Main Idea: The church must rightly practice church discipline to guard her holiness and doctrine.

18 “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.

A Healthy Church Will Not Remain So If It Tolerates Sin

• 19, 20 “‘I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first. 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.
  • 1 Corinthians 5:6, 7
  • Galatians 6:1

Appropriate Church Discipline Reflects the Patience, Holiness, and Truth of Christ

• 21 I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality.
  • Matthew 18:15, 16
  • 2 Corinthians 2:5–8
  • 2 Corinthians 7:8, 9
• 22, 23 Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed, 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.
  • Isaiah 5:16
  • Romans 1:18
  • 1 Corinthians 5:4, 5, 11–13
• 24, 25 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.
  • Titus 3:9–11

A Faithful Church that Exercises Christ’s Authority Now Will Reign with Him Forever

• 26–29 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 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. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’
  • Psalm 2:7–9
  • Daniel 7:27
  • 1 Corinthians 6:1–3

So What?

• We must be a congregation that confronts sin and pursues holiness together.
  • Matthew 18:17–20