The Liturgies We Live By (Revelation 2:18-29) | Pastor Jake Sweetman

Dive into our latest sermon, "The Liturgies We Live By," part of the series "The Wonderful World of the Apocalypse," where we explore the profound teachings of the Book of Revelation. In this message, we focus on Revelation chapter 2, examining Jesus's words to the church in Thyatira and their relevance to our lives today. Discover the significance of the liturgies—habits and patterns—that influence us, and learn how to shape them to align with a life Jesus commends.

Gain insights on maintaining spiritual integrity, resisting negative influences, and cultivating habits that lead to spiritual growth in both personal and professional settings. Tune in to explore how every choice contributes to who we are becoming and how we can be faithful witnesses of Christ.

Subscribe and join us for more transformative messages as we continue this journey through the powerful themes of Revelation.

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Transcript

 we are in a series right now called the wonderful world of the apocalypse going through the entirety of the book of revelation and today is going to be a lot of fun why don't you open up your bibles to revelation chapter 2 south bay nashville you guys can be seated how's everyone doing

 Wonderful.

Last weekend was our house offering weekend.

I want to say congratulations and thank you for committing so far $314,000 over the course of the next 12 months.

 Thank you, Lord.

 And I am filled with vision and faith.

I got to tell you, this next year I think is going to be my favorite year ever of Cathedral.

I can feel it in my bones.

I really can.

I hope that you can as well as God continues to position us for the doors that he's going to open for us to walk through.

Amen?

Did you find Revelation chapter 2?

 We are in verse 18, kind of a lengthy passage of scripture.

And I've got too much notes and not enough time.

So bear with me today.

I'll probably need to do just some editing on the fly.

So we'll see how that works.

I really would love to devote some time today at the end of the message to let the Holy Spirit move and minister.

 It says, to the angel of the church in Thyatira write, these are the words of the Son of God.

By the way, buckle your seatbelts.

This one gets a little intense.

Whose eyes are like blazing fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze.

This is what Jesus says.

I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first.

 Nevertheless, I have this against you.

You tolerate that woman, Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet.

By her teaching, she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols.

I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling.

 Verse 2.

Verse 3.

 Now I say to the rest of you in Thyatira, to you who do not hold to her teaching and have not learned Satan's so-called deep secrets, that word so-called is a translation of the Greek that communicates that this group of people within the church are claiming that they know Satan's deep secrets.

 Jesus says, I will not impose any other burden on you except to hold on to what you have until I come.

To the one who is victorious and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations.

That one will rule them, quoting now from Psalm chapter 2, will rule them with an iron scepter and will dash them to pieces like pottery, just as I have received authority from my Father.

 I will also give that one the morning star, which later in the book of Revelation is synonymous with Jesus himself.

Jesus is promising his own presence here.

Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

The title of the message today is The Liturgies We Live By.

 When I was 19 years old, I landed a job at the Apple store.

The iPhone was barely a year old and they still sold the iPod with a manual thumb wheel and a physical hard drive on the inside.

And I was absolutely stoked.

My dad, my brother, and I had been Apple nerds for years and years.

 and years.

My biggest influence as a teenager growing up was this guy in our church who used Apple computers, amazing man, actually leading a significant church in Lima, Peru today.

And so I had a lot of desire for Apple products.

I just, I loved the whole Apple world.

To a normal 19-year-old, working at the Apple store was a job.

To me, it was destiny, okay?

It was like, wow, I'm made for this moment.

But within a week of starting at this job, something felt really

 off the staff were all on edge that the managers were spending all of their shift hiding behind their keypad locked office door nobody seemed like they wanted to be working there and then about a week later i showed up to work one day and i find out that the entire management team all six of them were all fired

 And over the course of the next several days, many, many employees followed suit.

Well, it turns out that the weekend before I started on the job, the team had thrown a party at the general manager's house and things got a little out of hand.

Let's just say it was a pool party that turned into a clothing optional situation and professional boundaries were crossed.

 And it didn't stay a secret.

Upper management found out, they came in, they cleaned house, and that was my introduction to the Apple store.

It was also my introduction to the fact that every workplace, every profession has a culture.

 a rhythm of habits and language and expectations that teach you as an employee how to belong in that place.

And over time, those patterns of behavior, they don't just reveal what people value there, they actually begin to shape what people value there.

 And the apostore, it wasn't simply just bad judgment.

It wasn't just an isolated event.

That party was a part of a kind of liturgy in their culture, a ritual that trained people what to value, what to overlook.

Now, their liturgy happened to be unprofessionalism and drunkenness and apparently nudity.

 your workplaces liturgy is probably not that but you still have a liturgy in the workplace it might be a liturgy of success at all costs it might be endless productivity it could be gossip and slander it could be underhanded practices maybe the liturgy in your workplace is actually quite positive but every company has one every profession does some of them are loud like that party others are quieter maybe it's the liturgy of sacrificing integrity for influence

 Or addiction to performance or the gossip that keeps a team feeling really bonded even though that is corrosive to their soul.

And truthfully, it's not just work.

Every area of life runs on habits.

 Patterns that shape what we love and who we are becoming.

This is a liturgy, in case you've been wondering what this word is.

A liturgy is a pattern of practice that shape... Are we in Christmas graphics already?

Is that what's happening right now?

Praise God.

Wow.

God bless the creative team.

They're so on top of things.

I love it.

A liturgy is a very revelation Christmas.

That's what we're going for this year.

Amen.

 A liturgy is a pattern of practice that shapes what we love.

Our repeated actions that train our hearts in a certain direction.

That, by the way, is why we are very intentional about our liturgy of worship at Cathedral.

We sing about the gospel and the glory of God and the Lamb weekly.

We take communion weekly.

Why?

Because that is a liturgy that forms us into the people of the cross.

 We give generously weekly because that forms us into the image of our generous Savior.

We welcome one another with an embrace, the 60-second meet and greet that all the introverts hate.

It's intentional because we are forming ourselves into the family of God.

That's why we create that environment of joy and love.

We open our Bibles and we study Scripture every week because this is a liturgy

 that forms us into a people who submit to a truth that is higher than our feelings.

Every single week we have calls to respond to prayer because that is a liturgy that is forming us into a people who are comfortable saying, I need help.

It all forms us and so does your liturgy at home and your liturgy at work and everywhere else.

This is my point.

What you do with your life is shaping what your life is doing in you.

 How you spend your time is shaping your malleable heart.

This is part of what Jesus addresses to the church in Thyatira, the hidden liturgies of life that form us for better or worse.

 And if Apple Corporate could see beneath the surface, how much more can the Son of God with eyes that blaze like fire see beneath our life and our labor and the effects that they are having on our hearts?

That's what Jesus reminds us of here.

He also reminds us that he has feet that are like burnished bronze, as refined as

 That communicates his strength.

And what Jesus' invitation is to every single one of us today is no matter how challenging or difficult your circumstances in life, Jesus has strength to help you live by liturgies that will help you to experience his life.

Now, some of those in Thyatira, they thought that they were immune to certain sinful patterns, certain sinful liturgies.

 That's why Jesus has such strong words for them.

But he wants them to know that he sees beneath that.

And he sees the effect that that stuff is having on their hearts.

And he wants them to know that he cares enough to encourage the right things and to condemn the sinful things.

 He begins in verse 19, he says, I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that, listen to this line, I love this, that you are now doing more than you did at first.

So that in this verse, the things that Jesus is addressing here

 is essentially our activity our life together as the community of christ this is where jesus is starting is addressing how we do life together and he commends them for two sets of behaviors first their love and their faith second their service and perseverance the first pair love and faith have to do with the condition of their hearts everybody say hearts

 Jesus cares about your heart.

And the condition of their hearts is that they love God, they love other people, and they have a very strong faith in God.

And that faith is not ambiguous, it's not self-defined.

Rather, that faith in God is in Jesus Christ as God has revealed himself to us.

 to them they don't worship a god of their own definition or own making they worship god as he has revealed himself through the person of jesus christ the second pair have to do the with the results of their love and faith that is the activity of their hands everybody say hands

 That is, they give themselves to the service.

In the Greek, the word is literally ministry.

They are a church who all collectively do ministry.

Like we just welcome these new members into our house.

It's not just about a title.

It's about ministry.

 now you are entering into a place of ministry in the house of God.

They perform that ministry and they persevere, Jesus says, through their struggles.

Whether those struggles are because of internal challenges that arise from just the reality of living life with a few hundred people here in our church, or it's the challenges that come from external pressures or persecutions, they persevere through all of that.

They serve and persevere because they have love and faith.

 And their love and faith is stirred up and spurred on because they serve and they persevere.

There is a symbiotic relationship between these things that keeps their Christian life on a healthy path of progression towards greater fruitfulness.

And that's the second thing that's worth noticing about verse 19 here is that Jesus says the people of this church are actually doing more of this stuff now than when they first began following him.

 In contrast to the Ephesian church, who we looked at a few weeks ago, who had abandoned loving, faithful service, Jesus says that the Thyatirans are doing more loving, faithful service, and he commends them for that.

He loves it.

 Now, all of this should tell us something about the fruitful Christian life that Jesus delights in.

First of all, he delights in a life that is marked by love and faith and service and perseverance.

Both, the inner and the outer, right?

In Ephesus, they were really good at the inward, right?

They had faith down, but they were neglecting loving, faithful service.

In Thyatira, Jesus says, you're really good at the service, not at the expense of the inward.

Jesus cares about both.

 Jesus delights in both, and the key is you and I seeing that they are meant to exist symbiotically.

Right practice and right belief have to go hand in hand with one another.

When they don't, well, we don't live into the identity of what it means to be a Christian.

I could say a lot more about that, but for the sake of time, we'll move on because it's a little bit of review.

Jesus is impressed with these guys because their Christian life is growing instead of drifting.

 Did you know that Jesus cares about whether or not you are growing?

He cares about that.

He loves that these guys are loving more and believing more and serving and persevering more.

This is the ideal Christian life, a life that grows instead of stalls.

And so the question is, if this is the life Jesus commends, is it the life that you are cultivating?

 Do you have a liturgy that produces a life that Jesus loves?

Like are your practices producing a life that Jesus goes, wow, I delight in that life.

 In a society that calls a certain kind of life beautiful, independence, curated wardrobe, white picket fence, kids who are the best players on their travel sports team that we're paying too much money for, German car in the driveway, right?

When society calls that beautiful, have you got your priorities straight about what is truly beautiful?

Now, I'm not saying pick the Prius if you can afford the BMW, right?

 By all means, drive the BMW.

Just make sure that your tithe reflects your ride.

Eyes like fire.

Jesus sees.

Now, obviously, I'm being a little bit funny here, but the use of our money is a good example.

If the choice of car that we have made means that we cannot commit to a liturgy of stewardship, for example...

 that promotes Christ's likeness in us, that means that we've chosen the wrong car.

Because Jesus loves a life that is growing in faith and faithfulness more than he loves a fancy car.

So like, who are you living to please?

And do you have a liturgy in life that is helping you to build a life that Jesus loves?

Do your patterns promote growth in Christ?

This is why we say at Cathedral, we exist for the glory of Christ, the beauty of the bride.

 That statement right there was all about discipleship.

You and I growing in Christ's likeness together.

Making disciples is the church's mission, therefore it is cathedral's mission.

And so all of our systems, all of our programming, our Sunday liturgies are designed to help you grow, not just because we think that's a good idea, but because Jesus actually loves that.

But what we find is that many Christians do not commit themselves to what Jesus loves.

They don't cultivate what Jesus commands.

Why?

Because growth is painful.

 Jesus says that it requires pruning, which is a poetic word for being cut.

I once heard Sam Chan, he's a leadership guy.

He once said that growth equals change.

You cannot grow without changing.

And change equals loss.

You cannot change without losing some stuff.

And loss equals pain.

Therefore, growth equals pain.

 Jesus was just more poetic about it and called it pruning.

And that's life when you're abiding like a branch in the vine of Christ and the vine of his church.

I love that's been a theme in some of our prayers this morning, being like a branch in the vine of Jesus.

Now, if you're new to Jesus and you are wondering where to start cultivating a life that Jesus loves, the answer is in the waters of baptism.

 Water baptism is the moment that you step into the death of your old self with Christ.

It's like communion.

Baptism is not a symbol.

It is a sacrament.

That means it is a means by which God's grace is communicated towards you in life.

I love the way my friend Landon defines sacraments.

He says they are things that do things.

 When we participate in them, they are doing something to us.

And water baptism is like that.

In Romans chapter 6, Paul says that we actually die with Christ in baptism.

Our sinful flesh is crucified with Him, and by the Spirit's resurrection power, we are raised to new life.

Something truly happens in us.

 Just this last week, I saw a video of a man who was legally blind for eight years, came to faith in Christ, went into the waters of baptism.

When he came up out of the water, his sight was completely healed.

He could see perfectly.

Now, that's an amazing miracle.

 Physical healing doesn't always happen when we go into the waters of baptism, but that is an outward demonstration of what does always happen, which is that God does some miracle on the inside of us, and we enter into our new creation selves.

And so I just want to take a moment here.

This is a little commercial.

On December 7th, we are doing water baptisms.

If you have placed your faith in Christ as an adult, as someone who's made your own conscious choice to follow Him, and you've not entered into the waters of baptism, it is a

 biblical command for there to be no unbaptized Christians.

That every single Christian gets into the water.

It's not just a symbol.

It's something that happens to you when you get in that place.

You die with Christ and you are raised into his new life.

So important.

 And here's what happens when you walk out that new life.

You're going to get cut.

I mean pruned.

One day your doctrine is going to get pruned through essentials.

Your unhealthy internal narratives are going to be pruned through freedom groups.

Your misconceptions about godly leadership are going to be pruned through discipleship groups.

Your ego is going to be pruned through servanthood.

And it's hard.

And sometimes I, I mean you, want to walk away.

But you stick to it and you remain connected to the vine and you bear fruit.

And then one day you realize that you have

 cultivated a beautiful life it's amazing and then you wake up on Monday morning and you go to work

 And that's what verse 20 is about.

Nevertheless, I have this against you.

You tolerate that woman Jezebel who calls herself a prophet.

By her teaching, she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols.

So before we can understand what Jesus means here, we have to understand a little bit about how life worked in Thyatira.

 The city was full of what were called trade guilds.

A trade guild was like a mix between a modern day union, a networking club, and a religious fraternity all rolled into one.

And in Thyatira, there was a guild for every profession from metal workers to tanners to weavers, you name it.

 There was a guild, and each guild had a god, a patron god that they served, which meant that membership in the guild required participating in its feasts and its rituals, which were held in that god's honor.

So if you wanted to make a living in Thyatira, you joined a guild.

 And if you joined a guild, you were expected to attend the feast, which almost always included meals that were devoted to the gods and plenty of ritualistic sexual immorality.

To opt out of those practices meant losing clients, meant losing status, meant even losing your livelihood altogether.

Your labor came with a liturgy that you were expected to embrace.

 And before you became a Christian, that wasn't a problem.

You happily participated in the pagan non-Christian lifestyle and liturgies.

You gladly gossiped, cheated, stole, slandered, and slept around.

You happily devoted your work to the gods of your culture.

But then when Jesus gripped your heart and you locked eyes with the one who has eyes like blazing fire, the slain and risen Lamb of God who is the ruler of the cosmos, all of a sudden your old liturgies no longer worked.

They were clearly deformational.

 Even worse than that, they were adulterous because now you belong to the bride of Christ.

And so the pressure for the Thyatiran Christians was real.

To belong economically was to belong liturgically.

And non-participation in the liturgy meant ostracism from the economic system.

For them, it wasn't just about where they worked.

It was about who they worshipped while they worked.

 Saying no to that meant that many of them were forced into other ways of making money.

Many of them were simply driven into poverty as a result of their abstention from that false worship.

By the way, Christianity is not a call to poverty, it's a call to faithfulness.

And sometimes faithfulness might mean that you have less, but just because you have less

 understand that in the spiritual sense you are infinitely more rich just because you lose here doesn't mean you lose here jesus is not looking for the size of your bank account to determine how blessed you are he's looking at how faithful you are to him at the cost of some material things sometimes that's what jesus celebrates now this is all the context for the false teaching of the woman that jesus calls bella jezebel who if those of you who are familiar with the scriptures here this is a nickname that jesus gives this woman

 that's based upon a very prominent figure in the Old Testament.

In the Old Testament, the original woman, Jezebel, was a Phoenician woman who was married to one of Israel's kings, Ahab, who was a very evil, cowardly man.

And under her influence, Israel fell heavily into idolatry and sexual immorality, the two things that this text is talking about, leading Israel to grossly break their covenant with God.

 And so here in the church in Thyatira was a woman who clearly held a position of prominence and influence, and she was a self-proclaimed prophet.

She was a leader of some kind in this church.

And the wider church community in Thyatira were permitting her to spread her teaching.

 Jesus says that you are tolerating her.

They weren't discerning the harm of this doctrine and they weren't putting a stop to it.

And Jesus condemns that.

Now notice he doesn't condemn them for participation.

He condemns them simply for permission.

Jesus is not okay with his church tolerating false gospels in their midst for the sake of being non-confrontational.

Yeah.

 He's not okay with that.

From the prosperity gospel to the popularity gospel to the social justice gospel to modern day philosophical and political movements that are all making gods out of their activity, Jesus is not okay with us sidelining the true gospel for the sake of just getting along to go along and being agreeable with one another.

He's not okay with that.

 Now, it seems significant to point out here that Jesus does not condemn the church for permitting a woman to have a position of influence within the community, nor does he condemn women prophets and teachers in general, something that 1 Corinthians clearly says qualified women are permitted to do.

 does condemn is this particular woman's doctrine and he calls it demonic.

Just like the false apostles in Ephesus, their doctrine was demonic.

Just like the guy in Pergamum whom Jesus nicknames Balaam, another Old Testament character, his doctrine was demonic.

Same thing going on here in Thyatira, except this time it is a woman.

And the content of her teaching, Jesus says, is misleading people into sexual immorality and food that is sacrificed to idols.

 And this directly ties to the promise of the trade guilds in Thyatira.

Because essentially what this woman was teaching was that Christians, listen, this is a really important place to lean in, Christians were safe to engage in the idolatrous practices of their profession so that they could avoid the economic harm that came by rejecting these things.

Go to the feast of your trade guilds.

Participate in the liturgies that honor the false gods.

It's just business.

 That was Jezebel's motto.

And her logic didn't exist in a vacuum.

It was likely fueled by an early Gnostic thinking.

The word Gnostic comes from the Greek word gnosis that means knowledge.

The basic idea of this teaching is that the spiritual realm is good and the material realm, including our physical bodies, is at worst corrupt and at best irrelevant.

 Therefore, spiritual knowledge has saving power, but what you do with your body is inconsequential.

What you think is what matters, what you do with your body doesn't matter.

Sounds kind of familiar.

So this woman's teaching would have gone something like this.

Hey, we know that Jesus is Lord.

Therefore, you can go to that feast.

You can participate in that idolatry.

You can even engage in the sexual immorality because you know the truth about Jesus and it doesn't affect your soul when you engage in that stuff with your bodies.

 We might call this the equivalent of a Sunday-only faith, where the liturgies we live by Monday to Saturday don't matter as long as we profess the right stuff on Sundays.

Six hours of social media a day?

Doesn't matter that it's deforming me like crazy.

I'm gonna sing 25 minutes of worship songs on Sunday.

I'm good, right?

A little harmless flirting with the coworker?

No worries.

I'll repent before we take communion on Sunday.

 Let loose with the team after work.

Forget that I'm a representative of Jesus Christ to a lost world.

All good.

I'm serving on Sunday.

That basically makes me a super Christian, right?

These are all the justifications of Jezebel.

Some scholars think that this is what Jesus means by the phrase, the so-called deep things of Satan.

 that was their own wording, it implied that it was possible for Christians to participate to some degree in idolatrous situations, thus experiencing the satanic realm without being harmed spiritually by that participation.

So like in a strange sort of twisted irony, they thought that they were mature enough to handle compromise.

 And we are never mature enough to handle compromise.

To think that we are is only the evidence of our immaturity.

Now, I get the lure of all these behaviors because we don't often feel like we're voluntarily choosing a Sunday-only faith.

And that's what makes Jezebel so effective.

Jesus says that she's misleading you.

In the Greek, the word is beguiling.

The word beguile means to lead astray through charm and persuasion.

 It's the same verb that Jesus uses to describe the activity of the dragon, the beast, and Babylon later on in Revelation.

So here in the letter to the church in Thyatira, he's saying this harmless doctrine that you're permitting in your church is actually an everyday manifestation of the spiritual war that's going on around you.

In other words, deception rarely looks demonic.

It usually looks desirable.

 One Revelation scholar, C.B.

Caird, said this, that humans do not choose evil because it appears evil.

They choose evil because it appears good.

That's how satanic deception works.

It advertises something that looks wise, looks freeing, looks good, but actually leads to death.

We hear this all the time in our own culture, even in the church.

Hey, we should sleep together before we get married because that's going to test our compatibility with one another and make sure that we go the distance.

 Sounds wise, leads to death.

Hey, if I work seven days a week instead of six and neglect the gathering of God's people, I'll be able to get ahead financially in life.

Sounds wise, leads to death.

If I talk badly about this person ever so subtly behind their back, it'll make me feel justified about my own choices and my own lot in life.

 Sounds promising, leads to death.

If I hold a grudge against this person or somehow get revenge against them, I'll finally be able to heal the pain that I feel from what they did to me.

Sounds freeing, leads to death.

And that's why Jesus introduces himself here as the one who has eyes that blaze like fire.

He wants you to know that he sees beyond the illusion.

 what's really happening beneath the surface of our compromise, and he exposes it for what it is.

Essentially what Jesus is saying is you don't possess the deep things of Satan, the deep things of Satan possess you.

In the same way that Satan has been cast down from heaven, Jesus says that he's going to cast them down from the church and onto a sickbed.

Which, though it is a judgment, is actually a mercy.

 Notice the progression of the judgment from sickness to great tribulation to death.

It's a progressive judgment.

Why?

Because punishment is not the ultimate goal.

Repentance is.

Jesus even says in the text, I have given this woman time to repent, and she is unwilling.

So Jesus is really patient, but understand that his patience is an expression of his love.

 And he would not be loving toward you, and he would not be loving towards his bride if he allowed our liturgies of liability to go unaddressed.

And so he addresses them.

Now, in my pastoral and personal experience, it is our Monday to Saturday lives that do form us the most.

We spend a lot of that time at work.

 our co-workers, our peers.

And we have to recognize that what Jesus said to Thyatira is also true for us.

This is true for you.

To belong economically means to belong liturgically.

Your co-workers may not worship Zeus, but that doesn't mean they're not worshiping idols.

 And though it looks different for us than it did in the church in Thyatira, we have to realize that our labor also comes with liturgies.

And when we do not examine those, what happens is we unwittingly become shaped by them, usually for the worse.

There are no neutral spaces in life.

The Bible is pretty binary.

There is a kingdom of darkness, there is a kingdom of light.

There is evil and there is good.

 We are either being formed into the image of Jesus through intentional liturgies, or we are being deformed into the image of Satan.

Those categories, by the way, of formed and deformed, I find are more helpful categories to live by to steer your behavior and your choices.

Sometimes more helpful than right and wrong.

It's not always wisdom for you to ask yourself the question, is it wrong if I do this?

 Sometimes a better question is, will this help form me into the image of Jesus if I do it?

And if the answer to that question is no, I'm not really worried so much about where it falls on the spectrum of right or wrong.

I'm committed to becoming more like Jesus.

To ignore this leads us into a modern-day form of Gnosticism, where we think, it only matters what I believe about Jesus,

 It doesn't matter if I participate in this unchristlike pattern of behavior in my profession.

Work doesn't just pay you, it forms you.

So what are the liturgies in your workplace?

Let's list off a handful just quickly.

Does your workplace live by a liturgy of conflating identity with performance?

Where you are only as valuable as what you produce?

You need to resist that.

 You must resist that.

And the way you resist that is not by intentionally performing poorly.

The way you resist that is every single day you intentionally, liturgically root your identity in Christ by meditating upon scripture, by spending time in contemplative and reflective prayer, by allowing Jesus to draw near to you and to encourage and exhort you so that you go into work with the question of your identity is already settled.

And by the way, if you do that, you'll probably perform better and out of a place of greater health.

 What about the liturgy of gossip?

Does your workplace have that liturgy in waging unfair criticisms and perpetuating narratives about others behind their backs?

Is that just part of the company's culture that you are expected to participate in?

Refuse that.

Refuse to bond with your coworkers by talking negatively about somebody behind their back.

Refuse that.

Even if the person who's inviting you into that gossip is your boss, politely change the conversation.

And that might mean that you fall out of favor with your boss a little bit.

 It might.

But if Jesus can call the church in Thyatira to give up their livelihood altogether for the sake of not participating in those demonic liturgies, then he can call you to fall out of favor with your boss a little bit.

What will probably happen over time if your boss has any semblance of maturity is they will actually begin to respect you and see you as a trustworthy person and you will grow rather than being put out to pasture.

 What about the liturgy of compromise?

Is it normal in your industry to cut corners, to tell white lies in order to get the deal done?

Value your clients more than you do getting the deal done.

If the client were to ask you about your faith, would your testimony to Jesus Christ match the way that you've treated them?

There are certain practices in the industries where you work where it is normal to act in unethical ways.

 And so morality gets redefined.

In that context, it's right, but it doesn't help form you into the image of Christ.

So resist it.

Be unusual.

Be a peculiar people.

 You want to change the world?

Be different than the world.

Be a peculiar people.

By the way, the reason that your coworkers today don't worship Zeus is because 2,000 years ago, Christians were a peculiar people and they committed themselves to a liturgy of life and labor that though paganism was ripe in the Roman imagination, slowly but surely, they began to lay down their idols and begin to worship Jesus Christ.

The whole empire gets Christianized because leaven spread throughout the whole lump.

Slowly but surely.

Yeah.

 So like sometimes we can take for granted, we just think life is the way that it is and it's not going to change.

Don't think that.

It will change.

It's really good.

 And the way that it will change is by you refusing to participate in sinful liturgies and remaining steadfast in whatever your sphere is in liturgies that form you into the image of Jesus.

It's not just for your sake, it's for the sake of those around you as well who are part of a dead and dying world.

And you need to be the light of Jesus Christ that calls them out of that darkness into the kingdom of God's beloved son.

You need to be the reason that they get off the road to hell and on the road to eternal life in Christ Jesus.

 The stakes are very, very high.

And so when you show up to work every single day, the choices that you make about what practices and patterns you're going to participate in, it's not inconsequential, it's very consequential.

Souls literally hang in the balance and God is not...

 saved you and placed you here in this city on this plot of earth just so you could waste your time until you go to heaven when you die.

Now God has a plan.

He wants to use you in this place and time.

This is the purpose of the church to be faithful witnesses that convert God's enemies into God's friends.

And the way that we do that is everyday devotion and faithfulness.

Patterns that we practice here together

 and in the workplace.