Thyatira: The Devil Wears Prada

And y'all can go ahead and be seated. Well, good morning. It's good to see you. And um as you go ahead and grab your Bibles, open up to Revelation. Yeah, kids can head out with Kelsey. Uh as you grab your Bibles, head to Revelation chapter 2.

Uh we are continuing on in our series right now called Letters to the Church in America and we're walking through again just the first three chapters of the book of Revelation. And we'll be finishing up the second chapter today with the letter to the church in Thotyra. Thotyra. And so before we get there, let me start here. Sometimes when we read the Bible, sometimes when we read it, it feels like the Bible is mostly calling out men. uh mostly calling out men.

And so because you'll hear stories, you'll hear Noah, you know, or a Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Peter, the apostles, um on and on I can go. And and because it so focuses on the leadership of men. Um it's why many churches will focus on calling up and calling out men. And so it's why they'll do conferences every year on act like men. and and churches will go hard at the men because typically speaking, culture and church both agree that men are morons. And so it's just natural for them to again go after them.

But you'll rarely hear um a conference that's like act like women, right? You'll rarely hear churches just go hard at the women and call them up and in order to be able to call them out as well. Um, but here's what we're going to be doing today is, uh, we're not going to cave to the culture of going light on women. Um, we are going to go hard on women, but it's because women are not called to a lower standard of holiness, but the same standard of holiness, the same standard of righteousness um, that the scriptures have called men to. Um, because here's the truth. Team Satan would love nothing more than to convince women that their spiritual lives are somehow secondary or that their influence is somehow less important than it is of the men.

That's what team Satan wants you to believe. And history tells us otherwise. The Bible tells us otherwise. When you read the Bible, you see God using the role of women in miraculous ways. God used Esther who risked her life to save God's people. God used Mary to literally carry the son of God.

God used a Samaritan woman who ran back to her village and brought the whole town to Jesus. God used women to first witness the resurrection of Jesus Christ. God used Priscilla to help strengthen the church in Ephesus. God used Lydia to fund and host the church planting efforts of the Apostle Paul out of Philippi. And speaking of Lydia, this was a woman known for her successful business in purple fabrics and textiles, which was a sign of wealth. We learn about her in Acts 16 when Paul comes to Philippi and he preaches the gospel in this city and he meets this woman Lydia and she comes to know Jesus.

And when she comes to know Jesus, she then opens up her home and her resources in order to literally fund and propel the gospel forward. And guess where Lydia is from? Thotyra where this letter is being written to today. And so as we come to this fourth letter to the seven churches, we come to the writ to the letter written to the church in Thotyra. And the primary subject of this letter is a Jezebel woman or a woman by the name of Jezebel who in the Old Testament Jezebel or the woman Jezebel is known for doing at least three things. silencing the prophets, celebrating idolatry, and normalizing immorality.

That's what Jezebel women are known for, and we'll dive into that a little bit deeper here in a moment. But on the other side, the flip side, Jesus women, and that's what we're going to be contrasting this with with, are women who are bold in truth, faithful in worship, and radiant with holiness. And so, listen, this isn't just for the women in our church and the women that you interact with on a daily basis. This is for everyone. So, I don't want the men to tune this out either. Because what we're going to see in Revelation 2 is a warning to the whole church.

Not just for women who were compromising truth, but also for men who were being deceived by the women who were compromising truth. And so it's for everybody um in this room in order for us to understand. But here's what I do know. Um when I talk about Jeze Jezebel women and Jesus women here at the district, I know that our women want to be Jesus women. And so don't just hear this as like we're calling things out in order to bring you down, but rather we're calling things out so that we're able to steer in the direction of being able to live out and follow in what we want, what we long for, and what I know the women in here are more about because you're Jesus women. You're Bible women.

You want to be about what the righteousness Christ has offered is. And so in order to also know that, you also be able to need to know the contrary and what the opposite of that is. And so to give you a bit of context, look at Revelation chapter 2. We're going to start in verse 18. The Apostle John says this. He says to the church of the church or to the angel of the church in Thotyra, write the words of the son of God who has eyes like a flame of fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze.

I've kind of pointed this out a couple of times as we walk through each of the letters. What Jesus does in writing to the to the churches is he draws a comparison of something about his resurrected and glorified anatomy based on the truth that he is also preaching towards this church and what he is calling them to action in. And so in this idea, he's saying basically I w with his eyes flaming like fire, he's seeing something in the church. And then at the same time when it refers to his burnished bronze um feet, it's also talking about like your strength comes from your legs. Like if you know anything about fighting, like when you throw a punch, it comes from the legs first before it comes from the arms. And so it's essentially saying like you need to listen because my strength is anchored and my eyes see clearly what's going on in here.

And so it's almost like saying to this church, you need to you need to buck up because I'm bowing up and I'm about to come at you with some truth, but you need to listen listen up and listen to. And so let me give you again a bit of the backdrop here. Thotyra was not a political capital like what we've seen so far. Pergamum was a political capital. Smyrna was a political capital th those cities were very anchored in Roman Empire and being all about Rome and whatever Rome wants we will do. Um here in Thotyra it's a little bit different.

This is more of like a workingclass town. This is more of a trade type of town. This is more of your bluecollar type of town where the entire town was built on trade guilds and and you might have heard me mention that over the last couple of weeks of a guild that's like a union of workers. And so here everyone, whether you're a tent maker, you're a tanner, you're a cloth maker, you're a baker, whatever your trade is, it would belong to a guild. And the guilds were always attached to temples. And so in order to be able to come in and be able to do your business or run your business, you had to be a part of that trade guild that had in it of itself a patron god that you had to sacrifice idols to.

And as long as you do that, as long as you participate in that, you can sell whatever your goods are in the marketplace. And so you can imagine with that, someone coming into the church who's leading the people into idolatry and immorality, they're going to push you. Hey, we want to flourish. In order for us to flourish, we need to be a part of these guilds. We need to do what the guilds are preaching and proclaiming in order for us as a church to grow. And so again, these guilds are always going to involve idol worship and often include sexual immorality.

And so that's where this church kind of runs into a situation is because there's two things going on in this church. There's people who are saying Jesus is Lord. And that's good. That's what we want. But to say Jesus is Lord also means that they're not saying Caesar is Lord, Artemis is Lord, Apollo is Lord, the guilds, and so forth. And so this wasn't just a religious statement for them.

This was an economic risk for them. And so in Thotyra, this church is between a rock and a hard place because Jesus will say to them, I see that you are declaring Jesus is Lord, but at the same time, you're being tempted with this compromise. And we'll get to that in a moment. But this pressure cooker of this church being between a rock and a hard place leaves the open door for what's considered whether it was a woman or a group of women to be able to show up in this spirit of Jezebel as the Old Testament refers to it. Now, this wasn't literally the queen herself from the Old Testament showing up to the church. That would make her omniresent and outside of time and a continuous goddess of sorts.

It's a spirit of Jezebel that is coming in the form of these women or women into this church to essentially do the same things that Jezebel did in the Old Testament. Silencing the prophets, celebrating idolatry, and normalizing immorality. And so again, Jesus is going to say, I have this against you that you tolerate that woman Jezebel. In other words, Lydia, who's from Thotyra in Philippi, was a woman led by Jesus. The church in Thotyra was becoming a church led by Jezebel. And so, listen, every one of us, we have a decision to make.

Are we going to be like Lydia, a Jesus woman or Jesus man who is faithful to him and going to listen to him and what he's called of us? Or are we going to follow a Jezebel spirit of compromise, going along with the crowd, bowing down to idols, calling sin freedom and therefore unfaithful to Jesus. And so let's look at the commenation because that's kind of the structure of this is commendation, confrontation, and then call to action. And so the commendation, we're going to see that in verse 19. So look at that. Jesus tells them, "I know your works.

I know your love and your faith and your service and your patient endurance and that your latter works exceed the first." So this was a church that maybe had a very difficult time starting out. Maybe when they were planted, it took a long time for them to be able to grow. Whatever they were doing at first was difficult. And their second season was better. Their second season was flourishing.

Their second season was encouraging. It took off. And so whe whether that was seeing more people attend on Sundays, more people getting baptized, more people plugging in and serving and growing in leadership, this church was experiencing a season of growth. And therefore, their latter works were considered better than their first works. And so that's awesome. That's an encouragement.

That's an encouragement to our church. For years, we've seen an eb and flow. I mean, we're just going to be honest. We've seen an eb and flow of growth and decline. Growth and decline. And to be honest with you, that's every church.

It doesn't matter if you're 10,000 people and you grow to 15,000 and then you decline to 7,000. Every church experiences that. Our church has experienced that over the last nine years. I mean, we're not dumb. We see it. There are seasons where we grow.

We've expanded close to a hundred and there are seasons where we drop to 20. It's just reality. It's just life. There is an eb and flow that comes with this. What we can be excited about and what we can be hopeful in is that scripture is also not blind to this. He's literally saying this is a church that struggled in the beginning and then exceeded their growth in a second season.

What you actually see in most churches is that they'll have a season of growth and then when they enter into their second season, whether that's a different pastor or whether that's a transition of leadership, then they will shrink as a church. And so this is an opposite of what's going on in that, which again is is um a an encouragement for us that the next season can be far greater than the previous. And so let's believe that. Let's pray for that. Let's let's ask the Lord to be able to do that among us just like he did for this church in Thotyra. And so when someone asks about the church or their culture, man, I pray that someone would say the same thing of our culture in our church.

I pray that someone would look at our church and say as Jesus has said to them, it's loving, it's faithful, it's serving, it's patient, it's enduring the hard times as well. Like I pray that that would be said of us. But when it comes to seasons of growth as they are in right now, I often wonder if that's when temptation to compromise comes in as well. Because there's something to be said of when a church is in a season where it's struggling. When a church is in a season where it's hard, there's there there's the pressure cooker that brings the church together. And then there's unity in that where we're about the same thing.

We're focused on the same thing. We're pursuing the same thing and and we're not going to give up to anything else. But when a season of a when a church does move into a season where there is growth and there's a lot of people coming into it and there's new leaders coming into it, sometimes it's easier to let the guard down in those seasons. And I believe that's what ultimately happened in this church in Thotyra. They're seeing a season of growth. your your your uh your works are exceeding.

They're greater than they used to be. And so there is a growth of people coming in, but because of that, maybe they let their guard down and and their leadership structure, whatever it looked like, allowed for someone to come in and start preaching and teaching something that was contrary to what they had started out with in the first place. And so, look at this at Revelation 2 20-2. This is what Jesus says to this church. But I have this against you that you tolerate that woman Jezebel who calls herself a prophetus and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality.

Behold, I will throw her onto a sick bed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation, unless they repent of her works. And I will strike her children dead, and all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart. And I will give to each of you according to your works. But to the rest of you in Thotyra who do not hold this teaching but have not learned um I'm sorry and to all the churches who I lost my place somehow and all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart and I will give to each of you according to your works. But to the rest of you in Thotyra who do not hold this teaching, who have not learned what some call the deep things of Satan, to you I say, I do not lay on you any other burden. Only hold fast what you have until I come.

At some point in the life of the church, again, a woman or a group of women have come into this church and they've dominated the men, what the men were willing to tolerate. They've dominated what the men were willing to tolerate. And look specifically at how this came to be. Verse 20 says something unique in this moment. It says that this woman Jezebel comes into the church and she calls herself a prophetist and is teaching and seducing the leadership to practice sexual immorality and idolatry. Now, this was not a prayerful, this was not a godly leadership development pipeline that allowed for her to come in and take a position of leadership.

Rather, because what we saw in the church in Ephesus, the Ephesian church, was they had a very robust and a very uh defined way for you to come into leadership. So much so that Jesus commended them by saying you do not allow false teachers or false wolves to come into the flock. Like you have you you the door to get in is very tight and that is good. Here the door has been kicked wide open and the elder room is basically very open for anybody and everybody to be able to come in and declare among their leadership, God speaks through me. So you better listen up. God speaks through me and so you better listen up.

And so this woman has come into this church and has essentially said, "God speaks through me and you better listen up." She's selfdeclared, not by others. And so sometimes people ask like, "How do you get into leadership? What does that look like?" And I will always say it comes in two forms. There should be an inner calling.

There should be within you an aspiration that I believe God has called me to leadership. I believe that God has called me to a pastor. I believe God has called me to a place of influence. There should be internal affirmation. At the same time, there should be external affirmation because anybody can be subjective. You can you can go on a retreat or whatever and have the most wonderful time ever and then come back and believe I I need to change everything about my life.

But you also need to make sure that others affirm this as well because we don't want it to just be subjective. We also want it to be objective. We want it to be from others being able to say, "I I do see this. I see that you could be a pastor. I see that you could be in a place of leadership. I see that you could be in a place of influence.

I affirm that. I we we would be behind you. We'd be supportive of that. We want to follow that. Absolutely. That would be amazing.

That's not what's going on in this church. She's coming in and she's saying, "I'm taking this position and I'm going to start teaching." And apparently the rest of them allow it. They allow it. In the last 10 years, we've seen a wave hit the American church that looks a lot like the spirit of Jezebel in Revelation 2. Just think about it.

silencing the prophets. Pastors who stand up and preach God's design for marriage, sexuality, or the exclusivity of Christ get labeled as hateful or bigoted. Some of them lose their platforms, their jobs, or their voice because the culture and sadly even parts of the church say, "We don't want to hear that anymore." I mean, that's been the church in America for the last decade, compromising biblical truths in order to bring more people in and affirming things that are outside of the biblical design for marriage and sexuality and therefore they're silencing the prophets. At the same time, they're celebrating idolatry. Our culture doesn't build statues to Baal or Asher as Jezebel did in the Old Testament.

But we do build stadiums and stages and screens. And people will sacrifice anything, time, money, even their families for success, sex, entertainment, politics. We'll go all in on these things as long as those things affirm whatever our worldview is. And some churches, they don't confront it. They copy it. They copy it.

seating capacity like seating capacity is not wrong so long as the seating capacity is pushing towards the sending capacity of a church. If all we're trying to do is get as many people into the building as possible without actually discipling them in what Jesus has taught us and commanded us, then we're no different than what they're trying to do on a Sunday as football season is now kicked back up to get as many butts in the seats in order to make as much money as possible. There's no difference. It's just the entertainment industry. We're not about the entertainment industry. And because of that, to be honest with you, that's not that's why there's not a lot of people here in this room right now.

Because we're not about entertainment. We're about disciplehip. We're about preaching the Bible. We're about truth that actually changes and transforms people that leads to a life of flourishing. That's true flourishing, not false flourishing. True flourishing.

And so they would celebrate idolatry. At the same time, there was normalizing of immorality. Think about it. Over the last decade, especially since 2014, we've watched the sexual revolution go from fringe in the closet, if you will, to mainstream now everyone's talking about it to mandatory. You have to agree with this. And if you don't agree with this, you need to be in the closet.

And so, literally now to be Christian is in the closet. And what we're trying to say is we need to come out of the closet and speak with boldness. We don't need to be afraid to be able to preach and teach what the Bible actually preaches and teaches because it's what the truth is. It's what God's design is. And so the whole situation has flipped now to where what was normal was God's design. But now what's normal is immorality outside of God's design.

And we need to have a bold again a beautiful and a calm but we need to have a bold presence when it comes to speaking truth to those who are not following it. And so this Jezebel woman declares herself the teaching authority and therefore also declares that what she teaches idolatry and sexual immorality to be good and should be celebrated. Again, Josh McFersonson, who's a pastor in the Pacific Northwest, he puts it this way. What a church is willing to tolerate, a Jezebel woman will use to dominate them. To dominate them. And so speaking of the prophets, even when you look at the prophet Isaiah in chapter 5:20, he says this, "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.

Who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter." I mean, you think about that. We we we talk about abortion. We talk about the murdering of babies and culture will say it's women's healthcare. It's calling something evil good. It's not good.

It's not good. That's Jezebel in the Old Testament. She silenced the prophet. She celebrated idolatry. She normalized immorality. And in Revelation 2, Jesus says the same spirit is alive in a well in the church today.

Because Jesus calls this spirit by name. Similar to when Peter told Jesus, "Get behind me, Satan." Um, or when Peter told Jesus, "You can't die." And then Jesus responds to him and says, "Get behind me, Satan." Jesus wasn't talking to Peter. He was talking to the spirit behind Peter who was trying to deceive Peter into something that wasn't true.

Jesus is speaking to this church, and he's not speaking directly to the church. He's also speaking to the spirit behind the church, this Jezebel spirit that is leading the church in sin. So because he speaks to Jezebel, who is she actually? Because we need to know this. Jezebel shows up in First Kings. She was a Phoenician princess who married King Ahab of Israel.

And the Bible says straight up, Ahab was the most wicked king Israel has ever had. The most wicked king Israel has ever had. And Jezebel was the primary reason for that. She was the primary reason for that. What did she do again? She brought her idols with her.

She worshiped Baal and Azareth, which again are just false um false gods that Satan used as a mask to wear. And she didn't just practice her religion privately. She made it the national policy. She used her position to lead God's people into idolatry, idol worship, and sexual immorality. But it gets even darker than that. Jezebel actually went and hunted down the prophets of God and killed them, which is why they ended up going and and literally hiding in caves.

She silenced truth tellers and elevated false prophets. If you know any anything about the story of Elijah, again, one of the guys that never died. Elijah went to Mount Carmel to literally do like a I mean, we you know, football's back, grid iron, like this is that kind of setting where there's a bunch of people there. And he's like, I want to take on the prophets of Baal. And so, it was Elijah, one prophet versus 450 prophets of Baal. Guess whose prophets those were?

Jezebels. She selected all of them. And the only reason why Elijah is the only one over here was because she had all of the others killed. So Elijah shows up at Mount Carmel and he faces off against these 450 prophets. Now, if you don't know anything about that story, Elijah wins and mocks them. And it's a wonderful story.

You should go check it out sometime. But the other 450 prophets, they are Jezebels. She's bankrolling them. She's promoting them. And when God sent fire from heaven, Elijah won. She swore that she'd have Elijah and every other prophet killed.

That's a lie. I mean, just a ruthless, evil woman. And so, if you had to summarize her life again, get rid of truth, celebrate idolatry, normalize immorality. And that's why her name became shorthand for toxic spirituality and negative feminist influence. toxic spirituality and negative feminist influence. She wasn't just bad news in her day.

She became the symbol of what happens when you let compromise run wild among God's people. Now, before I talk about the difference between a Jezebel woman and a Jesus woman, let me make a preface here. A Jezebel woman, even in today's spirit, from a feminist perspective, is always going to say that she is for women. That she's for women. it it's always going to be that spirit which sounds right but it's wrong. Feminism in and of itself which just means we are four women cannot be something that you adopt just as it is.

Because what if that woman is doing something contrary to the Bible? Then you can't be for that woman. Just like masculinity, we we can't just be for men if those men are doing things that are contrary to what the one man Jesus preaches and proclaims. And so, you can't just be a feminist who is for women. And here's the reality, too. When you get into diving into liberalism versus conservatism and this whole fighting battle that's going on, if there's a feminist movement that is happening where we're for all women, well, what about women who oppose what they are about?

Are they for those women? No. These women now hate those women. So the idea of feminism falls in on itself because it can't be for all women. It can't. And so Jezebel women are going to be for women.

Period. Jesus women are going to be for righteousness. They're going to be for righteousness. They're going to be for the elevation and the celebration of women who are following Jesus and what he actually wants for them. not just a blind following of all women and being for all women. And so Jesus women along with John the Baptist, they're going to say things like, "I must decrease.

Jesus must increase." Jesus women say, "I don't need to be elevated and celebrated. I need to be helpful and faithful." One of those God despises, the other God cherishes. And so in the same way, Jesus men don't need to be elevated and celebrated. They need to be loving and sacrificial.

They need to be loving and sacrificial. And so I'm going to give you five quick things that contrast the difference between a Jezebel woman and a Jesus woman. Again, a Jezebel woman, just as it said here, a a Jezebel woman is going to um seek for control versus Christlike submission. Jezebel women are always going to want to be in charge, have some version of control. So they're going to manipulate people in order to get their way. It's my way or the highway.

This is also maybe something that we see called like sleigh culture. Maybe that's like a current term now is where you'll see a woman post something on Instagram that is just promoting dominance, promoting um maybe even uh body image, promoting whatever it is that's going to draw attention to them. And what you're top of, what you're typically going to see in the comments are all these other women just, you know, hard emoji, hard emoji, hard emo, fire, fire, fire fire, and then slay. It's like, what are they slaying? Like, what what does this even mean? Again, it's just promoting that I want to be in control and I want other people to see that.

where a Jesus woman is going to have Christlike submission, trusts God's order. She doesn't have to grab control because she knows God is in control. And therefore, she submits to God's good design and plans. Like Mary saying, "Let it be to me according to your will, not mine." Not my will, thy will. That's a Jesus woman.

A Jezebel woman is not thy will, my will. There's a difference there. And then there's also going to be the second one, corruption versus correction. A Jezebel women, what they want to do is they want to corrupt. They want to twist the truth. They want um for example, like Balam and Jezebel in scripture both pulled people into sin by making it sound harmless.

It's not that big of a deal. Everybody's doing it. We need to go the way of culture in order to keep our position and posture, to be able to keep our influence. And so they twist things in order to pull others into it. Jesus says, "She's teaching this and she's seducing you towards this." She's seducing you towards this.

Now, I want to say something in regards to how we should treat this type of corruption, especially when it comes to the the the form of seducing. Jesus calls us to handle Satan and a Jezebel differently. And when I say a Satan, I'm talking about just evil. And when I'm talking about a Jezebel, I'm talking about the the the sexual immorality and the temptation that comes with that. The way that Jesus tells us, if you were to walk out in the parking lot and when you're going to get in your car, say someone's blocking your door and it's Satan, so like I mean horns, tail, holding, you know, whatever image you put of Satan, say he's standing right there. The way Jesus tells us to handle that is to literally um do like what Jesus did.

Eyes of fire, burnish bronze feet, bow up. I'm about to fight you. That's how he tells us to handle Satan. If you walk out and you're a man and you're going to go get into your car and there's a woman there dressed in scandaly clad clothing that's saying, "Why don't you come on over here?" He doesn't tell you to bow up and buck up. He tells you to run.

He tells you to flee that situation. There's a difference between how we handle Satan versus how we handle a Jezebel. It's like Joseph and Piper. Like he walks in and he see Piper's wife and he's like, I'm going to flee this situation because I don't have the strength to fight this situation. There's a difference there how we handle this and how we handle the corruption that comes with this. A Jesus woman, they don't corrupt, they correct.

They stand with conviction even when it costs her. She says if God's word says it, that settles it. They're pushing everyone towards what God's word says, not how they can twist it in order to try to get something their way. Again, it's not manipulation. It's mobilizing people towards what Jesus has ultimately said. And and what you can really see in that a lot of times is how do conversations happen?

And I will speak into the women on this. When you're in a setting or a situation of women and say because I'll just th and I know I'm stereotyping this and it's okay. We we are adults here. But say there's gossip going on in the situation. I can't believe so and so would think this or I can't believe you know Hannah over here would would decide to want to do this. A Jezebel woman in that moment is going to latch on to that and say, "You're right.

Can you believe the way she dresses or the way she thinks or that her husband would do X, Y, and Z?" A Jezebel woman is going to take that moment and keep pursuing the idea of corruption. How can I corrode this whole situation and make it worse? A Jesus woman is going to seek understanding and yes to seek correction but do it in a loving humble hey maybe we don't know the full situation here. What I know of Hannah is that she actually loves truth. What I know of Hannah is that she actually pursues like she is a prayerful godly woman.

And so maybe we just don't know the whole situation here and we want to seek understanding in this situation. And so let's dive into that rather than throwing her under the bus. There's a difference between Jezebel women and Jesus women when it comes to corruption and correction at the same time. The third one is compromise and conviction. Jesus says she seduces them to practice idolatry and sexual immorality. Jezebel women, they seek compromise.

They want to blur the lines. They want to mix the worship of God with worship of culture. It's like someone saying they love Jesus on Sunday, but when it comes to Monday, they love the world. I love Jesus on Sunday. I mean, this is this is on Instagram culture. The women who are um posting things, revealing things for the purpose of getting likes and attention.

However, in their bio has a scripture verse. This is a Jezebel type of woman. They seek compromise. through idolatry and immorality instead of having actual conviction. And so a Jesus woman seeks conviction, chooses purity in a world obsessed with pleasure. Again, where a Jezebel woman dresses provocatively to promote her sexual immorality, a Jesus woman has conviction to dress, and again, I know this is a this is one of those now closet terms that we're not allowed to say anymore, but she will dress modestly to promote her sexual morality.

One is good, one is evil. We need to know the difference. She says, "I'm not for everyone. I'm for one. I'm for one. Where a Jezebel woman seduces, a Jesus woman supports supports supports her husband but also supports the brotherhood of Christianity by not creating a situation in which might cause them to stumble.

And I know again that's like right now the biggest arguments on social media that are coming out with that especially like and and and let me also just say this. I'm not dumb. I'm married to a woman and I know the conversations that are had. Do you know how hard it is to shop and find clothes that are modest but also current? I get it. I know the argument.

I could not imagine having a daughter and trying to go to the store and shop for her right now. So, for those who have the young girl, I mean, just bless your heart. Praying for you. Praying for you. With boys, it's easy. You can throw a trash bag on them and they're good to go.

Like they don't care. But the idea of modesty is so important because of the fact that we know men are morons. Men are morons. Should they practice self-control and not look? Yes. And amen.

And that's what we're after. At the same time, at the same time, we dress, the women dress modestly so that knowing they're morons aren't giving them an opportunity to lust, but rather helping our brothers see that Jesus is good and not see them. You understand difference between those two things? And then it jumps into the fourth one here. Collapse versus or the fifth one, I guess. Collapse versus contribution.

Nope. Fourth one. Culture worship versus Christ worship. Jezebel woman. They bow to cultural idols. They're always going to push you towards sex or success or social approval.

And again, these move and they shape over culture as well. So if sexual immorality is like not the trendy thing to dive into, well, you know what is? Maybe it's just success. Whatever they're going to do, they're always going to push you to worship whatever the cultural thing is in the time. What will people a Jezebel a Jezebel woman asks constantly, what will people think of me? Rather than what does Jesus think of me?

Jesus woman is anchored in Christ. So instead of culture worship, she wants Christ worship. She's anchored in Christ. She knows Psalm 16:11 in God's present there is fullness of joy. She lives for an ab an audience of one, not many. She lives for Christ, not anything else.

And so then it comes to collapse and contribution. If Jezebel doesn't maintain control, she'll seek a collapse. She'll destroy the whole thing. She'll bring the house down. And again, that's why I believe Jesus is coming so hard at this church. I mean he this is the shortest commendation that he has given up until this point and the longest confrontation that he has given up until this point because he knows that the spirit of this this woman in the church who is seeking this control and leading the church astray.

He knows it's ultimately going to destroy the church. It's going to collapse the church. They want nothing more than to leave a trail of brokenness because they themselves are broken. Her influence destroys marriages. It'll destroy churches. It'll even destroy generations.

If she can't have it, nobody will have it. A Jesus woman, however, instead of seeking collapse, they seek contribution. They help the mission of God. She wants to leave a legacy of faith like Lois and Ununice in the life of Timothy who was discipled by the Apostle Paul. But Apostle Paul calls out and says, "I love the fact that the beginning of your faith came from your mother and your grandmother." Like she leaves a legacy of faith.

Her life multiplies disciples who shape the future. Like Lydia from Thotyra, but now lives in Philippi. She contributes her home and her resources for the advancement of the gospel and what Jesus is about. She wants to be a helper in that. And so what does Jesus say to this church as a warning? Look at verse 21.

He says, "I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality. Behold, I will throw her onto a sick bed because she's sick. She's ill." essentially saying, "I'm going to put her on what she deserves, and there she is going to ultimately die for it. Those who commit adultery with her, I'm going to throw into great tribulation." He's basically saying, "If you're not willing to repent, you're going to struggle, and I'm going to make sure that you are struggling unless they repent of her works."

And I will strike her children dead. It's not literally referring to literal children. It's referring to the offspring of disciplehip that comes from the spirit that she is bringing within the church. And all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart and I will give to each of you according to your works. And so what was the call to action here? Verses 24- 29.

To the rest of you in Thotyra who do not hold this teaching, who have not learned what some call the deep things of Satan. I'll come back to that here in a moment. to you I say I'm not lay on you any other burden. He's basically saying um with this spirit of Jezebel that you have within the church, you got a lot of burden already on you. And I'm so I'm not going to hold any other burden on you other than repent of that. Steer clear of that.

Flee from that. Run from that and hold fast what I already have given you. The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end. To him I will give authority over the nations. And he will rule them with a rod of iron as when earth and pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from the father. And I will give him the morning star.

He who has an ear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches. Here here's what you need to see here. The churches today who are compromising biblical truth are doing so under the guise that they have progressed deeper into the things of God. This is what Romans 1 is all about. You need to see it so that you can recognize and not be deceived by it like the church was in Thotyra. Look at Romans 1:21-32.

I want you to see this and and and lit just overlay this with our culture and churches that affirm culture because they've somehow dove deeper into the scriptures. Look at this. Romans 1:21-32. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. But they became feudal in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. All right.

Okay. So they they became feudal in their thinking. Their foolish hearts were darkened. They were deceived claiming to be wise. We know more than what Jesus told us. We know more like when you this is when someone says like when we when we point out a scripture that says um homosexual homosexuality is a sin because the Bible says it is.

They'll say well you have to look deeper into it. Deeper into what? Well, Jesus says what they're looking deeper into are the things of Satan, not the things of God. Claiming to be wise, they actually became fools, and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. They worshiped creation rather than creator. Therefore, God gave them up in what?

the lusts of their hearts to impurity to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves. I mean, just think about the transgender move movement. It's literally the dishonoring of your bodies. The body that God created for you, that God gave you, that God hardwired, that God designed. It's dishonoring that among themselves because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie. and they worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.

I mean, think about just again like how I mentioned the feminist movement of um you can't be for women until a woman opposes you because then you should if you're for women accept what she's saying, but you can't accept it because it's opposing you. The same thing in the transgender movement. Why is the the the the sexual biology that I was born with, I don't affirm it, but if I change it now, I can affirm that? Like, it doesn't make any sense. And that's what he's saying here is that they they've given up. They've dishonored their bodies.

They've given themselves over to creation, but have actually just become foolish in that whole process. For this reason, God gave them up two dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another. Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. When people say homosexuality is not in the Bible, they've not read the Bible.

When sexual immorality is not in the Bible, they've not read the Bible. And it's not trying to be hard. It's just trying to be truthful. And since verse 28, they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness.

They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, hotty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. I mean, come on, God, let up a little bit, right? Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them. I mean, tell me that's not been the American culture in the last 10 years. It's running this play. And so, let's put this all together.

Jesus looks at his church at Thoty and he says, "I see your love. I see your faith. I see your service. I see your endurance. But I have this against you. You tolerate Jezebel.

In other words, he's saying you're doing a lot of good things, but you're letting compromise creep in and it's killing the good things that you're doing, and it's actually going to lead to your destruction. And if you don't deal with it, it's going to destroy you from the inside out. And then as you are destroying you, I'm also going to come in and destroy it myself. I'm going to remove the lampstand and you will cease to exist. And when we read Romans 1, which sounds less like ancient Roman, it sounds more like the nightly news today, people worshiping creation instead of creator, exchanging the truth of God for lies, redefining sexuality, celebrating sin, calling it progress. That's the Jezebel spirit.

It's silencing truth. It's celebrating idolatry. And it's normalizing immorality. And it's not just out there in culture. It's coming into the churches across America and the West. And if we're not careful, it could get into ours because no church is um safe from this.

Unless it's a church that says we're about Jesus and not a Jezebel spirit. But that has to be something that we repent of constantly. Like repentance isn't just for someone who's done something wrong. Repentance is constantly saying, "We're not about that. We're about this. We're not going to believe that.

We're going to believe this. We're not going to listen to that. We're going to listen to this." Repentance is just a constant turning of whatever I'm receiving, I am checking and I am testing. Is this what God wants me to do? Is this what God wants me to believe?

Is this how God wants me to think? Is this what God wants me to put my pleasure into? Whatever it is, I need to constantly be working that so that repenting doesn't lead to um just handling shame, but it's repenting and leading to refreshing as Peter says. And so, what do we do again? Jesus tells us to repent. Not just feel bad, not just admit we slipped up, but turn.

Walk away from compromise and walk toward holiness. Choose faithfulness over fitting in. Be like Lydia, not Jezebel. And so, let me give you a picture of this. Back in the 1800s, there was a revival in Wells that spread to India. And in one particular village, a man and his family came to Christ.

And when the village chief demanded that he renounced his faith, he stood firm and he declared, "I have decided to follow Jesus." Period. No turning back. Well, then they killed his children in front of him. And then he repeated, "Though none go with me, still I will follow Jesus." And then they killed his wife in front of him.

And he said again, "The cross before me, the world behind me. I will follow Jesus." And then they finally killed him. And once they killed him, the whole village seeing his unrelenting faith in Jesus, not willing to compromise, but willing to have conviction and stand up for it, the whole village ended up coming to Christ because he had conviction. And that's the invitation today. Like if we are going to be a church that makes a difference in this city, it's going to start with each one of us not having a compromise to culture, but having a conviction for Christ.

It's going to start with each one of us. I can't do it by myself. I can't do it by myself. But each one of us having a conviction in the neighborhood that we live in, in the workplace, in our families, in our spheres of influence, where you're whether you're at the gym, wherever you are, when there's conversations being had, you got to have conviction and not compromise. That's why, like I don't know if I shared the story last week or not, Ezra was sitting down at his table, fourth grade table. So, if you're going to public school your kids, you need to know these conversations are going to be had a lot earlier than you think they should be had.

But while he was at this table, uh the kids were basically saying, "Hey, just so you know, God's not real and men are allowed to marry men and women are allowed to marry women amongst fourth graders just having a conversation at the table." And Ezra, I said, "Well, what did you say in that moment?" And he said, 'Well, I just I stood up and I said, 'Hey, just so y'all do know, God is real because he made each one of you and he made you boy and girl and he made you so that men marry women and women marry men. And that's what the Bible says. I mean, proud dad moment. Proud dad moment.

Short, simple, to the point. They have no idea where they got the idea that God is not real or that men and can marry men and women can marry women. Ezra knows where he got the idea from that God is real and he made us male and female in his image. We just have to be bold. We just have to speak it. We got to tell people what the truth is.

What the truth is. because one of his kids at the at the table asked him a question like following that up asked him a question like well where where you know where do you see that in the Bible or why do you believe that and it just opens up conversation there was a time where you didn't know and you heard the truth and now you know you know and there are people all around us that don't know and we want them to know we want them to know let's Father, we thank you so much for your goodness to us. We thank you that we have the ability and the opportunity to be able to see your truth in your word and that it saves us. That your son Jesus came and lived a life that we could not live and died a death that we deserved and rose from the grave, guaranteeing for us for us future life and eternity with you. Father, we also know that we are easily corrupted and we are easily deceived. And Father, we just pray that your truth would continue to show us and convict us what the truth is so that not only do we live it and follow it and keep it and have ears to hear it, but that others would be able to have the same opportunity.

that others would be able to see exactly what you have called us to and be able to follow in that. May we have years to hear that and to do as the spirit has said to the churches.