Sermon Tone Analysis

This past Sunday evening I watched the most boring Super Bowl of all times!

During the Half-Time show they featured a rock band which I had never heard of: Maroon 5. I made a comment on Facebook that I had never heard of any of the people that were performing at the Super Bowl.

And of course I received a lot of comments about my lack of knowledge.

Finally I stated that I guess I just am not in sync.

Then an old h.s.

friend piped in and said the N Sync was a completely different rock group altogether!

In today’s electronically driven world we often sync our devices to one another.

My Kindle Fire tablet, my LG smartphone, and my computer all sync together.

The result is that whether I am on my tablet, my Smartphone, or computer I can see what I searched for on the web with any of these devices.

They are all synced to my Google Chrome account.

My reason for bringing this up is that a similar thing, called syncretism, seems to have been a problem in the church of Thyatira.

As a matter of fact it has been an issue ever since as well.

When we speak of syncretism as it relates to Christianity it has to do with the blending of the teaching of the Bible with the worldly teachings in a particular area.

An extreme example of syncretism is related by missionary John Cross.

He had a horrific experience of watching a trial by ordeal in a Christianized village in West Africa.

This particular village had been evangelized decades previously.

They had Bible verses and Christian symbols hanging all over the place.

And so this missionary was absolutely shocked by the event he witnessed.

In this village, the chief was taken ill, and a lady, who had put herself forward as a prophetess, claimed to have had a vision from God in which she was informed that the Village Chief’s illness was caused by three men poisoning him.

These three men vigorously asserted their innocence.

But the tribe reverted back to an ancient tribal right known as a trial by ordeal.

The prophetess made a poisonous potion which the accused were forced to drink.

One of the three immediately vomited it up, and he lived.

The other two did not, and were dead within a few hours.

The villages’ conclusion was that the one who lived was innocent, while the two who died were guilty.

The missionary spent some time trying to figure out what had happened.

In doing so he interviewed the pastor of the local assembly.

And this pastor found nothing unusual in this trial by ordeal.

And he was convinced that the “prophetess” was correct.

One of the things the missionary learned is that the original missionary who had evangelized this village used the common trade language instead of the local dialect.

And the folks in the village only partially understood what they were taught.

Then they took their “new religion” and synchronized it with their “old religion.”

The result was the creation of a third religion.

The folks in this village equated a witch doctor with a prophetess.

They filtered everything they learned about Christianity through the lens of their pagan religion.

Sad to say, this is not really that uncommon of a thing.

And it is not peculiar to third world countries.

It can, and probably has happened frequently here in the United States of America.

A current example is the trend among contemporary churches to make the church as “user-friendly” as possible, so as not to offend people who are lost and heading to hell.

But even traditional churches can become syncretistic as far as I can see.

When biblical Christianity is equated with the American way of life, it is syncretistic, as far as I can see.

When second amendment rights (which is something that I really appreciate) are put along side of the authority of the Bible, it is syncretistic.

As a side note, I don’t recall the Bible ever teaching any sort of right for believers in this life, and yet we have incredible rights and privileges that await us in the life to come.

But for this life we have the promise of persecution — and I would classify that as a warning and not a right!

If you have not done so, please take your Bible and turn to .

This is the letter to the unrepentant church in Thyatira.

This church was being duped by a false teacher who was apparently teaching this congregation to synchronize their belief in Christ to the culture in which they lived.

Of the seven churches that Christ addressed in the Book of Revelation, Thyatira was the smallest community.

And yet it received the largest letter.

Originally Thyatira was built as a military outpost whose purpose was to slow down enemy armies that were heading to Pergamum.

This city did not have the various temples that were present in the previous cities that we have looked at so far.

But they did have strong trade guilds similar to our labor unions.

And each of these guilds had their own patron deity to whom the members of the guild were required to worship.

And apparently a so-called prophetess within this church or least within the community was teaching the people of this church to synchronize Christianity with the various deities so that they would not be ostracized by the trade unions.

There is a strong connection between the letter to the church of Pergamum and the letter to the church of Thyatira.

Of course the problems addressed were not necessarily limited to one location or church.

Many of these churches had things in common.

One distinction though is that in Pergamum there were some who had strayed, whereas in Thyatira there were some who remained faithful.

In other words it would seem that most of the church in Thyatira was apostate.

But the Lord had preserved for Himself a faithful remnant.

As we go through this letter this morning we will look at it in the form of a letter: salutation, body, and closing.

I have not yet used this format for this series because if I did we would have the same outline for seven straight messages.

But with this being the longest of the letters it seems fitting to do so this morning.

The Salutation — Revelation 2:18

Let’s read this letter together.

The Salutation —

Recipient

The Recipient

One thing we have noted previously is that each of these letters is addressed to the angel of the assembly, which we have defined as being a representative of the church.

Most likely the pastor or teaching or leading elder.

Once again the significance of this has hit me this week.

We who are in leadership within the local church bear a heavy weight of responsibility for it.

And when a church is led astray by false teachers Christ holds the leadership responsible.

No wonder James wrote:

I purchased a new commentary this week, actually several new commentaries, and it was pointed out in them that in verses 19-20 it is the representative of the church that is being addressed.

“Your” from the phrase “I know your deeds” is singular in verse 19.

And “you” from the phrase “I know have this against you” in verse 20 is singular.

Author

This is the only time in the Book of Revelation where Jesus is referred to as the Son of God.

More common is the reference to Son of Man.

This reference is perhaps in contrast to the cult of emperor worship in which Caesar is referred to as the son of god.

It also may be in preparation for the quotation from in verse 27.

refers to Messiah as being the Son of God.

As with the salutations in these letters, there is a reference to the vision from chapter 1.

Note

This illusion to Jesus’s eyes being a flame of fire probably points to His penetrating discernment of the false prophetess who was plaguing this congregation.

Compare this with the vision that Daniel saw in .

The Body —

Commendations

Christ, having intimate knowledge of the church for which He died, commended the representative as well as the church for four things:

Their love

Their faith

Their service

Their perseverance

Their deeds

And notice that Christ acknowledged that these things were greater now than they had been at first.

Unlike the Ephesians whose love had dimmed over the years, the faithful remnant within this assembly had grown in love as well as these other “deeds” that were mentioned.

May our little assembly be commended for a growing love, faith, service and perseverance.

Condemnation

In the previous messages I have referred to Christ’s concern regarding the church and its leadership.