Thyatira

Write this to the angel of the church in Thyatira:

These are the words of God's Son, whose eyes are like a fiery flame, and whose feet are like fine brass. I know your works, your love and faithfulness, your service and endurance. I also know that the works you have done most recently are even greater than those you did at first. But I have this against you: you put up with that woman, Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet. You allow her to teach and to mislead my servants into committing sexual immorality and eating food sacrificed to idols.

I gave her time to change her heart and life, but she refuses to change her life of prostitution. Look! I'm throwing her onto a sickbed. I am casting those who have committed adultery with her into terrible hardship - if they don't change their hearts from following her practices - and I will even put her children to death with disease. Then all the churches will know that I'm the one who examines minds and hearts, and that I will give to each of you what your actions deserve.

As for the rest of you in Thyatira - those of you who don't follow this teaching and haven't learned the so-called "deep secrets" of Satan - I won't burden you with anything else. Just hold on to what you have until I come. To those who emerge victorious, keeping my practices until the end, I will give authority over the nations - to rule the nations with an iron rod and smash them like pottery - just as I received authority from my Father. I will also give them the morning star. If you can hear, listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.

Greek Dualism

v.

Hebrew Monism

God knows how we're made,

God remembers we're just dust.

[Psalm 103:14]

It's the same with the resurrection of the dead: a rotting body is put into the ground, but what is raised won't ever decay... It's a physical body when it's put into the ground, but it's raised as a spiritual body. - 1 Cor. 15:42-44

I wonder what we Christians are known for in the world outside our churches. Are we known as critics, consumers, copiers, condemners of culture? I’m afraid so. Why aren’t we known as cultivators—people who tend and nourish what is best in human culture, who do the hard and painstaking work to preserve the best of what people before us have done? Why aren’t we known as creators—people who dare to think and do something that has never been thought or done before, something that makes the world more welcoming and thrilling and beautiful? - Andy Crouch, Culture Making

Thyatira

Rev. 2:18-29

"Eli's Not Coming..."

Two

Tensions

Spiritual

Gnosticism

Material

"The problem which faced every Christian in Thyatira was whether they were to make money or to be Christians." - William Barclay

versus

Questions for Discussion:

• What forms does the temptation of Jezebel take in the world today?
• In what ways does the contemporary culture (and the contemporary church) treat faith as private?
• What are some of the major ways that Christians struggle to live out a faith that encompasses all of life?