Seven, Thyatira – David Nasser
Overview:
Tonight we dove into the letter written to the church at Thyatira. This is the longest and harshest of the 7 letters, yet it was written to the smallest and least influential of the cities. Thyatira was being diligently disobedient to God; therefore, He responded to them with a love letter displaying His wrath. They were not ignorant. These people knew the will of God, yet they put someone in leadership who led them astray. They were eating food sacrificed to idols. They were also living in sexual immorality and they had no intention of stopping. God’s wrath was very real and evident, BUT GOD, being slow to anger still gave them time to repent. In this letter, we see the complexity of the attributes of God. We think about God’s wrath, anger, and jealousy as a negative thing because we can only see them through the lens of our flawed perspective when, in fact, all of those attributes flow from God’s great love for us.
God’s Display on the Cross
When Christ was crucified, two attributes of God were on display at once: the love of God and the wrath of God were both poured out.
It was the pleasure of God to go public in allowing His wrath to be imputed on His Son and to be seen by all mankind.
If God is not afraid to show us his wrath, then why are we going out of our way to hide his wrath? Perhaps because we think wrath is the opposite of love. The opposite of love is indifference.
God is Slow to Anger
God is a God of anger, but He is slow to anger. He is abounding in steadfast love.
To be godly, we should be abounding in love and slow to anger. We ought to be slow to be critical. Slow to make fun of people. Slow to blast people. Let’s be quick to love. Quick to give the benefit of the doubt.
God’s Wrath has 2 Tenses: Active and Passive
- Active
2 Samuel 6:6-7 Uzza died for touching the Ark of the Covenant. He believed his hands were less filthy than the ground.
Acts 5– Ananias and Sapphira, lie to the church
Matthew 21—Jesus turning the table in the temple
- Passive: his withdrawal
Romans 1— the wrath of God is shown by God giving them over to their wicked ways. God takes his hands off of them.
Getting caught in sin is not the wrath of God but the mercy of God. God’s wrath is to let you get away with it and to continue destroying your life.
Takeaway:
God loves you too much to leave you as you are.
Verses:
Revelation 2:18-29
“And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write: ‘The words of the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and whose feet are like burnished bronze.
19 “‘I know your works, your love and faith, and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first. 20 But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. 21 I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality. 22 Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation, unless they repent of her works, 23 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. 24 But to the rest of you in Thyatira, 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. 25 Only hold fast what you have until I come. 26 The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, 27 and he will rule[c] them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father.28 And I will give him the morning star. 29 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’
Exodus 34:6-7
“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
Quotes:
The church in Thyatira was willfully and aggressively allowing a false profit to indoctrinate in idolatry. -Tim Keller
“Removing the “wrath of God” from the Christian context virtually eliminates the value of Christ’s substitutionary atonement on behalf of all of humanity”.
Substitutionary Atonement: the belief that Christ died in the place of sinners, taking on Himself the wrath of God that I deserved.
Questions:
1) How do God’s wrath and my anger differ?
2) Why do we feel the need to give God a “make-over” before the world and hide His wrath from them?
3) In what areas of your life has sin taken you further than you thought you’d ever go?
4) When it comes to other people, is your default setting compassion of criticism?
5) Are you living a life of willful disobedience and sin against God? Is there anywhere in your heart that God is being slow to anger, giving time to repent?