21.6.26 Evening Service

Good evening everyone. A warm welcome to the service this evening. I didn't give out much in the way of intimations this morning. I don't intend to say too much tonight either.

! Just to double check, the YF is meeting tonight after the service here. So the young folks can note that. And the second thing I thought it would be good to intimate this morning is that Adrian Glenn is 90 today.

So he's not with us in the building, but I know he is watching online. So we would wish him all the best and assure him of our prayers himself and Ina.

And if you see him, you can wish him a happy birthday. We will begin this time of worship and we'll sing to God's praise from Psalm 139 and the first two stanzas of the psalm.

Psalm 139 and the first two stanzas. O Lord, thou hast me searched and known, thou knowest my sitting down, and rising up, yea, all my thoughts afar to thee are known.

My footsteps and my lying down, thou compassest always, thou also most entirely art, acquaint with all my ways. These two stanzas of Psalm 139 we sing in Gaelic and remain seated to sing.

And after that, Ian will come and lead us in a prayer in Gaelic, please. . Thank you.

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Amen.

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If you could open your...

And you can see on a map, you know,...

introducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality.

Behold, I will throw her onto a sick bed, and those who commit adultery with her, I will throw into great tribulation unless they repent of her works. And I will strike her children dead, and all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works.

But to the rest of you in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching, who have not learned what some call the deep things of Satan, to you I say I do not lay on you any other burden, only hold fast what you have until I come.

The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, and he will rule them as with a rod of iron.

And when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father, and I will give him the morning star.

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Amen. And may God bless that reading of his word.

To us we'll sing again now to God's praise from Mission Praise 1164. Come, O fount of every blessing.

To my heart to sing your face.

Steams of mercy never ceasing, call for songs of my disgrace. Songs of God's abundant treasure, song by angels, tongues above.

Songs that tell them my best pleasure, of my Lord's unchanging love. I remember God's great mercy, by his help I've saved in love.

And I know he will not fail me, but will surely bring me home. Jesus taught me when a stranger, wandering far away from God, and to rescue me from danger, shed for me his precious blood.

Through God's grace I am his better, daily I this God renew.

Let that grace form like a better, find I wandering far to you. Prove to wander, Lord, I feel it.

Prove to leave the Lord I love. Take my heart, O take and seal it. Seal it from your courts, O.

If you could open your Bibles again, please, at Revelation chapter 2.

And let's pray as we come back to that passage. Lord God, we thank you for your word, and we thank you for these letters that we are able to read, and we thank you that, just as they were applicable and relevant to the church all these years ago, in a place far from here, we recognize that these letters are applicable to our own lives, and relevant to your church here at this time.

And so we pray that you would help us to hear what you have to say to us. We pray that you would give us eyes to see all that you would have us see, and we pray that you would open our hearts, and that you would work within our hearts, that we would have hearts which are responsive to your word, and that as we sang, that we would have hearts that are tuned to sing your praise.

We pray, Lord, that you would help us as we gather here in this place. We pray on for other places who gather around your word as we do. We think of Gordon and Helmstale and Julian as they start the six-week placement there, and we pray that that would be a time of blessing.

We pray that you would give them strength, and that you would give them encouragement, and all that they do is they seek to serve you in that place, as they continue to respond in obedience to your call upon their lives.

Bless them, we pray, in that placement. We pray also for Farah, as he preaches in Graver tonight. We ask that you would give him the words to say. We pray that you would work in that congregation also, at this time, and also as we prepare and anticipate Scott and Fiona and the family going there.

We ask, Lord, that you would do a great work for your glory in that place. We pray for the congregations around us, the Church of Scotland, for the Free Presbyterian Church.

We pray for those who meet in Scalpey and those who meet in Northden and Leaverborough, and across Lewis, across the nation and all nations, wherever Christ crucified is preached.

We ask, Lord, that you would be at work, that you would be bringing people to faith in Jesus. We pray especially for places where there is persecution.

We think of brothers and sisters in Nigeria. We think of brothers and sisters in China, as we read of attacks there this week in Somalia.

There are so many places where we are not told of the suffering that your people go through. But we thank you that you are the God who searches and who knows the whole of your world.

And we thank you that as we think of them and as we remember, as some that we have heard of, Lord, that you would be at work and that you would protect, that you would encourage, and that even in the midst of dark times, that the light of Christ would break through.

We ask, Lord, that you would help us as we think about this week that we have just come into. We pray thankful for the fact that you are the God who is with us and who weeps with those who weep and who rejoices with those who rejoice.

And we pray for Adrian and for Ina. And we thank you, Lord, for them. We thank you for Adrian and for these 90 years which are celebrated today.

Bless him, Lord, we pray, even in poor health at this time. We pray that he would know that inward renewal of day by day being in your presence. And for Ina also, we pray that you would bless her and bless them in their marriage and bless the home and the extended family.

We ask, Lord, also that you would be with those who are struggling, those who are grieving, as we thought this morning. We continue to pray for those whose hearts are sore.

We pray for those who are recovering from surgery and those who anticipate more surgery. We can think of those in our congregation, like Shona, who waits for another procedure.

And we ask that you would protect her and that you would give her strength as she goes through difficult providence after difficult providence.

Help her to know that you are with her. And we thank you for how bright her testimony is and how steady she is in her perseverance. We bring her to you.

We pray on for Lydia. And we ask that as she prepares to come home this week, that you would give her strength and that she would be able to come back. We pray for ongoing treatment if that's necessary.

We pray, Lord, for increased health and strength. So we commit her and Peggy and Andrew and Rory, the whole family, to you. We pray for Elaine as she watches at a distance also.

Bless our Lord, we pray. and we ask, Lord, for your hand to be upon that whole family at this time. And we can think of others as well, maybe not in this community, but members of our family have the promise of one who is with us through every difficult experience.

And we thank you that if we are in Christ, we are more than conquerors. So help us, we pray, and speak to us through your word now as we as we bow before you.

And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. I wonder if you would be shocked if you received tomorrow morning a personal letter from the king.

We're going through our mail and we see the brown letters, the bills, we see the flyers, we see the things that we're all accustomed to seeing, and then a fancy letter with the royal seal, and we open up and it's a personal message from the king.

If I was to receive that, I would be beyond shocked because why would the king write to me? I'm just an ordinary little person, an unknown person in a fully unknown place.

I wouldn't expect the king to know who I am or have any great interest in me. And when we think about this letter that's before us, we have in the heading, this is a letter to the church in Thyatira.

Thyatira. And Thyatira as a city was a bit like I suppose most of us are as people. Thyatira was a small city.

It wasn't considered to be very important. It was probably the least important of the seven cities that are written to in this section.

They wouldn't expect to receive any great attention, but what we see here is that Jesus, the son of God, the king of kings, he writes his longest letter in this series to Thyatira, the smallest and the least significant place.

So what we see from the outset is that Jesus seems to be very interested in what's going on in this little, fully unknown church.

And there's a lesson there in application right from the beginning, and it's this. Jesus sees and Jesus is interested interested in the people and the places that others often overlook.

Jesus doesn't judge us on how pretty we are or how popular we are. Jesus doesn't judge us on how powerful or how significant we are.

Jesus is interested in the people and the places that other people ignore. And that's something that we should think about and take in even to our week.

When you're in the school canteen, when you and I are maybe in a gathering hall someplace, if we look around we can almost always see somebody or a few that seem to be on the margins with nobody to speak to, maybe slightly different, not part of the popular group.

Jesus would have us not overlook but reach out and show love to those that others may turn away from.

So all that by way of introduction and now we actually come to the introduction. Four points in the time that we have.

The first point is the words of the Son of God. As we see the introduction as Jesus introduces himself to the church in verse 18, we have the highlight there that these are the words of the Son of God.

That's the first point. The second point is Jesus in verse 19 he notes works. This is a church that is working and there are works which are growing.

That's point number two. The third point from verse 20 and following is there is a very clear warning about a woman called Jezebel.

And the last point is there is this instruction in the last couple of verses and especially in the last verse, they and we are to wait for Jesus coming.

So that gives us a structure and we'll think now about the introduction in this letter. Verse 18, the words of the Son of God.

And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write, the words of the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze.

So in every one of these letters, Jesus, he introduces himself. He says something about himself as he starts to write to these churches.

And in this introduction, Jesus highlights three areas about himself. he draws attention to his mouth or his words.

He draws attention to his eyes and he draws attention to his feet. So first of all, his mouth or precisely his words.

Jesus, as he introduces himself in this letter, he highlights that the words that are being spoken are not just any words. We can pick up a letter, we can pick up a book and we can say they're just words.

But these words that we're reading, these words that they were reading on that first morning as they gathered, these were not just any words, these were the words of the Son of God.

And that's an amazing thing to consider. And that should strike us every time we come into this church or any church, that should strike us every time we open the Bible.

These are the words of the Son of God, the God who made all things, the God who sustains all things, the God who determines whether or not you and I have our next breath, God.

The God who is holy and pure and just and righteous and powerful and eternal, he speaks to us.

He is determined to speak to us through his word and he expects you and I to listen. whether we are in Thyatira or whether we are in Tarbert.

Jesus draws attention to his words, his mouth. The second thing Jesus draws attention to in this introduction are his eyes.

And probably when we meet somebody for the first time, even as we meet somebody we see regularly, the thing that we are most intent on, the thing that we get most information back from, are the eyes.

And there are some people, and when they look at you, it feels like their eyes are burning into your soul.

Some people, the way they look at you, you feel like you're being searched. I remember somebody once speaking about Gordon, who we were just praying for, and they said, you know, if Gordon asked me a question about a crime, I would confess to having done it, whether I was guilty or not, because he just has this searching, authoritative look and tone.

You feel like the eyes are reading you. And with Jesus, that's exactly true. As he looks into his church, as he looks into our lives, he sees everything.

You and I, we don't know what's going on in each other's lives, but Jesus, as he looks in on every person here, he sees everything.

He sees your search history. He sees your favorite TV channels. He sees your playlists. He sees our thoughts.

He sees our motivation. Nothing is hidden. We sang in Psalm 139 about the God who searches us and who knows us.

And in some ways, we might say that's unsettling. But actually, it's very freeing, isn't it, to know that we can be fully ourselves with Jesus.

Because he knows us better than we even know ourselves. And yet, he still loves us. and calls us to come to him.

And never pushes us away. No masks with Jesus. No pretenses with Jesus. You know, we can set up a social media Instagram page that presents and projects an image to the world that almost always is totally detached from the reality of our lives.

no point doing that with Jesus. Because his eyes are like a flame of fire and he sees everything.

And the last thing in the introduction is Jesus, he draws attention to his feet. His feet are like burnished bronze. And that's a symbol, it's a picture of strength and of purity.

David Strain says, with his eyes like fire, Jesus sees sin. And with feet like burnished bronze, Jesus stamps out sin.

And all that's in the introduction. and all these images that we see in this introduction, they take us back to Daniel chapter 10. And we're not going to go there just now, you can read it later.

And in Daniel chapter 10, Daniel sees a vision of the pre-incarnate Jesus. And now in John's vision and revelation, congregation, the same Jesus is speaking to the congregation in Thyatira, and the same Jesus is speaking to the congregation here.

We are reading, we are hearing the words of the Son of God. And so we're to listen because God has something to say to us.

So that's point number one, the words of the Son of God. Point number two is works which are growing. Verse 19, Jesus says, I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance.

So we see that in this church in Thyatira, this was not a lazy church. There can be churches that are very idle.

there's not much going on. There's no drive. They might be in maintenance mode, not mission mode. Well, Thyatira was not like that. They were working for the Lord.

And Jesus sees and Jesus knows their works of love and faith and service and patient endurance. And Jesus comments, he makes careful comment on these works.

And we can know that in application, just for our encouragement. Jesus sees and he knows our works. We may do things.

I know in this room, there are people who do things for the Lord that almost nobody else notices. and that's something that they want to keep that way.

But Jesus notices. He doesn't just see the people who are standing at the front or who are standing to pray and who are audible and visible.

Jesus sees everyone behind the scenes in every little act that is done. All the works that we do for him, he sees. Just as he saw in the church in Thyatira.

Matthew 10 42, Jesus says, And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.

So Jesus sees works in Thyatira and he makes comment, he commends the church for their good works.

And some of us might say, if I just hit pause for a moment, some of us might be tempted to say, I thought works weren't that important. I thought we were conservative, evangelical Christians.

I thought we were agreed on the fact that we were saved by grace, not works. And that's true, we are saved by grace.

Ephesians chapter 2 verses 8 and 9 makes that crystal clear. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is a gift of God, not the result of works, so that no one may boast.

So, from these two verses it's very clear that we are not saved by our works, works. But if we read on one more verse, we can see that we are saved for works.

We're not saved by works, we're saved by the work Jesus has done. But if we are saved by what Jesus has done for us, we are to work for him.

Ephesians 2 10 says, for we are God's workmanship, his handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

And, you know, one of the evidences that we are actually truly saved, sometimes we might wonder, am I actually a Christian? One of the evidences that we are truly saved is that we will want to work for God.

and our works will not be works where we're trying to gain favour with him. Our works will be an expression of our love and our thankfulness to him for all that he's done for us.

We could go to, when I survey the wondrous cross, how does that hymn end? It starts with a survey, a focus on the cross of Jesus, and it ends with that refrain, where the whole world of nature, mine, that were an offering far too small, love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.

And so the Christians in Thyatira, they were working. And it wasn't just a flurry of works when they first became Christians, they kept on keeping on.

Just like the Philippians this morning that we were thinking about, they kept on keeping on with their works. Jesus says in verse 19, your latter works exceed the first.

So the works that they were doing were works which were growing. Derek Thomas says Christians are meant to grow, and the Thyatira Christians had done just that.

Can I ask a question in application? And I always have to ask that question first of me, and I live with it for much longer than you do. But here's a question for us if we are Christians.

Are we growing? Not are we just over the line with a ticket for heaven, but are we growing as Christians?

Older Christians used to often ask that question of younger Christians, are you growing in grace? So are we?

If you look back to last year, and think about your walk with God, and then compare that with this year, has there been growth? Have we become stronger?

Do we look more like Jesus? Are we sinning less than we used to? Are we growing?

Imagine how bizarre it would be if we wanted to stay like babies all through our lives.

I mean, picture the madness of the sea, as we look around, even in the room. Imagine if we were all sitting here, rolling around on the floor, in our nappies, suking away on bottles of milk, playing with our toys, just endless babies.

That would not be a good way to live. That's a ridiculous picture to think about, and yet, there are many Christians who seem very content with that.

Come along for an hour or two on a Sunday, but there's no desire, there's no ambition, there's no commitment to growing as Christians.

The church in Thyatira were growing. There's progress in their service of God, Jesus says, your latter works exceed the first.

Works that are growing. Third point, there's a warning about a woman, verse 20, But I have this against you, says Jesus, that you tolerate this 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.

If we think back to the first day that this letter was read, remember, these were letters in almost like a box set. And so, there were servants of God who were sent to churches and they read out the letters.

It wasn't just a letter for the church that they were attending, all the letters were read out. And if we think back to that first day in Thyatira, when this letter was read for the first time, I don't know, maybe in our mind's eye we can imagine a woman called Jezebel.

And she's sitting in the congregation and then as the letter continues to be read, she becomes increasingly flustered and agitated. We can imagine her disappearing out a side door, stressed.

That might have been the scene. It might have been that there was a woman called Jezebel in the congregation. In all probability, that's probably not what was happening.

The reference to Jezebel likely is a reference back to 1 Kings chapter 16. You can read that later. In that passage, there is a woman named Jezebel.

She's a wife of King Ahab, who was a weak king. And she essentially lured God's people away from God.

Jezebel was somebody who led God's people into sin and compromise. And it seems that in the church in Thyatira, there was somebody like Jezebel in the congregation, somebody, and she was in leadership.

She called herself a prophetess, a self-appointed role. She calls herself a prophetess. She claims to speak God's word, but actually what she was doing is she was going against God's word, and she was leading some people astray.

And the leaders of the church, the elders of the church, were cruelly aware of the presence of this Jezebel. They knew what she was doing, but they didn't want any trouble. They didn't want to rock the boat, and so they did nothing.

And now Jesus is looking in to this church in Thyatira with his eyes like a flame of fire, and he sees the presence and the influence of Jezebel, and Jesus takes issue with the leaders of the church because they tolerated her.

So what Jesus has against the church in Thyatira, it might seem strange to us, but it was the fact that they were too tolerant. And we might say, well, I thought it was nice to be tolerant.

In our culture, especially, we're told repeatedly we have to be super tolerant. But it's not always a good thing to be tolerant, is it?

If we think about this. If we knew that the boats of the bridge in Scalpy were getting weak and rusty, and the bridge was becoming unsafe, we wouldn't say, well, let's just tolerate it.

Off you go, John and Donald, enjoy your drive home. That would be the wrong thing to do. If we were on a boat, and that boat was letting in water as we sailed across the mountains, we wouldn't say, well, let's tolerate it.

If we saw a man running down the street in Edinburgh, some of us watched the video this week, with a machete going for whoever he could find that comes in his way, it wouldn't be the right thing for the priest to say, well, let's just leave him, let's just tolerate him.

If we saw somebody trying to lure our children away into danger, we wouldn't say, well, let's just tolerate them. And that's what Jezebel was doing.

She was leading God's children into danger, and Jesus says to the church, to the leaders in Thyatira, why are you tolerating her? And then Jesus says in verses 21 to 23, I will not tolerate her.

And if you're scanning verses 21 to 23 just now, we see from the words of Jesus that he is patient with this Jezebel.

He says, I have given her time to repent, but she will not. So Jesus says, you may not stop her, but I will stop her. And I will stop those who are like her, her children.

And they are serious words in verses 21 to 23. And what we learn from the tone of Jesus' words in these verses is that Jesus takes sin and compromise much more seriously than we often do.

Derek Thomas says, such words bring home the utter seriousness of God's judgments and the folly of trifling with sin.

sin. I wonder are any of us trifling with a particular sin this evening?

Not putting it to death, but hiding it away, keeping it as our pet. that's folly, madness.

And that's why Jesus speaks with so serious a tone. And as we hear this warning from Jesus, what lies behind the seriousness of the warning is love.

Jesus loves his children. And so Jesus wants to keep his children away from sin, away from Satan's attacks, and close to him.

A warning about a woman. And finally, the exhortation and the promise that comes in the last couple of verses, we can deal with under this last heading.

Jesus says, wait for his coming. verses 24 to 25, but to the rest of you in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching, that teaching of Jezebel, who have not learned what some call the deep things of Satan, to you I say, I do not lay on you any other burden, only hold fast until, only hold fast what you have until I come.

And just as we're finishing, Jesus, he's reminding his church then and now that he will come back into this broken world.

And so he says to them and he says to us, wait patiently for me. Hold fast. We sang earlier that we're prone to wander.

We know it. Jesus is saying, don't wander. Hold fast until I come. How do we hold fast?

Well, we hold fast. It's very simple. We hold fast by turning away from sin day by day and by turning to Jesus day by day.

So you hold fast, says Jesus. That's what I want you to do. And then he says, and this is what I will do for you if you're holding fast.

To the one who conquers, verse 26, and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my father, and I will give him the morning star.

And there's two things that Jesus promises to the Christian who keeps on keeping on. Number one, they will conquer. You'll be on the winning side, says Jesus.

And for many of these Christians back at that time, in these places, it did not feel like they were on the winning side. They felt like they were on the losing side.

they were under attack, they were pressurized, they were struggling, but the risen Christ says, when I come, you will share in conquering with me.

That was his promise to them. And that is not just a promise that was for them, that's a promise that is for Christians in Nigeria tonight, who may meet like we meet in absolute fear of being destroyed halfway through a worship service.

It doesn't feel to them like they're on the winning side, but Jesus says, you will conquer in the end of the day. So hold fast.

To Christians in China who were reading this week are under attack, meetings being raided, Jesus says, you will conquer, you're on the winning side. Christians in DPRK, Christians in Pakistan, fiercely persecuted, and Jesus says to them, as he says to the church in Thyatira and Smyrna and Pergamum and so on, you will conquer with me.

And this is a promise for us when we feel beaten down by this world. Jesus reminds us that if we are in Christ, Romans 8, what are we?

We are more than conquerors. So Jesus promises to these Christians who hold fast as they wait for his coming that they will conquer and the second, the last thing that Jesus promises is he promises, he promises them himself.

I will give him, says Jesus, the morning star. What is the morning star? Fast forward to Revelation 22, verse 16, and Jesus says in that verse, I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things for the churches.

I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star. Jesus says, I am the morning star. And he says to these Christians back then who are holding fast, waiting for his coming, I will give you myself.

And Jesus is our greatest need. And Jesus is the one who will satisfy our deepest desires.

We sometimes forget that, we sometimes go chasing all kinds of things in this world that we think will satisfy us, and they never do. But the one who will satisfy us makes that promise tonight, I will give you the morning star.

As the deer pants for the water, we'll sing in a second, so my soul longs after you. And the one, our soul longs for promises to give himself to us if we will trust him.

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Let's conclude by singing from Mission praise.

And number 37, we'll sing that hymn that I quoted just a moment ago, as the deer pants for the water, so my soul longs after you.

you as the deer pants for the water, so my soul walks after you.

you are old on my heart's desire and I long to worship you.

You are old on my strength, my shield, you are old may my strength and yield.

You alone are my heart's desire and I long to worship you.

I want you more than gold or silver only you can satisfy.

you alone are the real joy given at the apple of my eye.

You alone are my strength, my shield, you alone may my strength yield.

You alone are my heart's desire and I long to worship you.

You're my friend and you're my brother even though you are a community.

I love you more than any other so much more than anything. You alone are my strength, my shield, to you alone may my spirit yield.

You alone are my heart's desire and I long to love and I!

grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father and the fellowship of God the Holy Spirit be with us all now and forevermore. Amen.