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Thyatira: Failing The Tolerance Test

May 7, 2023

In today’s message, we are going to look at the church in Thyatira, or as I like to call them, the church that failed the tolerance test. The way you fail the tolerance test is by tolerating what should not be tolerated. This church was tolerating something that it should not tolerate. It was putting up with something that it should have put out and put down. They thought they were broadening their thinking, but what they were really doing was stretching their conscience. They were choosing compromise over conviction. They were choosing comfort over confrontation. They were choosing peace over principle. In light of this, we are going to learn that when you tolerate what is wrong, you will always contaminate what is right. So in order to help us not fail the tolerance test, the Lord does three things that we need to know how to respond to correctly.

Topics: Tolerance

In this series

This is Your Captain Speaking

Over the course of this seven-week series called, “This Is Your Captain Speaking,” we are going to be studying seven letters that the Apostle John wrote to seven churches in Asia. They are found in the second and third chapters of the Book of Revelation. Now, John was not actually the author of the letters; he just wrote them. These were given to him by the risen Lord Jesus. The letters are a result of an on-site inspection Jesus himself conducted. We’re going to learn a lot throughout this series about how we can learn from Jesus’ evaluation of the seven churches in Revelation. So fasten your seatbelts as we take off on this journey together.

Bible Reference

“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.
“ ‘I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first.
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.
I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality.
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,
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 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.
Only hold fast what you have until I come.
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 earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father.
And I will give him the morning star.
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’