This Sunday’s 11:00 AM worship service (July 28) will not be livestreamed or recorded. If you are not able to join us in person, watch one of the services you missed or rewatch one of your old favorites! Sorry for the inconvenience. The livestream will be back next Sunday, August 4.
- Preacher: Steve Constable
- Sermon Series: Seven Letters for Seven Churches
- Sermon Title: Thyatira
- Scripture: Revelation 2:18-29
SERMON DISCUSSION NOTES
THYATIRA
Read Revelation 2:18-29
1. If all we knew about this church was what we are told in verse 19, what would your evaluation of the church include?
2. What would Jesus write about you or your church in the realm of love? faith? service? perseverance?
3. The church in Thyatira looked good on the surface, but under the spiritual appearance was a heart of wickedness. This was not just a church tempted to do evil but one that had married the world and moved in with it. How did that wickedness reveal itself in the church at Thyatira (v. 20)?
4. Jesus calls the leader of this sinful element Jezebel—not because that was her real name but because she had the same character as a wicked queen in the Old Testament. Jezebel was not a believer in the Lord. She was an idolater who led the people of Israel into idol worship and immorality. How do you think this woman was able to lead some of the Christians in Thyatira away from God’s standard of holiness?
5. This woman also claimed to have access to secret wisdom by calling herself a prophet (v. 20) and by teaching “Satan’s so-called deep secrets” (v. 24). How would you evaluate a person in your church or study group who claimed to speak by direct authority from God, or said they possessed spiritual truth that no one else had seen?
6. Does God respond to this woman with grace or with judgment, or both? Explain. What instruments of chastening does Jesus threaten to use (vv. 22-23)?
7. Has the Lord ever used harsh measures in your life, or in a friend’s life, to bring you to repentance? Share that story.
8. Not everyone in the church had followed the false teacher. What encouragement does Jesus give the faithful remnants at Thyatira (vv. 24-25)?
9. Jesus wants a pure church, but a church will only be as pure as the people in it. As you allow God’s truth and God’s Spirit to search your life, confess the habits or entanglements that should be removed or the attitudes that should be changed. Ask someone to pray with you about this. How can they hold you accountable to be obedient to God?
10. How do you respond when you are confronted about wrong and sin in your life? Pray that God will shatter any moral complacency in your life—the tendency to tolerate anything not pleasing to Jesus.
Questions taken from Douglas Connelly’s Seven Letters to Seven Churches InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition. (pp. 26-29).