What a recommendation for the church in Thyatira we heard! “I know thy works, charity, faith, and patience.” But none of us is perfect on earth. Even in Thyatira are shortcomings. But the Lord begins with the positive; He encourages first. But as the Great Physician, He uses the surgical knife of His Word to heal us spiritually. We read in verse 20, “Notwithstanding.” There is a “nevertheless.” The Lord continues, “I have a few things against thee.” It appears that the Lord has a serious complaint about the church's holiness and especially sexual sin. This complaint comes in the following words, “Because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.” A woman in the church claimed to be gifted by the Holy Spirit with the gift of prophecy. But she is a false prophet. She is called "Jezebel" to provide a link to the Jezebel we know from the Book of Kings. King Ahab married a princess from Sidon named Jezebel. She brought her own idols and priests with her. Through her, the Israelites were tempted to worship Baal and Ashtoreth; they fell into the sin of idolatry. This Jezebel here in Thyatira probably reasoned as follows: "To overcome Satan, one must know him, so participate in guild festivals and all that goes on there." Or worse, she wanted the world to see Christians as people who were just like them. Either way, through her preaching, church members began to participate in the sexual sins and idolatry that took place at these guild festivals. So apparently, there was no discipline in this church! We see how Satan is trying to destroy the church from within. “If the devil cannot destroy the church by persecution or heresy, he will try to corrupt it with evil.” Let us take the lesson here seriously. We read in 1 Corinthians 6:18-20, “Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.”