Revelation 2;19-20
I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first. 20 But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols.
There is a reason medieval cathedral builders spent 20 years on the footers and the foundation. No matter how good the building looked as it went onward and upward, the downfall was inevitable if the foundation was not sound. It happened once. That may also be what was happening in Thyatira. Jesus said they were doing great things and endured and it was trending up. Yet there were cracks in the foundation. Jezebel, or whoever the woman was, got into the footers and created rot that drew the Christians away from Jesus and toward the pagan idols like Apollo with the immorality that accompanied the feasts. The fall will be great.
Come to Cape Community Church tomorrow to see where and how this is happening today. A new skyscraper in New York City has begun to lean because it was not built on the bedrock under Manhattan but on poured concrete of man’s design. Churches too are susceptible to “Jezebels” because their faith is not built on the rock but man-made business models. Great will be their downfall if, like Thyatira, there is not a remnant that remains faithful to the Rock of Ages. May we learn from the mistakes of Thyatira and be more intolerant of worldly designs.
O Heavenly Father, you are the Rock on which the strong house is built. May we rest on the bedrock principles of your word and the way of salvation. In Jesus’ name. Amen.