Rooted In Endurance

Revelation chapter two.

I admit to you that the first eighty-five percent of this sermon will be a bit heavy.

But it gets really bright at the end.

Part of teaching and preaching the Bible verse by verse is letting God speak.

Not speaking, just letting God speak.

Reading the passage and giving the interpretation of it.

We come to the church of Smyrna.

As John has written these seven letters to these seven churches in chapters two and three.

We believe this was an ancient postal route, and so Ephesus was at the beginning of that route.

Laodicea was at the end of that route.

There's a couple of ways, I did not talk about this last week.

There are a couple of ways that we can interpret these passages.

First of all, we can interpret these as seven letters to seven churches addressing specific needs at that time.

For example, the Church of Ephesus had left its first love.

The Church of Smyrna needed to be reminded to endure.

The second way we could interpret these passages is to believe that each letter represents a period of church history.

So the Church of Ephesus was that apostolic church age, and now this is the post-apostolic church age from about 110 to 330 A.D.

The other way we can interpret this passage is to believe that every word in chapters 2 and 3 is for every church in existence today.

And the fourth way we might interpret it is a little bit combined of all of those.

So here in chapter 2, verse 8, we are introduced to the church of Smyrna.

And they are going through great persecution for their faith.

As we'll read in a moment, many of them will give their lives as an ultimate price of identifying with Jesus.

We have built our churches.

We have a Bible that's been built on the foundation of people who gave their blood to stand for truth.

The Bible says, buy the truth and sell it not.

Some people so cheaply sell what was purchased in blood.

Do you love your copy of God's word?

Several years ago we were in Orlando at what used to be the Holy Land experience.

And on the back side there was a scripture museum called a scriptorium.

And in the scriptorium was a Bible from the 1500s owned by a man by the name of Matthew.

It's called the Matthew's Bible.

If you've had children, you've probably seen them spill Kool-Aid over a stack of papers.

That's what it looked like.

And the curator said that's called the Martyr's Bible.

Stained with his own blood.

Because he lived in a time it was illegal to own a copy of God's word.

Rooted in endurance is the theme of our passage today.

Verse 8, and unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write, these things saith the first and the last, which was dead and is alive.

Aren't you glad we serve a living Savior?

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.

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 you shall have tribulation ten days.

Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.

He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.

He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.

Father, we come to you today in the name of Jesus.

We've sung about your name this morning, we've worshipped your name, we've thought about your cross.

And we know that only in the merits of the shed blood can we approach thy throne.

But we do come boldly today.

Resting in the blood.

Assured of your love for us.

Lord, would you please minister to the Calvary Baptist Church today?

Do in our hearts a lasting work in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thank you for standing.

Please be seated together.

Here in this passage, Jesus is speaking to the suffering church.

There's an old saying that every dog has his day.

I looked that up.

That's actually from Shakespeare.

True story.

He also mentioned a cat, but I didn't want to bring cats into the pulpit this morning, so we just talk about dogs.

A reminder that even those who seem small and overlooked eventually have their moment.

In a broken world, it often seems like the opposite is true: that evil is having its day.

There are seasons of life when darkness seems loud and injustice seems unchecked, and the pressure of God's people feels overwhelming.

That's the world the Smyrnans are living in in this day.

Poor, slandered, facing persecution.

It must have seemed like the devil was having his day.

I almost entitled the sermon, Every Devil Has His Day, but I thought how foolish I am.

The devil has no day.

This is my father's world.

Even in defeat, Christians cannot lose.

Even in defeat, they face the greatest victory.

By the way, what do you threaten a Christian with?

John L.

Rice was the first editor of the Sword of the Lord magazine, a great, a great man of God of bygone days.

Man broke into his office and threatened to shoot him.

Dr.

Rice said, Don't threaten me with heaven.

This is our father's world, and this is the day the Lord has made, and we will rejoice and be glad in it.

He writes to remind them that even the enemy's day is temporary, while the victory of those who endure is eternal.

Though the devil may have his hour, the saints who remain faithful will wear for all eternity a crown of life.

We're going to walk through this passage together.

First of all, will you notice the curses of the enemy?

The Bible says in verse number nine, I know thy works and tribulation and poverty, but thou art rich, and I know the blasphemy which say they are Jews and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.

Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer.

Behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison.

There's two curses I want to pull out of the text this morning, one from history, the other from our passage.

The first was the what we call the curse of the Menim.

Now, Menim in Hebrew means heathen or infidel or unbeliever.

John even speaks of those who say they are Jews and are not.

Those he says twice in these two chapters who were of the synagogue of Satan.

John is writing here about men who were Jews in a physical sense, but who had no relation to God spiritually.

I want you to hear these words of Scripture.

Galatians 3, verse 7, know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham.

Galatians 3:7

It was Jesus speaking to the Jews in John chapter 8, verse 37.

John 8:37

I know that ye are Abraham's seed, but ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you.

I speak that which I have seen with my father, and ye do that which ye have seen with your father.

They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father, and Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham.

And what did Abraham do?

He believed in God.

Romans chapter 9, verse 7 Neither because they are the seed of Abraham are they all children, but in Isaac shall thy seed be called, that is, they which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.

Romans 9:7

Paul continued in Galatians 3 9, saying, So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham.

If you're a child of Abraham, will you raise your hand?

And you're a child of Abraham because you believed in the promise, and the promise was fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ, the Yeshua Hamashiach, Jesus the Messiah, came to this earth, bled and died, and all, Jew or Gentile, who call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved, and all must call upon the name of the Lord to have everlasting life.

Paul is not saying here that ethnic Israel has no place in God's redemptive plan.

We don't believe in replacement theology that the church has replaced Israel.

No doubt in the end times Israel shall be saved.

But we must make a distinction between those who are of the flesh ethnically Jewish and those who are followers of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And what John is saying here is there were their brothers and sisters in an ethnic sense who had become cohort with Satan in persecuting Jewish brothers and sisters who had followed Jesus Christ as their personal Savior.

That's what he's addressing here.

So this curse from the first century is called the Brikat Hamenim.

It's a line that was added to the daily prayer of the Jews in this time.

The word menim means heretic or sectarian.

Here's an early version prayed by these members of the synagogue of Satan.

For the apostates, they would pray.

Let there be no hope.

Let them be blotted out of the book of life and not written with the righteous.

Blessed are you, O Lord, who humbles the arrogant.

It brings us into the mindset mentality and world of these early Christians.

To the Jew first and also to the Greek, these Jews, ethnically Jewish, who had come to believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God who came through the bloodline of Jewish people to save not just Jewish people, but to save the whole world.

And when these brothers and sisters in Christ, that we will meet in heaven someday, when they professed faith in Jesus Christ, they were cast out of the synagogues and ostracized by their families, and many of them suffered deaths at the hands of their own people.

It does say in scripture in John chapter 1 that Jesus came to his own, and his own received him.

John 1 · chapter mention

We even read on Wednesday night in our men's group that even Jesus' brethren for a period of time did not believe in him.

He came not to it just his own nationally, he came to his own domestically, and his own family believed him not, did not accept him.

And these people are paying a great price for placing their faith in Christ.

We have a really easy illustration of this in the ministry of the Apostle Paul, who was a Hebrew of the Hebrews of the tribe of Benjamin of the stock of Israel, circumcised the eighth day, as touching the law, blameless, as touching the righteousness of the law, a Pharisee.

And it was Paul who spent his early life, part of this synagogue of Satan, persecuting his own people, having letters in his hands that if he found any of this way, he would bring them bound to Jerusalem.

These people were under a curse of their own family.

This verse 9, this synagogue of Satan, let me clarify that quickly.

He's not talking about a building as we don't talk about a building today.

This is not the Calvary Baptist Church.

This is where the Calvary Baptist Church worships together.

This is just a building.

Can I say to you this morning, we we put a lot in our buildings than we ought to.

And we love what God has given us to steward.

But I want you to understand, we could have a church and not have any of these buildings.

Or we could have the greatest facilities in the world and not have a church.

A church is not a building.

A church is a group of saved and baptized believers who voluntarily join themselves together to carry out the Great Commission and to observe the ordinances and to preach of Jesus until he comes.

That's a church.

This synagogue, he's speaking of the character of the people.

The reference here is not to a building, but to the people who gathered there who planned assaults upon churches, putting themselves at Satan's disposal to carry out his evil plan.

Well, there's a second curse.

It's the accuser of the brethren.

We meet him in verse 9.

Satan, Satanas, the accuser.

The Bible says he accuses us before the throne of God.

These early Christians have been accused of a lot of terrible things.

Be careful, little mouth, what you say.

You know, ideas have consequences.

Ideas have consequences.

These people were called atheist.

Christians.

Christians, believers in Jesus.

Called atheists.

Why?

Because they rejected the traditional Roman gods and would not cry out, Caesar is Lord.

They were called cannibals.

This came from a misunderstanding of the early church gathering together to celebrate the Lord's Supper, where they spoke of the body and blood of Jesus.

They were called incestuous because they called one another brother and sister, coming together to what they called love feast.

They were criticized as being a secret society of conspiracists, a subversive political group.

They were accused of being disloyal to the state, of causing natural disasters.

It was Nero who, in seeking to deflect attention upon his failing government, set Rome on fire and blamed the Christians, and many Christians suffered because of this false accusation.

They were even accused of disrupting family systems and traditions that converged into Christianity sometimes divided households, leading to accusations that Christians were undermining family structures and cultural norms.

It wasn't the agendas of the world that were to be accused for the breakdown of society.

It wasn't the people that were destroying millennia of definitions about marriage and child rearing.

No, it's the Christians' fault.

By the way, we ought to be prepared for that kind of language.

It was Elijah who had prayed that a natural disaster would come to awaken the attention of the people, and it didn't rain for three and a half years.

And when Ahab saw Elijah coming, he said, Art thou he that troubleth Israel?

And I love what Elijah said.

I haven't troubled Israel, but thou in thine house had an opportunity to preach at the Faith and Freedom Fest yesterday.

And I said, I bet you guys are wondering if I'm a D or an R.

And I said, the fact of the matter is, our political system is so corrupt and rotted without any ethics at all.

I'm standing on God's side.

And we need some John the Baptist in the world today who are willing to tell Herod it's not lawful for you to have your brother's wife.

There's a famous apologist.

He passed away a couple of years ago.

He was asked to speak at the Mormon temple in Salt Lake City.

Mormonism is not biblical Christianity.

May I be so bold to say Mormonism is as much a cult as it was the day it was founded.

There's as much historical proof for Mormonism as there is for the Yeti in the mountains of Alaska.

He was asked to speak.

I'm sorry.

I'll be on my best behavior as I land this plane today.

He spoke at the Mormon temple.

And someone said, Do you think it was appropriate for him to speak at the Mormon temple?

And the answer was no.

But he should have so defended the deity of Jesus Christ, he wasn't invited back the second time.

We need some people today with a spine as big around and as tough as a telephone bowl, wrapped in velvet and Christian kindness that'll stand for the truth.

That wasn't in my notes.

That was free today.

We'll take another offering at the end of church.

I'm talking about the curse of the enemy.

Number two, I want you to notice the courage of the faithful.

I know thy works.

He says that to all of these churches.

This church does not receive any reproof.

You don't kick a good man while he's down.

The Holy Spirit comes to comfort this church.

He says in verse 10, many of you will be cast into prison by the devil.

Awaiting trial.

If you were accused of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?

The nature of the trial.

Behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison that you may be notice that word, tried.

John here uses a word that refers not to the legal processes, not to the legal proceedings, but the trial as a means of testing their faith.

This was a trial of virtue by means of affliction and adversity by Satan's inventions.

He uses the word tried, perazo.

It's the word used in Matthew 4.1.

Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be Perazo, tempted of the devil.

Matter of fact, it's the noun used for Satan in Matthew 4.3.

And when the tempter came to him, not the legal proceeding of Jesus' trial, but his character under assault by Satan.

You will be tried.

Your character, your virtue, your conviction will be tried.

How true is your faith, he says.

Matthew 22, verse 18, but Jesus perceived their wickedness and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?

Matthew 22:18

And he says, after this trial, verse 10, ye shall have tribulation for ten days.

A sporadic, intense, brief moment of persecution is coming to this church.

The term Smyrna means myrrh or affliction.

They're going to go through a very difficult trial.

Now, if this interpretation is true of church ages, this church represents the years from A.D.

100 to A.D.

313.

And during this period, the Roman Empire severely persecuted Christians, imprisoning them and executing many of them.

And we are told of this 10 year fulfillment that from A.D.

303 to A.D.

313 was an incredibly intense moment of persecution under Emperor Diocletian, who Marked this decade between 303 and 313 with intense and brutal opposition, slaying Christians by the thousands, feeding them to the lions.

During this time, there was a man by the name of Polycarp.

Polycarp was the bishop of the church at Smyrna.

Polycarp was the last human being who walked the planet who knew the disciples of Jesus.

He was a personal disciple of John the Beloved.

And in 155, when persecution intensified, believers urged Polycarp to flee the city of Smyrna.

They're going to kill you.

He withdrew to a farmhouse, spending his time in prayer.

According to the historical accounts of Polycarp's life, he received a vision one night that his pillow was on fire, and he surmised that this meant that he would be burned alive for his faith in Jesus.

Eventually, the Roman authorities found him, tracked him down, and rather than resisting, Polycarp calmly welcomed the soldiers, brought them food and drink, and asked them for an hour of prayer before he was apprehended.

He was brought before the Roman preconsul.

Polycarp answered, Eighty and six years have I served him.

And he has done me no wrong.

How then can I blaspheme my king who saved me?

The preconsul persisted, swear by the fortune of Caesar.

And Polycarp replied, If you suppose that I will swear by the fortune of Caesar, and you say, pretending not to know who I am here plainly, I am a Christian.

Well, he was sentenced to be burned alive.

When they prepared to nail Polycarp to the stake, he said, You don't need to nail me to the stake.

I'm praying that God will give me grace to remain still.

According to early accounts, the flames surrounded him but did not consume him.

He lifted his eyes to heaven as they thrust a sword in his side, and he died for his faith in Jesus.

We have our faith built on the blood of Jesus and a host of martyrs who have said, I am a Christian.

Does that mean something to you today?

We were at the Faith and Freedom Fest yesterday.

The organizer, my friend Brian, came up to me before the service.

He said, He said, Pastor, he goes, You're the only church that would support this meeting.

He said, People reached out to me and said, We're not coming to a rally for fear that there might be violence that spreads in this place.

Can we not just go ahead and publicly identify with the Lord who suffered open rebuke by the world's hands and declare, we are Christians?

You love your First Amendment?

How many of you love the First Amendment?

Exercise it or you won't have one.

Preach, or you won't be able to preach, or you won't be able to stand assemble, or you won't be able to assemble.

I just want to go on record and say COVID was the beta test, and the next time they come in telling the churches to close, we are not closing by God's grace.

We bow to King Jesus.

Oh, Pastor, they said they might take our tax exempt status away, but we must stand before Jesus.

Are we for sale?

No.

How can we go to heaven and stare these people in the face and tell them that we were ashamed when it came time to rise up and say, I am a Christian.

The crown of life.

Notice it, the crown of life.

Ye shall have tribulation ten days.

Be thou faithful unto death.

I'll give you a crown of life.

There's a contrast of allegiances playing out here.

Smyrna was a Roman stronghold.

Matter of fact, it was the first of the cities in Asia Minor to fully embrace Roman rule.

It was a place of stone path streets and trees and architecture.

Smyrna was early to accept Roman rule.

Cicero said of it, Smyrna is where our most faithful and oldest allies are.

Because of that, they gained a lot by being loyal to Rome.

And brothers, sisters, that's just the problem.

You can't be loyal to this old world and be faithful to the king and his kingdom.

Be faithful unto death.

I'll give you a crown of life.

Here they were to be faithful unto death, and in that moment they would trade a cross for a crown.

Escaping, he says, the second death.

Notice verse 11.

He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.

Pastor, what is the second death?

Revelation 20, 14, and death and hell were cast into the lake of fire.

This is the second death.

Fear not him which is able to destroy the body, but not able to destroy the soul, but fear him who's able to destroy soul and body in hell.

And can I just say, I'm not going to hell?

I hope you'll get this.

We were in publics a few weeks ago.

We were in the flower department, and we had to ask for some help.

And I think the guy was just having a bad day, and I was joking around with him, and pardon my expression.

He said, Go to hell.

And I said, I can't do that.

He said, What?

I said, I can't do that.

He said, Why?

I said, Because I've been saved by the marvelous grace of Jesus Christ.

I said, Are you going to hell?

I'm not going to hell.

I've escaped a second death.

Why?

Because of Jesus.

The crown of life.

I wanted to ask you a question as I kind of close the sermon today.

Have you ever met a martyr?

Who in here has met a Christian martyr?

Will you raise your hand?

I want you to know, I went to school with a Christian martyr.

We'll pull his picture up here.

Stephen Trail was a missionary in Baghdad.

Stephen was quite a guy.

He was from New Jersey, across the river from Philadelphia.

Stephen used to go down to the public transportation subway trains and pick up change that had fallen in the streets.

And by the time he met his wife, he had four or five thousand dollars in change he'd collected from Philadelphia.

He bought her a ring with it.

He was quite a guy.

Stephen was sharp.

Matter of fact, if you've if you've ever seen books from Crown Christian publications, Dr.

Sexton's materials, tracks, websites, Stephen developed FaithforTheFamily.com.

A very talented person.

After the war in Iraq, was it Iraqi freedom after 9-11, if I'm right about that, Iraq was liberated from Saddam Hussein's rule, and Stephen and another brother flew to Amman, Jordan, had a radio station that fit inside of a suitcase.

They got in a suburban in Amman, drove over 100 miles an hour through the desert, came into Baghdad, set up a radio station, got back to Amman so that they could broadcast the gospel in Arabic to liberated people.

And something happened in his heart.

He got the needs of the Arabic world on his mind.

He wanted to reach them with the gospel.

So he came back to the States and he was serving and working and finally raised support and moved his whole family to Baghdad.

A couple years ago, we received the news that Stephen had been shot.

He lost his life.

The front of this bulletin is something given to us at his funeral, November 28, 2022.

On the back of this pamphlet, he wrote this before he ever became a missionary.

The title, When I Die in the Middle East.

When I die.

And he wrote some bullet points.

I'll read just a few of them.

When I die in the Middle East, I will die, knowing I have obediently followed the direction of God for me and my family.

When I die in the Middle East, I will die with a vision of the possible.

Millions of Arabic-speaking people in the Middle East following Jesus and reproducing themselves in the lives of others.

It is possible.

When I die in the Middle East, I will die, understanding that there is no difference between my heart and the heart of a violent criminal.

It was my sin which took Jesus to a cross.

The heart of a criminal who needs to be redeemed from his wickedness is no different than the heart of a little Baptist boy who needed to be redeemed from his so-called goodness.

All sheep need a shepherd because without Jesus there is no end to how far we as sheep would wander.

I will die believing that no one is beyond the saving reach of a seeking Savior.

The blood of Jesus Christ can cleanse a violent criminal in the same way it has cleansed me.

The gospel is well able to change the life of any Arabic-speaking person the way it has changed me.

I will die with a broken heart, both over the lack of compassion of God's people towards Arabic-speaking people, and over the inaction of God's people to obediently advance the gospel and lands under the shadow of the crescent.

I will die, knowing that I could have personally done more to get the gospel to the Arabic-speaking people.

I will die knowing that the battle for the souls of Arabic-speaking people will only be won with the blood and testimonies of those who fear God rather than by men who fear death.

I will die, knowing that I have cast my lot in the greatest cause for which one can spend and be spent, making great the name of God among people who have yet to hear the good news of the gospel.

I went to school with a Christian martyr.

How can I earn the same reward as these Christians?

How can you earn the same reward as these Christians?

I can't go in with those.

But we're going in with those.

James chapter one.

Just just a verse, James chapter one.

I can go in.

Because the Christian martyr gave blood for the Savior who gave blood to save us all.

Jesus' blood is the assurance that all of us can spend eternity with God in heaven.

But there's a second thing I want you to notice here.

The crown of life.

Did you read that?

The crown of life.

James chapter 1, verse 12.

James 1:12

Blessed is the man who endureth temptation.

There's our word again.

For when he is tried.

He shall receive, say it with me, he shall receive the crown of life.

One statement.

All capped, bold, highlighted, neon flashing lights.

One statement.

Here's the whole message.

The Lord Jesus Christ is not asking you to die on a cross today.

He's not asking you today to give your body to be burned like polycarp.

At this very moment, the Lord Jesus Christ is asking most of you to stand tall in the moment of temptation.

He's not asking you to recant before evil counsels.

He's only asking you to live for him.

Live for him.

If we won't live for him, we would never die for him.

Live for him.

He that endures temptation shall receive a crown of life.

You could do that today.

What is that creepy, crawly temptation in the dark caverns of your life that you have institutionalized?

Bring it into the light of the gospel and endure temptation.

And when you are tried, you can receive the crown of life.

Live for him.

Live for him.

Peter said, Lord, I'll die for you tonight.

No, you won't.

You won't even live for me.

God's call to Calvary Baptist Church at this moment is not about bearing a martyr's cross, just bearing a cross of discipleship.

Just follow Christ.

I'll go with him, with him, all the way.

Rooted in endurance.

Let's endure.

Let's be faithful.

Let's stay at it.

Let's be consistent for the glory of God.

And all God's people said, let's pray, may we?

Pianist is coming.

Ethan will begin to sing quickly here.

Will you live for him?

That's the question.

Will you live for him?