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.

In light of this mornings Supreme Court ruling declaring homosexual marriage to be a enumerated constitutional right I thought it was timely to share a small portion of a Q&A  dialogue on the subject.  I trust it will be helpful.  For another  helpful article on the subject of same-sex marriage written from a different perspective please read "Same-Sex Marriage & the Future" by Russell Moore.

In the meantime, if you are a Christian troubled by todays ruling and concerned about its implications for religious liberty and free-speech, please take comfort in the following facts:

1)  Homosexuals are not our enemies - they are people who are lost and need the transformative gospel of Jesus Christ.
2)  Regardless of the dictates of the governments of man,  Christ is still on the throne and the good news is still true.
3)  Agreeing with God's is always the right thing to do - especially when it is difficult to do so.
4)  Always remember that Jesus wins (see Psalm 2).  At the end of the game all of the pieces will put back in the box and only Christ and His people will stand victorious.  

Though at first this might seem pedantic it is nevertheless important to point out that same-sex “marriage” is not really “marriage” in any real sense of the word.

Why is this?

This is because real marriage (unlike same-sex marriage) is most assuredly NOT a manmade institution or a societal construct, it is an institution very obviously imposed upon mankind from an outside source.  Proof of this is that marriage is hemmed in with very obvious biological, anatomical, and psychological (not to mention theological) parameters. 

A pastor would argue that these marital-parameters were given by God.  An evolutionary biologist might argue that these parameters were given by nature.  Either way though we are both agreed that the parameters are there.  They exist.  They are facts.  They are beyond our control.  They are unaffected by our feelings, preferences, desires, wishes, wants, and yearnings.  They are unalterably bound-up in the concept of marriage.  Since same-sex marriage has no such parameter and is little more than a societal construct it does not qualify as “marriage” in any way shape or form.

Politicians might pass legislation that will change how our society is permitted to use the word “marriage.”  Justices might pronounce judgments changing the legal definition of the word “marriage.”  But these are merely linguistic games  that cannot change the institution of marriage any more than they can change the biological, anatomical, psychological and theological parameters that surround it. 

Above I mentioned that it seemed as if marriage had been imposed upon mankind from an outside source.  It has, of course.  God is the outside source.  He alone has “imposed” marriage upon mankind without ever canvassing our views on the subject.   Therefore marriage’s meaning, its boundaries, and its blessings all come from God and are clearly laid down in His word, the Bible. 

Here are some scripture references that might help you understand why I, along with any Christian who takes the Bible seriously, cannot affirm the practice of homosexuality let alone support the concept of same-sex “marriage”

1.)  Marriage has been given by God as a picture of the relationship between Christ and His bride the church (Ephesians 5:32).   This is yet one more proof that God has set the institution up in a very particular way and for a very particular purpose and therefore we have no real authority to redefine or recreate it.

2.)  Homosexual behavior is strictly prohibited in both the Old and New Testaments (Lev. 18:22-24, Lev. 20:13, I Cor. 6:9-20, I Tim 1:10) as being contrary to God’s design in creation.

3.)  Homosexuality along with all other forms of sexual immorality is always represented as intrinsically sinful behavior that provokes the wrath of God (Rom.1:26-28) and dehumanizes its participants. 

4.)  Scripture clearly shows that marriage is the lifelong union of one man and one woman.  (Gen.2:22-24, Matt. 19:5-6).         

5.)  Homosexuals (like all of the rest of us) though sinners are NOT beyond the transformative power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ (I Cor 6:9-11 – please note the implications of the phrase “such were some of you” in v.11).  Christians who, in the name of love or tolerance, support same-sex marriage are simply affirming homosexuals in their sin.  Furthermore, they have embraced a very troubling philosophy – namely, that whoever the gospel is for, it certainly isn’t for the sexually immoral. 

Can I say to you very bluntly that if the gospel isn’t for the sexually immoral, be they homosexuals, adulterers, fornicators, or people who yield to lust, then the gospel isn’t for me…  and it isn’t good news at all…  But, of course, it is for me and it is good news.  Therefore, I am against same-sex marriage because I am for the gospel. 

 In a bygone day children came to church dressed like little adults.  They sat in pews alongside of adults.  They sang the same hymns as adults.  They were expected to be quiet, attentive, and reverent just like the adults.  Of course, this arrangement required patience and charity on the part of the congregation... but I think this model made the Church of a bygone day much stronger than the average contemporary congregation. 
  
Today in many parts of the church world the expectations we have of children are abysmally low.  Is this because American Christianity’s view of children has been shaped more by American culture than by the Bible?  I’m not sure.  Whatever the reason, the result is that we no longer dress children like adults, we don’t ask them to sit alongside of the adults, and we certainly don’t think they are capable of singing the same hymns as adults….  And so we simply whisk our little prepubescent blobs of sunshine away to something called Children’s Church. 

            Is this wise?

            Is this helpful? 

            More importantly, is this practice Biblically defensible? 


 Yes, I know that children are children and they can be restless and even disruptive during church services but is this sufficient reason to amputate children from Christ’s Body?

 At All Souls Church we believe it is NOT.  We believe children are to be welcomed into the Body of Christ just like adults.  Yes, children do need to be instructed at their level, and we have special times set aside for this, but these times do not interfere with the corporate worship of Christ’s Body. 

 Here are a few reasons for our rationale:

I’ve sometimes heard preachers talk about children as being “the future of the church.”  But that is only half right…  Surely they are the present of the church too.  Therefore, if they are in the church shouldn’t they be ministered to as part of the church.

Someone from the peanut gallery objects, “But kids don’t have the understanding to get Big People Church.”  This may be so, but since when have intelligence tests ever determined who we let into our services?  Should the fact that children have the understanding of children be held against them?  By this reasoning we could argue that the senile, the mentally retarded, or even the person who lacks a high school diploma should be excluded…  but this would obviously be wrong.  If there is any place on earth where the “weak and foolish” should be accepted with open arms, it is the church.

I contend that the church of the future depends upon children being ministered to in the church of the present.

By this I mean that what happens in a typical Lord’s Day service needs to become part of a child’s regular experience.  Yes, I understand that this is easier said than done.  Kids are rambunctious and church is…   well…  strange.  That is to say, what happens in church each Lord’s Day is NOT normal.   Pastoral prayers, public scripture readings, corporate singing, sermons, etc., do not typically happen outside of a church setting and therefore MUST become normalized in the lives of our children.  How does this happen?  I can think of no better way than by simply giving children regular exposure to these things – i.e. having them sit through church services.

Unless children grow up in an environment where it is normal to see a man read the bible and where it is normal to listen to a sermon, they are very unlikely to see these things as normal when they become young adults.  We’ve all heard teenagers dismiss church services as “weird” and perhaps we’ve wondered why.  But wouldn’t you think church was weird too if you had spent the totality of your formative years being whisked away from normal Church to a world of flannel graphs, vacuous songs, and moralistic stories?  I would…  and for a long while I did, thanks to Children’s Church.

I contend that church must be normalized in the minds of children through their regular attendance of and participation in Lord’s Day Worship Services.

The Lord has given His Church regular means of grace for their collective benefit.  According to ch.21 of the Westminster Confession of Faith: 

“The reading of the Scriptures... sound preaching…   singing of psalms…  receiving of the sacraments instituted by Christ, are all parts of the ordinary religious worship of God.”

Elsewhere we read that these things are done “to put a visible difference between those that belong unto the Church, and the rest of the world.”  As far as I can tell this must include both the old and young of a given congregation.  The Lord has placed no age limits on the means of grace.

I contend that the regular means of grace are for both big people and little people and are to be received together as one body.

For Americans, segregation is a painful word…  that’s why I deliberately use it here.

America has a dark history of racial segregation and thankfully great strides have been made to right the wrongs associated with it.  Sadly there were even many churches in the past who were segregated along the “color-line.”  But as anyone with a modicum of Biblical knowledge knows, the Bible lends no support to the idea of racially segregated congregations.  It’s bitterly ironic therefore, that we Christians are not quite as quick to recognize other forms of segregation.   Surely age segregation within the Church has no more biblical warrant than racial segregation and I would contend that it is equally as destructive to the Church because it fragments the body of Christ.  Surely, the old and the young are members of one body – Christ’s body.

I contend that God has designed it this way and that we need each other.