Thyatira - the Challenge of Leadership

I have here a copy of an ancient letter which archaeologists just recently discovered in the Holy Land. It is a business letter which apparently was addressed to Jesus of Nazareth. It was written by an executive of an organization known as the Jordan Valley Management Consulting Group, and it deals with a personnel matter that Jesus had sought their advice on. I’d like to read you the text of this letter…

Dear Jesus:

Thank you for submitting the resumes of the 12 men you are considering for management positions in your new organization. We have interviewed the individuals in question, have administered our standard vocational aptitude tests, and have drawn up a psychological profile of each candidate.

It is our opinion that most of these men are significantly lacking in the educational and vocational qualities necessary for the type of enterprise you are undertaking. Their diverse backgrounds and temperaments make it unlikely that they would ever function well as a team. In addition, there are some serious psychological issues which you need to be aware of.

Specifically, Simon Peter is emotionally unstable, highly impulsive, and given to fits of temper. His brother Andrew has absolutely no leadership qualities whatsoever. The two Zebedee brothers, James and John, show a pronounced tendency to place their own personal interests above loyalty to the company. Thomas demonstrates a consistently skeptical and negative attitude which will tend to undermine the morale of the group.

We feel it our duty to inform you that Matthew has been censured by the Better Business Bureau of Judea for his questionable business practices. Likewise, Simon the Zealot is wanted by the authorities, has pronounced radical leanings and registered a high score on the manic-depressive scale. We recommend that you continue to search for individuals who are better qualified than these men.

It is our conclusion that only one of your candidates shows great leadership potential. He is a man of ability and resourcefulness, having a keen business mind, and strong organizational skills. He has already established a network of contacts in the upper-level management echelon of the Jerusalem business community, and is highly motivated, ambitious, and responsible. We recomend that you hire Judas Iscariot as your financial controller and executive assistant.

yours truly -

Jordan Valley Management Consultants

We come today to the issue of leadership in the church. We have been studying the 7 churches in the book of Revelation and we have found that each one of them was wrestling with a particular challenge that the church still wrestles with today.

- Ephesus - the issue was love
- Smyrna - the issue was opposition
- Pergamum - the issue was values

Now we come to the church at Thyatira. Oddly enough, while Thyatira was the least important of these 7 cities, it received the longest letter from the Lord. Let’s see what he wrote…

To the angel of the church in Thyatira write: These are the words of the Son of God, whose eyes are like blazing fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze. I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first.

Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols. I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling. So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds.

Now I say to the rest of you in Thyatira, to you who do not hold to her teaching and have not learned Satan’s so-called deep secrets (I will not impose any other burden on you): Only hold on to what you have until I come.

To him who overcomes and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations— ‘He will rule them with an iron scepter; he will dash them to pieces like pottery’— just as I have received authority from my Father. I will also give him the morning star. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

Thyatira was a small city, not easily defensible, and not noted for any outstanding features. It was situated in a valley about 30 km southeast of Pergamum, on the main trade route that came from the east.

Because of that, it became a thriving center of trade and commerce. Archaeologists have uncovered a lot of coins around Thyatira, which indicates that it had a pretty robust economy.

Certain businesses did especially well in Thyatira. There was a large garment industry, dealing in woolen and linen goods, as well as in dyes. In fact, one of the most famous women in the NT called Thyatira her hometown—Lydia, who was a dye merchant. She sold purple dye.

There was also a thriving metalworking industry in the city. Thyatiran brass and bronze were in demand all over the ancient world, especially for use in military armor—helmets and shields, etc.

There were also many leatherworkers, potters, and bakers in Thyatira, and each of these industries had its own trade guild or, as we might call it today—a union.

Ephesus = Toronto: because it was the largest commercial, financial center of Asia
Smyrna = Vancouver: because it was the most beautiful city of Asia
Pergamum = Ottawa: because it was the political capital of Asia
Thyatira = Hamilton: because it was a union town

These unions, or trade guilds, in Thyatira were a lot like social clubs—somewhat similar to the trade unions in modern day Japan. They provided a social environment in which their members could get together for meals, go on trips, have special festivals and parties and events, etc. There were definite advantages to being a member of one of these trade guilds.

If you belonged to the leatherworkers guild, for example, you could get special seats at the theater. Or if you belonged to the bronze workers union, you might get an extra discount on your purchases in the marketplace.

But the problem for the Christians in Thyatira was that these trade guilds also had a religious component to them. Each trade guild had its own patron deity. The bronze workers would worship Apollo. The bakers would worship Artemis, and so on. Their festivals and parties and dinners would be held in the temple of that deity, and would recognize and honor that deity. The banquet menu would include meat that would first have been offered on the altar of that god.

And that’s not all. Often these banquets would get out of hand and degenerate into wild parties, with all sorts of drunkenness and immoral behavior going on. Something similar to the notorious modern-day “office Christmas party”.

So you can see how this would create a real dilemma if you were a Christian living in Thyatira. You couldn’t, in good conscience, go to these feasts and participate in these pagan revelries. But you couldn’t be a member of one of these trade guilds unless you did.

And if you weren’t a member of one of these trade guilds, in a strong union town like Thyatira, you couldn’t make a living. So the Christians in Thyatira were really on the horns of a dilemma. Let’s examine what Jesus said to them.

He begins by reminding them of who he is in v. 18, and he uses two images which would have “rung a bell” for those people…

To the angel of the church in Thyatira write: These are the words of the Son of God, whose eyes are like blazing fire - that immediately brought to mind the image of Apollo, the sun god, who was one of the patron deities of Thyatira.

and whose feet are like burnished bronze - that expression “burnished bronze” (or KJV - “fine brass”) was a single word in Greek which appears only here in the NT. It is the word “chalcicolibanos”, and it was the trade name for Thyatiran bronze. It’s like if you’re from Hamilton and you say “Dofasco Steel”.

Jesus is saying here “I relate to your situation there in Thyatira. I know all about you. I know what you are facing. And I can provide for you better than anything you have there in Thyatira.”

Secondly, he reviews the church’s performance. Look at verse 19…

I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first.

Wow, this is a pretty good review! This was a growing church with many positive qualities. They were loving. They were full of faith. They were involved in serving God. And they were hanging in there—they were perseverant. And their performance curve was going upward—they were doing more than they did at first. Unlike the church at Ephesus, they hadn’t fallen from where they once were; they hadn’t lost their first love.

It would have been nice if the Lord could have stopped there. But there was a problem. No church is perfect. If you find a perfect church, don’t join it, because then it won’t be perfect anymore. Every church has its problems, and the church at Thyatira was no different.

And that brings us to Jesus’ rebuke in v. 20…

Here is the situation: a woman in the church had gained a position of influence—she was a teacher; and because of that, she was in a position of leadership. She called herself a prophetess.

Now you have to understand that the gender thing was not the problem. This passage is not teaching us that it was the fact that she was a woman teacher that was the problem.

The NT tells us that a woman can be a teacher. In Acts 18, a Jewish man named Apollos showed up at the church at Ephesus and began to teach the OT. He was a great teacher, but he didn’t know the whole story about Jesus yet. He had only heard about the baptism of John, looking forward to the coming Messiah.

So a woman named Priscilla, along with her husband Aquila, took him home and “explained to him the way of God more adequately”. Priscilla, who is mentioned first in that context, was a teacher.

And a woman can be a prophet, as well. When we hear the word “prophet”, we usually think that of someone who foretells the future. Now in the Bible, a prophet sometimes did that. But more often, we find that a prophet’s job is to give a divine word for the present—to teach people what God’s will is in their present situation.

Prophecy is one of the spiritual gifts listed in the NT - it is listed in Romans 12, and 1 Cor. 12, and Ephesians 4. And a woman could have this gift, because in Acts 21, we read about the four daughters of Philip the evangelist, who were prophetesses.

So the problem in Thyatira wasn’t a gender problem; it wasn’t that this person was a woman—it was the content of her teaching; it was the impact of her leadership in the church that was the problem.

The Lord calls her Jezebel, but that probably was not her real name. Why do I say that? Because if she was a Gentile from Western Asia, she wouldn’t have had the name Jezebel. It wasn’t a local name. And if she was Jewish, she certainly wouldn’t have had the name Jezebel, any more than a Jewish couple today would name their son Adolf. The name Jezebel connotes great evil and spiritual disaster for the Jews.

Jezebel was the daughter of Ethbaal, the king of Sidon. You can read about her in the book of 1 Kings. Sidon was a kingdom right next door to Israel—where present day Lebanon is. It was an important commercial and economic power in the Middle East in the 9th century BC.

King Ahab of Israel figured it would be a good idea politically, and economically, and diplomatically to marry the daughter of the King of Sidon. That’s what they did in those days to cement alliances. So Ahab married her, and that is how Jezebel came to be the queen of Israel.

The only problem with that arrangement was that when Jezebel came to Israel, she brought her pagan religion with her. She worshiped the god Baal, and as their queen, she introduced the people of Israel to Baal worship. She sponsored it, she promoted it, and she began to persecute and slaughter the prophets of Yahweh. She had a famous run-in with the prophet Elijah, and she came within an ace of wiping out the entire line of David.

And this all happened because Ahab was merely doing what he thought would be the expedient thing to do.

Jezebel was a wicked, manipulative person who would stop at nothing to get her way. And so down through history, the name Jezebel has come to stand for deviousness and depravity, all wrapped up in a female package.

The Lord is most likely using the name Jezebel here as an epithet. An epithet is a way of labeling a person—a way of describing their most prominent characteristic.

What the Lord is saying is “You tolerate that Jezebel of a woman. You have allowed her to become a leader in your church, even though she is teaching you to accommodate yourself to these pagan practices of the trade guilds in your city. She is telling you that if you want to survive and get ahead economically, you need to go to these parties, you need to attend these feasts. You need to eat the meat that has been offered to idols.”

Because the church at Thyatira had such low standards for leaders, this woman led them into ungodly conduct, and that would lead to some unavoidable consequences. The Lord details some of these consequences in v. 21-23. There will be judgment. There will be suffering. There will even be death.

It brings to mind the problem in the Corinthian church, where they were abusing the celebration of the Lord’s Table. And Paul wrote in 1 Cor. 11: That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. God will discipline a church which falls into sin.

What is the remedy? It’s found in v. 24-25 - “Hold on, I’m comin’!” There were many people in the church who did not follow her teaching; who had not set about to learn Satan’s so-called deep secrets. This refers to an idea that was current in those days that a Christian could plumb the depths of physical evil without being harmed in spirit. The false teachers talked about having to enter Satan’s stronghold and learn all of Satan’s deep secrets in order to defeat him.

And the Lord simply encourages them to hold on to what they have—hold on to the sound teaching they had received.

A reward is promised in v. 26-29:

To him who overcomes and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations—‘He will rule them with an iron scepter; he will dash them to pieces like pottery’— just as I have received authority from my Father. I will also give him the morning star.

There was a leadership problem, an authority problem, in the church at Thyatira. It’s interesting that the letter to the church ends on this note of authority. Jesus is the source of all authority.

Well, what is the relevance of all this for us today? Simply this: it is enormously important that a local church have godly leadership. A church can have a great program, and a great spirit, and great faithfulness, and be doing all sorts of good things for the Lord—just as the church at Thyatira, but if that church does not have sound leadership, it will lead to disaster.

Every church needs to have leaders whose:

lives are godly - they are walking with the Lord
teaching is sound - they know the Word and can communicate it
influence is positive - they leave people with a desire to know Christ; to grow in Christ

Here at Erindale, I believe we have been blessed with that kind of leadership. It has been my privilege to get to know our elders and I can tell you that they are men who truly love God.

And they take their responsibility as elders very seriously. They spend a lot of time thinking about you and praying for you. Our chapel fellowship is always on their hearts.

I think it would be appropriate to recognize these men this morning, so I’m going to do something unusual. I haven’t told them that I was going to do this, but I want each of our elders to stand: Bill Armstrong; Mark Coombs; Gerry Crawford; Edwin Rix; and George Tabet. I want you men to come to the front of the church because I want the church to recognize you and to pray for you.

While they are coming, let me remind all of us about what the Scripture says about church leaders:

1 Timothy 5:17 The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor

Hebrews 13:7 Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.

Hebrews 13:17 Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you.

Prayer for elders