Revelation 2:18–29
Jesus’ Letter to His Assembly in Thyatira – Part 2
Part 1 is available at https://gospelherald.org/what-you-have-hold-fast-until-i-come-jesus-letter-to-thyatira /
The background in Part 1 helps us understand Jesus’ powerful words and imagery to His people assembled in Thyatira and their application in our lives today. Jesus’ said,
18 “And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write:
The Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and His feet are like burnished bronze, says this:
19 ‘I know your deeds, and your love and faith and service and perseverance, and that your deeds of late are greater than at first. 20But 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 sexual immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols. 21I gave her time to repent, and she does not want to repent of her sexual immorality. 22Behold, 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. 23And I will kill her children with death, 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. 24But 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. 25Nevertheless what you have, hold fast until I come. 26He who overcomes, and he who keeps My deeds until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations; 27and 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; 28and I will give him the morning star. 29He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’”
1. Jesus’ Greetingand Vision
We look and listen closely verse by verse. Jesus begins,
18a “And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write…”
Jesus has John write His longest letter of the seven to His messenger (angel) of the Thyatiran assembly. It is also the middle letter of the seven.
There are elements of symmetry in the arrangement of His seven letters. The two churches who receive no condemning rebuke from Jesus, Smyrna and Philadelphia, are two places away on either side of Thyatira.
The other five have issues most churches face today. Thyatira and its neighbour nearest neighbour Pergamum were both Mysian cities in the northwest of Anatolia that had problems with synchronism with the idolatry and sexual immorality of their culture taught to them by two charismatic leaders personified in Balaam and the false prophetess Jezebel. The impact of these false teachers upon the more modest population of Thyatira must have been part of what motivated Jesus to use some of His strongest language of all to correct those among His people who caved into the enticements of this immoral pair of church leaders – and – to give the faithful among them the grandest of His promises for overcoming.
Among its many unique features Jesus’ letter to Thyatira contains the only reference to Jesus as the Son of God in Revelation and the only direct quotation from the Old Testament, although Revelation contains many verbal parallels and allusions to the Old Testament Hebrew and Aramaic Scriptures.
Thyatira receives the longest list of commendations from Jesus. Aside from Pergamum, it is one of only two churches to which Jesus gives a double promise for overcoming faithfulness and obedience. These two promises are also the widest in scope of all seven letters. As He does in other of His letters, Jesus frames His strong message to Thyatira with elements of His vision in chapter 1.
18b The Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and His feet are like burnished bronze, says this:
Only here in Revelation does Jesus refer to Himself as the Son of God. This is one of His strong Messianic titles with foundations in prophecies of the Hebrew Scriptures. “Son of God” appears many times in the Gospels and New Testament letters. Notably relative to His adversaries, it is a title by which the devil and demons know Him. In 3:8 of his first letter John writes “The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.”
One of the most important frequently quoted sources of Jesus’ Son of Man Messiahship is Psalm 2. Jesus quotes Psalm 2:8–9 to His people in Thyatira in His grand promises to them in verses 2:26–27. In Psalm 2:7b, God says of Jesus, “‘You are My Son, Today I have begotten You.’” In chapters 10 and 13 to 17 of John’s Gospel, Jesus frequently emphasises His Sonship and His unity with His Father and His Spirit.
Jesus says He “‘has eyes like a flame of fire’” and “‘His feet are like burnished bronze.’” Jesus is all seeing and all knowing, omniscient. Regarding the penetrating power of Jesus’ all knowing eyes, He says in verse 23, “‘all the churches will know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts.’” Thus Jesus confirms what we have learned about His seven letters, they are for all His people including us assembled in Him today.
Jesus’ description of His feet would resonate well with the bronze workers and moulders of Thyatira as well as everyone who appreciated the fine quality of their work. As His all-knowing eyes penetrate the deepest reaches of minds and hearts, His feet will take Him everywhere and support Him in total victory over every opponent. God prophesied at the beginning of Scripture that Jesus would bruise the devil eternally on the head (Genesis 3:15). This prophecy of course was fulfilled on the cross and will be fulfilled eternally in Revelation 20 when the devil is cast into the lake of fire.
2. Jesus’ Commendation
Jesus commends His assembly in Thyatira for more positive things in total than any of the others though many of these attributes are shared among the churches.
19 ‘I know your deeds, and your love and faith and service and perseverance, and that your deeds of late are greater than at first.
In verse 24 He adds this to the list, “‘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…’”
Jesus first commends them for their deeds, literally their works. God works and creates so His people will work like He does. Jesus said in John 5:17, “‘My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.’” We recognize the importance of works from Jesus’ first letter to Ephesus in Revelation 2:2. The Thyatirans are an active serving congregation. Not only this, unlike the Ephesians who need to return to doing the deeds they did at first, the Thyatiran’s works “‘of late are greater than at first.’” They are getting better at working like God.
They are also a loving church. Jesus commends them for their love, their agape, that benevolent love of God that acts to improve the welfare of others ahead of self.
Jesus exhorted His assembly in Smyrna to be faithful until death (2:10). Here, Jesus commends His people in Thyatira for the faith, loyalty and trustworthiness which they are currently living out.
In addition, He commends them for their service, the root of our word deacon (servant). They are a serving congregation.
The Thyatirans share the attribute of perseverance with the Ephesians whom Jesus commends twice for it in 2:2 and 3, and with with those in Philadelphia in 3:10. Perseverance is the “capacity to continue to bear up under difficult circumstances.” Later in 14:12, we see that perseverance is connected with keeping God’s commandments and not worshiping the beast, “‘Here is the perseverance of the saints who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus.’”
3. Jesus’ Conviction and Condemnation of Their Sin
Following these positive commendations, Jesus lowers a scathing rebuke upon those in Thyatira who have compromised with a false teacher in their midst and have been pressed into the mould of the pagan culture around them:
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 sexual immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols.
They are tolerating Jezebel whom they should be convicting and expelling from their midst. The central idea is that of putting up with something you should not. Tolerance by definition reveals that there are differences between two individuals or groups. Where the differences are minor they can coexist. But Jezebel’s teachings and practices are diametrically opposed to God’s.
We first learn about Jezebel in 1 Kings 16:30-33, “Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all who were before him. 31 It came about, as though it had been a trivial thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat (Jeroboam was king of northern Israel in the divided kingdom), that he married Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and went to serve Baal and worshiped him. 32 So he erected an altar for Baal in the house of Baal which he built in Samaria. 33 Ahab also made the Asherah. Thus Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel than all the kings of Israel who were before him.
First Kings 21:25 sums up Ahab’s evil legacy and Jezebel’s role in it: Surely there was no one like Ahab who sold himself to do evil in the sight of the Lord, because Jezebel his wife incited him.
Jezebel was a Gentile princess of Sidon who married Ahab, son of Omri, king of Israel.
She lead her husband into Baal worship. Baal, a name meaning lord, was the so called god of the weather, lightening, wind, rain and fertility. To Baal his worshipers even sacrificed their children and performed sexually immoral acts to excite him to show favour upon them by ending droughts and sending rain to water their crops. Of course Baal was a lifeless idol who had no control over the weather.
Jezebel killed many prophets of the LORD (1 Kings 18:4). Four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah ate at Jezebel’s table (1 Kings 18:19). For Elijah’s role in killing the 450 prophets of Baal, Jezebel vowed to kill him (19:1–22ff). Jezebel killed the humble and faithful Naboth the Jezreelite to steal the inheritance of his vineyard for Ahab and to ease her husband’s childish sulking and vexation (1 Kings 21:1–29).
Regarding the identity of the Thyatiran Jezebel, we know that on occasion God personifies a famous person from Israel in His New Covenant work. A positive example is Elijah for John the Baptist. In Matthew 11:14, Jesus said, “‘And if you are willing to accept it, John himself is Elijah who was to come.’” The Thyatira Jezebel was a person who manifested the evil intent, cold heart, idolatry and immorality of the Sidonian princess.
Let’s summarise the problems Jezebel creates in Thyatira.
Jezebel calls herself a prophetess but she lies. A true prophet is someone who speaks for God and His prophecies through the prophet come to pass (Deuteronomy 18:21–22). Jezebel, on the other hand, is a false prophetess that speaks the opposite of God’s will.
She accomplishes her deceptive goal through two methods; first, false teaching. Jesus and His Apostles frequently warn us about the dangers of false teachers within the church. There is much false teaching in the world. The most dangerous false teaching comes from within the hearts and minds of leaders within the church.
Secondly, she leads God’s people astray. Literally Jesus describes us as His slaves. We belong to Him. We serve Him. We are loyal to Him. He is our only Lord and Master.
The net result of her lies and misleading God’s people are the opposite of God’s will. He demands faith and holiness. She entices God’s people into eating foods offered to idols and sexual immorality. These are the same problems that emerged in Pergamum and two of the four things from the Law of Moses the elders and leaders of the Jerusalem meeting of Acts 15 instructed the Gentiles to avoid: “For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these essentials: 29 that you abstain from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication; if you keep yourselves free from such things, you will do well. Farewell” (Acts 15:28–29).
We have seen there is a close relationship between idolatry and sexual immorality particularly when people aim to please pagan fertility gods in exchange for rain and fruitful crops and harvests. In Old Testament books like Hosea we also see that sexual immorality is a metaphor for spiritual adultery, unfaithfulness to our faithful God.
Thus Jezebel of Thyatira created several problems for those who tolerated and followed her synchronizing their lives with the world. She led them into serious sins contrary to God’s character and will. They developed an attitude of tolerance towards evil that eroded their faith and the effectiveness of their witness to God in a fallen world. They in turn would become ineffective leaders in the church that would lead others to depart from Him and the truth. They would forfeit eternity with God and meet the same doom as Jezebel if they didn’t repent.
In verse 21 Jesus said, “‘I gave her time to repent, and she does not want to repent of her sexual immorality.’”Giving her time to repent is a demonstration of God’s patience and His grace. Patience is a key attribute of God and a fruit of His Spirit. We see it all through Scripture from Abraham’s bargaining with God to spare Sodom for the sake of ten righteous, to Peter’s last letter chapter 3 verse 9 where he tells us “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.” We see God’s patience and grace here in His conditional offers of repentance and salvation in Revelation. God gives everyone time to repent and return to Him. It is equally true that for every person time by its very nature has limits. Responding to God’s gracious offer to repent while there is still time is eternally important.
We learn from Jesus that repentance is an act of our will. The word literally means “with mind.” It is a decision that leads to action in positive change. The change of thinking that leads to change of action. Jezebel did not want to repent. She decided not to repent but to carry on with her sexual immorality.
As we, like our Thyatira brothers and sisters, live in a society saturated in sexual immorality, we do well to remember that God has also taught us His will for positive sexual morality within the holiness of marriage.
To be continued with conclusion in Part 3