While David was the earthly king who reigned above all others, Jesus is our heavenly king. Jesus is the King of kings and holds in his hands the power to determine the future course of the lives of the church and its body. In those hands is the door of opportunity for His church. Jesus chooses to open it for the Philadelphian believers and for us. Through that door we can conjecture lays a chance to grow in Him spiritually, to work for His kingdom by spreading the love and faith of Christianity, to care for those in prison, the orphan, the widow and the stranger in the land. We have a chance to do the work of God, even in the midst of the trouble of life. The church in Philadelphia had a chance as well to continue to be the church of God even in the middle of great persecution and suffering. Jesus is encouraging them here to continue to walk through the door that He opens for them and to be a source of light in their otherwise darkened and lost city.

That Jesus is holy and true is an encouragement to the church. He is faithful to us and will not change that demeanor; for as God Jesus Himself cannot change. His holiness was protected at the cost of His very own blood and His faithfulness to us was demonstrated by that very same act. He is our Lord and Savior and He deserves our reverence for that very great truth.

Jesus gives them the open door because of their diligence to do those things that they were left to do, even though it was difficult for them. He promises that their church will be left intact in order to continue to do those things, for His open door may not be closed by any other than He. Their great compliment is that they did not deny the name of Jesus to those in their city that foolishly demanded it of them. Though the walls may fall and the temple of the flesh be assaulted by evil doers who seek only to destroy that which God has established man must refuse to consider their demands. The man who stands in the face of evil and simply says ‘No’ will stand forever in the face of Jesus and hear Him say, “Yes.”

Lessons from the Temptation of Christ

2012-01-05T08:00:00.002-05:00

Throughout this account Jesus remains our example of the ‘right’ ways to handle temptation. He shows us the exact response that we ‘ought’ to have toward temptation. Look briefly at the similarities between ourselves and Jesus Christ:

Jesus was man and we are men

Jesus had the Spirit and we’ve been given the Spirit

Jesus had the Word and we have the Word

Jesus prayed and we may pray

Jesus fasted and we may fast

Jesus could be tempted and we are tempted

Jesus was victorious and we can be victorious

We have access to the same tools that Jesus employed to resist the devil. We are tempted by the same types of things that the devil tempted Jesus with. We can effectively resist the advances of the devil just as Jesus did (but only if we employ the tools as He did!).

Romans 8:26 “In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words”

Ephesians 6:18 “With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints”

Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness praying and fasting before the specific attacks by the devil. Jesus spent this time preparing for the ordeal to come. Prayer was His primary weapon both during this trial and during His time on the earth. It is our primary weapon as well. It is our primary means of becoming one with our Father. It is our link to Him, our lifeline, so to speak. Without we are cut off from the flow of the Spirit between Father and son, Father and child. The Spirit communicates to us the ways of God in words that we can’t hear but that we feel and can know in our hearts. The Spirit takes from us the words that we can’t say and gives them to the Father who receives them and answers them for us. Our prayer therefore is vital. Without it we lose our familiarity with God, we stop our growth and understanding as children, our level of unspoken needs rises creating stress and anxiety, and we flounder in our stagnant pool of lifeless water.

Fasting is the means by which we subdue the demands of our bodies in order to focus our minds on God. Through fasting we learn discipline over the needs of the flesh. Without such discipline our fleshly needs might blossom into indulgence and our indulgences into habit and our habit into sinful lust for that which we are not allowed. But with fasting comes struggle; struggle against the sinful nature that craves satisfaction. Our response must be to turn to the Lord for strength to overcome. Our dependence on Him for life is made clear when we deny our bodies nourishment. Gratitude for what He supplies replaces the unthankful way we often consume our daily bread. Fasting requires a strong will; especially in a day where food is available on demand. Fasting shows our weakness of will, the ease with which we rationalize our failure to fast and resume our daily habits of consumption.

Jesus uses the Word of God to respond to satan’s attacks. In each of Jesus’ responses He quotes scripture. Scripture that He, as the Word of God, gave to mankind for the express purpose of giving man a tool to help guide his steps. Jesus shows in His response how the word of God is an ample weapon to fend off the attacks of our spiritual enemy. The use of the Word does not prevent our enemy from attacking again, but it does end the attack itself. I have been thinking that using scripture would make the temptation go away, meaning that when we recall the Word we would be wiped clean of the feeling of the temptation; the dirty, clinging, despoiling, despairing need for whatever it is that we have been tempted with. But here Jesus’ use of the Word does not necessarily erase His own desire toward the temptation but rather it effectively stops the tempter from pursuing that particular avenue of temptation. Using Jesus as our example, we are to stay in the Word and in prayer, and use both when our flesh gets stirred up or when our enemy stirs us up toward evil. We are to remember what it says that applies to our situation and we are to quote it back to our enemy and to ourselves. In order for this approach to be successful we must first know scripture! At the end of the devil’s questioning, the devil simply left. He was powerless to do anymore against one so armed with the Truth and he left Jesus, “until an opportune time.” This shows us that the devil is a constant opponent. We can fend him off, but he will return- always trying to destroy our relationship with the Farther, or to neutralize it. In the other accounts (Mark and Matthew) when the temptation was over (possibly during) Jesus was ministered to by angels. This shows me that if I can use God’s word to effectively silence my enemy then God will send me comfort to help me deal with the after effects of my stirred up flesh. If we can hold out during the trial, resist our enemy until he flees, then we will be comforted by God, ministered to by Him, and temptations grip will leave us.

Summary:

We will be faced with temptation.

We are plagued by a sinful nature with an inclination toward gratifying our flesh.

We must prepare for it using the Word of God, prayer and fasting.

The devil and his demons will attack us where we are weak and stir up our flesh toward sin.

We can use the Word of God to neutralize the force of these attacks and make the devil go away (flee).

We will be left with the pain of the temptation, but not with the devil’s fueling of it.

We will be comforted by God in our spirits and the temptation’s grip will leave us.

Once the devil flees, we advance the kingdom, the devil loses ground, and the kingdom gains ground.

Letter to Sardis/ Part IV

2012-01-04T08:00:00.001-05:00

Revelation 3:4-5 ‘But you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their garments; and they will walk with Me in white, for they are worthy. He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.

We may not appreciate the gift that our cleansed souls are to us. We were once spotted and unclean. We were once stained by our sin, inheritors of that original blemish from our first parents and then we made our sin increasingly worse by our own lust and pride. But then Jesus came to us and taught us how to live and then died in our stead. And then He rose alive from His grave and ensured our eternal rising from our graves. And now we are clean in the eyes of God and of His Son, Jesus. There was nothing else that could have accomplished this cleansing. There was no power on the earth or in God’s created order that could have done for us what Jesus did for us. We who were once darkened by our transgressions were made light by Jesus.

In Sardis, like in Thyatira in the previous letter, the believers were turning from that gift by following after another gift, one that could not save but was in itself just another blemish. Once given cleansing how can one so readily turn from the Giver and soil His gift? How easy it is for man to dis-remember from where it is that he came and spurn the One who loves him truly. How easy it is for us to forget that we were made clean at a great cost to God and His Son and that our lives were purchased back for us.

A frightening thought that keeps arising out of these letters to the churches is that if we were made clean and then we stain our souls once again, soiling the fresh garment that God gave us, how can we be made clean a second time? The only hope we have is in the idea of a continual renewing of our souls. The answer must lie in our repentance for our transgressions and our turning back to God in faith and love; the answer must be repentance. Jesus asks these believers to stay true to Him and to not follow after the ones who had seemingly forsaken Him. If we stay true then He promises to give us a new white robe at the end of things. In addition to the new name that we will be given we are promised an eternal place in the book of life. Jesus promises to stand by our side on judgment day and to speak on our behalf. He will speak our name to the Father who will accept the word of His Son and allow us to live with Him forever. What more could we ask for? What better possible motivation could there be for us to continue to discipline ourselves into obedience?

What If?

2012-01-03T08:00:00.001-05:00

Luke 4:3-4 “And the devil said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.” And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone.’ ”

Here is a ponderous hypothetical, “What would have happened had Jesus failed the three tests of satan?”

Number one consequence- It would have been a grave sin. Had that happened Jesus would have in effect been choosing something other than the will of His Father to satisfy. He would have been choosing self, His own will, and His work would have been to satisfy that and not the will of the Father.

Number two consequence- If He had done what the devil suggested it would have spoiled the purity of the Lamb. The Lamb that was to be offered for the forgiveness of mankind’s sin must be spotless. A lamb with defect was never acceptable to God; it was always rejected.

If Jesus had chosen to sin His heart would have become darkened and He would have become separated from His Father. A heart that is turned away is not one that the Lord approves. If Jesus was not pure of heart His sacrifice would have been meaningless.

This of course is a horrific hypothetical and probably serves no purpose to even consider because Jesus of course did not fail. He was strong throughout His short time on earth. He remained our holy and blameless Lamb and through Him God achieved a glorious triumph in our salvation. But if we consider it in order to gain insight about the nature of God, what do we learn?

We know that God is righteous; there is no error in Him. We know that He will not compromise His holiness. His work is perfect; it is not accomplished through wavering on His principles. We know that God does not grant unwarranted forgiveness. Meaning, that although His graciousness gives us our lives though we are not worthy, the means of His grace are never corrupted but always achieved just as He planned them to be.

In scripture we have examples of God willing to act in a manner seemingly in contradiction to His declared will simply because there was sin that had to be dealt with. God’s righteousness is of the utmost importance for us to understand- nothing is allowed to compromise that. God’s omnipotence ensures that His will is accomplished even though His actions seem to move against His own wishes. In Exodus 4:24 God was going to kill Moses, the man who He had chosen to lead the people out of Egypt. Moses had failed to circumcise his son and God’s anger burned against him. God was willing to destroy His chosen vessel of salvation in order to protect righteousness. In 1 Samuel 4 we read of the ark being captured by the Philistines. The holy relic of God, His very own mercy seat, the one place where God was willing to meet with man when all the conditions of the tabernacle were met and the high priest had ritually cleansed himself and the people, was captured and handled by the great unwashed: pagans, and Philistines no less. This is the same ark that when handled inappropriately by an Israelite resulted in that poor man being fried to a crisp. Yet God allowed an enemy army to not only touch it but to capture it and place it within a pagan temple! This is another example of God’s interest in His holiness being protected at all costs, even when the outcome seems to defy His own will. It was important that Israel, the chosen people learn to honor God’s holiness. The ark was their symbol, not the pagans. To the Philistine the ark was just a box; but to Israel and therefore to God, the ark was a holy object. They were to handle it as such- and when they failed God had no hesitation in declaring it sin and destroying the offenders.

The point here is that sin must be dealt with, regardless of the apparent consequences. The question I have is: had Jesus sinned God would have acted quickly to remove that sin. Would God have destroyed Jesus? And would our salvation have then come about in another way? This is an obscene proposition and it takes the above examples to the extreme. But my point here is that God’s way is the only way that things can be expected to be accomplished in His creation. And just because we mere mortals cannot imagine that things could ever happen or have happened in any other way does not make it impossible. God’s omnipotence and His omniscience are the guarantors of His will being accomplished. What we ought to ponder are the ramifications of those attributes of His- all power and all knowledge means that He is always in control, no matter what. God’s will, will be done. It can be no other way.

Thank God that Jesus did not sin; He did not waver, He was stronger than we could ever have been in the same situation. Mere man that He was at the time He was stronger than any man ever born before or since. And because Jesus did not sin, His work and His blood became our salvation. Because He remained pure His sacrifice was pure and God tearfully accepted it and graciously applied it to us. God’s holiness was undefiled and our sinfulness was made clean. Thank you Lord!

Letter to Sardis/ Part III

2012-01-02T08:00:00.001-05:00

Revelation 3:3 So remember what you have received and heard; and keep it, and repent. Therefore if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come to you.

Here is the call to change. Very simply and directly Jesus tells this church to repent. They must wake up and begin again to do the things that are required of them. That is a good lesson and reminder for us as well. We cannot call ourselves Christians and not do the things that Christians are supposed to do. We counted the cost of faith when we first believed and we signed on when we called on the name of Jesus to be saved. He has done what He promised to do and we must in return do that which we have promised to do. We must live for Him and remember Him and His great gift for us, in our love for Him and our love for our brothers and sisters. We might fall from that golden path from time to time but God will redirect us with a warning and a reminder as He does here for those in Sardis. Our response is what is important. Will we respond as we should and redirect our steps back onto the Way or will we stubbornly continue forward as those such as Jezebel have and still do today?

The consequences for not obeying God’s command to repent are startlingly severe. Jesus said that He will come in the night like a thief and take away that which we do have. He threatens to take our churches away if we who call ourselves the church do not act in accord with His desires for us. Jesus told the believers in Thyatira that He would kill them if they did not repent. Believers face the judgment of God if they refuse to follow His commands. We must not allow ourselves to fall into the trap of thinking that we follow a God who is soft and whose love is not supported by a strong right hand. Our God is first and foremost a jealous God who will not tolerate any of His children to turn from Him to give attention to another, be it an idol or be it self. He wants us to be His alone and He and His Son have worked and sacrificed greatly to give us the chance to be just that, His alone.

This ‘killing’ of believers for their acts of disobedience and idolatry is a tough one for many I would think. How could a loving God kill off His children? What does that do to their salvation? I believe that God allows us to make mistakes because of the blood of His Son which washed clean those mistakes in our hearts before we even speak to God. I believe that we are born again each time that we sin and repent and begin again. The blood of Jesus makes this process continual and eternal so that our salvation must be assured. But I also believe that if we do not make sure to check ourselves in our sin and continue our part of that cycle, if we do not repent but instead harden our hearts and stay turned away from His clear direction to change, then He will take us out. I believe that He will remove us from our families if our behavior is hurting them. He will remove us from our ministries if our behavior does not pass muster with the calling that He gave us. And I believe that He will remove us from the earth if we simply will not or cannot change our behavior and turn back to the right way of things. He does this in order to protect His own holiness and the holiness of His church. What becomes of that ‘killed off’ believer? I believe that believer is sent home to face a God who is at once severely disappointed in him and who at the next will begin to teach that child the error of his ways. There must be some degree of hierarchy among those who will join the ranks of heaven for scripture speaks often of rewards and crowns and those gaining power and authority. The believer who overcomes is the one who joins those ranks victoriously and reaps the benefits of his labors on earth. The one who is called home prematurely must go there with his head hung down in shame.

1 Corinthians 3:11-15 For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.

Letter to Sardis/ Part II

2012-01-01T08:00:00.002-05:00

Revelation 3:2 Wake up, and strengthen the things that remain, which were about to die; for I have not found your deeds completed in the sight of My God.

Sleeping and waking are pretty common analogies for death and life in scripture. This church is dying, Christ says. It is not doing the things that an awake and vibrant church would be doing. What is more it is losing the things that it once had and it is letting its work go unfinished. If Jesus had not stepped in this church would have died; but He does step in, as He always will, to give a warning and to remind the believing church of their first love, their first calling and their work for the Kingdom which must continue.

In Luke 18 Jesus tells the parable of the widow who continuously pesters a judge to hear her case. At the end of the parable Jesus asks the question, “When the Son of Man comes will He find faith on the earth? (Luke 18:8)” The parable illustrates that God will answer the call of His children when they cry out to Him for help. Jesus’ question asks whether or not God’s children will continue to cry out to Him or if one day they will forget and lose the faith in Him that they once had. That was the danger this church in Sardis faced- that they would lose their grounding in the first things and return to the apathy of their former lives lived in aspirations of a glory gone forever.

Letter to Sardis/ Part I

2011-12-31T08:00:00.001-05:00

Revelation 3:1 I know your deeds, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead.

Jesus knows. He is omniscient as His Father is omniscient. There is nothing that can be hidden from Him. He has the Spirit(s) in His hand and He knows that the church at Sardis has not asked for help in turning itself around. He knows what the people of this region once were and how that pride has carried them through many disappointing defeats at the hands of new and ever more-powerful empires. He knows that they still live in the past and view themselves as great and noble when in fact they are a weak and dying people. But their political and financial health is not what Jesus is concerned about. He is concerned primarily for the church in Sardis which is not behaving as a church ought but rather as the people in Sardis as a whole behave. Jesus wants for the church in Sardis, as He wants for all of His churches, that they forsake the world and its aspirations and turn instead to the Kingdom of God and its aspirations. Jesus wants this church to seek only Him and to remember that they were saved out of the church and into everlasting life where worldly wealth does not exist and where political boundaries are demolished.

The Temptation of Christ

2011-12-30T08:00:00.004-05:00

Luke 4:3-4 “And the devil said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.” And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone.’ ”

Three of the devil’s temptations are recorded for us to ponder. Two of them begin in this way, “If you are the Son of God.” The devil is tempting Jesus to doubt the validity of His relationship with the God, His very own Father. If Jesus was not the Son of God then He would have had no business setting out to do the work that He was intending to do. If the devil could undermine the very truth of their relationship, even with a lie, then the salvation of mankind could be lost and death would forever remain the devil’s domain.

This is the same sort of tactic that the serpent used in the Garden of Eden. There, the serpent asked, ‘Did God really say that?’ The question was aimed at the heart of the relationship between the child and the Father. For Adam and Eve the relationship was blessed by the abundance they enjoyed and the freedom they shared to live in it. In addition to this they had the Father Himself for fellowship as He came walking in the Garden in the evenings. The question from the accuser was aimed at the trust that existed between the children, Adam and Eve, and the Lord God. God’s only demand upon them was that they obey His commands. To obey God is to love God; and the child’s love is what the Father most desired of His first children. The serpent’s question targeted the love relationship the Father and the children shared and by it he hoped weaken or to sever that relationship.

The serpent used the physical appetite of Adam and Eve (lusts of the flesh) to make his attack appealing. It appears that he initiated the conversation by approaching Eve with his question, “Has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree…?” (Genesis 3:1) To which Eve explained that they were allowed to eat of any tree in the Garden except for the one in the middle of the Garden. That one tree God placed off limits and commanded them not to eat from it lest they should die. The serpent responds to her quickly by suggesting that Eve has misunderstood God and that by eating of that one tree she will surely not die but rather be made like God Himself, her eyes would be opened and she would know good and evil. The serpent squeezed his venom into Eve by opening a crack in the rock solid faith that she had in her Father. He posed a simple enough question to her and then seeded it with the insinuation that God was not as open and honest as she may have thought. He gave her the new thought that maybe God was hiding the truth of their life in the Garden from them; maybe He was selfishly keeping them from something that would give them more power and therefore even more satisfaction in their lives. When she looked at the tree with the appealing but forbidden fruit she realized that it was a tasty looking fruit and in an instant she had taken and eaten of it. In that one moment of manipulation by the serpent Eve was taken over by the doubt that had been implanted in her, the need for the instant gratification that the fruit promised which stirred something in her flesh, she forgot what she knew (her faith) and wickedly (angrily?) turned from the command of God and obeyed her own instead. The result of that one moment in time was the fall of the entire human race forever.

The serpent had his own objective in this, to destroy what God had begun to build; not the Garden, but the love relationship between God as Master and His new creatures, mankind. The serpent used his guile to converse with Eve, he used just enough truth to confuse her, he implanted doubt and fear, anger and selfishness in her heart, and the hunger of her flesh to water his wicked seeds. Then he stepped back and watched as his evil tares took root and began to choke out the good crop God had planted.

In our passage (back in Luke 4), satan (the serpent of Genesis) uses the same tactics, or so it seems. Jesus is hungry after His marathon fast and satan approaches the weakened Jesus and begins his infamous line of questioning. His first question attempts to use Jesus’ hunger as the vehicle to implant doubt into our Lord’s mind. He attempts to lure Jesus into calling on His forsaken deity and His relationship to God in order to satisfy His starving flesh. Satan relates Jesus’ Sonship to the hunger He is feeling and suggests that the Son of God need not hunger, for the Son of God could simply command His creation to supply Him bread, out of the rocks if necessary. However, in this trial the rules are clear; for Jesus, His salvation will/ must rest on God alone. If He were to call on His Father for help He would cancel out the work He was called to do as the Suffering Servant- the man-God- the spotless lamb who would be the sacrifice for the sin of the world. Satan seems to know this and was trying not only to tempt the Son into disobedience but also to destroy the work of the Father in the redemption of His children.

Satan was also questioning the relationship Jesus had with the Father. His question, “If you are,” tells us that he was working against the faith Jesus had in the Father. This tells us that Jesus, as a man, was susceptible to doubt in regards to his faith/ trust in God. He was truly a man who lived in the confines of man’s time and space. He was not able to see forward and backward. He was not able to exist as He once had. He was stuck in the form of mankind and His only hope existed in the promise that His Father had given Him; that He was loved and that He would be safe in the hands of God. Jesus was in the fire of life; He was expected to perform the most difficult work imaginable- the salvation of the world, without any power of His own- with only the power granted Him from God. To do this Jesus prayed continuously; always going off by Himself. He was always seeking communion with His Father. Is it here that He gained His strength? Is it here that He was equipped to stand as He did? His works came from the power of God- Jesus came to do that which God had sent Him to do; His miracles were His Father’s miracles. In order for what I am saying to be true then Jesus would have had to give up all claim to divinity while upon the earth. He would have willingly had to forsake the power of God and do only that which the Father allowed Him to do. Hence we see all of His prayer as a seeking of not only communion but of guidance and instruction and an imparting of that which He would need to spread His word effectively. Jesus was as the apostles- only able to do that which was given to Him to do.

So, when Jesus was faced with the devil He was being tempted to use that power which He had abdicated, in order to satisfy His own flesh. What a temptation! His body was ravenously hungry and the power of God was certainly available to grant that desire. Jesus had only to speak as He had at creation and I am sure that his Father would have granted His request. He was being tempted to call on that which He had voluntarily, in obedience, given up to God. In order to pass this test, the Son of God, the Son of Man who was truly man, could not answer as God would but had to answer in the only way that a man could answer, with Scripture. He answered, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone.’”

Jesus was victorious. We can’t tell whether He wavered internally or if this was difficult for Him in any way, but His answer certainly seems decisive and He resisted the devil’s advances. He refused to be compromised and in so doing set an example for all mankind to follow. His resistance becomes our model. Faced with both an awesome fleshly temptation and an incredibly spiritual one, Jesus reminds satan, and us, that men are not sustained merely by the flesh but by their Father in heaven. If He, Jesus, were to succumb to this temptation His action would have been disobedient to the Father. Not only would the Lamb have been spotted with this sin and therefore worthless as a sacrifice, but the unity of God and the Son would have been soiled. Jesus chose to Love His Father with this one bold statement. Thank you Jesus!

Letter to Thyatira/ Part X

2011-12-29T08:00:00.001-05:00

Revelation 2:29 I will give him the morning star

From Matthew Henry: Knowledge and wisdom, suitable to such power and dominion: I will give him the morning-star. Christ is the morning-star. He brings day with him into the soul, the light of grace and of glory; and he will give his people that perfection of light and wisdom which is requisite to the state of dignity and dominion that they shall have in the morning of the resurrection.

Daniel 12:3 “Those who have insight will shine brightly like the brightness of the expanse of heaven, and those who lead the many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.”

Jesus is inextricably linked to light throughout scripture. He is the Light of the world. He is the Sunrise from on high (Luke 1:78). He is the bright morning star (Revelation 22:16). Some commentators take this passage to mean that to the overcomer Jesus will bring into his soul the Light of the world; that in some way these overcomers will somehow gain a share of Jesus that the rest of the believing church will not gain. This makes sense in that all men will not be able to wield the power of authority at the same time and in the same way so this gift must indeed be exclusive to the ones who can ‘overcome.’ To overcome then must be something very special for all men might not be able to achieve it. In this passage, to overcome means to resist the sin of compromise in the church and to stand firm in the knowledge of and faith in Jesus. It means to obey no matter the cost and no matter the pain. This approach means that all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved in the end on the last day but only to some will the morning star be given.

The problem with this approach is that if only some get the promise of this verse than it would make sense that only some get the promises of the other verses in these letters to the churches. That would be an unfortunate interpretation because those other promises sound a lot like the salvation that all believers will enjoy. What is clear is that in order to enjoy any of the promises of God it is of the utmost importance that one work diligently to refrain from sin and to abolish it from one’s presence when it appears.

Letter to Thyatira/ Part IX

2011-12-28T08:00:00.001-05:00

Revelation 2:26-28 He who overcomes, and he who keeps My deeds until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations; and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, as the vessels of the potter are broken to pieces, as I also have received authority from My Father; and I will give him the morning star.

The NASB places some of this verse in small capital letters to indicate that they believe it to be a quote or a reference to a prophecy of the Old Testament. The reference is to Psalm 2 where God delivers all authority to His begotten Son, giving Him the nations and the power to lift them up or destroy them. God says this in response to His people ‘devising a vain thing’ and turning away from Him as King and turning to the ‘deep’ things of the surrounding nations. Why do men always look elsewhere for their salvation and hope rather than to the Lord who promises to save and can deliver?

The last three verses of this psalm foretell exactly the kind of dealing that men can expect if they choose to turn from him and choose instead to follow the likes of Jezebel.

Psalm 2:10-12 Now therefore, O kings, show discernment; take warning, O judges of the earth. Worship the Lord with reverence and rejoice with trembling. Do homage to the Son, that He not become angry, and you perish in the way, or His wrath may soon be kindled. How blessed are all who take refuge in Him!

In this passage in Revelation, however, the power and authority are given to mankind. The reference to the psalm is to point to the kind of power that God wants to bestow upon His children, the children of man. Jesus is the first among men and the only begotten of the Father. Jesus is our elder brother and our example of life without sin. God has already given Jesus the throne and the crown over creation. But to us our new King Jesus gives the promise of authority among men. This verse seems to promise that to the men who overcome this kind of sin in their lives and in their churches Jesus will grant the power to judge the ‘nations’- which I take to mean the surrounding nations of unbelievers. What this means in truth I cannot say and I really don’t want to hazard a guess for my vanity might kick in and I would be lost. But those nations are to be shattered by a rod of iron, by the authority that these men in the church will wield on judgment day. Jesus grants this power based on the authority that He Himself was granted on the day He became the son of God.

Letter to Thyatira/ Part VIII

2011-12-27T08:00:00.001-05:00

Revelation 2:24 But I say to you, the rest who are in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching, who have not known the deep things of Satan, as they call them—I place no other burden on you. Nevertheless what you have, hold fast until I come.

There are always going to be those who do not follow along with the rest. There will always be a remnant in the church that does not lose faith, just as in Israel there was always a remnant, no matter how severe the transgression or the discipline. To those who have not followed after the teaching of Jezebel Jesus places no additional burden. God will not load us up with task after task and duty after duty. It is enough that we strive to follow after Him. It is enough that we turn away from false teachers and idols. To follow Him is the task that God places on us- it is enough that we do this with all of our hearts and minds and strength.

‘The deep things of satan’ must have been the phrase that Jezebel used to lure her followers in. There is something compelling to the human psyche about the dark-side, as it were. Men are intrigued by the unknown; and the unknown power of evil is somehow attractive to us because we mistakenly think that it holds the power to satisfy our lusts and desires for control and gratification. Man chooses this power over the power of God because he thinks that it is within his power to control. To follow after Jezebel placed the reins of fate in the hands of the follower and not God. It gave personal control over one's satisfaction and destiny in the hands of man. But it was a lie. It is a lie. The father of lies is satan; to use his name as a lure toward autonomy is the height of irony. His desire is to control his own fate and to be independent of the Lord. His method of attaining this is to misdirect and to mislead as many of the children of God as he can in order to disrupt and possibly destroy the kingdom of God and in order to take it over for himself. But he will not be able to do this because he himself is operating under a delusion. He is not master of his own destiny for he too is merely a creature, created with a purpose that must be fulfilled. The rest of the book of Revelation illustrates that purpose and his final destiny. He is lost. To the followers of Jezebel, who are the followers of satan, God says, ‘You are to be destroyed for you have forsaken my ways and have chosen another.’ That is what is written and we can be sure that for as many who did not repent that is exactly what happened. To the rest God says that He will not forsake them nor add to their already difficult burden which was the resisting of the evil in the world and the evil which had crept into their church. God simply says to them, ‘Hold fast.’ Hold on Church of Christ for He is coming. Continue to resist the evil day and continue in the path that you have chosen. Do not weary and do not give up. Jesus is coming and He is going to take us with Him. Amen!

Letter to Thyatira/ Part VII

2011-12-26T08:00:00.002-05:00

Revelation 2:23 I will give each one of you according to your deeds

The simple truth is that there is a judgment. Men are tried and judged according to the deeds done while in the body. Throughout scripture there is a one-to-one equivalence between what you do with your life and what will be done to you in the next life. The rich man who would not take care of the poor man at his gates is seen lamenting his fate as he watches that poor man being cared for by Abraham while he himself suffers the heat and thirst of hell. Time after time when Israel or her people turned from the way of the Lord they met a grim and terrible punishment. If she entered into idolatry the neighboring nations would be allowed to enter her borders and slaughter her people. When Achan took forbidden plunder he and his whole family paid the terrible price of being swallowed alive into the earth. When Judas turned away from Christ in His final hours he himself died alone outside of Jerusalem and was split open and eaten by carrion.

We cannot deceive ourselves as Jezebel apparently did, that God will overlook our sinful transgressions and allow us to carry on in our own ways within His body. We are His now, we have been bought with a price just as the Israelites were when God redeemed them out of Egypt. We no longer have our own say to live or die as we please (as if we ever did). We now must live as He says or He will take us out as He promised to do with the sinners in Thyatira and as He did with the sinners throughout the accounts in scripture.

Letter to Thyatira/ Part VI

2011-12-24T08:00:00.001-05:00

Revelation 2:23 I am He who searches the minds and hearts

This is a common understanding of God in both the Old and New Testament. God repeatedly declares His omnipotence over both the ways of men and the hearts of men. God is in the details of a man’s life and He knows the inner workings and motivations of a man. Jesus wants the church to understand that God is the same now and forever and just as the Israelites had to learn that He knows them inside and out so did the churches in Asia Minor. As David wrote in Psalm 139 there is no escaping from God for He is ever present. There is no escaping His notice for He is omniscient. This woman in Thyatira was not going to get away with her grievous disregard for the church and neither were her followers. The church in Thyatira had to understand this as did the rest of the churches in the kingdom of God.

Psalm 139:1 O Lord, You have searched me and known You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Even before there is a word on my tongue, behold, O Lord, You know it all. You have enclosed me behind and before, And laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is too high, I cannot attain to it.

Letter to Thyatira/ Part V

2011-12-22T08:00:00.000-05:00

Revelation 2:23 And I will kill her children with pestilence, and all the churches will know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts; and I will give to each one of you according to your deeds.

In this verse the word pestilence is the Greek word for death. According to Strong’s it implies everything from the death of the body, to the separation of the body and soul at death, to the miserable condition of that soul in hell and torment after death. This is a spooky word; translating it ‘pestilence’ conjures up images of plague and insects and rot and decay. The followers of Jezebel were going to be judged next and if they too were found wanting even after being given a chance to repent just as she was that judgment was not going to be in their favor. Jesus says that He will kill her and her followers for their sin. He will cast them into hell. They will suffer. These are not words to be taken lightly, either by these first century believers or our twenty-first century believers.

Jesus explains why He will do this; or more accurately, what will happen when He does this. The churches will know that He is God. They will know that He is the One who knows the innermost thoughts of man and is able to cut through those thoughts to get to the real condition of a man. Jesus says this, I think, to strike fear into the hearts of His church so that they will not take these kinds of gross sins lightly. He seems to want His church to understand that they are being watched and evaluated. The church does not operate in the absence of Christ but in His very presence. Jesus was the shepherd of this church in Thyatira and He wanted them and their fellow churches to understand that He was jealous for them and would not tolerate any taint or blemish among His flock.

Letter to Thyatira/ Part IV

2011-12-21T08:00:00.001-05:00

Revelation 2:21-22 I gave her time to repent, and she does not want to repent of her immorality. Behold, I will throw her on a bed of sickness, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of her deeds.

To repent is to change one’s mind about a particular sin or course of action. Jesus gave this woman an opportunity to change her mind about the activities that she was engaged in. He gave her a chance to turn herself around and to begin again in a right and proper direction. It is important to note here that Jesus does not require us to perform absolution for the sins we have committed or even for the ones that we are currently committing. Jesus only requires that we change our minds about them and be willing to turn away from them and pursue a different course. He is not commanding that this woman do anything other than to turn from her sin in order to get herself back on the proper path. But she did not want to. Her personal desire was of such strength that her love for God and for His Son diminished in the presence of it. She would rather continue in the life of immorality that she had created for herself, with all of its perverse pleasures than to turn back to God and follow His desires for her.

We can learn something from this simple fact. We can learn from this, and we ought to be very wary of it, that our own desire for pleasure, success, or control can drive us more powerfully than our desire for being led by the hand of God. That, I think must be the power of sin in our lives. That must be the very fact that keeps men from God; that we simply do not want to follow Him. We can probably discount all of the rhetoric and the convincing apologetics for and against the idea of faith. What it really comes down to is a simple matter of desire. Men do not want to follow the Lord because men would rather continue in their sins. The lust of the flesh and the pride of life outweighs the thirst for living water and the hope of eternity. What a commentary that makes of the human condition!

Letter to Thyatira/ Part III

2011-12-20T08:00:00.002-05:00

Revelation 2:20 But I have this against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads My bond-servants astray so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols.

The judgment had already fallen on this woman at the time of this letter’s writing. Jesus says that He gave her an opportunity to repent and she did not take it. Jezebel was offered forgiveness and a way back into the grace of God but she turned Him down. She chose instead to gratify her flesh in immorality and to gratify her lust for power by leading a fledgling flock of idolaters. The sobering thought here is that God will allow a believer to destroy him or herself if that believer chooses wrongly. It is sobering to think that God will not always reach out a hand and stop the believer from continuing down a road that leads only to death. In our day we sometimes think of Jesus as our Great Friend and Savior and that has come to mean that He accepts us in our infirmity and in so doing accepts our failure to change. We like to think that Jesus and His Father do not expect us to be perfect but only that we admit our imperfection. But scripture says something entirely different. Here in this passage, and earlier in the gospels, the mandate is most definitely for change. And the amount of change is limitless for we are commanded to be as perfect as the Father in heaven is perfect. Can we do this? Of course we cannot- not perfectly anyway. But we sure can try- and that is what this Jezebel refused to do and that is what the believers in Thyatira were refusing to do by allowing her sin to fester within their community. Jesus judged her and found her guilty and He informs the Thyratirans that she will certainly face a horrible judgment just as her namesake did in the Old Testament. The question that He asks the church in Thyatira is, “What about you? Will you repent so that I can heal you and your church or will you suffer a similar fate?”

Letter to Thyatira/ Part II

2011-12-19T08:00:00.003-05:00

Perhaps the biggest sin of this woman Jezebel, both the one in this letter and the one in the past, was that she led the bond-servants of Christ astray. She not only went astray herself from the desires and teachings of God but attempted and succeeded in leading others to that place with her. We must not only remain ever-vigilant for our own purity and adherence to the Way of God but we must also remain diligent lest we lead others to sin when we ourselves fall. We are the guardians of the kingdom of God and we bear the responsibility to keep the Church pure from sin. We must not bring our sin into the church and we must not let our sin affect those within her either. And beyond this personal duty there is the duty of the church itself to ensure the purity of the body of believers so that the church of Christ would not appear blemished to an unbelieving world. The believers in Thyatira allowed Jezebel to make a place for herself and her pagan ways within the body of believers. She was allowed, and therefore condoned, to live in her sin and to teach others to live in it as well.

This is the rebuke of Christ to this particular church, that they let this take place under their watch. This sin makes their previous work and their present endeavors lose luster because they are offset by such an evil; an evil that resides within them and will soon take them over should they fail to cleanse themselves of it.