A Greater Punishment

TO READ: Revelation 2:18-29

Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches.

Revelation 2:29

Thyatira was the church that wouldn’t listen. In the Bible, the word hear means perceiving with the mind and understanding with the heart. Are we willing to hear what we don’t want to hear? Do you ever open your Bible and try not to let the words sink in?

Perhaps you have settled for a cease-fire in the war between a difficult relative and yourself, instead of initiating “peace talks.” Maybe you are absorbed by ambition, and you don’t want to listen to the Lord tell you not to strive in such a way.

We don’t know how the church in Thyatira was born, but it could well have been through Lydia’s witness; she was a native of that city (Acts 16:14). Perhaps the people would no longer listen to God’s voice through that godly woman, or maybe they just enjoyed their sexual sin too much to give it up. Whatever the reason for their dullness of hearing, the Lord rebuked them for being willfully deaf. The “Jezebel party,” those in the church who were tolerating fornication, adultery, and perversion, must be dealt with, Jesus insisted. Jesus explained that he “gave her time to repent” (Revelation 2:21).

God has given us time to repent as well. Some of us need to use our inner ears, to listen to the Spirit, and to give up our sin, sexual or otherwise. Until we do, we risk a much more dreadful punishment than even Satan can devise. We risk the judgment of our God (Revelation 2:23)!