Smyrna: Suffering for His Sake

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Revelation chapter 2. Last week we talked about, we began to talk about, what if Jesus came to church? If Jesus were to walk into any given church and were to look and observe and assess what he saw, what would he say?

Because I told you the question is asked all the time in songs and articles, and usually they’re made to sort of beat the church up because the people feel like their church isn’t spiritual enough or their church doesn’t do this right or doesn’t do that right. And I shared with you about the song that my dad had played for his Sunday school class where the singer said, my Jesus would never be accepted in my church. And I told my dad that man needs to either find a new Jesus or a new church because he’s either at a biblical church and serving an unbiblical version of Jesus or he’s serving the Jesus of the Bible and he’s at an unbiblical church.

But if something’s wrong there, if that’s the case. And what we see in the Bible is that this actually did happen. I won’t tell you that Jesus showed up at these seven churches in physical form, but in the seven churches in Revelation, Jesus showed up at these churches.

He looked at what was going on. He assessed what was going on in his churches, and he gave them some very real, some very honest commentary about what was going on in the churches. Some churches, he had nothing bad to say about them.

Some churches he had nothing good to say about them. Most of the churches he had a mix of things to say about them. And to every church he gave instruction about how either they needed to correct course or how they could take what they were doing right and do it even better.

For each of them he gave a promise of what was waiting for them as a result of their faithfulness to him. He gave real instruction to each of these churches. Each church, as we study through these churches, we’ll see each of them are different.

And just as each church today is different. Even among biblical churches, every church is different. None of us are exactly the same.

We all have the same spiritual needs. We all have the same need to apply the Bible, the same need to be led by the Spirit, the same need to submit to Christ. But as far as how that specifically looks in our context, it’s always a little bit different because we always have different problems, different mixes of people. And as we’re studying through these books and what Jesus said when he came to these churches and said, this is what you’re doing right.

This is what you’re doing wrong. This is what you need to do better. I want us to consider our church and look around at the things that he told them and say, you know, if Jesus came in physical form, if Jesus came in and sat down one Sunday at Eastside, what would he say about what we’re doing here?

Because I suspect that he would have some good things to say to us. I imagine he’d look at us and say, this area, this area, you’re doing very well. Keep going.

I imagine there’d be some other areas where he’d say, you’re deficient in these areas and you need to do better. I imagine he would tell us how to do that. And he’s already given us his promises about what we can look forward to as a result of our faithfulness to him.

So as we study these churches, let’s consider how what he told them could apply to us. Instead of just a historical exercise, let’s say, what can we take from this that applies to Eastside? What would Jesus say to us if he came to church?

This morning, last week we talked about Ephesus, the church that had lost its first love. He had a lot of great things to say about them. They had done so well.

They had worked so well at so many things and followed Him so faithfully. And yet, He said they had lost their first love. The love that they had for God, the passion, the zeal they had when they first believed had evaporated.

And He told them how to get back to that. And I challenged you to look at where you were when you were first saved. We know our salvation is not dependent on our feelings.

It’s dependent on what Jesus Christ did on the cross. But at the same time, if there’s not a heart and a love for God, something is wrong with us spiritually. And I challenge you to, and challenge me as well, I challenged all of us to look at where we are spiritually, look at where we are now, to look at the love we had for Christ when we were first saved and see, have we grown cold or have we gotten better?

And if we’ve grown cold, his challenge to the church at Ephesus, just as to us, is to remember from whence we’re fallen, Remember where we were, repent, and do the first works. That formula still works today, by the way. We talked last week about Ephesus, a church that had lost its first love.

And a lot of churches today have lost their first love. Today we’re going to talk about Smyrna. Smyrna is kind of a fun word to say.

Smyrna was a persecuted church, and we’re going to talk about suffering for his sake. The church at Smyrna faced severe persecution, as many churches did in that day. In the times of the Roman Empire, they were persecuted by the Roman government because all the other religions, it seemed, had found tolerance in the eyes of the government because the Romans wanted everybody to worship Caesar as a god.

Now, they didn’t care who else you worshipped on top of that. As long as you were willing to burn incense to the emperor, you were all right. And so people from all these various pagan religions were able to come in and say, sure, why not?

We’ve already got 150 million gods. What’s one more? I mean, at that point, really, what’s one more?

And so they’d burn incense to Caesar. The Christians, and the Jews also, came along and said, no, we can’t worship Caesar. Now, the Jews faced persecution under the Romans, too, but they had found political means to work that out.

The Christians had no such political power or standing, and the Christians were not willing to, the faithful Christians were not willing to burn incense to the emperor. They were not willing to worship the emperor as God. They said, we have one God, Jesus Christ, And we’ll worship nobody but him.

And they faced severe persecution throughout the empire. In some cities, it was even worse, though, because you had not only the Roman authorities as a whole, you not only had the empire imposing government persecution on you from on top, but you had also, in some areas, the local mobs. I don’t mean mafia, but the mobs of unhappy locals would be very upset about the Christian presence there.

And sometimes people would be beaten, would be attacked, would be killed these unruly mobs. On top of that, you had in some regions Jews who were upset that the Christians have kind of come in and co-opted part of their message that there’s one God and taken these Old Testament scriptures and proved that Jesus is the Messiah that they’ve been looking for when they didn’t want to accept Jesus as the Messiah. And so in many cases, you had persecution throughout the whole empire, but in some places you had persecution from three sides coming at you all at once.

Smyrna was one of these places where they were just persecuted on every side. They were just It was a good church, but they were beaten down by the people around them. We’re going to talk today about suffering for his sake.

Revelation chapter 2 verse 8, starting in verse 8, says, And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write, These things saith the first and the last, which was dead and is alive. Jesus tells John to tell the, when he says, as we talked last week, the angel of the church at Smyrna. The word angel a lot of times in the Bible means, well, the word angel means messenger.

The Greek word there is angelos, which means messenger, somebody who brings a message. In some instances, that’s a created being with wings like we would think about. In some cases, it refers to something else.

It refers to a person. Sometimes in the Old Testament, it refers to what we believe is Jesus Christ showing up in what they call his pre-incarnate form, that he showed up before he was born. That will boggle your mind.

But he’s already, it’s widely believed, he’s already said when he talked about the seven candlesticks, We talked about this last week. The seven candlesticks were the seven churches. The seven stars were the leaders of those churches.

And it’s widely believed and accepted that the angels of these churches, it’s not separate guardian angels for each church. He’s talking about the messenger to the church, whoever would take this message back to the church. So Jesus tells John unto the messenger of the church of Smyrna, write, these things sayeth the first and the last which was dead and is alive.

Before you launch into the message, John, make sure the messenger knows who is the one speaking. He who is the first and the last, who was dead and is alive. Jesus Christ identifies himself to the church of Smyrna as the one who is sending this message.

He says, I’m the first and the last. That means that before everything ever started, there was Jesus. After all of history is wrapped up, there will be Jesus. There is never a time when he has not existed.

There will never be a time when he does not exist. He is the first and the last. By Him were all things created and nothing was created that was not created by Him, according to John chapter 1. That right there should give them a little bit of a feeling of security that they were in the hands of the very one who threw the universe into existence, put it into order, started it running, who held the Roman government in His right hand, and that there was nothing that He was not powerful enough to handle. He’s the first and the last. The one who was dead and is now alive.

It’s a pretty big claim. It’s a true claim that he was dead and is now alive. I can’t think of anybody else that can credibly say that.

I know there are people who have died on the operating table or have been pronounced clinically dead or what have you, that a few minutes later they revived them. Nobody else can make the claim that they spent three days in a tomb after having been crucified, beaten beyond recognition, and then came back three days later walking around talking to the people who knew them firsthand. proving that he was who he said he was and that he could do what he said he could do.

He’s not only the first and last in control of the universe, he’s also the one who was dead and is now alive. The one who was crucified for their sins and raised again for their justification, the Bible says. That there’s nothing that’s outside of his power.

The physical universe and life and death themselves are in his hand. He said, that’s who’s speaking to you, church at Smyrna. He says unto the angel of the church at Smyrna, the messenger, the one who will relay this message.

A lot of people believe that this is a man named Polycarp. I’ve talked to you before about Polycarp. I don’t fault you if you don’t remember it because it was just an offhand mention in a message about something else.

But Polycarp is a historical figure who was the pastor of the church at Smyrna for a while. He was a disciple of John. He learned about the faith from John.

By the way, John who wrote this letter. John who walked with Jesus. He learned about Christianity.

He learned the truth from John. And actually, after the apostles died, a lot of people turned to Polycarp because there were people running around teaching false things, saying they were apostles, saying, well, the apostles taught this, and writing fake documents and fake teachings and things. And people would turn to Polycarp because he was the closest that had been to the apostles and who would know better.

And so for a while, Polycarp was kind of the guy they looked to, not as a pope, but as a source. What I’ve told you before about Polycarp was that when he was an old man, when he was an old man, they came to him and said, if you will recant your faith, you can leave here with your life, but otherwise we’re going to kill you. And Polycarp, when a lot of other people ran away, when a lot of other people around him deserted the faith, Polycarp, this frail old man, said, I cannot deny my Savior.

And Polycarp ended up being burned at the stake in the city of Smyrna in the second century. sometime, I want to say about 117 A. D.

, somewhere around in there. So not too long after the book of Revelation was written, Polycarp gave his life for the faith. And that’s who many people believe that this, when they’re talking about the angel of the church, the messenger of the church at Smyrna, they believe it was Polycarp at that time.

Somebody who would give his life under the Roman persecution for his faith. It says, Under the angel of the church in Smyrna write, These things saith the first and the last, which was dead and is alive. I know thy works and tribulation and poverty, but thou art rich.

And I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan. There’s a lot of information in that verse alone. He tells him, just like he told the church at Ephesus, I know thy works.

And ladies and gentlemen, especially when we’re suffering, especially even when we’re suffering for the sake of Christ, it can feel like we’ve been abandoned. It can feel like the world is just dark and desolate and the trials, the trouble, it’s never going to end. Nobody sees my predicament.

Nobody sees what I’m going through. Nobody understands. And Jesus looks at the church at Smyrna just like he did the church at Ephesus and said, I know thy works.

There was nothing they were going through that Jesus didn’t know. There was nothing that they had done that Jesus didn’t see and keep record of. And you better believe there was going to be a reward in store for their faithfulness.

He said, I know thy works and thy tribulation. I know the suffering you’ve gone through, church at Smyrna. I know how difficult it’s been for you to persevere in my word, in the faith, in the midst of these trials, and yet you’ve done it.

I know your tribulation. He said, and I know your poverty, but thou art rich. And some people have speculated that when they want to try to spiritualize this book, and what I mean is they try to, instead of interpreting it literally, unless there’s reason not to interpret it literally, and when I say reason not to, it’s things like when Jesus said, I would have gathered Jerusalem under my wing.

We’re not supposed to literally believe Jesus had feathers and a beak, okay? But I believe in interpreting the Bible literally unless the Bible itself gives us compelling reason not to, when it’s obviously symbolism. People who try to make all of this symbolic instead of writing to specific churches, folks, he gives way too many details in his letters about what was going on in these churches to think that it’s anything other than literal letters to literal churches about literal situations going on.

And people will say, well, this is about their spiritual poverty, their weakness. Folks, they were impoverished. I mean, let’s just admit it.

Their persecution had driven them to poverty. When you’re constantly running around for your life, you’re not real worried about making a living at that point. Just eking out an existence is enough.

Getting from day to day, having maybe enough to eat for that day, maybe not. But getting through there with your life is enough. And these people may have been wealthy at some point, But because of their faith in Christ, the government and the people around them had come down on them so hard that these people now found themselves impoverished.

I mean, it talks about their tribulation, their suffering. Why would we think they would be persecuted in the sense they’d be made fun of, but everybody’s going to leave them and let them have all the money they want and let them have all their stuff? I believe these people were probably devoid of all the worldly possessions they’d ever had.

And when you’re facing trial, when you’re facing opposition, you face the loss of what so many people, even Christians, we tend to end up trusting in that bank account, trusting in the possessions. And when you are left without all of the things, our peace, our security, our possessions that people tend to trust in, it would be very easy to think, God’s forgotten me, the situation is hopeless. But he said, I know your works, I know your tribulation, I know your poverty.

He says, by the way, but thou art rich. They may have been impoverished in this world, but folks, they had a greater reward coming. There were greater riches in store.

They were rich in faith. They were rich in love for one another. They were rich in all the things that really matter in this world.

The things that we would say, yeah, if we had a moment of clarity about our priorities and said, you know what, that bank account doesn’t really matter. The house, I think of it like at home when there’s a tornado because it happens so often. And, you know, everybody will spend so much time working on their house, making their house nice, keeping the yard pretty, keeping up appearances, doing all these things, working so hard to own the boat and the fancy car.

By the way, there’s nothing wrong with having those things. But they’ll focus so much on that. And then a tornado will come through, as it does every few years, and wipe everything away.

And yet they were down in the cellar with their families. You know, I realize that that’s what mattered. The boat, all that can be replaced, But these are the things that matter.

The family, the people we care about. And the things that we’re really rich in and don’t take time to think about. Folks, it was the same thing for them.

They may have been devoid of their money. They may have been broke. They may have been under persecution.

But they were rich when it came to the things that really mattered. They had one another in the church. They had Jesus Christ first and foremost, who again was the first and the last, was dead and is now alive.

He said, I know your works, your tribulation, your poverty, but you’re rich. You’re rich, whether you realize it or not. He says also, I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.

And I read all sorts of people trying to explain this verse. And a lot of the explanations sounded pretty convoluted. One man wrote that a lot of times they referred to Christians at that time as Jews, and they did, but not so much in the Bible.

I can think of maybe one other instance where they were talking, where they mention the Jews in the Bible and they’re talking about believers. And where he’s been talking about the church, I find it hard to believe. Anyway, I think he would have said, I know those who claim to be believers.

I know those that say they’re part of the church and are not. He says here, I know those who call themselves Jews. I know the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.

And it calls to mind a verse in Romans chapter 8 where he talks about, I mean, Romans chapter 2, I believe it’s verse 8, that talks about how they’re not Jews who are those outwardly. And the real circumcision is not the outward circumcision. What he’s talking about is those who were really his are those who follow him inwardly.

It didn’t matter the outside rituals and ordinances. It was those who followed him on the inside. And the church at Smyrna was persecuted by Jewish people at that time who thought they were following God, thought they were partakers of the true faith because of their outward deeds, their adherence to the law.

He says they’re not real Jews because they’re only Jews outwardly. In reality, he calls them the synagogue of Satan. They were the dwelling place of Satan.

These Jewish people who persecuted the church at Smyrna. They were like Paul, incidentally. Lest any of this sound anti-Semitic, I have the highest possible admiration for the Apostle Paul.

But at one point, he was one of these people as well. He was one of those who thought he was doing God’s work. And yet what he was doing was keeping outward laws and ordinances and observances, all the while persecuting the people who really had God’s true faith in their hearts.

He called them the synagogue of Satan. Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer. Behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison that you may be tried, and ye shall have tribulation ten days.

Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. He tells them, don’t be afraid of any of these things. He says, some of you are going to be cast into prison.

It’s an interesting juxtaposition there, an interesting contradiction in terms there to say, you’re going to go to prison, but don’t be afraid. I’ve not been to prison, but I assume it’s scary. It would be for me.

It says the devil’s going to throw some of you into prison. The people that thought they were doing the right thing, and yet were, whether they thought they were upholding the rule of Rome, whether they thought they were upholding the Old Testament, Whatever they did, the people who worked for the devil’s cause were going to throw them into prison. Some of them were going to be persecuted with prison.

And he says that the church will be tried. You shall have tribulation ten days. Now, does that mean ten literal days they were going to have persecution?

It might. Some people have said there were ten persecutions under the Romans and the church at Smyrna was there throughout all of them and that the word there for days can also mean periods of time. I don’t know.

I’ll be honest with you. I don’t know whether it was 10 days, 10 periods of time. What I do know is that Jesus told them, you are going to suffer persecution.

He says, don’t be afraid of it. Why wouldn’t they be afraid of it? Well, for one, because Jesus went through it with them.

He told them in the very beginning, when he starts talking about the churches, that he walks among the seven candlesticks. He was there with the churches. He tells them that he was dead and is now alive.

He’s reminding them that anything they could suffer, he’s already suffered. He suffered at the cross. He would know what they were going through.

It says, and ye shall have tribulation ten days. Be thou faithful unto death. There’s also a reason there for them not to be afraid because as horrible as the things that were coming were, there was something even better for them after that.

Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. Give them a crown of life. Does that mean a literal crown?

Maybe. Does that mean that they would inherit eternal life? Yes.

To those that were faithful unto death, they would have a crown of life. They would receive eternal life. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.

He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death. Now these two verses together. There are several things that if you take them out of context in his letters to these churches, could sound like he’s threatening them with a loss of salvation if they didn’t do certain things.

What I see in here are promises of what he will do if they do what they’re supposed to. And we in our minds say, well, that means, no, He’s not talking to them. Because the Bible’s made it clear that if they were His, they would remain His.

And if they departed the faith, it was an indication they never were His. And so they’re not losing anything. They’re being shown for what they were, what they truly were by the persecution.

And those who were faithful unto death, those who by their life gave testimony to the fact that they were truly His, would receive a crown of life. Those who overcome. He’s not talking about earning anything in heaven.

He’s not talking about earning their place. 1 John asks the question, Who is he that overcomes? It says it’s he that believes in Jesus Christ as the Son of God.

And in other places, in the book of 1 John, he talks about those who overcome. It was their faith. Ladies and gentlemen, we don’t overcome by doing enough good works.

We overcome by trusting the fact that Jesus Christ died for us, that He was who He said He was, that He can do what He said He could do, that He dealt with the sin problem for us because we could not, and that he died for us. The moment we put our trust in Jesus Christ and we’re born again, we have overcome the world. And we will.

Folks, I don’t believe in the Calvinist concept of perseverance of the saints, but I do believe that if we’re truly his, we will persevere unto the end. He that overcometh will not be heard of the second death. What’s the second death?

The second death, the Bible says, is to be cast into the lake of fire. So those who overcome, those who are faithful unto the end, those who belong to Jesus Christ by faith, He promises them that no matter what persecution they go through, He encourages them, stand strong in the faith, because once you go through this, on the other side, you will have the crown of life, you will have eternal life, and you will not endure the fires of hell. He’s not telling them, stand strong, have perseverance as a way to earn these things.

Have perseverance, stand strong in the faith, because you do have these things. This is a very short letter in comparison to some of the others. but it was because it was a church with a very short priority list. You know, in times of crisis, our priority list gets very short, doesn’t it?

This was definitely a church in crisis. Under severe persecution, they were in crisis. Their priority list was very short.

Whether or not they were going to be able to hang in there in the midst of this persecution. And so he writes to them to deal with the most pressing problem they had, whether to stick with it or whether it would just be easier to give in. Whether it would be easier to just give up.

And he tells them, just as his message to Ephesus was to repent, his message to Smyrna was to stay strong. Ladies and gentlemen, in the face of persecution, there’s not a long list of things we have to do. The message is very simple.

Stay strong. And you may think, what in the world does this have to do with us today? Because we clearly, I mean, we are not suffering anything approaching the persecution that they went through in Smyrna.

But men and women, the world is still not a friendly place toward Christians, is it? We may not be able to see that sometimes, living in the Bible belt as we do, but the world is not a friendly place toward Christians. I did some research last night from Voice of the Martyrs and just pulled up about the first five or six stories I came across.

And I won’t read you the whole story, just kind of give you a summation. But in the last month or so, in the last couple months, Christians were beaten and nearly murdered by Muslim extremists while responding to an invitation to provide humanitarian aid to a small village in Kyrgyzstan. They were there at the invitation of local officials, and they were there to hand out food and things for the children.

And Muslim extremists attacked them because they were Christians and nearly strangled one of the men to death. Two Kenyan churches, two churches in Kenya were attacked, leaving 17 people dead and 40 wounded and serious damage to their meeting places. We have no idea how tough it is to be a Christian, do we?

An Iranian pastor was sentenced recently to six years in prison because of his faith. Now, that’s to say nothing. Many of you, if you’ve heard on the radio, will know the story of Yousef Naderkani, who’s a pastor in Iran currently under a death sentence because of his faith.

And even our U. S. State Department, some good things do come out of Washington occasionally, even our U.

S. State Department is working to try to get him released. But he’s under sentence of death simply for being a Christian.

Iranian authorities also recently closed one of the last remaining churches in Tehran that offers messages in the local language. Up to that point, they had closed all but four. Tehran is one of the largest cities in the world.

There are four churches, or there were four churches in Tehran, that were remaining preaching the gospel in the Farsi language of the millions of people who lived there. And the government came in and forcibly closed one of them, and they’ve got their targets on the other three. One of our allies, Israel.

I love Israel, but sometimes bad things happen there too. It’s a tough place to be a Christian in Israel too. A mission congregation was evicted from its rented meeting hall in Jerusalem under pressure from the local Muslim population.

And also recently in Nigeria, two churches were attacked by car bombers, injuring dozens of people. Ladies and gentlemen, what’s our connection to this in the 21st century? Our connection is that it’s still tough to be a Christian in this world.

I hear stories all the time about, oh, the Christians are persecuted so-and-so down through the ages. Ladies and gentlemen, if I’ve not made it abundantly clear in my messages before, the Catholic Church throughout the Middle Ages was not a representation of what Christianity is. And some of the teachings that come out of there today, I still don’t believe it is, but that’s neither here nor there.

The persecution, the inquisition, was conducted by the enemies of Christ, not his people. In the United States, the people who supported slavery, the members of the Ku Klux Klan, the people who supported prejudice, ladies and gentlemen, they showed themselves by their teachings to be in opposition to what the Word of God teaches, and often twisted and misused Scripture to do it. True Christians do not persecute anyone.

True Christians have been the objects of persecution. Some of our Baptist forebears in the faith were martyred, even up until just a couple hundred years ago in Europe. The Catholics and Protestants alike would tie them back to back and throw them into rivers.

Say, you like to be re-baptized so much because they’d been baptized as infants and said, no, the Bible teaches baptism of believers. So they’d get re-baptized. Fine, you like re-baptism so much, we’ll tie you back to back and throw you into a river and let you drown.

I’ve told you the story of the people who met with the Augustinian monk on the border between Wales and England, and because they wouldn’t su