Is your church properly intolerant?

Pete Alwinson:
Is your church properly intolerant? Let’s talk about it, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
This is Key Life. We’re here to communicate the freeing truth that God’s not mad at His children. Steve invited our friend Pete Alwinson to teach us all this week. Pete is a former pastor, founder of ForgeTruth.com and the author of Like Father Like Son.

Pete Alwinson:
Thank you Matthew. Pete Alwinson here, one of the voices of Key Life and oh, what a joy it is to be with you all and to be able to talk about grace and the graced church. We’re talking about the seven churches in the Book of Revelation. And today we want to look at two more churches, the church in Pergamum and the church in Thyatira, but it’s Wednesday and I hope your week is going well. It is the celebration of 9 11 today. And so, as a country, we do pause and reflect about that dark day in the life of our country. But the early church also had to deal with a lot of dark days. Think about the church, say, 60 years after the resurrection of Jesus Christ. They were a small church, and they were a persecuted church. The Romans were coming after them periodically, and the culture was against them. And so, 60 years after the resurrection, Jesus writes these letters through John to the seven churches. And your church might be either like the Church of Pergamum or the Church of Thyatira. But we’re going to be talking about tolerance and intolerance today. So, let me read to you a few verses from Revelation chapter 2: verse 12.

“And to the angel of the church in Pergamum write: ‘The words of him who has the sharp two-edged sword. I know where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is. Yet you hold fast my name, and you did not deny my faith even in the days of Antipas my faithful witness, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells. But I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold the teachings of Balaam, who taught Balaam to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so that they might eat food sacraficed to idols and practice sexual immorality. So also you have some who hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans. Therefore repent. If not, I will come to you soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I’ll give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on it that no one knows except the one who receives it.’

There’s some great promises that are given to the Church of Pergamum here. And it’s important to understand that Jesus has the two-edged sword and notice the sword is coming out of his mouth, it’s not in his hand. He’s not going to come and cut up his people. He is going to come and rebuke his people. He’s going to speak the truth to his people and the church in Pergamum was a church who had fallen on tough times. I mean, one of their own had died and was no longer in church. Antipas, one of the faithful had died. He was a faithful witness. Can you imagine going to church on Sunday and seeing that spot in your church where Bill always sits and Bill’s not there. And it’s not just because he went on vacation. It’s not that he just went to the beach for the week-end. It’s that he was executed for his faith in Jesus Christ. Now, that’ll put the fear in anybody. Well, this was a church that had some people in it that were teaching some false things. And they really weren’t staying true to the word of God. And so, it’s important to understand that we have to be true to the word. Jesus was filled with truth and grace. Grace and truth. One of my seminary professors was D.A. Carson, and many of you know, D.A. Carson is one of the finest minds Canada ever produced, and he’s been a teacher in the United States for years and years. But he wrote a book back in 2012 entitled The Intolerance of Tolerance. And he talks about how liberals are no longer being tolerant of us. Well, fast forward to today, over 12 years past that time, and we see that our culture has become a very, very, very intolerant culture. And we in the church have been baffled by this and haven’t known exactly how to deal with that. And yet the reality is that like the church in Pergamum, if we’re not faithful to the word of God, we have to repent. You know repentance is one of those things that we don’t think about that much. We think, well, if you become a Christian, you’ve got to repent. But repentance is something that happens, not only when we come to faith in Christ, but should be a big part of what we do every day of our life. Steve Brown often says, quoting Jack Miller.

That the pastor ought to be the most repentant person in the church.

And the older I get, the more I see why that is true, because the closer you get to the light, the more you see your own darkness. And so, the church in Pergamum had to repent because they were tolerating false teaching in the church, and they actually needed to be less tolerant of what was going on in the church. And then we come to the church in Thyatira.

“And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write: ‘I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first. But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols.’

They were tolerating in an area in the church where they should have been intolerant of that error. And it was a woman teacher, her name probably wasn’t Jezebel, but she was a Jezebel like character. Go back and read in I and II Kings, boy I tell you, she was one tough lady. But when the church falls into false doctrine and idolatry, it then can very easily fall into false sexual practices as well. And so, there were so many in the church of Thyatira that were giving into this. Many that were standing true and firm to the gospel as well. So listen, who are we as a church? What is the church to be? Well, we’re to be tolerant at times of one another, particularly. Bear one another’s burdens and thus fulfill the law of Christ. We are to put up with one another, we’re to love one another, to bear with one another, that’s true. But there are times when the church needs to be intolerant. We need to be intolerant when there is pastoral or staff abuse of the people of God. We need to be intolerant of some of the gender nonsense that we see going on in our culture today. We need to be intolerant of abortion on demand and what we see in American culture today. We need to be intolerant of being pushed into the corner of approving of same sex marriage. There’s so many things that as Christians, because we are to be the lighthouses in this world and stand for the truth and the gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s important that we learn to be winsomely intolerant. And so, let me give you a truth.

Intolerance is grace and gospel motivated and is totally compatible with compassion and kindness.

Let me say that again.

Intolerance is grace and gospel motivated and is totally compatible with compassion and kindness.

See, I can be intolerant of a lot of things. I can be intolerant of false doctrine in the church, but kind in dealing with somebody in the church in how we deal with that false doctrine. I can be intolerant of the practices that I see in our world around us, and yet I can be loving, and I can be kind, and I can be compassionate, when I deal with people who differ with me. The truth of the matter is, is that we can and must speak and hold the truth in love. You can do that. And it’s possible for us and what a great role it is for us to be God’s people who hold the truth in love. That’s what our Lord Jesus Christ did and does. It’s absolutely amazing though, when you think of what went on in Jesus’ time as he dealt with the religious Pharisees of his day, he was kind and compassionate on great sinners like Zacchaeus who was repentant, but on those who were hard and stiff necked against the God of the universe, like the Pharisees and the Sadducees, Jesus could be downright harsh. So, as we move into this era of time in which we live, we have the opportunity to remember that there is a time to be tolerantly intolerant, to be intolerant, kindly intolerant of the evil that is around us. So, the truth is.

Intolerance is grace and gospel motivated and it can be totally compatible with compassion and kindness.

I’m going to pray that the Church of Jesus Christ would know how to live the truth in love and hold it strongly in truth. You take it to heart. Amen.

Matthew Porter:
Pete Alwinson, for that reminder that there are times when being intolerant is absolutely the right thing to do. Pete has been teaching us all this week from Revelation in a series called The Graced Church. And once again, our specific text today was Revelation 2:12 through 20. One more day in this series tomorrow, do hope you’ll join us for that. Well, if you’re a regular listener to Key Life, then you’ve probably heard Pete before. So, you may be interested in reading some articles he’s written on our website. Just go to keylife.org, then on the left hand menu, click the Authors button, then scroll down until you find Pete’s name. And as you’re there, you’ll also see info and articles from all our Key Life contributors. It’s an easy way to deep dive into the content that ministers to you the most. And great news, all of our website content is still free thanks to the generous support of listeners just like you. If you’d like to donate to Key Life, call us at 1-800-KEY-LIFE that’s 1-800-539-5433. If you’d like to send your donation by mail, go to keylife.org/contact to find our mailing addresses. Or you can e-mail [email protected] you can charge a gift on your credit card or include a gift in your envelope and of course you can now give safely and securely through text. Just text Key Life to 28950 then follow the instructions. Key Life is a member of ECFA in the States and CCCC in Canada. And we are a listener supported production of Key Life Network.