I wonder what your views are about CCTV, the various closed circuit television cameras that are springing up around the place. There are very few things, I think, that have generated such a mixed response in recent years. Very often, victims of crime are reassured by them, reassured by the security that they offer. Sometimes the wrongly accused are grateful when they prove innocence. I read recently about a story where the police were called to a house where a woman had been allegedly assaulted by her husband. And the police arrived and they arrested not this husband, but the rather surprised wife. What was going on? Well, when the 999 call had been received, the police very wisely turned their cameras onto the house. And what they saw as they sat and watched this screen was a man sitting downstairs, watching television, minding his own business. And upstairs there were two women. And one punched the other in the face and then embraced her. Basically, the woman was trying to make it look as if she had been assaulted by her husband. But CCTV proved the innocence of the husband, and a rather surprised woman was arrested for the crime that she had committed. But there are some good things about CCTV, but my guess is that many of us, or at least some of us, would be innocent people, minding our own business, going about our daily work quite innocently, and we don't necessarily want to be watched. But if we have mixed feelings about CCTV, how do we feel about the way that Jesus describes himself in this passage today? If you've got it open, you'll probably find it helpful. Page 1235. And look down to verse 18. Jesus describes himself as having eyes like blazing fire. Verse 19, he says, I know your deeds. Verse 23, I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds. The Lord Jesus can see us more clearly, more intimately, more constantly than any CCTV camera ever could. And what do those eyes like burning fire that see our every action and search our hearts and minds? What do these eyes see in St. Mary's? What do they see in you and me? What do they see in each one of us? Well, before we turn that camera on ourselves, let's have a look and see what they saw in this fourth church in Thyatara. We're in a series looking at seven letters to seven churches at the beginning of Revelation, and we're on the fourth letter to the fourth church. And this letter continues the familiar pattern that we've seen so far. A letter that starts with commendation and then moves on to rebuke. Jesus starts to say, I've seen what you're doing, and I've seen that this much is good, but I've also seen that this much is bad. Now today I want to learn, I want us to look mainly at the commendation. There is so much to learn in that commendation that we are going to focus mainly on that and are only going to touch briefly on the criticism if time allows. But let's start with the commendation. Verse 19 again. Jesus says, I know your deeds. Jesus says, I've seen what you're doing, I've seen your work, and by and large, I'm impressed. And then he goes on to say, I see that you are now doing more than you did at first. Jesus is not only pleased with what they're doing, but he sees that their ministry is growing. He sees that they're doing more and more. And because of that, Jesus is thrilled. And that's a real contrast with the church we're going to look at in the week after next. The letter to the church in Sardis. If you look across to chapter 3, verse 1, he says, I know your deeds, you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up, strengthen what remains and is about to die. So we've got a real contrast with that. Jesus says, I see what you're doing, you're doing well, and what you're doing is becoming more and more. You're growing, you're thriving. So this was a busy church, thriving with lots going on, and Jesus commends them for it. Now, does that mean, does that mean that being busy, that rushing around doing things, does it mean that that pleases Jesus? Do we need to try and cram even more into our already hectic days? Do we need more meetings at church? Do we need more groups? Should we just be doing more things? Well, no, that's not what he's getting at at all. Let's look at verse 19 a bit more. He says, I know your deeds, your love and your faith, your service and your perseverance. You see, being busy in itself gives no pleasure to Jesus. It's not about what we do, it's about the state of our hearts behind what we do. These guys at Thyatara were motivated by love and by faith. And I want to look at both of those separately. Firstly, love. We're not told all that much about the nature of this love, although the word that's used in the Greek is agape, which means a kind of self-sacrificial giving love. But it's easy to see, isn't it, how love functions in a variety of churches, in the Bible and in history since. We could start by thinking about love for Jesus. What does a church that loves Jesus do? How does that prompt its deeds? Well, in many ways. It means, doesn't it, that they would take their worship seriously. It means that they would go sometimes to great lengths to work hard to keep Sundays free. Church would be a fixed point in the diary, not something to do when they have time. And they would arrive on time and they would work hard not to be distracted. They won't be preoccupied with the sort of issue of, you know, I like this song and I don't like that song, because they will be more interested in the God that they're singing to rather than the music they're using. Love for Jesus means a church will take its worship seriously. Love for Jesus means a church will take the Bible seriously. We would be eager to hear from him. If you love someone, you'll want to hear from them. When Kate and I were first going out, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, it was uh long before the days of email or anything like that, and uh Kate, being a language student at university, had a year abroad. And while she was in Germany in particular, that meant we had to write to each other. Do you remember writing letters like what we did before we had email? Uh but I remember waiting, I remember checking the post each day, seeing had the letter arrived. I really wanted to hear from her. Kate probably saw it the other way, ran, oh, there's another letter that I'm gonna have to reprise it, I don't know. But you see, a church that loves Jesus is gonna be itching to read the letters that we have from him. A church that loves Jesus is gonna be itching to open the Bible and to listen to him. What has God got to say to me today? We will want to know if we really love Jesus. And a church that loves Jesus is gonna take prayer seriously. Prayer is kind of the other half of that two-way communication with God. All that is said of the Bible, we could also say of prayer too. There's an old saying, if a church is full in the morning, then it means the congregation loves the church. If the church is full in the evening, it means the congregation loves the minister. Now, I don't know what that means about the fact that we're not even having an evening service at the moment, but never mind. But a church that is full at a midweek prayer meeting, that is a church that loves the Lord. It's a challenge, I think, for us. If we really love the Lord, we will take our prayer together and our prayer as individuals very seriously. So that's love for Jesus. Love for brothers and sisters in Christ, love for our fellow Christians. Well, that means, wouldn't it, that we would have a concern for people going through hard times. It would mean that we want to serve. It would mean that we're we're keen to get on and do some of the tedious, menial tasks that makes life so much easier for everyone else, be it washing up after refreshments, being hoovering the carpets many other different ways. If we love our fellow Christians, we will want to serve them. We will want to see them grow in faith, and so we'll be faithful in prayer for them. We would work tirelessly to heal any divisions or any hurts within a church. I don't much care if Gordon Brown and David Miliband and other members of the cabinet fall out. But when people that I love, when my friends and my family, if they fall out, then I would do anything I can to try and work for reconciliation. And a church that is motivated by love for one another won't allow division. It won't allow cliques. It will be want to be united. It will want to be a church together. A church motivated by love for brothers and sisters will be generous with money. We will want to pay for our work together. We will want to make sacrifices so that others can benefit. And we will be generous not just with our money, but with our time. We'll gladly give up a few hours or how often it is needed in order to serve. And finally, love. We've talked about love for Jesus, love for fellow Christians, love for non-Christians too. A church motivated by love for non-Christians will long to see our non-Christian families, our friends, our colleagues, would love to see them come to faith. And that again would make us committed in praying for them. Since April 1996, when I resolved to pray for my family every day, I I haven't done so, but I've come close. There haven't been that many days when I haven't prayed for my family. And I have a list of friends that I was at school with that I pray for once a week without fail. They haven't come to faith yet, but I'm going to keep praying, be it until the day I die, if that's what takes. You see, if we are motivated by love for our non-Christian friends, we will be committed to praying for them. And we will be committed to taking a step that can be embarrassing and can be make us feel vulnerable, a step of talking to them about our faith, a step of inviting them to church, saying, come to the St. Mary's Cafe, come to the Christianity Explored course. If we really love them, we would want to do that. So that is talking about a church motivated by love. I'll spend slightly less time on a church motivated by faith. A church motivated by faith will be confident in God's protection and God's provision for them. One real issue that the Christians in Thyatara were facing was kind of professional or economic. You see, if pressured to compromise between faith and work, they knew which way they would go. And they were pressured to compromise. Let me tell you a little bit about it. In Thyatara, there was a lot of kind of industry, lots of things were made, and there were kind of trade guilds, a little like kind of unions today. And in order to get on in work, in order to advance your career, you had to become a member of one of these trade guilds. And if a member uh if you were a member, you were expected to participate in worship of the various pagan gods that this trade guild was dedicated to, in the hope that they might prosper your work. Now that's a no-go area for a Christian, isn't it? Faith to these Christians in Thyatira meant I will make that sacrifice. I will sacrifice my career for Jesus, because he's the one who meets my deepest and most real needs. I can have a wonderful career, but actually my real needs will be met by Jesus. So a church motivated by faith will be confidence in God's protection and provision. We could talk about many other ways in which faith will shape a church. Faith means trusting God even when it looks as though he's absent, even though it looks as though life is difficult. But of course, in the Bible, there is one greatest point of faith, one reason why it is so important, and it is that faith is what saves us. Faith is what means God will forgive us. Faith in Christ is what guarantees us a place in eternity. And think about what that would mean for a church. If we're a church of faith, it will mean we have absolute confidence in our forgiveness. It will mean that although we've messed up many, many times, many ways, although there are things in our past that we're deeply ashamed of and wish they weren't there, if we're a church truly motivated by faith, we wouldn't care about that. Because we would know that we're forgiven. We would know that the slate is wiped absolutely clean. And we would be absolutely confident that although there are so many ways in which I fail and let people down, although that's true of all of us, we're still loved by God and we have no reason to doubt it. A church motivated by faith that saves will be humble because we will recognise that we needed salvation. And a church motivated by faith will have a deep love for God rather than trying to win the approval of man around us, men and women around us. We know that God has done so much, and that is where we'll find our security. We won't be anything like as worried what other people think of us. So think about it. A church motivated by love and faith, what deeds would such a church do? Now I need to move on. But do you see the point? Jesus is not interested in us just being busy, he's interested in us doing things prompted by faith and love. And I think there are two big questions that that leaves us with. When Jesus' all-seeing eye looks at St. Mary's, at each one of us, when he searches our hearts and minds, what does he see? Well, I think the first question that it raises for us is what is the motivation he sees for what I do at church? What is the motivation for my ministry? Does it come from faith and love? And if not, why am I doing it? What is the point of doing it? Jesus takes no pleasure in us being busy unless that busyness comes from faith and love. And so we might as well stop doing anything that isn't motivated by that. If your financial giving to St. Mary's comes from duty and drudgery, then stop giving. The treasures are looking at me slightly crossly there. But uh but I mean it, actually. If it doesn't come from faith and love, Jesus takes no pleasure in it, and nor should we. But what I would say, don't just stop giving. I would say go and get your heart straight with God, and then come back and give us your money. Because we do need your money. What is the motivation? If it's not faith and love, should we be doing it? For that's the first question. The second question is this Thyatira was a church that was commended for doing more than it did at first. Each of us should ask ourselves regularly the question, am I doing all that I can in my service of Jesus? Or is there more that I can do? That's not necessarily the same question as saying, can I be busier at church? That's not necessarily what it means at all. But it might well mean, is there someone going through a rough patch that I should telephone or go and have a cup of coffee with? It might mean, could I actually be a bit more organized in my week so that I can go to central prayer evening on Wednesday, even though it's a Wednesday that I would have loved to have kept free? It might mean, could I go, could I forego that extra 20 minutes in bed when the alarm goes off? Could I get up 20 minutes earlier so that I could have a bit longer to read my Bible and to pray in the morning? It might mean us asking the question, is there someone I should commit myself to praying for? And that I should invite to a guest event at church. You'll be hearing in coming weeks about Back to Church Sunday, and I would suggest that even now you have a start to think about who you might invite to that, who you might pray for to come. It might mean asking the question, could I give more money to St. Mary's? And if that's the case, there are promise forms at the back, and I would love for you, we would all love for you to fill one in. And it might mean, should I go right now, or at least at the end of the service, should I go at the end of the service and put my name down on the rotor? Because there are big gaps with people wanting to clear. Well, we need people to help clean the church, we need people to help with flowers, we need people to go and mow the lawn. The rotors are in a book at the back. Might asking that question mean that you need to go and put something down there? It may mean many different things for each of us. But Fire Tyrra, was church commended for doing more than they did at first. Is there more that our faith and our love could be prompting us to do now? Okay. So that is all the commendation. I'm going to be incredibly brief looking at the criticism, but do you look at it maybe a little bit longer in your own time? It's interesting that they were criticized for the very thing that our culture today most prizes. Verse 20. Nevertheless, I have this against you, you tolerate that woman, Jezebel. Tolerance is often seen as the greatest virtue in the modern world. And yet that is what Jesus has against this church. Tolerance isn't always a good thing. And what were they tolerating? Well, very basically, they were tolerating false teaching. Someone was offering a teaching that claimed to be offering something new, some deep insights. Look at verse 24. Now I say to the rest of you in Thyotara, to you who have not told to her teaching and have not learned Satan's so-called deep secrets. She wouldn't have called them Satan's secrets, she would have called them God's. But her teaching, which claimed to offer something more and more exciting than the Bible, was leading people astray. It was leading them astray intellectually, spiritually, and morally. And so a church of faith and a church of love must not tolerate anything that deviates from the truth of the gospel. We see it in many religions and many cults. Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormons, he and many others claim that the Bible is fine, but that they can offer something else, something that will give you a deeper understanding of God. But Jesus calls that Satan's deep secrets and says we should stay clear. I spent much of last year trying to help a student who had been horribly messed up by a cult that had promised her great things, but actually it came quite close to killing her. They are around, they are very dangerous. And we see it, I think, in churches too. It's very tempting to say if you worship our way, if you do this and that and the other, you will have a deeper understanding and a deeper experience of God. Well, anyone who teaches something more than the contents of the Bible is teaching something that should not be taught. Jesus rebukes that church for tolerating it. Okay. I've said a lot. You've done well today with me, particularly our junior members. Thank you for being patient. But let me just wrap this up. I've said a lot, but there is lots I haven't said. So you might want to read it yourself and see what terrible consequences there are for the people following this false teaching. You might want to see what is on offer to those who are faithful to Jesus. But I want to close with just a reminder of those two questions and suggest that we have a moment to reflect on them. Two questions. Am I working out of the right motives? Am I motivated by faith and love? And secondly, is there more that I should be doing as a servant of Jesus?