Christians cannot be tolerant of all things because God is not tolerant of all things. We can respect differing opinions and try to understand them, but we cannot give our unqualified, unconditional affirmation to every belief and behavior. Because God doesn’t. We must love what God loves. That’s where Ephesus failed. But we must also hate what God hates. That’s where Thyatira failed.

Of the seven cities in Revelation, Thyatira is the least well known, the least impressive, and the least important. And yet, the letter is the longest of the seven. There was a lot going on at this church–some bad, some good.
Let’s start with the good. Verse 19, “I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance.” Ephesus was praised for its good deeds and strong work ethic. Thyatira is even better.  Is has the deeds that Ephesus had and the love that Ephesus lacked. The church at Thyatira was not without genuine virtue. It was a tight-knit bunch who loved, served, believed, and endured.

Maybe Thyatira was the kind of church you walked into and immediately felt like you belonged: “Great to meet you. Come, let me introduce you to my friends.  Here, I’ll show you how you can get plugged in, use your gifts, do ministry. We’re so glad you’re here.” It was a caring church, a sacrificial church, a loving church.

That was the good part. And the bad part? Its love could be undiscerning and blindly affirming. The big problem at Thyatira was tolerance. The folks at Thyatira tolerated false teaching and immoral behavior, two things God is fiercely intolerant of. Jesus says, “You’re loving in many ways, but your tolerance is not love. It’s unfaithfulness.”

The specific sin in Thyatira was the tolerance of Jezebel. That wasn’t the woman’s real name. But this false prophetess was acting like a Jezebel-leading people into adultery and idolatry. We don’t know if her influence was formal–she got up in front of people and told them these deceptive things–or if it was informal–taking place in conversations and by word of mouth. However it was happening, this woman in Thyatira was a spiritual danger, like her Old Testament namesake.
Jezebel was the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians. She worshiped Baal and Asherah and led her husband, Ahab, in the same. Jezebel is the one who plotted to kill innocent Naboth for his vineyard. She was called “that cursed woman” (2 Kings 9:34). As a punishment for her wickedness, she was eventually pushed out a window, trampled by horses, and eaten up by dogs. She was a bad lady. And she lead many Israelites down a bad path.

Jesus says to Thyatira, “You are allowing a woman like that to have sway over your people. Why do you tolerate her? Don’t affirm her. Don’t dialogue with her. Don’t wait and see what happens. Get rid of her. . . .or I will.” Apparently, by some means, the Lord had already warned her to repent, but she refused. And so now the Lord Jesus promises to throw her onto the sick bed and make her followers suffer as well, unless they repent. “I will strike your spiritual children dead,” says the Lord. Jesus isn’t messing around here. This isn’t a secondary issue. This is a serious sin worthy of death.

It was also an entrenched sin. There were a number of trade guilds in Thyatira. Suppose you belonged to the local BAT, the Bricklayers Association of Thyatira, and one night the guild got together for a feast. You’d be sitting around the table, ready to partake of this great celebration with your friends and colleagues, and the host would say something like, “We’re glad you could make it. What a happy occasion for the BAT. We have quite a feast prepared for you. But before we partake, we want to recognize the great god Zeus who watches over the bricklayers and has made this dinner possible. Zeus, you see his statue in the corner, we eat to you, in your honor, for your worship. Let’s dig in.”

What would you do in that situation? Stay or go? What would your participation signify before your fellow Christians, before the watching world, before God? Christians in the ancient world didn’t have to go searching for idolatry. It was woven into the fabric of their whole culture. To not participate in these pagan rituals was to stick out like a Yankees fan at Fenway Park. These feasts, with their idolatry and the sexual revelry which would often follow, were a normal part of life in the Greco-Roman world. To remove yourself from them could be socially and economically disastrous.

Which is why false teachers like this Jezebel in Thyatira or the Nicolaitans in Pergamum gained such a hearing. They made being a Christian a lot easier, much less costly, must less counter-cultural. But it was a compromised Christianity, and Jesus could not tolerate it. He was going to make an example of Thyatira to show all the churches that Jesus has eyes like fire, too pure to look on evil, and feet like burnished bronze, too holy to walk among wickedness. He wanted all the churches to know that he was the searcher of hearts and minds and he would repay evil for unrepentant evil.
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The error of Jezebel was a serious sin, an entrenched sin, and a subtle sin. The people had probably been told that the “deep secrets” wouldn’t harm them. We don’t know exactly what it meant for the church to learn Satan’s so-called deep secrets. We don’t know if that’s what the false teachers called them or if that’s what Jesus is calling them. But what was going on was probably some kind of false teaching that devalued the material world. This Jezebel may have been saying, “The physical world doesn’t matter. It’s the spiritual realm that counts. So go ahead and participate in idol feasts and do whatever you want sexually. Those are material things. God doesn’t care about that.” Or she may have been saying, “Look, if you are truly spiritual, then your relationship with God will be strong enough to withstand the deep things of Satan. So go ahead. Participate in evil practices. You can handle it and you’ll probably even learn more about the enemy in the process.” Whatever it was that she was saying, it was a lie and it was leading people into sin. The church was more tolerant than Jesus, which is never a good idea.

CALVINISM:  For some people it's just another irrelevant "ism."  For others it's the theological equivalent of a cuss word.  While still others enjoy pinning it to their chest in a desperate attempt to be taken seriously.  But in my experience, Calvinism, is either misunderstood by those who loathe it or irrecoverably reduced to little more than a wilting tulip by many who claim to love it ( there's more to Calvinism than the 5 points)

As a pastor, people often seek to engage me in theological conversation and sometimes the kind of  misplaced loving or loathing of Calvinism referred to above rears its ugly head.  From my point of view these misplaced expressions can almost always be traced back to one simple root - neither the lovers nor the loathers have actually taken the time to study their subject.  To put it another way, they haven't really taken the time to discover and develop their theological foundation. 

​In terms of my Systematic Theological position I am a Calvinist - it is a pure and simple fact that I nether try to hide nor flaunt.

Why am I a Calvinist?
 
Because I took the time to investigate Calvinism and other systematic theological positions so as to assess them in light of the Bible.  In my case this investigation eventually gave birth to a Calvinist.
 
To state it negatively, I became a Calvinist not because I was trained in it from childhood (I wasn't).  I became a Calvinist  not because I had friends or family who were Calvinists (I didn't and they weren’t).  I became a Calvinist not because I started my theological training at a Calvinistic Bible College (I didn't).  I became a Calvinist not because I was desperately seeking a guru to follow other than Jesus (I wasn’t).  
 
I became a Calvinist because I actually took the time to read Calvin in his own words and to weigh his teaching in light of the Bible.  And so morning by morning on a big British double-decker bus between the village of Kirkintilloch and the city of Glasgow, I read Calvin's Institutes, and by the end of that winter I became convinced that the things I read were true and profoundly helpful in so far as they accurately represented the teaching of the Bible. 

I highly recommend this sort of exercise to anyone willing to read and wanting to grow in their Christian understanding.  Try it and see if you don’t experience a similar result.  

​I am fully convinced that if a solid theological foundation can be discovered within a public bus on its way to Glasgow, Scotland it can be discovered anywhere.
 
A helpful and easy to read encapsulation of Reformed teachings can be explored here .

Today's useful insight comes from Thomas Jefferson:

"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) even one redeeming feature.  They are all alike founded on fables and mythology."

    - Thomas Jefferson,  American Founding Father, author of the Declaration of Independence, U.S. President, and sadly no fan of Biblical Christianity. 
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