Sin is a Cancer; Faith is the Cure!

The Son of God is a title used often by John in his epistles. Look at just some of the meaning that is packed into this title:

I John 1:7 the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. I John 3:8 The Son of God appeared that He might destroy the works of the devil. I John 4:9 God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. I John 5:5 And who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? I John 5:20 And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding, in order that we might know Him who is true, and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.

Jesus, the Son of God cleanses us from sin, defeats Satan and his attempts to snare us, enables us to overcome the World, and gives us the ability to know Him deeply. The Son of God provides the remedy for the problems that the next feature exposes.

The eyes like a flame of fire, expressed in today’s terminology, are a surgical laser cutting through our cleverest facades and our inner most thoughts. God sees us when we are alone or far away from anyone we know. We cannot escape those EYES. If you are a person after God’s own heart, like the Psalmist, this will bring great comfort. If you are living in "secret" for fear someone may know you are harboring sinful desires, this can be most intimidating.

Psalm 139:7-12 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me," even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.

The Son of God clearly sees the trouble spots in our lives, and rather than simply pointing them out and leaving us writhing in guilt, He offers us complete freedom from the sin and guilt through His blood shed at the cross. However, He also stands ready to mete out the consequences of our sin if we refuse to repent and turn to Him.

Although never a large city, Thyatira was a thriving manufacturing and commercial center during New Testament times. Archaeologists have uncovered evidence of many trade guilds and unions here. Membership in these trade guilds, necessary for financial and social success, often involved pagan customs and practices such as superstitious worship, union feasts using food sacrificed to pagan gods, and loose sexual morality.

The Book of Revelation refers to a certain woman known as "Jezebel" who taught and beguiled the Christians at Thyatira to conform to the paganism and sexual immorality of their surroundings (Rev. 1:11; 2:18-29).

The apostle Paul's first convert in Europe was "a certain woman named Lydia... a seller of purple from the city of Thyatira" (Acts 16:14).

(from Nelson's Illustrated Bible Dictionary)

1. When we choose to tolerate sin and allow it to remain in our environment we start to become calloused to its hideous nature. What at first is unthinkable eventually becomes acceptable.
2. They may have reasoned, it was the only way to earn a living. We readily look for ways to rationalize and justify our actions when we are trying to survive.  It is possible that these people were required to belong to a trade guild before they could be employed.  As was mentioned in the above quote from Nelson's Illustrated Bible Dictionary, the guilds incorporated into their meetings idol worship, which included eating meat that had first been offered in worship to an idol and having sexual intercourse with priests and priestesses of the idol. 

Tolerance:  Society today raises this banner high.  There are only two things that our culture deems intolerable --  loss of personal freedom or choice and people who hold to the absolute truth in God's Word.  Sometimes we Christians tend to take Jesus’ statement in Matthew 7:1 "Judge not, that ye be not judged" as an instruction to live and let live. Yet, Jesus also said in John 7:24, "Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment." He expects us to identify sin and remove it from our midst. It’s not easy to confront sin in the lives of others. It is risky business that takes a great deal of personal soul searching and prayer. We must do this only out of love with a desire to redeem and restore. If we approach this task with any other motives, we should "remove the log out of our own eyes" before proceeding. We must rely completely upon the Lord’s guidance in these matters. He will show us the areas in our own lives that need cleansing, will give us the approach to take in helping others to find freedom from their sin, and will keep us mindful of our vulnerability to the same or similar sin. We also need to remember that the sin is what we are trying to eradicate, not those who are caught up in it. We must approach this business of confronting sin in the lives of others with extreme caution, but we must confront it nonetheless. Confrontation is uncomfortable for most people. We tend to shy away from it even when:

1. We have a right relationship with the Lord,
2. He has revealed clearly to us the devastating aspects of the sin,
3. we share His sense of urgency to remove it due to our love for the person caught in its snare, and
4. we realize that He is leading us to do the confronting.

The confrontation becomes increasingly more difficult when we ourselves are intrigued by the sin, and when the primary advocate of the practice is a strong, outspoken leader in the church. Jesus said that the Christians in Thyatira tolerated the woman Jezebel. I’m not sure that this was her real name. I rather think the name was used to cause the readers to think back to the kind of woman who led the Israelites astray during the reign of Ahab.

Jezebel

[JEZ uh bel] - The wife of Ahab, king of Israel, and mother of Ahaziah, Jehoram, and Athaliah (1 Kings 16:31). Jezebel was a tyrant who corrupted her husband, as well as the nation, by promoting pagan worship.

She was reared in Sidon, a commercial city on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, known for its idolatry and vice. When she married Ahab and moved to Jezreel, a city that served Jehovah, she decided to turn it into a city that worshipped Baal, a Phoenician god.

The wicked, idolatrous queen soon became the power behind the throne. Obedient to her wishes Ahab erected a sanctuary for Baal and supported hundreds of pagan prophets (1 Kings 18:19).

When the prophets of Jehovah opposed Jezebel, she had them "massacred" (1 Kings 18:4,13). After Elijah defeated her prophets on Mount Carmel, she swore revenge. She was such a fearsome figure that the great prophet was afraid and "ran for his life" (1 Kings 19:3).

(from Nelson's Illustrated Bible Dictionary)

(Copyright © 1986, Thomas Nelson Publishers)

In tolerating this woman, what were these people permitting to continue? What was this self styled prophetess teaching?

1. According to verse 20 she was teaching people that it was all right, in certain circumstances and under certain conditions, to participate in the sex rituals of idol worship.
2. The article in Nelson’s indicates that idol worship of this nature was part of belonging to the strong trade guilds of Thyatira. What if active membership in a trade guild was mandatory, and jobs were given only to guild members?
3. In verse 24, Jesus refers to her teaching as having to do with the "deep things of Satan." This could be nothing more than the pagan worship itself, but perhaps it was an attempt to beat Satan at his own game. Most pagan ritual is an attempt at controlling the prince of darkness and his hordes with incantations, symbols, and artifacts.   This church leader may have been telling the congregation that she knew how to protect them from Satan's snares even in the midst of their active participation in the idol worship of their guild.

It appears that the woman was helping the people of the church to rationalize their behavior because, "after all, they had to eat and provide for their families."   If active participation in the idolatry of the guild was a necessary prerequisite to earning a living, they would have been looking to circumvent the rules one way or the other.  They either needed to be relieved from the guild's requirements or from God's requirements.  This church leader, that Christ Jesus calls Jezebel, gave them the out they were looking for.  

Their situation had brought them to the end of their faith.  Circumstances had pushed them into a corner.  They had to provide for their families, and they couldn't see any way but to conform (at least in appearance) to the requirements of the trade guild.  Their real problem was that they were living be sight rather than by faith. (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:7)  Their temporal needs out weighed their eternal needs.  The suffering that resulted from being unemployed clouded their ability to trust God for a valid solution. 

• Where is the end of your faith? 

• What circumstances bring you to the point of taking matters into your own hands rather than trusting in God?