Revelation 2:8-11

We study through books of the Bible here at the Village Chapel, and it is my joy and privilege to be leading us through the Book of Revelation, the last in this 66 book library we call the Word of God.

Unique in its source, timeless in its truth, broad in its reach, transforming in its power.

We're calling our study of Revelation the hope of glory, and uh it's becoming more and more evident as we continue to study that the book of Revelation is not meant to, it's not designed to cause us to worry about the future, even with all of its images of dragons and beasts and all that sort of thing.

It's actually meant to drive us to our knees before Jesus in wonder and in worship.

So it's to fill us with hope that all of human history and our history as well all belong and are held in the hands of the one who is our Savior and our Lord.

Revelation, probably written sometime during the Emperor Domitian's reign.

He reigned from 81 to 96.

Very difficult time.

And John, the apostle, is writing from the island of Patmos.

It's a prison island.

So John is writing this message of hope, the hope of glory.

He's writing this while he's imprisoned, and that makes it all the more wonderful, doesn't it?

He's also writing seven letters to seven churches.

And today we're going to look at the seven churches up on the map.

And you'll see they form a bit of a horseshoe shape in terms of the routing.

Pergamum, right above that, another 40, 45 miles.

Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea, horseshoe shape and an ancient Roman postal route and trade route.

Would have made it very easy to be able to pass along a letter like this or a book like this, the Book of Revelation, to each and every one of the churches.

It would be called an encyclical because it was being passed around.

And even though within the confines of what we call chapters two and three, there are specific letters to specific churches, they really do represent, don't they, all of the church?

And we all can learn something from these by extension.

So we take a look at the letters themselves, and they seem to have a common pattern.

The city name is mentioned first.

The references to the Christ of chapter one, we'll see that in this uh second letter this morning.

A commendation, I know, and then Jesus will say, I know something about each and every one of the churches.

There will be an accusation, it's five of the seven churches.

I have this against you, is the way Jesus will say it most of the times.

But Smyrna and Philadelphia, he doesn't seem to articulate any kind of accusation against them.

And there's an exhortation to all of the churches as well, reminding me that I need not only encouragement, but exhortation.

I need the comfort of a pat on the back, but I also need some prodding along once in a while.

And uh so do you if you're honest.

The call to hear and to heed is a part of each of the letters as well.

And it's in that formula that Jesus used so often when he was here, uh, walking the planet as uh recorded in the four gospel records, which would have been written quite a bit uh a couple several decades before the writing of Revelation.

He who has an ear to hear, let him hear.

And in the book of Revelation, Jesus says, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

And so I want to be reminded as the pastor of the village chapel, and we together, collectively, as the village chapel, to always be listening.

Because the two things that are true in that statement, the spirit speaks, and we're supposed to be listening.

And I hope that we are.

Um, I pray that we are.

And uh, you pray for us, we'll pray for you as a church as well.

There's a motivating promise at the end of each of the letters as well to the one who overcomes, is typically the way it's stated.

And then there's a uh description of some kind of benefit or attending reward that comes along with that um um victory of overcoming or remaining faithful during difficult times.

Uh, these letters also to me exhibit uh Jesus thinking, as John Stock calls it, what Christ thinks of the church.

Um I also see it as Jesus saying, Here are some ways I want to train you up as a church to grow up.

And uh in the first letter it seems that he's saying, learn to keep first things first.

Ephesus, return to your first love.

You've you've lost your first love.

As we studied last week, there was this uh sort of three-part thing.

Remember, uh repent, return, remember uh the the the your first love, that is Christ.

And uh that's not just to remember how much I felt all gooey and ooey when I first became a Christian, but to remember that he first loved me, because John's the one who wrote this, and he also wrote 1 John 4, 19.

We love God because he first loved us.

So remember that first experience of love is when God loved me.

The first experience of real love.

Someone loving me for my sake, not for what I can do for them or what I might be able to give to them or how might be able to in some way serve them.

God loved us before we ever loved him.

While we were yet sinners, Christ gave his life for us.

This is beautiful, beautiful.

With Smyrna, it seems that the spiritual training is about encouragement in times of suffering.

And this is so relevant for us in our own day and time.

And really, um, when you learn about Smyrna with me today, you'll see why this was apropos for them.

Pergamum seems to be spiritual training in terms of exhortation to hold fast to truth, Thyatira, discipline to become more holy, Sardis, warning to wake up and strengthen what remains, Philadelphia, and exhortation to stay on mission and Laodicea preparing us for pure worship in eternity in the throne room before the Lamb of God who was slain, but now lives and reigns and rules forever, together with all of the saints of all the ages and people from every tribe and tongue.

It's just glorious.

And it's one of the reasons why, again, this book is not about, you know, Revelation isn't, it's not about getting us to worry about the future.

It's about to drop us to our knees in wonder and worship before our Savior.

Eugene Peterson in Reverse Thunder describes these churches and says the churches of Revelation show us that churches are not Victorian parlors where everything is always picked up and ready for guests.

They are messy family rooms.

They're not showrooms, they're living rooms.

And if the persons living in them are sinners, there are going to be clothes scattered about, handprints on the woodwork and mud on the carpet.

And that, my friends, is so true.

You've heard it said before.

We've said it at Village Chapel.

If you ever find a perfect church, don't join it because you'll ruin it.

And that remains true to this day as well.

The churches, the seven churches in Revelation, yeah, they had some problems, they had some difficulties, but they were being perfected, and Jesus loved them.

He was standing among the lampstands.

He was intimately acquainted with what was going on in their churches.

And he, his encouragement and his exhortation are all motivated by his great love for them.

Now, Smyrna, let's talk about Smyrna, the second letter.

Smyrna, third largest city uh in Turkey, what we call Western Turkey nowadays.

Back then it was called Asia Minor.

Uh, today it's called Izmir, and it's the only remaining city of the seven cities from the book of Revelation.

All the others are a pile of rubble and ruins.

But uh Izmir is uh, as I say, the third largest city in modern-day Turkey.

About, like I say, 40 miles north of Ephesus.

Uh, sits on it's a port city.

It's a quite active, dynamic city.

Uh back then in the first century, uh, probably a population base of about 200,000, so big city, bustling city, port city, so lots of activity, lots of uh uh market activity, lots of trade, lots of uh business going on.

It had a famous stadium, had a massive library.

I think uh boasted about 200,000 volumes, actually, and uh the largest theater at that time in all of Asia Minor.

Coins from that time bore the inscription that Smyrna was first of Asia and uh in in both beauty and size, you know.

So they were making the bold claim.

A lot of cities do that nowadays, don't they?

They'll say, oh, we're the number four station, we're the number three station, you know, we're the number one.

And uh so there was pride in this city uh for their uh about their city and for their city.

It also claimed to be the uh birthplace of Homer, not the simple-minded uh cartoon character Homer Simpson, but the Greek poet from about 4,000 years ago, even before the time of Christ, uh, who uh is credited with bringing us the writings called the Iliad and the Odyssey.

So, without any further ado, let's by all means read the second letter of seven, the letter which is a message to Smyrna and the church in Smyrna.

So Jesus speaking to John, and remember, there is a sort of a chain of conveyance here.

You know, God the Father uh revealing Jesus the Son to an angel that's speaking to John, that's speaking then and carrying it on through to uh the churches in Asia Minor, to the angel of the church in Smyrna, right?

And here it is, the first and the last who was dead and has come to life.

So here we have that common, those elements of these letters, the city name first, and then the reference to the Jesus of Revelation chapter one.

He's the first and the last who was dead and who has come to life.

There's nothing more beautiful and nothing more powerful, nothing more hopeful that he could have said to the church at Smyrna that was suffering such great persecution at the time.

Um again, uh Christians being told to recant their faith, or the Romans who demanded that they worship the emperor would put them to death, execute them right on the spot if they wanted to.

Even as much as 60 years later, after this time, uh, the bishop of Smyrna, a man named Polycarp, tied to a stake, um, fire set at his feet.

It doesn't quite kill him, so a guy runs him through with a sword.

And uh man, just really a difficult time for Christians, a tough time to be Christians.

And so for Jesus to say, I'm the first and the last, I'm the one who was dead, but I'm now alive, that would tend to make them sort of sit up straight and listen.

If he knows how to conquer death, if he can defeat death, I want to listen to him because I might be facing that, or somebody I know might be facing that.

He says, I know your tribulation and your poverty, but you are rich.

Just reminding all of us, there's more than one way to look at wealth, isn't there?

There's more than one way to look at richness in life, or there's more than one way to look at flourishing, isn't there?

And it's not always just material uh goods or or occupation or you know, or pleasure.

There's there's a richness in Christ that's on offer to us through faith in Christ, uh, because God is so generous and so gracious to us.

He says, I know the blasphemy by those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.

See, the church at Smyrna had unfortunately suffered some of the religious folk from their tradition.

Uh remember, the Christian faith is rooted in the Jewish faith.

So some of the folks from the synagogue there had been outing them to the outing the Christians to the Romans.

Uh Christianity had been seen uh for quite some time as a subset of Judaism.

Judaism enjoyed the privilege of being uh a uh religious uh uh legitimate religion, I guess you might call it from back then, an allowed religion during the time.

And so if the Christians were sort of a subgroup of that, then that would give them a legitimate status as well.

But now the Jews were saying, no, they're not really a part of us.

And so the Romans are going to the Christians and saying, You're gonna worship Caesar or not?

You're not a legitimate religion.

And if you're not a legitimate religion, we're gonna put you to death if you don't worship Caesar.

And they, the Christians, of course, were saying Jesus is Lord.

And so these folks who are religious, Jesus is aware of the fact that they are betraying the Christians, and Jesus even goes so far as to call them the synagogue of Satan.

Um, and so Jesus uh siding with the Christians against some folk who call themselves religious, might wear the jersey, but not really on the team, uh, might call themselves God's people, but really in their hearts they're not working toward God's purposes in this world.

I don't want to be that way.

I don't want our church to be that way.

I don't want the church in the world today to be that way.

I hope you don't either let us commit ourselves to learn what we can from these seven letters to these seven churches to be awakened to uh what we need to be awakened to about what it means to deny ourselves to follow Christ, to to to pick up our cross and follow him.

Yeah.

Jesus goes on through this angel to the church in Smyrna and says this do not fear.

Gotta stop.

Some of you know what's coming.

The most often repeated negative command in all of Scripture, the most often repeated positive command is sing to the Lord or praise him or worship him.

The most often repeated negative command, though, is don't be afraid.

Why?

Because the God of the Bible doesn't want you to live in fear.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, the fear of the Lord leads to life.

And if you have a healthy fear of the Lord, the Bible says you don't need to have an unhealthy fear of anything else, including tribulation, including death itself here.

Do not fear, Jesus says to the church at Smyrna, what you are about to suffer.

Oh, you mean there's more to come?

Yeah, there's more to come until he comes and wraps everything up, which we read about at the end of this book, chapters 20, 21, and 22, there will be a brokenness about our world.

There will be a darkness prevailing in our world.

And he's calling us to trust him in the midst of all of that.

That though the darkness seems so strong, yet he is our Savior.

He's our Lord.

He's our He's our, we can trust Him.

He's conquered death itself.

Behold, He said, Do not fear what you're about to suffer.

The devil's about to cast some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and you will have tribulation ten days.

And that's interesting.

Ten days must just be a round number.

Um there's no other under my understanding for it, it's a limited amount of time.

Certainly means that he knows there's an end to the whole thing, right?

Be faithful, so do not fear, be faithful until death, Jesus says.

And I will give you the crown of life.

Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.

The word for crown in the Greek is Stephanos.

Um it's the it's the same word, the term that they would use for uh the victor in an ancient one of the ancient games.

Um it's about the victory, you know.

And so it's not about the materials of the crown itself.

It's not about the, oh, look at this.

I can, you know, sell this on the in the market or on eBay or something.

No, it's about what the crown represents.

The victory is life itself.

Be faithful.

Don't be afraid.

Be faithful.

And Jesus promises the crown of life, you see.

And then he who has an ear, has that formula again, so typical, let him hear.

Do you do you have an ear?

Most most of us have not just one, but two ears.

And a lot of us just use our ears to hold up our glasses.

I do that, I often fall into that pattern.

Uh, sometimes people use their ears just to hang jewelry on.

Um, but when your ear was designed by God so intricate intricately, so well designed by God, he designed it with a purpose in mind.

It had a tilas purpose.

And that purpose was that you would hear with it, not just as an acoustic function, but that you would hear and that you would listen, and that you would hear.

In this case, he says, let him as an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

And man, I don't know about you, but again, I want to learn to do that more.

I don't want to be the guy that isn't listening, that isn't paying attention.

Uh, I don't I don't want to be like I was when I was a kid, and I had I was upstairs in my room, had my headphones on, had the three-dog night LP turned up really loud, you know, live at Carnegie Hall, had the television on, and I was doing my homework, all three things going on all at once.

And meanwhile, my mom's calling from downstairs, dinner's ready, Jim, come on, you know, and I just couldn't hear what was really good for me and waiting for me because I was listening to another source, you know.

Matter of fact, three other sources.

My mind and all of its noise, doing the homework, the television, with back then had to be the Andy Griffith show or something.

And three dog night.

One is the loneliest.

No, some of you know that, I'm sure.

Um, but here, Jesus says, H-E-A-R, hear what the spirit says to the church is I want to be the pastor that's listening.

I want us to be the church that's listening as Jesus moves among the lampstands of his church.

Uh, I want to be among those who listen.

And he says here, he who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death.

Huge promises here.

Massive promise.

The second death we'll learn later in the book of Revelation is really the lake of fire.

It's the eternal destiny of all of those who set their lives against or at odds with God.

Uh, they live as if God doesn't matter, they live as if God's salvation isn't necessary for them.

And there's lots of people like that, sadly, in our world today.

One of the reasons that we remain in the world is that Christ wants us to be his representatives, his ambassadors, carrying the good news of the gospel so that others might hear the gospel and that they might come to know their first love, Jesus Christ, and that God sent his son to die for them, and that through his finished work on the cross, all their sins, past, present, and future, can be paid for.

All the times we failed, every single time.

And here we have Jesus, the one who sees his church, knows that they're suffering, knows that they're going through tribulation, knows that they're about, some of them about to go to prison, and some of them are gonna die.

And I have no doubt in my mind that this is Jesus that is most tender.

This is Jesus, the good shepherd.

And as this book, and specifically this letter to Smyrna, circulates for about sixty years, it gets to one of the disciples of the Apostle John, a man named Polycarp, whom evidently John ordained as the bishop of Smyrna sixty years later from the time of the writing revelation.

And Polycarp is reading the same thing you and I just read.

And it's Polycarp who unfortunately goes through this very difficult persecution.

And the Romans grab him, they want him to recant his faith, and they want him to say that Caesar is Lord.

And they're violent with him.

And they ultimately tie him to a stake, build a fire, and run him through with a sword, and demand that he recant his faith.

And he says, No, I can't do that.

I'll put it up on the screen.

Last words have survived down through church history.

Eighty and six years have I served Christ, and he has never done me wrong.

How can I blaspheme my king who saved me?

Polycarp, yeah, he would have read the same four verses you and I just read and studied.

He would have known that Jesus is the first and last, the one who was dead and who's come to life, and Polycarp would have trusted Christ.

That if Christ was dead and came to life, then even though Polycarp had to face death now, he would never have to face the second death.

But Jesus could indeed raise him from the dead as well.

Well, what do we what do we learn here?

Well, I I have a summary slide here of three different things I think that are here.

Encouragement for those who suffer.

Um, as we talked about earlier with the seven different letters, they seem to have these themes and Jesus training, uh giving us uh training in our in our walk with him.

And so the first thing is that I think the Lord wants us to know that he's aware.

He says, I know your tribulations.

So he wants us to know that he knows.

He wants us to know that he's aware of our past tribulations, our present tribulations, and that we don't need to sit around wondering if God is even aware of what we're going through.

The answer is already settled.

Jesus has already said it.

I know your tribulations.

I know the poverty you're suffering.

And in their day and time, they probably were marginalized on a business level.

Probably most of their businesses had great difficulty because they weren't able to do business if they didn't have their certificate that said they had said, confessed that Caesar was Lord.

And they were being edged out, if you will, and shut down business-wise, and many of them suffering great financial hardship if not being executed.

So Jesus is saying, I know what you I know the loss you've suffered with those who were executed.

I know the pain of poverty.

Um, and this is so true when you think about Jesus.

When you think that he came not into splendor when he came to earth, but he came and was born to uh an impoverished couple, a peasant couple, born into a stable, not into a palace, um, and and mixed with tax collectors and sinners, all the time eating with them and and sharing the good news and the gospel and the hope of the gospel with them.

Um, Jesus knows all that you struggle with, all that I struggle with.

Jesus cares.

Not only does he know, it's not just that he's cognizant, but he's also not indifferent.

He cares.

How do I know that?

Well, because he came back when Jesus came to earth, he came to the darkness that was our world, covered over in sin.

And before any of us repented and turned to him, he came.

While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

And that, my friends, is amazing good news.

No matter what we're suffering, no matter what the cause of our suffering is, whether we're suffering because the world is broken and just in a general way we're suffering, or whether we're suffering because of our own foolishness and addictions, or whether we're suffering because someone else is caught up in some kind of sinful activity, um, attitude, uh, which, I mean, that just the fact that there are close to 30 million people caught up in human trafficking to me is such a scourge, it breaks my heart.

It's such a darkness.

And you add to that the kind of uh racism and vigilanteism that we've seen, the kind of uh horrific uh animosity and and anger that people are throwing at one another.

If you jump on social media, it's it's you can't miss it.

One of the reasons I'm starting to curb my own uh time uh in front of the tube or on social media.

But the Lord, the Lord Himself, he's aware of just how dark it is for you and for me.

He knows about that.

It's important for us to know that.

This is not an a distant deity.

He didn't create the world and then dropkick it off over into the back, you know, back fence of the universe and just say, go have a good time.

He's aware, he knows he's moving among his churches too, and we need to know that.

Jesus rose again from the grave and he's promised to be able to push back this darkness.

But the second thing I think it's important for us to know, and he says this to the church at Smyrna that's already suffering, tribulation, poverty.

And there's some of them are about to be imprisoned, he says, and some of them are gonna die.

And so he says, be aware, there's more coming.

There's more suffering to come.

So what won't work for us is sort of the Pollyanna messages of, well, just look in, look into your heart, or just believe in yourself.

Um, the kind of the kind of thinking that that just is faith in faith itself for no reason at all.

We need outside help, folks, because of the darkness that lurks in my heart and the darkness in the hearts of the people around me and the world around me, especially in those who have rejected God, those who were headed for the lake of fire and the second death.

That darkness is so great.

We can't defeat that darkness ourselves.

We need outside help.

And so Jesus says, Don't be afraid, remain faithful, be faithful.

Why?

Because He has the power of life and death.

And he's the one that can say to us, You don't need to be afraid, you can trust me, you'll not have to worry or be fearful at the second death.

And that's the third thing I want to say is don't be afraid as you faithfully endure, because no matter what kind or how much suffering may befall us in this life, Christ will have the last word.

That's just so powerful.

Jesus, you know, when he walked the earth, he told his disciples the same kind of thing.

And this message runs throughout scripture from Genesis all the way to Revelation.

You see God's people struggling.

And the struggle that God allows in this world is not because God's just angry and ticked off and just wants to throw all, he's like the troll under the bridge waiting for us to have a good time so he can stop us.

That's not it at all.

It just keeps pointing us, though, to the fact that we need a savior and a redeemer.

And here comes Jesus very clearly to all seven of these churches saying, You need look no further.

I'm the one.

I hold the keys to life and death itself.

I'm the one who was dead myself, and who is once again alive.

And he'll be called the Lamb multiple times, dozens of times in the book of Revelation.

The Lamb who was slain but now is alive again, reminding us again, he really we don't need to look anything.

He really is the one we can trust, even though there's all this darkness and tribulation around us.

He was telling his disciples that in the Beatitudes, the first part of the most famous sermon ever preached, the Sermon on the Mount, which I'm actually going through in a daily devotional I do on uh Instagram.

If you if you go to the website, you can you can follow me on that and and we'll come up on this next Beatitude I'm about to read uh this coming week.

But Matthew 5, 11 through 12, blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you falsely and say all kinds of evil against you because of me.

Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way you persecuted the prophets who were before you.

We'll keep that slide up there for just a second.

There's three parts to every one of these Beatitudes.

First, the declaration, they all begin with the word blessed.

It's makarios in the Greek.

And it's much, it's much deeper than just mere happiness.

Happiness depends on happenings.

This is a declaration by Jesus that all of those are who want to live the blessed life have these kinds of heart characteristics about them.

And so, and it's paradoxical when you read the Beatitudes, because he says, Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, uh, blessed are the merciful.

So on and on it goes.

Here at the end, it's almost you're scratching your head.

Blessed are you when people insult you.

That sounds like a contradiction, but it's not, it's a paradox.

Blessed are when people, blessed are you when people persecute you.

Again, he's been telling his disciples, including John, this for a long, long time.

And even when they falsely say all kinds of evil things against you, because of me, not because you're just being foolish yourself, but because of me, because of your faith in Christ.

Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven.

So all of these beatitudes, three parts: the declaration of blessedness, the condition of the heart, and the benefit, the attending benefit that is uh uh our reward in heaven, and the the joy in being able to rejoice and be glad in that, uh, because in the same way they persecuted the prophets before.

In other words, this same testimony has been shown to be true over and over again.

In John's gospel, chapter 16, verse 33, Jesus pulled aside his disciples and said this to them, These things I've spoken unto you, that in me you might have peace.

In the world you will have tribulation.

But take courage, some of your translations will say, but be of good cheer.

I have overcome the world.

Again, it's paradoxical, isn't it?

That with the suffering that we have to endure as believers or followers of Jesus, we can trust in him so much so that we can actually have joy and peace in the middle of our suffering.

Some of you know someone who has suffered and yet done it with joy, or yet done it with some kind of peace.

And people of faith, as a pastor, have been in hospital rooms with people, people who are about to pass away, people who are about to lose loved ones.

And it's not that they're slap-happy kind of, it's not a slab-happy moment at all.

There's honest lament for the suffering.

And Jesus isn't happy about people's suffering.

But what he has the ability to do is to see through that.

You see, he uh did not sidestep the crucifixion, he turned it into a resurrection, and he can do the exact same thing for us.

Smyrna also reminds me that we need to pray for our brothers and sisters around the world and the persecuted church, those who are persecuted for their faith.

This we do through uh being informed through organizations like opendorsusa.org.

If you go to their website, sadly, uh on the opening uh paragraph, it says more Christians are suffering for their faith than at any other time in history.

And that would include the time of Smyrna right now around the world.

And they list, by the way, the 50 countries with the highest incidence of uh persecution against Christians just for their faith.

Okay.

Real important that we stand with them, that we pray for them, and that we do everything we can to help.

And if you are curious about that, or if you're moved by that in any way, shape, or form, I would point you to websites like opendoorsusa.org.

Here in Revelation 2, the warning was that there was more suffering to come.

It would be difficult for 10 days, probably just as I say, a symbolic, rounded number.

But they would suffer in specific ways.

Um uh poverty, slander, uh, prison for some, even death.

Um these things sound almost impossible to us, but yet in our own day and time, I think we're starting to see the beginnings of how it it you could see how a society not only could marginalize people of faith, but actually ridicule people of faith openly.

And and more and more you can see how it could become quite a problem, and it has become quite a problem around the world.

But with Jesus, even if it lasts 10 days, here's what we know with Jesus, there'll always be an 11th day.

See, he takes crucifixions and turns them into resurrection.

He rolls away stones, folks.

And I don't know who you're trusting to roll away your stone, but the call for us is to trust in him, to remain faithful to him no matter what we're facing.

And then the crown of life is on offer to us, the you know, from him, the one who has it, who actually owns it and can give it to another, right?

So it's a real uh I love our Bibles for the reality that the message is of the Bible, and certainly this letter to Smyrna, the reality of it, it's so true.

But it doesn't make me worry about the future.

It drives me to my knees in front of Jesus in wonder and worship at why he would come to rescue such a wretch as I.

Why he would himself leave the comforts of heaven, condescend to come and live among us, to lay down his life on the cross, to go to all of that trouble, just to provide us with this hope of salvation, with this hope of the crown of life?

Would he really does he love us that much?

And the answer from the Bible, my friends, is yes, he loves you that much, and he loves me that much.

Why wouldn't you turn to him in faith, believing?

John Stott talked a little bit about the way that the Christian faith is at odds with the way the world thinks and acts apart from God.

In what Christ thinks of the church, his commentary on Revelation 1 through 3, he says, Nothing provokes the world's opposition more than the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it emphasizes such unpalatable doctrines as the gravity of human sin and guilt, the reality of God's wrath and judgment, the impossibility of self-salvation, the necessity of the cross, the freeness of eternal life, and the dangers of eternal death.

These truths undermine human pride, that's true, and arouse human opposition.

And that's exactly right.

That's the way it really is in the real world and the way it really was in Smyrna as well.

They wanted the Christians to say Caesar is Lord, but no, no, no, no.

They couldn't do that.

Why?

Because Jesus is the one they ultimately trust in.

Gavin Ortland in his new book.

Think of the way Jesus feels about Good Friday now.

It's no longer painful to him, but triumphant and happy.

So one day will every ounce of suffering in this life be to us.

Resurrection is coming, which means not merely the end of pain, but turning pain into glory.

And that, my friends, is why we're calling this study of Revelation, the Hope of Glory.

That's where this is all leading, you see, the glory of God.

It's why we were created to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

In 1943, in the middle of the horrific era of World War II, a woman named Ruth Kay Jones was a pastor's wife and the mother of five living in western Pennsylvania.

Just like many people today, she was distressed by the difficult and tragic headlines of her time.

She had seen the World War II casualty lists, and she knew the Allies were only making marginal progress at the time.

Supplies were rationed at home, everything felt surreal, and everyone was struggling with unbearable pressures and isolation.

Sound familiar?

Anyway, one day she opened her Bible and her eyes fell on 2 Timothy 3.

Ruth studied the page and pondered the opening words, but know this that in the last days perilous times will come.

She took out her pad and her pencil from her apron pocket and she jotted down a few thoughts in a few words.

And then a series of notes played out a little tune in her mind, and which later, by the way, she would recall as having come from the old clock on the mantle, her fireplace mantle, uh, with its iconic Westminster uh chimes.

And together the words and the melody became one of the most beloved uh gospel songs or choruses of the 1940s and 1950s.

Some of you will know it.

In times like these, we need a savior.

In times like these, we need an anchor.

Be very sure.

Be very sure.

Your anchor holds and grips the solid rock.

That rock is Jesus.

Yes, he's the one.

That rock is Jesus, God's only Son.

Be very sure.

Be very sure your anchor holds and grips the solid rock.

Listen, whether we had lived during the time of ancient Smyrna or during World War II, or whether we live in our own time with all of its tribulation, with all of the difficulties of our day and time.

The fact is we can't face all of this on our own.

We need outside help.

Whether our suffering comes, as I say, from those who are the enemies of Christ, or our own foolishness, or whether it comes from just the brokenness of our world, whether you've got some kind of chronic illness or or or just the despair in the news every time you turn it on.

We have got to make certain that we are trusting and hoping in Jesus.

Because in times like these, we need a savior, not just a coach.

In times like these, we need a savior, not just an example.

There's none finer than Jesus, but we need a savior.

Be very sure, yeah, that your anchor holds and grips this solid rock.

We must allow the love of God in Christ and the comfort, strength, and encouragement of the Holy Spirit to flow both in and out of our hearts.

We must not allow this darkness that's all around us to overtake us in such a way that it begins to dominate our minds or our hearts and cause us to be fearful.

Because Jesus' invitation is for us, no, Jesus' command is for us to not be fearful.

That's his exhortation to us, folks.

Don't be fearful.

And the way to not be fearful is to turn to him, to trust in him.

And he will be your sure and steady anchor.