I’m working on my garden. It’s that time. It’s not much: a few herbs here, some tomatoes in planter boxes, there. All the more reason, that I’m spending more time this year with soil prep—composting, to be exact. I want rich soil, minus sneaky weed seeds that can slip into the dirt. The right environment, free from contaminants, is important especially if you’re growing a small garden and …a small church, or any church for that matter. That’s why a pastor I heard about used a clever “show and tell” to make this point to this congregation so they would get it.
He took four cans and put a worm in each can. He put a worm in the first can full of whiskey; he put a worm in the second can full of cigarette smoke; he put a worm in the third can full of chocolate. He put a worm in the fourth can full of rich dirt. * Then he preached on love. At the end of the sermon, he opened the cans to show the congregation. The worm in the whiskey can was dead: the worm in the cigarette smoke was dead; the worm in the chocolate was dead. But the worm in the good soil was alive.
So, he asked the congregation what they learned. Maud, the cranky, hard living elderly woman who always sat in the back, raised her hand. * “I learned that if you drink, smoke and eat chocolate, you won’t get worms. She missed it.
Without the right environment, compromise—like weeds—can crop in and choke a church like the Church at Thyatira.
“Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?” Innocent children sing. Wiser adults ask a more serious question: How does the church grow? How will God judge the compromising church?
That is the question facing Thyatira in Rev. 2:19-27, one of the seven churches in Asia, Christ evaluated. There were weeds in Thyatira’s Garden.
As we march toward Easter, we continue our Lenten Church Series: Lent—it’s not what you give up, but what you gain. Thyatira is the fourth church we have looked within and looked forward to see what needed to be given up so that they would gain. We will see in Thyatira, the right environment of a growing church; the weeds of a compromising church, and the possible blooms of a repenting church. Don’t miss it like Marge. It’s not worms, but the weeds that will ruin the garden.
First, keep growing in Christian virtues that make you the Church Christ is looking for. Thyatira, like a garden with the right environment, was growing in Christian virtues. We see that in verse 19:
I know your deeds, and your love and faith and service and perseverance, and that your deeds of late are greater than at first. Revelation 2:19
Every gardener has expectations. I plant tomatoes seedlings this spring. I expect tomatoes this summer. Christ is no different. He expected Christian virtues from the church in Thyatira. And Christ, with his eyes like laser-fire (described in verse18.) didn’t miss a thing, He saw four virtues in their garden.
First, there was love in their garden. Unlike Ephesus who had lost their loving feeling—it was gone, gone, gone—Thyatira was practicing a practical love. Christ, with laser-fire eyes, saw it in their deeds. He saw agape—God’s preferred love—the doable love in 8 ways, that we see in 1 Corinthians 13: Love is patient; kind; does not envy; does not boast; is not rude; is not selfish; is not easily angered. Love does not keep score. God saw love in Thyatira’s deeds.
Second, there was faith in Thyatira’s Garden. Thyatira was the smallest church, but Christ, with laser-fire eyes, saw their mountain-moving faith as they faced the same monumental persecutions of being a Christian church in a pagan land that the other seven churches faced. Christ made it clear in Matthew 17:20, that it’s not the size of your faith that matters, it’s the object: “…if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move.”
Third, there was service in their garden. Christ, with fire-laser eyes, saw it in their deeds. They were living out their Christian liberty, not as an opportunity for the flesh, but to serve other through love according to Galatians 5:13 that we saw last week in admonishing the Pergamum Church. We don’t know the specifics of their service. But it was enough for Christ to see. And He sees your service, Church: collecting protein food stuffs for the homeless.
Fourth, there was perseverance in their garden. Christ, with fire-laser eyes, saw a “faint not” quality in their deeds. They did not grow weary in their “well-doing”, according to Galatians 6:9., “for in due season they will reap if the faint not” from their garden work. Church, God doesn’t reward “seasonal’ Christians, but “due season” believers who stay until it’s their time, even to the end like Polycarp and Antipas—martyrs who were faithful even unto death. God sees yourperseverance.
These virtues: love, faith, service, and perseverance were not just present, they were growing in Thyatira’s Garden. With fire-laser eyes, he saw a dynamic church maturing, moving forward, deepening, whose “deeds of late are greater than at first.” Notice Christ did not say “your membership rolls are greater or your square footage is greater.” Growth is not about membership, but maturity in what Peter describes as “…growing in grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” according to II Peter 3:18. It’s not how wide, but how deep you are planted when floods come.
Church, as you look within yourself this Lenten season, ask, “How does your garden grow?”—not “With silver bells and cockle shells and pretty maids all dressed in a row,” as the nursery rhyme goes. Christ is looking for more than ornaments, but virtues worth picking.
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