#04 For the church in Thiatira

[AI translation] Of the seven letters Jesus wrote to the churches in Asia Minor, this is the longest, and it is the smallest of the seven. It shows that Jesus never tailors what he says to how many people are listening. The extent of the blessings He gives never depends on whether two or three people are huddled over the Bible, or whether a huge, gleaming church is packed to overflowing with a distinguished congregation. The weight and validity of Jesus' words never depend on the audience, but on Him alone. He was speaking to a handful of Thyatira, and that is why His message is vitally valid and important for us. This small community therefore receives the longest letter. It is as if Jesus were saying that it is the humblest, the weakest who need to be shepherded most, the smallest who need to be surrounded by the greatest love and fraternal heart. In this letter, as in the others, there is praise, lamentation and promise. Let us now look at them one by one.It is worth reflecting on what Jesus considers praiseworthy in a church. This is where the difference between our understanding of the church and Christ's understanding of the church becomes most apparent. We tend to rejoice when we have as many souls as possible in our records, and Jesus is curious to know how many of them are named
He has in the Book of Life. Each year we report how many have been born and died in the church, but Jesus would consider it more important how many have been born again and how many are still in a state of spiritual death? We are happy to count how many came to worship, Bible study, communion, and Jesus keeps count of how many did not come because no one came for them, no one urged them. We want the Christian Church to be a respected cultural force, and Jesus wants it to be the fighting army of His invisible spiritual kingdom, fighting the battle without compromise for the Kingdom of God on earth. We are looking at who is in what role or office in the church, and Jesus is looking at which presbyter, which member of the church is studying His will from the Bible every day, and which is living a serious life of prayer? We count in a miserly way or with a spiritual shrug of the shoulders how much of our income we have already given to the glory of God, and Jesus counts how much of our income we have left in our pockets. So Jesus sees things very differently than we do. We don't really know each other or ourselves, we are deceived by appearances, but Jesus says, "I know your things." Even your hidden things, your secret things, even things that no one knows about you except you, even things that you yourself are not aware of. He sees things differently, and obviously His vision is the truer, the more real! If only we could see ourselves and our church as He sees us.
According to the letter we read, Jesus praises the church for its love, service, faith and patience! Jesus says that this is what is important in the life of a Christian church: love, service, faith and patience. In fact, love and service are one and the same, because service is nothing more than love manifested in a particular case! Or I could say that love for God is made visible and demonstrated in service to one's fellow human beings. Even if one says that one loves God, this can be measured quite precisely by the service one renders to man. The two words can be linked in this way: love-service. Because these two are always true only together. How does your love for God manifest itself in service? Or: is your love truly manifested in your service in the world? For love without service is indeed only sentimentality, empty chatter, deceiving oneself and others, that is, it is not love; - and on the other hand, the service, the work, which man does not do out of love: it is a soul-draining drudgery, a forced toil, without the blessing of God upon it. In a world full of malice, intrigue, drilling, distrust, the commandment to all followers of Jesus is almost twofold: love and serve! Serve in love and love in service! Today, more than ever, strive to make every work, every manifestation, a service of love, for God, for the world, for man!
Jesus also praised the little church of Thyatira for its faith and for its patience. This is almost one and the same, because tolerance is precisely the test of faith. To endure is to be able to believe in the God who, at the cost of a terrible sacrifice, at the cost of Jesus' death, began the good in this world, and what he began, he will finish. Today, indeed, almost the very existence of humanity depends on this faith and tolerance not being lost from our souls! Today, when, faced with the threat of the end of the world, a large part of humanity is sinking into hopeless pessimism, while a smaller part of humanity is trying to inspire the despairing with faith in the future by uttering optimistic slogans, - we, the followers of Jesus, are commanded to be doubly patient and to believe! Be neither pessimistic nor optimistic, but a man of hope! Believe, but not in romantic ideas or phrases, but in the God who brought out of the most hopeless death, out of that Golgotha, the greatest hope, the resurrection! Therefore, we can rightly believe in a future of justice over sin, a future of life over death, a future of glory over suffering, a future of peace over warfare. In the resurrection of Jesus, our hope recognises not only the eternity of the heavenly world, but also the future of life on earth, the future of the humanity for which Jesus died on the cross. I dare to look to the future of humanity on this earth with a certain hope, because on this earth there once stood a bloody cross where God raised from the most hopeless death a whole new life. That is why we know that our work, let us say: our labour of love, our service of love, is not in vain in the Lord. Believe and endure, that is, hope, for you have every reason to do so!
Having said these things, Jesus now tells the church in Thyatira his own complaint. What is this complaint? In short, that the spirit of Jezebel has reared its head in the church! Bible-reading people know that this Jezebel was the wife of the worst remembered of the Jewish kings, Ahab, whom the king had brought with him from a foreign land. This woman also brought with her the worship of foreign gods, and established the worship of Baal and Astarte in her new homeland. She taught the people of God to 'limp two ways', to 'serve two masters'. He taught the people of God how to worship two deities with one heart, how to sacrifice both on the altar of God and on the altar of Baal. How to attend two services at the same time: the interpretation of the law in the synagogue and the orgy of Baal. He did not want the people of God to abandon the God of their ancestors, the one true God, only to attend the pagan worship in addition! The two can go together! So, he did not tempt them to apostasy, but to polytheism, to double-heartedness, to divided worship. He wanted to make them believe that the two were not mutually exclusive, that it was possible to serve two masters.
Well, this is the spiritual attitude that the Scriptures call fornication. God and His people are in league with one another. This is a very beautiful and expressive analogy of the Old Testament. The New Testament uses a similar image when Jesus compares the relationship of His church to that of a bride and groom. The purity of this marriage is jealously guarded by God, and unfaithfulness to this marriage, the breaking of this marriage, is called adultery in Scripture. For indeed it is: spiritual fornication. When a soul gives itself to two or more masters for obedience, service, worship: it is indeed the most abominable spiritual fornication. And the danger of this was manifested in the life of the church at Thyatira. It was not from the outside that the faith of the church was threatened by some danger, like the persecution in Pergamos, but from within, by a split, a spiritual division between two masters, a spiritual limping between the Lord God and an idol god. The temptation here was not to break the covenant allegiance with God, but to break it. The danger here was not apostasy, not apostasy as in the other churches of the day, but double-mindedness! The most dangerous temptation of the Tempter is when he tries to make man, the believer, believe that evil and good can coexist, that the pure and the impure can coexist, that one can turn to God and to idols with the same heart!
Do you see how modern and eternal this problem is? Is this not what you struggle with in your daily life: serving two masters? Many people now almost believe, and take it for granted, that there is no other way to live today unless one takes on this double-mindedness. It is in such small things that this is realised, that there is, for example, hatred and love in the same heart. From the same heart, there is a flame of hatred for some and a flame of love for others! So which is the real one? Or when one can combine faith in one's heart with concern. Which is the real one? Or when one thinks: prayer is beautiful, let us not abandon it, for it would be a pity to erase this beautiful "colour" from life, but one needs the elbow, otherwise one will fall behind in the rush. Some people confess God here in the church, but out in the world, where it is not fashionable, they themselves fit in with the ideals of their surroundings. You think: today you have to serve two masters, because that's life! And in this double-mindedness, a man's soul grinds on unnoticed! It is the fact that one is different at home and another at work; one is different at church and another at home; one is different among his children and another among his friends. He wears a mask here and there. He doesn't dare admit to himself how much he grinds between the two, when he so wants to find peace and live one life! To be at home with God and not wander off. You no longer know what is right and wrong, what is allowed and what is not, and you are slowly coming to accept that this is life!
But you feel that God wants a whole heart, not a divided life. God does not want perfect faith, but simply faith! The kind of faith that every sincere Christian man has: stumbling, doubting, powerless, but - faith! Try for once to always be the same! An inner schizophrenia (split consciousness) of faith cannot last long! I knew an old pastor who could never separate pulpit and life. He never said a word he could not say from the pulpit. He was called the "father of the Hungarian Belmissiion", Aladár Szabó. But not only a pastor can be such a single-minded man. A report appeared in the June issue of the journal Kortárs last year. The journalist spoke to the commander of a group of mine rescue workers. Mine rescue workers do a very difficult job: if there is an accident somewhere, they are alerted and carry out life-threatening rescue work. If a mine rescue worker tells you he is not afraid when he hears the horn honking, don't believe him. I jump out of bed when I hear the clock at home. - How much do you earn? - Less than when I was a boy. - Then why do you do it? - On orders. - What orders? - On orders of love. I'm a Baptist. There's a Baptist church here in Komlo in the seventies. There are miners, postmen, clerks. When I was a Václav, I shared a part of my salary with my clergyman, because he had four children. The other farmers laughed at me: are you out of your mind, looking for something else? You don't understand, I told them. All four legs of the world's table are broken, and there is only one brick to support it: helping people help each other...
It's no good living a divided life, with our hearts drawn to God and our interests tied to the world. Let us not split our faith! The greatest danger of the Christian life is not what comes from the outside: not persecution, not suffering, but what comes from within: hardening. Only then can we truly serve in love and love in service.
Finally, in the promise, Jesus says: "To him who overcomes, ... I will give the morning star." (Rev 2:26-28) He who overcomes: so Jesus expects His follower to overcome, to overcome weariness, unbelief, hopelessness, double-mindedness. The morning star is a harbinger of the coming day. When it rises, however dark it may be, its fate is already sealed, for the new day is approaching inexorably. So he who triumphs shines like a morning star. Every soul of Christ is a harbinger of the approach of a dawn that will disappoint and disillusion no one. Imagine what a dawn will break when souls shining with the heavenly brightness of Christ begin to dawn and shine here and there!
That is how we can most surely serve the hopeful future!
Amen
Date: 19 June 1966.