Revelation 2:18-29 – 2024 Mar 07

For the sake of time in this study, I’m going to jump right in. This is the longest letter of the seven, spanning 12 verses. It can also be seen as the most terrifying letter because of how the Lord Jesus identifies Himself and the threats of direct summary judgment He makes against it. As such, we will want to know the things that provoked the reasons why. As always, the city has some background that allows most of these things to manifest themselves, and it is therefore always a good exercise to look at the historical context. Buckle up, this will be thick and fast, and hopefully appropriate.

In ancient times, Thyatira was little more than a picket defence for Pergamum. It was set up against attacks from upriver to give Pergamum time to marshal its defences, being built on the height of land surrounded by a plain. As you will recall, it was a well-defended city and was for a time the capital city of the Roman state of Asia. This made the city perpetually poorer than some around it because of the constant rebuilding that went on around it. It was also where the church of Jesus Christ compromised with the world. I like how Dr. John MacArthur said it. If Pergamum is where the church married the world, then they were already celebrating anniversaries in Thyatira.

As a result of the constant rebuilding going on, there was an abnormal amount of craftsman guilds in Thyatira. It was impossible to divorce that construction from the social life of the city, and thus from religious life, because each guild had a patron “god” that they represented. It was also impossible to divorce the religious immorality that included sexual orgies from the activities of any given guild. Some of these guilds even reached outside of the city of Thyatira for business, and one of these was the folks that dyed cloth. Rome, it seemed, had a demand for purple cloth, and Lydia was some kind of sales rep for purple cloth. We meet her in Acts 16:14-15 where Paul’s gospel reaches her heart: “A woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple fabrics, a worshiper of God, was listening; and the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul. And when she and her household had been baptized, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and stay.” And she prevailed upon us.” She is listed as the first convert in Europe in my Bible, and her household came with her. But think about what she must have gone through after that.

As I said, it would have been impossible to divorce community activity within a guild from religious practices of the day. Greek and Roman “gods” were known for wild parties and all kinds of immorality. Given that Apollo was the chief deity of the city, this fits. Apollo was one of the (many) sons of Zeus, and there was a definite connection between him and the kind of debauchery of which we speak. Anyone who became a believer in Jesus and wanted to follow Him would no longer wish to participate in this regular and approved-of guild activity. It could cost more than just some hurt feelings. It could cost your livelihood, your reputation, and possibly your life given the persecution of Christians by Rome at this time under Domitian. That persecution was going to be in place in varying degrees for over two centuries from this point. Many saints would lose their lives. Remember Smyrna here, and think about the faithful Antipas in Pergamum. Or Polycarp in about 60 years. This wasn’t new for the believers at this time.

We saw what kind of compromise this caused in Pergamum, did we not? When the traditions of other religions and idolatry enters the Bride of Christ, we discovered the theological term for that was syncretism. We also found that it was syncretism that was responsible for the northern kingdom of Israel to go into a permanent captivity, and the southern kingdom of Judah to go into a 70-year Babylonian captivity. This letter, if those are your circumstances spiritually will be absolutely terrifying. We will talk about the remedy of repentance and faith of course, but this letter is a little different than some of the others in terms of what it discusses. With that said, let’s have a look.

I broke the text into the following thought units.

KV25: Sin causes loss, so hold fast what you have

25: Nevertheless what you have, hold fast until I come.

18: The Son of God comes to judge

19: The Son of God knows ALL your deeds

20-23: You are tolerating SIN in your midst

24-25: To the rest, hold fast until the Son of God comes

26-29: The promise to the overcomer

We should put a special note on v.29 because for the first time, the “ears to hear” part appears AFTER the promise to the overcomer, whereas in the first three letters it was before the promise, kind of like the promises themselves were a postscript. NOW, they all come in the body of the letter. No commentator seems to have a solid reason, but the best suggestion I heard was from Dr. Chuck Missler. Think about what epoch the canon of Scripture was completed and finalized. It was about AD 385 that it was all placed in one volume and distributed to people. This would have been at the very beginning of the period of the medieval church, right around this time. The previous three church “eras” had passed in a historical and prophetic sense, making Thyatira’s church profile the active one when the canon was completed. That means that from now on, those promises are being made in real time to those churches when the word is starting to get around. Is that information really valid? I don’t know. It certainly doesn’t affect anything I say in terms of what message the people of God should be taking away from these studies, but I want to mention this for completeness of information and examination. Is Dr. Missler right? I don’t know. Does it matter? Not in any way I understand, but it is information, and I pass it on. On with the show, so to speak.

KV25: Sin causes loss, so hold fast what you have

25: Nevertheless what you have, hold fast until I come.

For those who have been here for a while, you know that the Scriptures command us to be holy, just as God Himself is holy. Without that holiness that Christ conveyed to His people as a result of His death on the cross, we will not see the Lord. Holiness is the most important, most elevated attribute of God in Scripture. The original meaning of the Hebrew word qadosh means to be apart or separate from something. God is holy because He Himself is separate from or alien to sin. And that is what His people must be. Now, He doesn’t ever override our will in these matters, or we would not have a constant struggle. Not only do WE experience that struggle, but Paul lamented his own struggle to the church at Rome in Romans 7. He likened sin to being like being bound to a corpse. As the corpse rotted, it would release all kinds of toxins and poisons into the living body of the pair. It was a form of capital punishment. At the end of Romans 7, he cried out, “O Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?” Then he said as an answer to his own statement, “I thank God through Jesus Christ my Lord.” And then Chapter 8 verse 1 reads, “There is therefore NO condemnation in Christ.” Christ provided the holiness. WE must choose to BE SANCTIFIED, be made holy, and walk in the deeds he prepared for us ahead of time to do. He must be Lord, Gerry must not ever be Lord, no matter how slow things get for me or how much agony I go through. Personalize this for yourselves, I can only speak for myself. If a person would claim Christ as Lord, then he or she must follow Him in this way. And it sometimes feels like being strapped to a corpse. If we live in that sinful state by choice, it is a sign that we need to repent and turn to Him in faith. It further MAY be an indicator that you are not actually His, and you don’t want that as a believer. We must turn from our sin as we do it if need be. It is the ONLY way to be made holy. We must stand against sin in our own lives. We must confess we did it, and then make a renewed commitment to NEVER DO IT AGAIN. And the same with the next time it happens! I’m not an idiot. This isn’t easy. But it is already done for you by Christ, so walk in the new nature He gave you when you first believed Him. Because if you don’t, there are some things you should know. Let’s get into the text and see what those things are.

18: The Son of God comes to judge

This letter is the longest of all the letters to any of the churches for a reason. Our Lord Jesus Christ has a great deal to say on how to honour Him and how to walk with Him. He commands His people to follow Him at the cost of their own lives if need be, as we saw in Smyrna. If we would walk with Him, we must keep our first love and be faithful right up to when we die, regardless of the form that may take. And we must walk with Him in purity according to His Word, otherwise we compromise with the world and risk the judgment of God, as we saw last time in Pergamos. This letter is what happens when He does give judgment. Let’s see.

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:

Can you imagine being the pastor of this church and getting a letter like this directly from the Lord through John? I would be on my knees quaking at the description Christ uses to identify Himself to me, because if all speaks of judgment. Remember, the word “angel” here is being used of a human servant of God who has been given a specific mission. In this case, it was to shepherd the saints in Thyatira. [We’ll go with the Latin pronunciation here, Thī-a-tē’-ra. Greek is Thee-a-tee’-ra, I know, but I actually learned an Anglicized Thy-a-tye’-ra, and it’s not correct. The Latin would have been appropriate for the time.]. Who was the one confronting said shepherd?
The Son of God. [huios tou Theou] This is the only usage of this phrase in the entire book of Revelation. And He shows up here. That in itself is startling. And His appearance is nothing short of intense. He has eyes like a flame of fire. I checked the Greek text here. This is exact in translation. Flames consume. Fire burns. And it is ALWAYS in judgment in the New Testament. Now before you tell me that it’s also a sign of the Holy Spirit, I will agree, but that only happened once, and it didn’t say it was fire, it said it was “like fire.” It was a different thing, resting on the heads of those who were in that upper room on that day. These are His eyes, the very piercing gaze that burns through all illusions we like to think we fool everyone with. There will be NO fooling Jesus, He is the Son of God.
His feet are like burnished bronze. My understanding of the process here is that to burnish bronze, you melt it together with silver to get that highly reflective sheen on it and then you polish the heck out of it. Bronze is a heavier metal, certainly heavier than silver, made from a mixture of copper and tin and other additives like arsenic or silver. The tin hardens the heavy copper and depending on the additives can approach the hardness of iron. Silver makes it gleam as well as hardens it. The symbolism here represents the strength, stability, and purity of Jesus. Some commentators said that it has a connection with the Tent of Meeting in Ancient Israel, though they did not explain that. I think it is a connection to the same feet in Rev. 19:15 that tread the winepress of Almighty God. He tramples there, for the record, the grapes of the wrath of God. THOSE feet. And here He is, coming to you. Again, I would be quaking in my boots. What does He say? Next verse, next paragraph unit.

19: The Son of God knows ALL your deeds

We have all seen the attributes of God in the Scriptures, and omniscience, or being all-knowing, is one of the big three. (all-present and all-powerful are the others in that triad). The Son of God knows you. He has seen everything you have ever done, and has heard every THOUGHT you have ever had, both the good and the bad, and you should know that the bad thoughts, words, and deeds probably outweigh the good. It is good that He loves us and is merciful toward us. However, if you are NOT at least attempting to walk in holiness before God, you are being disobedient to His loving call for all people everywhere to repent and turn to Him. I did not say you had to be succeeding. But you have to try. If God calls you to turn away from your sin and toward Him, you should do that. What does it say if you still want to pursue the old life and the things that please you and not God? It says that you didn’t actually turn away from your own pleasure and toward Him to do His pleasure. That, as it turns out, is a problem! Let’s look.

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.

The Lord, as always, begins in peace and kindness, giving praise where it is due and where He can. He specifically mentions their deeds out in the world, the Greek erga in the text, meaning the things or actions you perform. However, as we will see, he also knows the bad ones done for some…different…reasons. But He also speaks of the love [agapēn, divine love], and the faith (the definite articles are there in the Greek) [pistin, that firm persuasion that when followed makes a difference], and the service [diakonian, transliterated, we get the English word “deacon,” so clearly service to God’s people whatever that may have been], and the perseverance [hypomonēn, remaining under]. And the Lord even commends them for doing even more of them, as the word for “greater” here is used to imply an increase in number in Greek. That’s all that this says here, so we will move on to see the problem.

I wanted to treat this as a paragraph on its own because it brings out something that happens in modern churches. There is always a group that is doing things for the church, which is the people in the building, not the building. Some of us run bible studies. Some of us mind the nursery on Sunday. Some book speakers for events. Some book the pastor who speaks on a given Sunday. Some look after the building the church meets in to keep it in good repair so that it is available when it is needed. All of these, and other things we haven’t named, are ALL part of being involved in those good works that the Lord determined for us to do from before the founding of the world. But then there is something else. It isn’t good, and I have seen it in literally every place I have ever been to worship the Lord in my nearly 39 years as a Christian. I do it too, but that definitely doesn’t excuse it. Let’s get into that.

20-23: You are tolerating SIN in your midst

This is NOT walking in holiness or sanctification, Beloved. This is walking in direct disobedience to God, whether we realize that or not, whether we intend it or not. God says “Do this,” he expects us to do it, and do it the way He wants it done. I’ll pick on something we do at least once a month. He says “Have the Lord’s Supper.” We take real bread, and real fruit of the vine, and we have the bread first and then the cup, and we remember what the Lord Jesus did for us on the cross. The theology behind it, although important, matters less than the actions of the communion [kononia, sharing] service itself. We aren’t taking fried eggs and whole grapes, beloved. And there is a reason for that. The Bread is the body of the One who is the Bread of Life. The Wine is the New Covenant in His blood, shed when he died on the cross. There are even some that will insist on real wine here because the fermentation represents His death! I don’t know so much about that, but the point is that we need to do it the way HE said, not do our own thing. To do otherwise is to tolerate sin, and to do so complicitly. Let’s see what the Lord is talking about.

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 acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols.

The very first thing we see is a servant of the enemy who has wormed her way into the authority structure of the gathering. There is a lot wrong here, and it will offend someone because I am saying it. I admit I am a bit more shy than some, and this is hard for me. But it is nonetheless true, and I can point out other places in Scripture where it talks about these things.
The first thing wrong is that there is a woman in charge of the ministry. I don’t mean that to be sexist, and I know how that sounds. Women are fully capable of doing everything a man does in the church, and I have met some very capable women. That does not mean they should be the ones running the show. God is very specific in places like 1 Tim. 2 and 3 and Titus 1, as well as 1 and 2 Corinthians, and other places that men are supposed to lead. It doesn’t mean that women cannot teach or that they are not capable of it. They are, and I’ve seen that. But it isn’t what God instructs through His apostles. I apologize if you’re offended about that, but Paul said we have no other way of doing things. To do so is to tolerate sin in the church. Having said that, some notable women have done extraordinary things in Scripture in the New Testament. Phoebe was a servant in the church at Cenchrea (a port in Corinth). The word Paul uses to describe her authority is diakonos. We transliterate that into “deacon” in English. She was an officer of the church. Phillip the Evangelist (Acts 21:9) had four daughters who were prophetesses. I’m not saying that women are supposed to be wallflowers. Prisca was no shrinking violet. She instructed (with Aquila her husband) Apollos on how better to preach the truth. There are others. Please do not mistake what I am saying. This lady seized control wrongfully, and I’ve seen that happen too.
The second thing is that she was compared by Jesus Himself to Jezebel. I don’t think that was her name. Who names their kid Jezebel? And I know a woman named Delilah (two actually). This is how the Lord describes her, and it is instructional. Who was Jezebel? She was the wife of Ahab, King of the northern kingdom of Israel after Solomon. She shows up in 1 Kings 16:31. “It came about, as though it had been a trivial thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, that he married Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and went to serve Baal and worshiped him.” And again, we see the problem. Jezebel came from a nation that was not Israel for the sake of a political alliance. YHWH specifically forbid this because it would pull the man away from YHWH to serve false gods. It seemed to have done that with Solomon, as wise as he was, and it was doing it here with Ahab. To summarize, Jezebel led Ahab away from YHWH to worship the Ba’als, false gods of the region, in this case, Sidonia. Now, if you know anything about the Ba’als, you know that part of their worship involved sexual activity. This will be relevant directly.
The third thing is that apart from this Jezebel leading the New Testament people of God away to worship false gods, in doing so, she led them into sexual immorality. It was impossible in those days to separate the worship of false gods from sexual activity. The Lord Jesus said here that she led them to commit porneusai. This is the aorist tense of the verb porneuō which means both a) illicit sexual intercourse including but not limited to adultery and b) metaphorically, of the association of pagan idolatry with doctrines of, and professed adherence to, the Christian faith. She did both, just as her namesake did in 1 Kings. She died horribly in the original story. Moving on.

21: I gave her time to repent, and she does not want to repent of her immorality.

This is the real problem. Everyone and I mean EVERYONE is capable of sin while we are here on earth. People do it. We considered last time the remedy for that, and it simply to repent, that is, to turn away from the sin by admitting it is wrong, to God and to yourself, and then making a commitment to not do it again in the power and the faith of Christ. Every real believer in Christ knows when they sin. Every real believer turns from that sin (eventually, sometimes it takes time).
Jezebel did not want to repent. She enjoyed her sin too much. And what was her sin? It involved the guilds we spoke of at the beginning, I suspect. To be a guild member was to do honour to the patron deity of the guild, whoever that was. The Romans had one for everything, and so did the Greeks. I like to think of them as the same false gods but with the names changed to protect the guilty. Because it was impossible in those days to separate the false gods and the cultural practices of sexual immorality, no real believer would want to go to those events. She taught them that it was okay, against the conscience that God had restored in each believer. In a couple of verses, Jesus identifies this as “the deep things of Satan.” Maybe it was a little of the pagan attitude. I think it may have been, coupled with that old Greek dualism. Everything spiritual was good, and everything physical was bad. The sex was just physical, and it had no standing or effect on your relationship with God. As long as you love God the Spirit, everything is okay. Beloved, that is a key plank in original Gnosticism, an ancient heresy. Couple in a bit of asceticism, and a bit of “secret knowledge that an initiate can learn from the master” and you have the complete package. Jezebel was the master here. She probably was enjoying herself and the perks of her new theology. But theology matters, Beloved. And she was enjoying herself SO much that when she heard the truth, she rejected it because her sin was too much fun and pleasure to throw away. She did not WANT to repent. We call folks in this category false converts. They think they are believers but really are not.
And God gave her time to repent. This tells me that time is marching on, Beloved. I’m no fan of scaring people into the kingdom, but this is real. God gives us all time. If one runs out of time and does NOT repent, then it demonstrates that salvation is a time-limited offer. It is free for the recipient, it is available to all, but not all will take it. I was sharing this with some of the guys and Pastor Victor the other day. I think the Scripture bears it out, but I’ve not really thought through this. Ultimately everyone will get what they want. The Pharisees who wanted the praise of men got it. This lady in her wantonness wanted pleasure and the associated power of being the “prophetess.” I dare say she got what she wanted. We heard a couple of weeks ago Paul Washer tell the story of how he prayed to be more like Jesus. After all the pain of that happened, he got at least part of what he wanted and will receive the rest as he continues to be faithful to Christ. Everyone will get what they ultimately want. The problem that Jezebel figured out too late was that sometimes what we want isn’t worth the price of admission. It’s a big topic, and I need to develop it further. Next verse.

22: Behold, 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.

This is the part that should make your knees shake. Those words “of sickness” do not occur in the Greek. Those words were supplied in conjecture by some of the translators to try to make it clear to understand. It is my opinion that this is incorrect, however. Without those words, one could read that Jesus will ballō [throw like a ball] her into a bed & c. This could mean that the bed represents death and hell, where Dr. MacArthur suggests ALL who will not repent have their ultimate destiny in his New Testament Commentary on this verse. The issue here is that she will not be going alone.
He will throw those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation. Those words, thlipsin megalēn, or “great tribulation,” have no article, and so cannot refer to the Great Tribulation referred to in eschatological discussion. It simply means that there will be a lot of pressure on such an individual, and we are not going to speculate on what that might be. Commentators like Dr. Chuck Missler and Dr. Gary Stearman make this kind of end-times connection, and maybe there is something to it, but it makes less sense to me that way. If one were to make this kind of a connection, you are saying that saved believers can be left behind at some “snatching away” to face the wrath of God with all the unbelievers. That’s simply not possible. If you were left behind at such an event, it is easier to think that you were a false convert. From there, you will know how to repent, and maybe you will and maybe you won’t. As it fits with the doctrines of Grace, your faith did not persevere because you never had it to begin with.
So the way that you will escape this nonspecific great tribulation or pressure will be, as we have been saying all along, is repentance and faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. There is nothing mystical in this phrase, and it is very easy to understand. Shape up or get out. Those are ultimately your only options.

23: And I will kill her children with pestilence, 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.

Again, this is a bit of a translator speculation, still on the idea of the bed of sickness. “I will kill her children with pestilence.” That isn’t in the Greek, but this is: apoktenō en thanatō. “I will kill with death.” Death, a form of the word thanatos, is not a DC Comics villain. (Thanos is the Marvel villain.) Death is (a) the separation of the soul (the spiritual part of man) from the body (the material part), the latter ceasing to function and turning to dust, or (b) the separation of man from God; Adam died on the day he disobeyed God, and hence all mankind is born in the same spiritual condition, from which, those who believe in Christ are delivered. All that According to Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words. I think here it is the latter application. For those who will choose ease and pleasure instead of God and His Son and their purification of mankind of sin by the Sacrifice of Jesus, that is the only option that remains.
When the Son of God executes this judgment on the church, God gets the glory. Everyone will know who He is. Everyone will know that He alone is capable of searching the minds and hearts of His followers. For all those who give mere lip service to the idea, even if your behaviour in public backs that up, He still knows what is in your heart. He knows you. He made you. And He is inevitably coming for you, to render to everyone the rewards fit for their deeds. Deeds done in hypocrisy are bad deeds also. Where will you stand on that day? On His right with the sheep? Or on His left with the goats? I know where I want to be stood. And it isn’t out of fear, it is because I love Him and want to be with Him. That desire is worth anything I pay here. But He is coming for us. How will you choose?

I said earlier that salvation is a time-limited offer. Don’t run out of time. If you do, you will have no one to blame but yourself, and it will be because you wanted something more than Jesus Christ. I have a hint for you. There is nothing more than Jesus Christ. He made everything. If He didn’t make it, it isn’t here. Next thought unit.

24-25: To the rest, hold fast until the Son of God comes

Not everyone that was in Thyatira was in the predicament of having their livelihood threatened by the guilds and their demands for social conformity. There were those, as always, who did not care what others thought about what they were doing. I know people with that mentality and I admire it, though I don’t have it myself. Sometimes I wish I did. But to those people, The Son of God with those piercing, burning eyes that see everything, and those burnished bronze feet says to hold fast. Stand therefore! Hold the line! Let’s see.

24: 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, as they call them—I place no other burden on you.

To those who are not partaking in the spiritual adultery and idolatry of the followers of the “prophetess” Jezebel, no other burden than faithfulness to Christ is placed on them. Note here that these principles of idolatry and spiritual adultery are referred to as “the deep things of Satan.” Why? Because these are violations of (at least) the first two of the ten commandments, first, “You shall have no other gods before me,” and second, “You shall not make idols.” The very real sexual sin that was involved is a part of that. To participate in this activity, you must have sex outside of God’s intended design for it. It is easier to tell you what those boundaries are than to list the litany of violations of it, so it is exactly this: sexual activity is to take place within a marriage relationship between a man and his wife. Anything outside of that is a violation of the order God designed. Beloved, that covers EVERYTHING from adultery to homosexuality. “Oh Gerry, you don’t understand! I was born this way!” Amen. So was I. That’s why I needed to be born again, this time from above, a working of God and not man. You can be as well if you turn to Him in repentance and faith, ad infinitum. That will not ever change until God ends time, and then there will no longer be need. Paul said that the marriage relationship is a representation of the relationship between Christ and His church. Is it any wonder that the main attack is on this relationship with any and all kinds of perversions of it? But what does the Son of God say here? If you aren’t engaging in this kind of skandalon, then you have no need of repentance, you have need to be faithful. So be faithful. Next verse.

25: Nevertheless what you have, hold fast until I come.

See? Hold fast. Stand firm. Hold the line. There are many different ways to say this. What we need in these days is to be faithful to do it, because He SAYS to do it. If you need another reason, He will provide one even if you don’t like it. It is never (or at least hasn’t been for me) a case of “Do it because I said so.” That was my abusive earthly father. And even he had his reasons, and they were usually for my good if I did what he said. Our Lord Jesus will always explain Himself if we will be humble. Sometimes that is after we obey, by the way. That is so He can say, “See? That’s why.” And we learn like that at times.

The point of the last two thought units, which could be rolled into one unit, is that we need to resist sin in our own lives, and in the life of the church, the corporate person who is the Bride of Christ. If we will not resist that sin, then the Son of God is here with His wrath to judge us for it, and we will not go unpunished. Mat the Lord have mercy on us and cause us to see this so that we will turn away from sin and towards Him and righteousness. He is Yahweh Tsidkenu, YHWH our righteousness, after all. And His mercy is amazing. I wish we could take the time to consider it more, but we still have a thought unit to get through.

26-29: The promise to the overcomer

As we stated earlier, there is a change that will carry through the last of the letters starting with this letter. Where the promise to the overcomer came AFTER the “he who has ears to hear” bit, almost like a postscript, here the promise comes first and then that line. Why the difference? I don’t know for certain, but if I had to guess, I would say that this is where considering these as periods of church history becomes relevant. We have already detailed this, but it is fitting to remind you all here. Let’s look at the promise.

26: He who overcomes, and he who keeps My deeds until the end, TO HIM I WILL GIVE AUTHORITY OVER THE NATIONS;

The very first thing the reader will notice in their Bible is the use of capitalization of some of the words of the verse. Who knows what that means? [pause] That’s right, it is a quotation from the Old Testament! In this case, it is the promise of God the Father to His Son in Psalm 2:8. “Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Your inheritance, And the very ends of the earth as Your possession.” You may note this does not say exactly the same thing as the verse in the Psalms. The Holy Spirit is capable of inspiring John, the scribe of this letter, to use the words that best express the meaning God wants to convey without violating the OT meaning or context. And the quote from this passage isn’t done being referred to by John in this text.
To the overcomer, that is the one who is a believer in Jesus and obeys Him and does His will until there is no longer need, to that one, He will give authority over the nations. I have an idea of what that means, but I have no idea how that will apply for each individual. The really cool part is that we are going to get to find out! Next verse.

27: AND 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;

Here is verse 9 of Psalm 2, but with something else added, again from the Old Testament. “You shall break them with a rod of iron, You shall shatter them like earthenware.” That Ps. 8:9. That is what the verse means. Remember, this is a promise from God the Father for His Son, and Christ refers to that at the end of the verse. But then there is this bit about the vessels of the potter being broken. That is from two verses of the prophets. The first is Isaiah 30:14. “Whose collapse is like the smashing of a potter’s jar, So ruthlessly shattered That a sherd will not be found among its pieces To take fire from a hearth Or to scoop water from a cistern.” This is saying that the authority will be to crush any rebellion and treason by comparing the nations to a potter’s vessel that is hit so hard that there isn’t a piece big enough left to carry on. The second is Jeremiah 19:11, which says, “…and say to them, ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts, “Just so will I break this people and this city, even as one breaks a potter’s vessel, which cannot again be repaired; and they will bury in Topheth because there is no other place for burial.” Topheth was the place where they burned and scattered the ashes of the children who were sacrificed to Molech, incidentally. No resistance to this authority will be possible.
This is the kind of thing that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, will give to us who follow Him. How do we know? Because He says He will, just as His Father gave this authority to Him, He will extend that to us. And by His grace, we will have the wisdom to use it properly, not as tyrants, but as those whom the Lord has made free from sin. Next verse.

28: and I will give him the morning star.

This kind of terminology is used four times in Scripture. The first of those is in Isaiah 14 and is used in reference to Lucifer, star of the morning when he fell from the presence of God. I doubt this is the morning star to whom the Lord is referring for several reasons, and we won’t go into it here for the sake of time. So who is this morning star?
The first use of this phrase in the New Testament is in 2 Peter 1:19. “So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.” Some have suggested that the morning star is the Word of God as it arises in our hearts. Metaphorically, I agree, if it is the Word of God in John 1:1. You remember…In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and that God was the Word! Then there is this verse, which has caused the question, but then there is a verse from the end of the book. It answers the question in plain language, as clear as an unclouded day. Revelation 22:16 reads, “I, Jesus, have sent My angel to testify to you these things for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.” Here it is again, a hint of what is to come. Jesus promises in metaphor to literally give us Himself. Himself, in all of His royal glory and majesty! He will give us Himself as husband, and we His bride, living together in the garden of God forever, the picture of Revelation 21 and 22. More on this when we get there, I suspect.

29: He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

Here is the operational phrase. The Lord Jesus and others used this in Scripture to say, “If you get it, you get it. If you don’t, search it out. If you won’t, we return you to your regularly scheduled programming.” If you have ears to hear these truths, then hear the very words of God to the churches.

What a trip through a city of the ancient world and its social and religious practices, all from the point of view of the Son of God. From this 20K-foot view of the letter, as we look back on the letters so far, we can see how things developed both in real time and historically. There has always been a group that has been pressured and hated because they hated our Master first. These are seen in every church, but especially in Smyrna, where they were put to death simply because they would not allow themselves to say that a mad tyrant named Domitian was a god. For this crime, they were guilty of death.

And then there was the other group, and the best word I can think of to describe this group is the word “problem.” First, they left their first love. They left it, not lost it. They did not persevere in the good works that God had them doing in Ephesus, they compromised in Pergamum because it was easier, and in Thyatira they broke and overflowed the boundaries that God had set for them for the sake of being able to earn a living. If you think this is all bad, realize we still have three letters to study, and though there is a mixed bag here, most of it is bad. In some ways, it is even worse. And there is a bit of all of these in every gathering on the planet today. Learning these things makes it possible to diagnose where you are, and to try to steer your gathering in the right direction, in repentance for sin and faith in our Lord Jesus. Let us be those who serve the church we are a part of by holding the truth He has given us and trying to steer people in the right direction until the Lord removes us from that situation, one way or the other.

That’s what I saw in the text.