Slide 1:
Thyatira:
– The smallest of the seven church cities (by far)
– Population only around 25,000 to 30,000
– Least significant city, but longest lette
– Their chief god was Tyrimnos, son of Zeus (from coins)
– Modern-day city of Akhisar, Turkey

Slide 2: 
Thyatira: A “blue collar” town:

– Guilds in the city included leatherworkers, wool workers, weabers, bakers, tailors, dyers, blacksmiths, stone cutters, bronze smiths
– Specialized in “burnished bronze,” which gave off a reflection (chalkolibanos)

Slide 3:
Shrine of the Sambathe:
– Found the ruins of a Sybil shrine near the city
– She was Jewish prophetess
– She dealt in pagan witchcraft

Slide 4: 
Pattern for each letter:

– To the angel of the church in…
– A statement describing Jesus, but also relevant to the town
– Specific words to that church
– A statement on conquering
– “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says.”

Slide 5:
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. 19 “‘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. 21 I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality. 22 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,23 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. 24 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. 25 Only hold fast what you have until I come. 26 The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, 27 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.28 And I will give him the morning star. 29 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’” Revelation 2:18-29

Slide 6:
Old Testament References:

– Jezebel (1 Kings 16-21; 2 Kings 9:22-37)
– Eyes of Fire, Feet of Bronze – Daniel 10:6
– Authority Over the Nations – Psalm 2:8-9
– The Morning Star – Numbers 24:17, Isaiah 14:12, Revelation 22:16

Slide 7:
A great church: I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first.

A failing church: But I have this against you, that you tolerate…

Slide 8:
NOTICE! – Jesus is not pointing out the sin inside the town. He’s pointing out the sin inside the church.

Slide 9: 
We all need guardrails and roadblocks.

Slide 10:
Who provides the guardrails and roadblocks in your life?

Slide 11:
One of the key roles of the church is to provide accountability.

Slide 12: 
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved. Ephesians 2:1-5

Well, good morning and welcome to our 8:00 AM service. We are so glad that you’re here. Did you feel an hour of your life be sucked away last night? You know, it’s interesting. If it weren’t for for people posting like notices, my cell phone does it automatically. So I just, I wouldn’t even know. I would just wake up feeling miserable in the morning and wondering why I got such poor sleep. Special shout out to the parents in the room because you know, who doesn’t do time change very well, young children. So you are real troopers for being here. The good news, though, is in the fall you love to gain an hour at night, but then the entire fall you’re miserable because it’s dark at 3:00 PM So last night we lost an hour, which is miserable, but we are days away from it being light until 7:00 PM And so, praise God for that.

I, I have realized in life that I am almost a good singer. And here’s what I mean by that. The, the, in my experience, there’s really three things that you need to be a good singer. That there’s, there’s tone and there’s pitch. That’s an important part of it. Tone is the sound pitch is being able to sing on key. And then that third part is just being loud. And, and of those three things, I’m really loud so I can do that one, but I, I don’t have great tone or pitch. And do you know what they call a singer who has one of those three things, but not all three, they call ’em a bad singer, is what they call ’em, <laugh>. And so, despite the fact that I’m a bad singer, I sing a lot to my kids. I’m loud. I like to wake ’em up in the morning by singing very loud, sometimes opera, sometimes classical Broadway.

It just doesn’t, doesn’t matter. And rarely is that received in a really fun, friendly, happy way, but it does the trick. It does wake them up. And I realize this week just how big a difference it is between a good singer and a bad singer. We were in a production meeting and, and Myron was talking about a song that we’re gonna be singing in, in a worship service that we haven’t played before. But he’s like, I’m sure you’ve heard it. It’s on the radio a lot. It’s a really famous song. And then he starts to sing it, you know, he starts to like do his thing. And instantly I knew exactly what song he was talking about, like the moment he started doing it, I was like, yeah, I totally know that song. And it sounded amazing because Myron is like the five tool player. He’s got tone and pitch and loudness and, and can play keys. And I know in my own life, I’ve had these moments where, where my wife is, I’m trying to tell her about a song, and she’s like, I, I don’t know what song you’re talking about. And then I do this thing. I’m like, you know, this song? He’s like,

And she just stares at me like, I have no clue what you’re talking about. And then I tried again as if maybe the problem was she just didn’t hear it. Right?

You

Know, you know what I mean? She, she’s like, no. And so then I’m having to like look up on my phone or get Alexa to sing it, and then it sings it. And she’s like, oh, I know exactly what song you’re talking about. And I say, that’s what I said. But the truth is, that’s not what I said. Because you can’t just be half a good singer. If you are half a good singer, then in fact you are a bad singer. And you know, the same is true in a lot of different areas of life, including the church. There, there’s lots of different areas inside of a church that we need to be good at in order for us to be a healthy, successful church. And if we’re really great at some things, but really terrible at other things, then we are not a healthy church.

We are in a sermon series about the seven letters. These are seven letters from Jesus to seven different churches in the first century. And the church we’re gonna look at today, Thara was a church that was really good in excelling at certain things, but they weren’t doing a really great job and some other things. And because of that, they weren’t a healthy church. Here’s the map that we’ve pulled up each and every week. This is Asia Minor, this is modern day Turkey. First letter went to Ephesus, the island of Patmos would’ve been down in that southwest corner somewhere. Then it went to Smyrna, then Pergamum. And then today is the thi tarara. Interesting about Thi Tyra. Here’s just a few things about it. One is, it’s the smallest church of the seven different churches. A and not by a little bit like it’s the smallest church by far.

There’s only a population at that time, of around 25,000 to 30,000 people. If you go on a tour like you, you can sign up to go on a tour of the seven churches, except most of those tours will only take you to six of the churches because they just skipped thi. And the reason is ’cause there’s not a whole lot there. It wasn’t a very big city. And so as a result of it, we don’t have a whole lot of ruins from that city. It was the least significant city, but it has the longest letter. Now. Now here’s an interesting thing that, that probably, I’m gonna say a name that none of us have ever heard of. One of their chief gods was Tyra Menino. And I said that wrong, but no one knows how to pronounce it. But it, the only reason we know that is because he was the son of Ju Zeus.

We have very little writings about him, but he’s on a lot of the coins that we have from Thara. And so they have this, this God that they were worshiping that was one of the sons of Zeus, but but not nearly as famous as, as a lot of the other gods that, that you hear about from Greek mythology. Currently the modern day city of Akisa as there in Turkey, a few other things. They were a blue collar town. They had a whole bunch of different guilds in their city. And interestingly, we found some stone tablets that list out all the different guilds that they have. And we have more records of guilds in this town than any other town in the ancient world. So, so you’ve got some much, much bigger towns in the ancient world. And yet this town had so many different guilds, had leather workers and wool workers and, and dyers.

And then really importantly is they had a lot of blacksmiths, stone cutters and bronze smiths. So th their thing that they were the most famous for, that we we know of in ancient literature was burnished bronze. That this is what the, the Greek word for what they did was, I’m not gonna try and pronounce that to you. You can attempt it yourself, but in the first century, they didn’t have what we think of as mirrors. You can go buy a a mirror at the store for just pretty cheap. But having a mirror in the first century was, was really hard. Everybody didn’t have one. They didn’t have the same, the type of glass that we have today that we can make it with. So what they would do is they would take a piece of bronze, they would flatten it, they would cut into a circle, and then they would polish and polish and polish and polish that thing until it reflected an image, much like Am Mirror does for us today.

Except what they produced. They were famous for, but, but really only really wealthy, affluent people would’ve been able to afford that piece of burnished bronze. Another thing that’s interesting that we have found in the ruins outside the city is this shrine. We have found a shrine of Sambath. So here’s what we know. Sambath not a whole lot there, but we know that we have the ruins of a Sybil. A Sybil in the first century was a Greek either prophetess or a, a seer, someone that that said that they could see the future. So it’s the ruins of this, this prop prophetess or, or seer shrine. It was near the city. It was less than a mile outside the city. We think based off some different archeological things that we found that she was a Jewish prophetess. But she also dealt in pagan witchcraft.

So odd thing she had her foot in, in both camps, which, which is just not pretty typical. Not a whole lot of ruins from Thyra. Here’s one picture of the ruins. And it’s interesting, it’s like smack dab in the middle of the city that is now around it. That’s why they don’t take you on the tour there. ’cause It’s like, alright, there you go. And next city. So small town, long letter. I think God has a lot that he wanted to say to that church. And I think if we’re paying attention, God has a lot to say to us today as well. Something interesting now that we’re on the, the fourth week of the series, I want you to start noticing the pattern that every single one of these letters has. So all the letters have the same pattern that it starts with to the angel of the Church Inn or to the messenger, or most scholars would say to the pastor that is in that church in then there’s always a statement that describes Jesus, but also is relevant to the town.

So each letter, Jesus says, from the Son of God, and then he describes himself in some way, but also the way he’s describing himself will, will have a cultural context. And we’ll see that in just a second. Then there’s specific words to that church that they need to work on. Then you have a statement on conquering this theme, that, that reoccurs over and over and over again. And I think it’s an encouragement to us that God wants us to be conquered. He wants you to conquer your life. He wants you to conquer the day. He, he wants you to conquer your future. And he is trying to give us this path forward of here is how you do that. And then it, they all end with this phrase, he who has an ear, let him hear what the spirit says. And now, now there’s two things about that phrase that I think are, are really important.

One is this idea that the Spirit is wanting to speak to us. And the Holy Spirit as we’re reading through this letter, is we’re really unpacking what God has for us. That the Holy Spirit wants to make it come alive to us. That that a letter that was written 2000 years ago for an audience in the first century, that has a lot of cultural context to them, that that letter still has application to us today. So the first thing is this idea that God wants to speak to us. But the second part that’s really important is in saying He who has ears to hear, let ’em listen. It means that it’s possible for us to not hear. It’s possible for us to not be listening and fully grasp it. My prayer for us today is that we wouldn’t miss what God has for us. If you’ve got a Bible, turn me two.

Revelation chapter two. We are going to finish up chapter two. It, it keeps going into chapter three, but we’re gonna finish up chapter two today. Revelation chapter two, starting in verse 18. Again, the longest letter, we’ll break it down a little bit as we go. It says this, and to the angel of the church in Thara, write the words of the son of God who has eyes like a flame of fire and whose feet are like burnished bra. So, so pause for a second because that’s what we just set up a second ago. Each letter has this identifying phrase that is describing Jesus, but it’s relevant to this church. So it’s describing Jesus as having eyes like a flame of fire, whose feet are like burnished bronze. We actually see that in describing the Messiah. And Daniel chapter six. It talks about eyes of fire and feet of bronze.

But what’s the cultural context? Well, blacksmiths this idea of, of fire and specifically burnish brawns, that was the primary thing that Thyra was known for in 19. Jesus says, I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, that your ladder works exceed the first. Now if you pause right there, and that is a warm, fuzzy letter, Jesus saying, you are doing great. And, and look, it’s not just small things, it’s big things. He’s saying their love and their faith, their servants, they have patient endurance. Their latter works exceed their first. We’re not sure what those things are, but it means that they were doing great works to begin with and they’re continuing to do even greater works now than they were before. Those are wonderful things. And then verse 20 says, 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 morality and to eat food sacrifice to idols.

Now pause for a second. Jezebel was a real figure in the Old Testament. We see in first kings, we see her in second kings. And in the Old Testament, she uses sexual I immorality to seduce s god’s people away from the path that he has for him to try and lead Israel to destruction. So that name Jezebel throughout the rest of scripture becomes synonymous with that idea of a seductive. So when Jesus mentioning Jezebel there, it’s highly unlikely there was a woman literally in that city, in that church named Jezebel, that he’s talking about that, that a lot of recent scholars would say, it’s likely that maybe he was talking about this shrine of sand bath. That, that you have this, this Jewish prophetess who’s in the church, active in the church, but also teaching this pagan immorality. So he’s saying, I, I have this against you.

You’re tolerating this person being inside your church. Verse 21. He says, 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 her into great tribulation unless they repent of her works. And I will strike her children dead, most likely talking about her followers. 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 that that’s an eternal truth that we know to be true. That that sin will reap destruction every single time. Sometimes it’s not immediate, but eventually sin will lead to destruction. Verse 24. But to the rest of you in Thara who do not hold to 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, there’s that phrase, 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 the wr of iron as when earth and pots are broken in pieces. These are a lot of cultural references that would mean a lot to a guild at that time. So whether it’s rod of iron, iron or earth and pots these are all things that, that a trade town, a blue collar town would’ve, would’ve known and understood really well. He says, even as I myself have received authority from my father, and then that phrase that he’s every letter with, and I will give him the morning star, he who has an ear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches.

And now there’s something that’s brilliant that’s happening that we can miss without a whole lot of cross-referencing. So, so you have two things that are being layered on top of each other. One is all kinds of cultural references from the very beginning of the letter to the very end of the letter. He, he keeps using these phrases that for guild workers at that time, that that that numerous different guilds and their trade, their profession would’ve been mentioned with some phrase in there. But simultaneously he’s making a whole bunch of Old Testament references over and over and over again. So we talked about some of the cultural references. Here’s some of the Old Testament references. So Jezebel is this figure from the Old Testament that phrase, eyes of fire, feet of bronze is from the Old Testament, that phrase authority over the nations. That’s directly from the Old Testament.

The idea of the mourning star. We see that multiple times both in the Old Testament and then referring to Jesus in the New Testament. So, so you, you have this kind of brilliant piece of literature where he is layering these things on top of themselves, but, but ultimately, what’s he trying to get them to see? That, that on on one side he says that they’re a great church. Hey, there’s some things that they’re doing really well. He says, I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first. Like, those are wonderful things and you’d be hard pressed. I I would say most churches that are loving Jesus or, or, or teaching from the Bible, they have wonderful things that are happening inside that church. But just because you have some wonderful things doesn’t mean you’re a healthy church.

Why? Because of what he says next. He says that they’re a failing church because he says, but I have this against you that you tolerate. And then he goes on to describe the sins that are in their church. There’s this word in, in theology called syncretism. A syncretism is this idea that we see throughout all of church history. We see it very prevalent today where people oftentimes try and take two different religions and synchronize ’em together. They say, well, hey, you’ve probably heard a phrase like this. They say, well, actually Christianity is a whole lot. Like fill in the blank. You see Christianity has this piece and, and this religion has this piece, and actually we can synchronize those things together and they’re, they’re really teaching the same thing. And that’s what this Jezebel was doing, that she was in the church. It’s, it sounds like she was even teaching inside the church.

And so she was in some way, shape or form professing to be a Christian, a follower of Jesus. And yet somehow she was trying, trying to synchronize those things with the pagan culture at the time. She said, well, well, you can love Jesus and also practice sexual immorality and eat food sacrifice to idols. Which if you noticed the, the recurring theme of sexual immorality and food sacrifice to idols, like so many of the churches in the seven letters struggle with those things. And she’s somehow saying, well, no, both of these things can be synchronized and you can do both together at the same time. And what is Jesus saying? He’s saying, I hold this against you. That, that actually, no, you can’t do that. That is not okay. I I also wanna point out, and I think this is really important, especially in our cultural context for us to, to figure out, okay, what is our path forward?

What does this mean for us right now? Notice this ’cause it’s really important. Jesus is not pointing out the sin inside the town. He’s pointing out the sin inside the church. Jesus could have said, Hey, you’re doing a great job, but I hold this against you. There’s so much sin in He doesn’t say that. The recurring theme of all seven letters is all seven churches are in very sinful towns, very broken towns, lots of immorality happening all around them in their town. And not once in the letter does Jesus say, Hey, this is what I’ve got against you. It’s your job to stop the sin in the world. That’s not what he says. He says, for the church, it’s our job to not tolerate and to stop the sin where inside the church, inside the church and and, and why he’s not coming from this mean sense.

Hey, he’s coming out of this sense of compassion, love. The most loving thing that we can do is to help people recognize sin and turn away from sin. It’s this idea of guardrails and roadblocks that we all need guardrails and roadblocks in our lives. You ever been driving up the mountain and then you see a guardrail? I I mean, you see right over the edge and there’s a cliff that just goes straight down. And oftentimes in a guardrail you see that somebody at some point has rammed into that guardrail. Like there’s a dent on the side of the guardrail. I I, I wonder how many lives have been saved because of a guardrail. I grew up in Houston, Texas born and raised there. Love the city, but it it is a pretty ugly city. It’s a concrete jungle. There’s no hills, there’s no mountains.

The only mountains that they really have, there are overpasses. And the overpasses we have here are like little kitty overpasses compared to the overpasses in Houston. I mean, they go hundreds of feet up into the air to connect you from one freeway to another freeway. I mean, literally hundreds of feet. Like if you are squeamish of heights, not a great place to drive. I I knew people in Houston that they would drive miles around to avoid an overpass. But, but here’s what’s fascinating. You go up this, this overpass, giant overpass, concrete barricades on the side, and do you know what is dotted all along those concrete barricades, tire marks, tire marks. And, and the whole time, I’m, I’m looking at that, I, I get fascinated. I’m driving over and I’m looking at the tire marks. I’m thinking, how distracted do you have to be 150 feet up in the air checking your phone to ram your car into the tire?

Mark can, every one of those tire marks represents somebody who would’ve been dead if it weren’t for that guardrail. So guardrails are keeping us from destruction. If you’re a parent, a lot of what you do as a parent is guardrails. The, if you have a kid, our youngest is six years old. And so, so do we wanna parent who really well as a 6-year-old? Yes. But there’s a destination in mind then we are trying to grow her up to be all that God has created her to be knowing that one day she will no longer be underneath our roof. And so right now we’re trying to create the right guardrails in her life where she has autonomy and she has freedom and she, she can learn and she can make mistakes, but at the same time, we’re gonna prevent her from utter disaster inside her life.

That’s what guardrails are for. In addition to guardrails, occasionally you have roadblocks. Occasionally you say, Hey, this is something that, that we’re not just gonna try and sear you in the right direction. We’re gonna absolutely stop you and turn you around. In Houston, it floods a lot. So you got hurricanes, you got just a lot of rain. And, and almost every time there’s flooding, you hear about people on the news that that drowned as a result of the, the flooding. The vast majority of people that drowned in a flood, it’s because they pulled up to an intersection. There was a sign that said road closed. They drove around that roadblock. They get submerged underwater. They can’t open their car door and they end up drowning. I had a, a friend who’s a police officer and he said, he just mind boggling how many people would just drive around a road closed.

He said, we don’t put ’em out there for fun. We’re not just putting road closed because we’re trying to just pull a prank and make you late for work. Like we are doing that to keep you safe. And sometimes as a parent, that’s what we have to do. Sometimes as a parent, we absolutely stop a kid from doing something they want to do because we know it would be disastrous. A kid early on does not wanna hold your hand in a parking lot, does not wanna hold your hand when you’re crossing the street. And, and I get a vice grip, but less so now ’cause my youngest is six. But still sometimes with that 6-year-old, like if you’re in your, your elementary school and you’re trying to walk through carpool, drop off, I got a vice grip because there are no worse drivers in the world than carpool pickup and drop off.

I got a vice grip. And the whole time she’s fighting and she’s saying, no, no, no, I can do it by myself. And although I do want her to have autonomy and grow, there are certain circumstances where’re like, no, hey, that’s a roadblock. You are not allowed to do that by yourself. And why? Well, what’s the motivating factor in my heart that’s causing me to do that? It’s love. I love you too much to let you endanger yourself in a way, even though you want to. And so I’m going to put up a roadblock. But, but here’s the thing. As kids, we all need roadblocks. We all need guardrails. And we we acknowledge that hey, they don’t know what they’re doing. There’s so many things they have to learn. But for some reason we think that when we, we become adults, well, hey, I don’t need that anymore.

I don’t need guardrails in my life. I don’t need roadblocks in my life. And yet we do. Here’s, here’s a question that I think is a really important question for all of us to try and wrestle with, and that it’s simply who provides the guardrails and the roadblocks in your life. If you are veering off towards destruction, who is it in your life that you have willingly given accountability to? I said, I want you to be someone to stop me from going off a cliff an edge. I want you to be the one that if you see me breaking down to pull me back and that, can I also just push back on? ’cause Some of you’re like, what’s my spouse? But there’s a reason that I don’t think that’s a great accountability partner because you know what a, a good accountability partner will hold you accountable for as well.

You marriage that that for some reason we think, well, I don’t need that. And yet we do. And in the studies, the data will back it up. It’s interesting, the the there’s a Psychology Today article and they talked about the difference in accountability. It’s really not about accountability towards a goal, it’s accountability towards a process. So, so let’s say that you decided, hey, I wanna go run a marathon. It doesn’t really help you to have accountability of the goal. So someone checking with you every day, have you run a marathon? Yes, yes or no? No. Okay. But but instead, what is beneficial is accountability towards a process. Somebody saying, okay, you wanna run a marathon, which means that every week you need to be running. And so every week saying, Hey, did you run two miles today? Did you run three miles today?

Ha have you increased to five miles to six miles to 10 miles? The the process is where we need accountability. And accountability works according to the American Society of Training and Development. The probability of you or me completing a goal, if we just in our mind come up with an idea or a goal, don’t do anything else with it. Just in our mind like, Hey, I’ve got a goal in my life, probability of you or me completing that goal. 10%. Now, if we take one step forward and we consciously in our mind saying, I’m not just setting a goal, I’m going to consciously decide I will do that goal. It goes from probability of being 10% all the way up to being 25%. I if you decide when you will do it. So you add a timeline on it, you say, I’m consciously decide I’m going to do that goal and I’m going to do it by the end of this month.

Now your probability of accomplishing it goes up to 40%. If you add a plan, you say, I’m gonna do it at this date and I’m going to come up with a plan of how I will accomplish it, then your probability goes up to 50%. If you go to someone else and say, Hey, this is what I’m doing, I wanna tell you about it, your probability now goes up to 65%. But listen to this. If you have a specific accountability appointment regularly with the person that you’ve committed to, the probability of you accomplishing that goal goes up to 95%. And and so here’s what I I I wanna point out what Jesus is getting into onto the church about comes down to accountability. And one of the key roles of the church is to provide accountability. One of the things that, that drives me crazy personally, and now I’m a pastor, so I’m biased, but you hear a lot of people say, well, you don’t really need to go to church because we are the church.

And that theologically, that is a hundred percent true. Our church is not this building, although it’s a wonderful building. Our church is the people inside the building. But the idea that you can be disconnected from a body of believers and be a healthy, mature Christian, you cannot find that in scripture. Can’t find it in the Bible. Not there. Jesus doesn’t write the seven letters to seven Christians. He writes the seven letters to seven churches. And one of the things that we need at church is accountability. It’s us saying, I want people that can notice that if my life starts to go off the tracks, that they’re gonna be the guardrails that say, Hey, I’m giving you a warning. I’m starting to see some things in your life that are not very healthy. Like if your marriage starts to struggle, who is the person in your life that can call you out and say, Hey, you are being a terrible husband.

Hey, how you are as a wife or treating your husband? That’s just not okay. You gotta work on that. Who is the accountability in your life? If you’re not a good parent that can say, Hey, I’ve noticed how you’re parenting and I’ve got some concerns. I wanna have a, a conversation with you about who’s that person in your life that if you start to struggle with addiction and it starts to become a problem in your life, that they can step up and say, Hey, I’m noticing a pattern of behavior and I love you too much to just ignore it.

Accountability is hard because accountability requires a few things. It requires us not just attending worship, but saying, I’m gonna be a part of a community. I’m gonna go be at a place where they know my name, they know my need, they know my life, and then I’m going to willingly start to share information with them of what’s going on in my life. Who are those people that can hold you accountable? If you say, I want to, to chase after God, to be all that God has created me to be? Who are the people holding you accountable to that process saying, are you in God’s word? Are you chasing after God? Are you, are you memorizing scripture? Are you spending time in prayer? Do you have that or not? We all need accountability, including me. That’s one of the beauties of an elder led church. I am underneath the spiritual authority of our elders.

That means that I’m willingly submitting to their authority. And so if they wake up one day and say, we don’t like the direction that Kurt is taking the church, then, then they’re the spiritual authority to step in and say, Hey, this is not right. If they recognize in my own personal life, hey, we don’t think that he’s spending enough time in prayer or in scripture or or spending enough time preparing the messages, they’re the spiritual authority that I have given the right to them to say to me, Hey, we see some things that are concerning. And now here’s the problem in our culture today is that feels judgy, doesn’t it? The idea of giving someone else authority is just so counter-cultural. The idea of saying, I want you to call me out when I’ve got junk in my life that seems scary and judgmental. And yet the most loving thing we could possibly do is that imagine a parent that doesn’t put up guardrails around their kids’ life.

Am I’m the parent that doesn’t hold their kids’. Young kids’ hand in a parking lot when cars are zooming back and forth. You would look at that person and say, Hey, you are a monster. Don’t you love your kid? Wouldn’t you set healthy boundaries for your kid? And the same thing that we need as kids are the same things that we need as adults because it’s easy to see flaws in other people’s lives, but it’s really hard to see flaws in our own life. We naturally put up blinders. And so we need people that can look past those blinders and say, Hey, I’m noticing some things that you need to work on. Look at what Paul says in Ephesians chapter two, talking about what he’s trying to save us from. He says, and you are dead. And the trespasses and sins in which you once walked following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work and the sons of disobedience, it goes on to say, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind.

And we were by nature, children of wrath like the rest of mankind. So pause for a second and, and let’s, let’s get a picture of what Paul’s describing. He, he’s saying, we live in a broken world full of sin. And every problem that exists in this world is because of sin, death. What, what’s the root of that goes back to sin. War. What’s the root of that goes back to sin. People living in poverty. What’s the root of that? Some kind of greed that goes back to sin. People dying of starvation. Why does that happen? Goes back to sin. Conflict in a marriage, in a family. What’s the root of that? Goes back to sin. He’s saying that sin leads to destruction, but God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead and our trespasses made us alive together with Christ by grace, you have been safe.

See the letter. What Jesus is saying is he saying, I want you to be alive with me. He says, I want you to be a conquer. He has something that is so much greater than this world could ever offer, but the thing that will prevent us from being alive in Jesus is the sin in our life. And if we are gonna be a healthy church, a great church, we need to have great love and great action, but we also need to call people to accountability, call people to repentance, love people enough to say, Hey, we’re not gonna ignore the sin in your life. Instead, we’re gonna say, let me challenge you to work on these things because sin will always ultimately lead to death and destruction. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, God, I I just pray that, that as we unpack something that can come across, especially in our culture, sounding judgmental and intolerant, Lord, Lord, that you want us to have accountability in our life.

You want us as a church to hold people accountable for sin, out of love because you want us to be alive in you. And so, God, I pray right now for, for anyone in this room that when they really ask that question, who holds me accountable? If they don’t have an answer, God, I pray that they would not just set a goal, but actually in their mind start to come up with a plan and a process and a timeline and to tell someone, I need this in my life to get connected to a connect group or a men’s Bible study or a women’s Bible study where, where they can walk alongside people in community. Or if they’re in that community, they still don’t feel like they have accountability that they can share with someone and say, Hey, I need accountability in my life. That we would be a place that wholeheartedly chases after you conquers what you have for us. And in doing so does not tolerate sin. We love you. It’s the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.