Revelation 2: 24-29
Jesus described the spiritual condition of the church as divided. On one hand, it was full of love and faith that translated into patience and ever-increasing activities of service. On the other hand, it had also adopted a doctrine of compromise with the world.
Apparently, the church, overall, wasn’t going to change. Jesus’ counsel, then, was to those who at that point had remained faithful to His ways. They had not been fooled by swimming in the depths of Satan’s deception – the doctrine of compromise taught by a prominent church member and self-proclaimed prophetess named Jezebel.
Jesus called these faithful believers “the remaining ones.” Satisfied with them, Jesus, in so many words, told them to keep doing what they were doing; that He would lay no other burden upon them. That was a reiteration of what followers had been told by the Jerusalem council decree of Acts: 15: 28, 29 – “For it seemed good to the holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these essentials: that you abstain from things sacrificed to idols, and from blood and from things strangled, and from fornication.”
Jesus’ counsel and rebuke to the Thyatira church applies to some of today’s churches as well. These are churches that preach and emphasize love as the be-all and end-all. It can be brought to its attention that it is breaking God’s laws and principles, but the warnings are dismissed. Why? Because whatever is being done is being done in the name of love.
What these churches fail to realize, though, is that the love they’re operating from is not God’s love. God’s love consists of passion for the truth and an adherence to that truth, from which flows righteous works. When Jesus walked the earth as a man of God, He stayed with and was obedient to the truth of God’s perspective, ways, and laws; even to the point of death on that cross.
The love that Thyatira-type churches feel are just that – feelings that forsake the other elements of love: loyalty, obedience, and discipline. It feels right to adopt the trends of the world. It feels right to accommodate the wrong-doings of other churches and other religions. It feels right to lovingly hold hands with them. After all, we’re all after the same thing, the thinking goes.
The ministers who preach this kind of love mean well; not realizing, though, that it is a Jezebel spirit they’re pushing. What they do and promote, all in the name of this kind of human love, is a love that seems right to them, but is one that actually leads to death.
Just because a church is bursting with activities – inner city outreach ministry, foreign missionary work, planting new churches, etc. – doesn’t mean that it is necessarily an obedient church. If its not, the thing for the truly faithful in those churches to key on is to keep doing what’s known to be right; to keep relying on “Thus says the Lord.”
Stay loyal and obedient to Jesus. That’s what Jesus wants and is why He presented Himself in the beginning of the seven-church message as One with brass feet (Rev. 2: 18). As He is stable in godly love , faith, and obedience, so are His followers to stay the course.
For those who do that, there is a two-fold promise. The first is being given authority over the nations. This will be a shared authority with Jesus. It’ll be fulfilled when God’s people are on the throne and ruling with Jesus in heavenly places (Rev. 20: 4) and on earth (Rev. 5: 10). The second promise is And I will give him the morning star.* Jesus is the Bright Morning Star (Rev. 22: 16). Therefore, not only will He share his rule, He will be with the overcomer forever and ever.
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* The enemy is also called a morning star. Read Who is the Morning Star? Jesus or Satan? Click here.