Seven | Smyrna - Revelation 2:8-11 | August 23

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Good to see you all again.

Hey. We'll get Callahan happy.

So, yeah, thanks for coming and sticking it out.

I think the Lord has some good words for us through the book of Revelation,

more specifically these first three chapters.

We look at Ephesus last week. Today we're going to look at the letter to the

church in Smyrna, which probably is a name in place, except for out of these four or five verses.

This is chapter 2, verses 8 through 11, I think, that you've probably never

Isaiah 2:8–11

heard of. In fact, today, we'll get into this in a second, this is kind of the

only one of the seven cities, the seven churches that still exist.

That's not really fair to say because there are sort of some cities and small

towns nearby, some of the other places.

But this is the one where there is still a bustling, important foundational city to Turkey.

It is now called the city of Izmir, but it is the same, more or less,

built on the same ancient city that was Smyrna.

So it's interesting that what

we're going to see here is a letter to a church that has no correction.

It's not that they weren't doing everything perfectly, or that they were doing

everything perfectly, rather.

But in this moment, Jesus doesn't correct them.

He encourages them only. And it's interesting that this is the only city that

kind of still exists in a way.

And not only that, but there are still Christians there today.

So it's an amazing, amazing letter. And I pray that God will speak to our hearts through it.

Let me begin. Again, I'm just going to kind of go verse by verse,

although that's not my normal procedure.

Not that I'm opposed to it. I just never tend to think that way.

But we're going to go verse by verse and we're going to talk about the.

With the sort of formula of these letters along the way.

We begin with the address. We begin with an aspect of Christ the Messiah that's

important to this city. In chapter one, we get the full picture,

not a full picture, but a quite complete picture of the Messiah.

And now he's going to pick out each characteristic for a specific church.

So that's how he's going to go here.

Then we're going to get a praise. Usually we'll get a correction or a judgment.

We're not going to get that today.

And then another encouragement, and then the last sort of benediction for us

to who have ears to hear, which means again, to remind you, it doesn't just

mean those who can listen,

but it literally is saying something along the lines of, we who hear these words must listen.

We must act on them.

And this again is such a beautiful book that it is the only book in the New

Testament, or in the Bible rather, that pronounces a blessing on those who read

it, who listen to it and hear it, and who do the words that it says.

And so this is the encouragement that Jesus leaves us at the end of each of these letters.

So I'm going to read the whole thing. Why don't y'all stand with me again?

And then we'll kind of go verse by verse. This is again, Revelation chapter

Revelation 2:8–11

2, verses 8 through 11. I got that right.

To the angel of the church in Smyrna write, these are the words of him who is

the first and the last who died and came to life again i know your afflictions

and your poverty yet you are rich.

I know about the slander of those who say they are jews and are not but are a synagogue of satan.

Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer i tell you the del i tell you.

The devil will put some of you in prison to test you and you will suffer persecution for 10 days.

Be faithful, even to the point of death.

And I will give you life as your victorious crown.

Whoever has ears, let them hear what the spirit says to the churches.

The one who is victorious will not be hurt at all by the second death.

Amen. Lord, thank you for your word.

There's something I'm supposed to say. This is the word of God for the people

of God. And all the people said, all right, go ahead and sit down.

These are the words of him who hold, this is the, this is the,

to the angel of the church in Smyrna, These are the words of him who is the

first and the last who died and came to life again. So Smyrna says,

Again, it's one of these seven churches in Turkey. They formed sort of modern-day Turkey.

It was part of Asia, or Asia Minor, as they might say it back then.

But it formed this trade route amongst these seven churches.

We talked about Ephesus last week, which was the largest of the cities.

This is the second largest.

Ephesus, in a way, became the sort of center of Christianity at the time.

It was a megachurch. They sent people out.

It was possibly even that some of these churches were planted either by Paul

as he went around or from Ephesus itself. But Smyrna was a harbor city.

It was beautiful. It had crowned architecture. It was known as the crown of

Asia because of its beauty and its architecture. And it was.

This major city in the area, a hub of trade, a hub of culture.

It was known for this, we might call it, or in England, they might call it a high street, right?

Or in other places, they have different districts that they might refer to,

like a Pearl District or whatever. They had what they called this golden street.

And it was known for that because of the beauty that you walked and saw.

It led you through the city. It led you past the beautiful architecture.

If you've ever been to Charleston, you have that particular street that goes

by all the corally, beautiful colored houses. It was that kind of thing. This pride of Smyrna.

Where you had all of this beauty that people came around to see.

And so hold on to that name, Crown of Asia. It'll become important a little later.

What also will become important is that Smyrna, it won't take you a stretch

of the imagination to get there.

It comes from the word myrrh, which you might remember as one of the things

that was brought to Jesus as he was born, or a two-year-old probably.

But Smyrna gets his name and shares that with myrrh because it was one of the

leading producers of this.

It's a resin from a tree that produced, it's kind of bitter,

but it produced a sweet fragrance.

And that'll be important again as well in a little bit. So hold on to that.

It was also a place where sort of you have this burgeoning cult,

this Roman cult, which glorified Rome, it glorified Caesar.

It's where you have this phrase that we're familiar with, Caesar is Lord.

And it's what made it so compelling that one of the earliest sort of creeds

that existed in Christianity was the creed that Jesus is Lord.

Because it was a direct confrontation with this cult of Rome who claimed that only Caesar is Lord.

And you can only say that. And in fact, it was sort of illegal.

And you could definitely imprison and lose your life for saying anything anyone

else was Lord. But of course, we know that Jesus Christ is Lord,

says that throughout the Bible. But this is a place where...

The cult of Rome was developing and espousing this language.

It was also a place where there was quite a large population of Jews,

as we'll see in a couple of verses.

And it says that these particular Jews that were greatly opposed to the way

and persecuted and slandered the people that the church in Smyrna,

it calls them a synagogue of Satan.

So we have quite a large Jewish population.

Some of those Jews greatly opposed the church and caused this persecution that

we're going to talk about and is the kind of the thrust of this letter.

And again, modern day Smyrna is still this influential city and we still have

Christians there. So it's crazy that this is one of two letters,

only two of the seven where there is no judgment, there is no correction.

Again, it's not that they were doing everything perfect, but their hearts were set on Christ.

And so Christ encourages them to endure. And he says, this is the words of him

who holds the, sorry, I keep reading Ephesus. I'm gonna have to readjust.

These are the words of him who is the first and the last, who died and came to life again.

These are going to be the foundational words for us as we read the rest of the

letter, because what Christ is doing here is he's giving him this important

characteristic of himself, perhaps one of the most important.

We celebrate that Jesus died, that he rose again, that He brings life to us.

This is not just a reminder of that for these people. This is a truth for them to hold onto.

Because what He's saying is that He is the first, that before.

This church existed, He was there. Before this Asia Minor place existed, He was there.

Before the universe existed, He spoke it into existence. We know in John 1 that

He was in the beginning and with Him was the beginning and He spoke all things

into existence and all things were made through him.

And so we get the very beginning message of the Messiah as this message that

your Savior, Jesus, is greater than you could ever imagine.

That your Savior is larger and stronger than you could ever believe.

And this will be important, not just for them, but for us. Again,

these letters were written not to a church, but to all the churches,

and not just to those churches, but to all of us who are part of the church and who will hear them.

And so he writes and begins with, I am the first and the last.

So not only is the first the progenitor of all things, but also he turns to

the other direction and says, I will always be. This is the word I am, Yahweh.

I am the all-existent one, the first and the last. In the end of Revelation,

he'll say the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.

Which is interesting, right? Because God has no beginning and he has no end.

So what he's saying is, all things have begun from me.

And even after they all end, I still am. I still will be.

We have this, I'm going to go off book, but we have this crazy point in time right now,

where science is advancing so much that what these scientists are discovering

is that all of the ways they thought about the world don't work anymore.

Because the claim is, oh, well, there was the Big Bang. We had a beginning.

They all agree, the universe had a beginning. But if it had a beginning,

the question is that they pose to God is, well, who created God?

It's a foundational misunderstanding of God.

We don't believe in a God that had a beginning and that was created, right?

But for the universe to come out of nothing, there had to be something that initiated it.

And so they get stuck in this question. Well, what? And so their answer has

become more recently, the universe is a unique existence that begot itself.

It's like, that's starting to sound a lot like God, that there was something

that has to have always existed to have what we are today, because we all agree

that the universe had a beginning.

So, we live in this crazy time, and of course, a ton of scientists,

although it takes a long time to trickle down to school systems and all of us

who are more ignorant and have letters next to our name.

A lot of these scientists are being persuaded by Christianity,

not just God in general, but specifically the claims of Christianity.

Because the more we learn, the more we realize how far we still have to go.

The more they learn about the cell, the more they realize that we're not even

close to recreating one.

It's an amazing thing what happens in science. Again, that's an aside,

so we just ate up a lot of time. But Jesus is the first and the last.

Beside them here, There is no God.

Christ is aware. He is aware of Satan and his schemes. He is sovereign over them.

He is in control of all things. There's this passage in Daniel chapter two,

which I absolutely love and I've memorized it, but every time I try and remember

and memorize and recite something up here that I've memorized before,

it's never gonna come out right.

And I would flip over to it, but that's gonna take me too long to find it.

But essentially it's saying, and this is when God is confronting Nebuchadnezzar,

the king of the Babylonians, and he has this dream that Daniel reveals to him.

And I think it's his confession in Daniel chapter two, Babylonian king is that

surely God is Lord, that he is sovereign over everything. He's in control of

the seasons, that nothing escapes his control.

We have this beautiful confession in the book of Daniel.

And it's so true that God is sovereign. This is one of the names and characteristics

we give to him, which means he is in control, that Satan is not in control.

It's going to talk about the devil in a couple of verses in a synagogue of Satan.

So the encouragement is do not fear what you're about to suffer because God is in control.

Through him, all things were created and he will exist long before this world

that we call home ceases to exist.

So do not fear because he is in control.

We see in the book of Job, which is, I know is like your favorite book in the Bible.

If you're going to read it, read the whole thing. It's 40 some chapters,

I know, but like don't get stuck in the first 39 chapters.

Because there's just a lot of arguing back and forth that that's not rounded in truth, right?

It's a lot of misunderstandings that God has to correct in the last two or three

chapters. So get to the last two or three chapters.

But at the beginning, we see this idea where Satan comes into the throne room

of heaven, which is interesting.

And what we read in our Bibles is God saying, have you considered my servant Job?

And now I heard it recently that it could be more likely that what it's saying

is there, God is talking to Satan and he's saying, I see you've been considering my servant, Job.

God is not unaware of Satan and his tactics and what he's been doing on the

earth and how he roams and how he infiltrates human history and how he even attacks individuals.

So God comes and says, I see you've been considering my servant, Job.

And then God gives him limited authority over his external things,

his children, his crops, his animals.

And then Satan comes back because Job still doesn't renounce God.

And God gives him again, limited authority because God is in control.

God is sovereign, which is such an important and comforting thought that we

are not in control and that Satan is not in control.

He says, I'm the one who died and came to life. This is more than just a pronouncement

of Jesus's death on the cross.

Although that is the foundation of our faith, Jesus's death and resurrection.

This is Jesus in his incarnate form, perfect and holy, full of power,

telling those Christians in Smyrna who he's about to say, don't be afraid of

what you're going to suffer.

And he's about to tell them it's about to get worse.

This is Jesus saying, I empathize with you.

I was on the earth. I came, it's Philippians chapter two.

I humbled myself to the point of being a human, to the point of death on a cross. I suffered all things.

We see these beautiful phrases throughout scripture.

In 1 Corinthians 15, one of the best chapters that clearly illustrates the fullness

of the gospel, it says, But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead,

the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

It says that Jesus isn't just someone who suffered along with us and who is

with us now, but he came to provide a way that we will follow the firstfruits of the resurrection.

Hebrews 4 says, we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness.

But in all ways, he empathizes with us. That doesn't mean he suffered everything

that any of us will ever go through.

But it means to some degree, he suffered the worst of it.

And to a greater degree, he suffered as he brought on himself all sins for all time.

That he doesn't just know all things because he is God and he's omniscient.

He's not just aware because he have knowledge, but he knows from experience.

He knows suffering. He knows rejection. He knows death.

He came to die and to pave a way through his death for us to enter in and follow

in the resurrection like his.

So Jesus empathizes. He is sovereign over everything, over death itself.

And he knows what it means to suffer.

So when he says, don't fear, I am with you, it is his continued strength and

presence with us and it is the God who has suffered as well.

And so the next verse, he's laid this out. This is who I am.

And he begins by saying, I know your afflictions.

So when he writes, I know, when he says, I know to John, he's saying, I have seen it.

I've experienced, but now I see it as well. It's not escaped me.

Sometimes when we come to God in prayer, I feel like we have to tell him what's

happening because we feel he doesn't know what's going on.

Do you even know that this is happening in my life? Do you even know the way

I'm suffering? Do you even know the people I love who are hurting?

He says, I know your tribulation. I know your suffering. I know your poverty.

I know your slander. He lists specifically the things that they would have been most concerned with.

Their tribulation, their poverty, their slander. I know every detail of your life.

And Matthew chapter 10 says that God knows every hair that's on our head,

Matthew 10 · chapter mention

which is not an important detail for God to know,

but it just illustrates the fullness and completeness of his knowledge of all

that we are, all that we experience, all that we suffer, that even the insignificant

hairs on our head are all numbered.

And Psalm 34 says that the Lord is near the brokenhearted. So Jesus in the wealth

of that scripture says, I know your brokenheartedness.

I know what you're suffering. I know these Jews that have come in and are slandering

you and turning you over to death and persecuting you.

I know your anxiety. I know your depression. I know your internal hurts.

I know the prayers that you pray in the dark. I know the prayers that you've

been praying for for 10 years that I haven't answered yet or I haven't answered

in the way that you had hoped.

I know all of these things. I know.

I know the doors I haven't opened.

And there is this profound truth that we see throughout scripture in the names of God.

We see it here in this pronouncement of these two words, I know.

It's probably one word in Greek, honestly.

I know that he sees, that he can, that he will do something about it.

And as we get that confession, another place in the book of Daniel,

a little bit, that even if he doesn't meet us in the way that we expected,

that we're not going to bow to anything else.

That he can and he will, but even if he doesn't, as Shadrach,

Meshach, and Abednego said, even if he doesn't, we're not going to bow.

We're not going to serve anyone else.

This is how Jesus starts out this letter to those in Smyrna.

Those, again, one of two of these seven letters, these seven churches that has

no judgment, that has no pronouncement of judgment, that has no correction.

There's no rebuke given to this church.

He never says, I have this against you like he will in the other letters.

Instead, what he does is he encourages them and builds them up based on the

truth of who he is, because then he says what's coming, right?

Do not fear what you are about to suffer.

But I will say, even before he does that.

As he mentions these Jews who have come against him, that have slandered them,

in many ways they are kind of carrying on just the tradition of what Paul had started.

That there were those who, though they called themselves Jews,

were not truly Jews because they didn't align themselves with God.

Instead, they persecuted the church and his mission.

And even though there's not a judgment, I think there's still a warning for us today.

This might not have been a warning for the church, but more of a statement of

what's going on. And again, I know that these people are here and what they're doing.

But it would be so easy for us, even as Christians within the church,

to place ourselves in opposition to the mission of God if we're not careful.

To become like these particular group of Jews in this particular place at this particular time.

And who they call themselves, but because they were not aligned with God's mission

and they set themselves against it, God refers to them, Jesus refers to them as a synagogue of Satan.

In the same way, this is calling back to words that we've heard before.

When Peter wants to prevent Jesus from heading to Jerusalem and going to the

cross, and Jesus' rebuke to him is, get behind me, Satan.

Because even we, as Christians, when we set ourselves in opposition to the mission

of God, what we can do is line ourselves with Satan,

the enemy, that which is opposed to, not equal with, but opposed to the accuser of the brethren.

So we should take this as a warning to not align ourselves in that way,

to not place ourselves in opposition to the church, to be careful.

Those of us like me who have a tendency to be more critical because we can see

problems and we want to correct and fix things.

Men, a lot of us are fixers. We want to fix things instead of listening, right?

We have to at least take this as a warning to be careful how we speak about

the church, what we say about individual churches,

and the things that we might spread in our complaints and our weaknesses to

other people who perhaps are not prepared to hear it and therefore set ourselves

in opposition to the mission of God.

We don't want to be part of that synagogue of Satan that John writes about,

that Jesus talks about. So there is that warning.

But Jesus comes with this encouragement after he builds them up.

He says, I know what you're about to suffer. Therefore, do not fear.

Do not fear because I know what you are about to suffer.

Notice that he doesn't say, do not fear because of what I'm about to rescue you from.

He doesn't say, do not fear because I'm about to spare you from this great thing

that is coming towards you.

Do not fear because this tribulation won't get worse and it won't touch you.

Jesus tells them, do not fear what you are about to suffer. Because what he's

telling them is, at least for the 10 days that he's mentioning it,

it's about to get worse for them.

They're about to suffer more. They're about to experience worse things.

Some of them are going to be thrown into prison, that they may be tested.

And for 10 days, they will have tribulation.

Do not fear. The reason we don't have to fear, the reason this church doesn't

have to fear is hidden in these words.

Jesus had already said, I know. Jesus is sovereign over this tribulation.

He's not being caught off guard by it. He knows that it's coming.

He hasn't been caught off guard by anything that happens in the scriptures.

He knows and he prepares his people.

Christ is sovereign over death itself. He is the one who died and came back to life.

So do not fear. I have gone before you. I have suffered ahead of you and I have

prepared a way. Do not fear.

And again, as we talked about earlier, Satan is not in control.

I think what this opens up for us is an inherent question.

That has been a popular question for years to come.

And while I'm going to tell you that I don't have a great answer to satisfy,

your needs for this question,

I will tell you that the only answer that really makes sense,

the best answer, comes from Christianity, from God, from Jesus.

That every other answer just simply stinks.

I was going to use a different word, but my kids are going to use that word if I use it.

There's no better answer to the problem of suffering than in Jesus.

Why would he allow us to suffer? Why would he allow these Christians to suffer?

Why would he allow these burdens and pains to come upon people we love?

Why would he allow sickness and death? Why would he allow tribulation and poverty?

Why would he allow any of these things to come upon us? How can there be a good

God and still be suffering.

Every other religion, every other ideology, the answer is pretty bad.

Only the Christian answer has hope within it.

And part of that response is Jesus says, I know that you think you're poor, but in fact you're rich.

There is a way of seeing things that escapes us.

So when we as Americans, as we as Westerners look at suffering,

we see it as us being poor. We see it.

As a terrible thing that must be avoided.

We see it as something that stands against all that we believe in,

life, love, the pursuit of happiness.

We see it as an obstacle to overcome in our culture.

But God looks at our suffering and sees something better than poverty. He sees richness.

They weren't delusional. They knew what was actually happening around them. They weren't.

Contrary to popular belief in our modern era, everybody thousands of years ago were not idiots.

They were smart people who knew what was happening.

They were not unaware of some hidden vast wealth they just didn't see things

with an internal perspective.

They saw their circumstances. They saw, as we see in Psalm 23,

they saw the mountains looming over them that they called the shadow of death.

It's the same thing we see. They saw the giants.

We cannot believe as a culture that good things take time.

We cannot believe as a culture that a life worth living is attained through much difficulty.

We think things should come easy.

We can't see as a culture, we can't believe that there is good to be had in

the midst of trials, tribulation, and suffering.

We can't see past our discomfort.

We must have this mind as in Christ Jesus, as it says in the book of Philippians.

We must hold this in our minds.

We must have the same mind as Christ. We must seek to see and understand the

Christ who said, I know you think you're poor, but in fact, you are rich.

Even though things are about to get worse, in fact, you have great wealth.

Who said in the Sermon on the Mount for us to not store up wealth on this earth,

where thieves come and steal it,

where time and weather erodes it, and moths come and eat it,

and it's temporary, but to store for ourselves great wealth in heaven.

He's going to say in just another verse, this crown of life that I've prepared

for you, this great wealth.

There's also this idea.

And so let me give this answer before we move on.

I think the best answer to suffering in this world is to have a 2H perspective,

which we talked about many, many weeks ago, but it all makes sense in the end,

if this life is not all that there is.

If this life is all that there is, suffering doesn't make any sense,

so we should avoid it at all costs.

We should maximize pleasure and minimize discomfort.

Unfortunately, the best way you could possibly do this, if you believe in that,

is to sit in a chair, comfy chair, not in a padded room with no external stimulus

hooked up to like morphine.

If that's all that life is, is maximizing pleasure and minimizing discomfort.

Nobody does that because nobody actually believes that, right?

But none of it makes sense unless there is an age to come.

So scientism, atheism, nobody has a good answer for suffering. We know it exists.

But if there's no God, all you can say is, well, survival of the fittest, right?

For some reason we care. We care about people who suffer deeply.

So it contradicts this human or materialistic scientific ideology that we tried

to adopt in our culture, where miracles are explainable by science and nothing.

It just doesn't make sense that we care deeply about people who suffer if there is no God.

And we live in a one-age culture where we as Christians adopt that and think,

although we recognize that eternity exists, we don't live like eternity exists,

so we struggle with suffering.

But Paul tells us that all of this stuff is light and momentary affliction.

Some of us have walked through such great things, terrible things,

and it's hard to say this is light and momentary.

But in the shadow of what is to come, anything that happens here is just blown out of the water.

And so when we talk about suffering, one of the hardest things for us to wrap

our head around is that suffering is God's chosen method of making us more like Christ. It's crazy.

Is the best thing to get us out of our selfishness,

and awaken us to this new life that he gives us where our old self passes away

and our new self walks in the fullness of what he calls us to.

I'm going to read, after we sing again, I'm going to read from Romans chapter

Romans 8 · chapter mention

8. And there's just a beautiful part of that that talks about those who he called,

he predestined to be conformed into the image of His Son.

There is nothing that conforms us into the image of Christ so that we can be

the sweet aroma of Christ to this world like suffering.

I wish it were another way. I wish it were another way, but it's just what,

in God's sovereignty, He knows is true.

And so He tells us that with great tribulation, with great suffering, we will enter into the,

Remember, as we close up, Smyrna, his name is synonymous with this incense, this resin myrrh,

this sweet aroma of the temple, the sweet aroma of kings.

It's associated with kings and wealth.

It probably wasn't the main producer, it could have been, but it was such an

important part of this economy that the name itself shares that with that word myrrh.

To make myrrh, these branches, these trees were collected.

They were cut and bruised and stomped and crushed and twisted to release this

resin, which would harden and they would extract it and would become part of

this incense, part of this perfume, this sweet smelling aroma.

And I think there could be a connection here that we could make with Jesus.

But I think the stronger connection for us to make is as Jesus is encouraging

this church in Smyrna, that you are about to suffer greatly, but don't fear.

For us to make that connection, that we, as we face tribulation,

as we face crushing, as we face difficulty, as we face hardship,

as we experience these things that wound us,

sometimes deeply,

that there's something about suffering that produces this sweet aroma when we suffer well.

There's something about enduring, there's something about not giving up, that's,

that produces, as it says in the Bible, and it makes us this pleasing aroma

to Christ, a pleasing aroma to the world that is dying.

Oftentimes in these letters, the names of the places and the words that Jesus

will use are not discordant.

They agree with one another. Names are important in the Bible.

Not only that, but he tells them to be faithful unto death.

Some of you are going to die. Be faithful unto death and I will give you the crown of life.

We serve a Lord, the Lord who has gone through it all and who has conquered death.

We serve the same God who made himself man and suffered and died and rose again

to provide the way forward for our resurrection.

It's the same God who lives in us. It's the same God who conquered the grave,

who lives in me, who has prepared a crown to give us.

Remember, I told you that Smyrna was considered the crown of Asia in the time.

So I don't think it's coincidence that Jesus is writing to them,

Endure this and I will give you something much better, a crown of life.

So many people are chasing after this crown that you see around you.

Beauty, comfort, wealth, success.

But the crown that I have for you that is far better is laid up for those who

endure and don't give up.

And just as I feel like last week, the word that I shared with you that I feel

like the Lord gave me on that Monday was why. What's your why?

The thing that Ephesus had lost, the thing that we, the longer we're Christians,

it's so easy to lose, our why.

And what I told you, what I suggested

to you, that the why is that other people would know about Jesus.

Sort of, it's like half right. The why ultimately is the glory of God.

That's the purpose and chief end of all man.

We live the why out by sharing it with others.

That was the word I feel like the Lord gave me about Ephesus for us.

This one, it didn't come till Thursday and Friday, but I feel like the message

for us this morning is don't give up.

Don't give up because you're not seeing your reward here.

Don't give up because your health and the health of those around you is failing.

Don't give up because you're not seeing your prayers answered and played out

in the way that you had hoped they would be.

Don't give up because you have hope.

There is hope for you, a hope in a future.

I love how in the book of Isaiah, the word of the Lord through Isaiah,

to the exiles, to those suffering before the exile, to,

specifically to foreigners and to eunuchs that have found themselves amongst

these people, he says he would give them a future and a hope.

That he would give them a name everlasting to people who had no hope for a future,

to people who had no hope that their name would be continued.

God's word to them is, I have prepared and I'm going to give you a name, a future, and a hope.

And that's still God's message to us this morning, that we have a hope and a

future, so don't give up.

Give up, even though it all seems crazy, it all seems lost.

Don't give up if following God in this life and walking in humility makes you look foolish to people.

Don't give up if you experience hardship and persecution.

Some of us, possibly even in this room, some of your dear friends,

some of your loved ones, some of those closest to you, maybe even you yourself,

have given up You don't think that you've given up.

You don't know that you've given up yet, but you've given up.

Every time, every time we say, I'm doing this for me.

I'm doing this because I need some self-healing.

I'm doing this because it's too hard. And just for this season, I need to do it this way.

Every time we do that, every time we say, it'll just be for a season, we're giving up.

Might not realize it for five years. We might not realize it for 10 years.

We might not realize it for 20 years.

But the problem is, before we ever realize it, that we've given up, it's too late.

We've settled ourselves into a way of life that we never expected to find ourselves in.

We've settled ourselves into a way of living that has just pulled us along until

we at last realize that we had ended up there because we gave up all those years ago.

So Jesus writes, to him who overcomes, to him who endures, don't give up.

Endure, persevere, and I have for you a crown of life.

To those who overcome, to him who has ears to hear, he says,

what the Spirit has to say to these churches.

We have a God who's gone before us, so don't give up.

We have a God who is the architect of all things and is in control, don't give up.

We have a God who empathizes with us, don't give up.

We have a God who knows is in control, he sees what we're dealing with, don't give up.

He's a God who knows the tears that we cry at night when no one else might, don't give up.

Word would be this. We meet suffering with worship.

When everything around us is burning, we worship.

There's a group of people in ancient Israel that did not worship when things

got hard, when they were surrounded by enemies.

We tend to refer to them as the evil kings. The kings of Israel and most of

the kings of Judah were the ones who never turned back to the Lord.

But in those we call good kings, in those who are the remnant,

what we see is that when things get hard, they rend their heart,

they tear their clothes, they fall to their knees, and they worship.

When they hear news that is hard, their response is worship.

So the way we don't give up is that we worship.

We worship at all times.

We don't fear. We worship. We endure. We remain faithful. We don't give up.

We don't give up because we're not seeing our reward. We don't give up because,

it seems like things are getting worse because God is in control.

This one last thing. I know I'm over time a little bit.

Church. So Ephesus, we talked about the legacy of leaders that it had.

This church in Smyrna, at some point in its history, whether it's when John's

writing this letter or later, came to be led by a guy named Polycarp.

Which means nothing to us, except Polycarp was a disciple of John who wrote this letter.

Polycarp lived a great life, long life. He led this church well.

As this tribulation kicked up more and more in Smyrna, Christians were arrested.

Christians were put to death.

Polycarp was able to evade that for a while, but eventually he was betrayed,

by one who was in the church.

And there's all of these great stories. Some of them kind of drift into the,

idea of mythology, but some of them are true.

The legend goes that as the soldiers are showing up to arrest Polycarp, he already knows.

He welcomes them in. He's so kind. He feeds them. He says, do you mind if I go and pray first?

So much so that he spends two hours praying while these soldiers are there to

arrest him, and they let him. It's an amazing story.

He gets brought into this coliseum where other Christians have suffered.

Other Christians have died. They've been attacked by animals for sport.

They build a fire around him, or at least they put him on wood to burn him.

And their whole thing, their whole shtick is, renounce Jesus,

say Caesar is Lord, and will spare your life.

I'm reminded of, there's this great comedian, I think Shane Smith,

you should listen to him.

He got saved a number of years back from a really hard life.

He's a clean comic as well.

And he's talking about Jesus everywhere right now. He's pretty popular and hot, So it's awesome.

About in his days when he was in debt like really bad and like his dentist called

and put him to debtors and he's like for like 20 bucks it's like why didn't you just call me,

but he got called by these debtors and they were like you better pay us the

money or else your credit's gonna be bad and he's like is that your only thing

my credit's already bad i'm not gonna pay you,

and they're like nobody's ever told us this,

so like this is that your only thing that's what i'm thinking about I feel like on,

that pile of wood, he's like, is that your only thing?

The crown that is awaiting me is so much better than letting it go.

So much so that his response to them is these 86 years or so,

God has been faithful to me.

How could I in this moment be unfaithful to him?

What a powerful story that comes out of this church that Jesus writes,

to him who overcomes, to him endures this great tribulation,

I'm going to give the crown of life. Lord, I thank you.

I thank you that in all of this rambling is such great encouragement that you are in control.

Are holy, that you are a good God who cares for us,

that you are preparing and have prepared a future and a hope so great that it

rivals all of the crowns of life.

So like in a couple chapters in Revelation, I pray that our response to your

continued faithfulness for

however long we might have is that we would cast our crowns before you,

that we would cast everything that we hold dear to on this earth in front of

you, because what you have prepared for us when we get to be with you in eternity is far greater.

It's far greater than anything we could suffer. It blows it out of the water.

And if we could just make that flip in our mind to understand it,

it's so hard when all that we know is what we see and experience here.

So hard to make that flip, but if we could just make that flip in our mind,

that we would be faithful to the end, that we would not give up,

and that we would meet all difficulty, all hardship, that we would meet every

diagnosis, that we would meet.

Every crazy thing that happens to us on this broken world that we all know is broken.

We all have our ideas of how it should be fixed, but Lord, you know the way and you are the answer.

So much so that we would meet all of those with worship, with a life that is

humbled and bowed down before you.

With a life that lays all of the things that we care about at your feet,

as an offering, as a sweet fragrance, that our life lived in this time,

in this place, would be aroma that is pleasing to you.

That all that we think about, that all that we believe, that all that we do

would be pleasing in your sight, God. That we wouldn't try and please...

Neighbors and friends and people, that we would please you, that we would not give up.

And for all of us, any of us who might have already given up, that we would renew,

that we would renew our fervor, that we would, as we talked about in Ephesus

last week, that we would remember the love we had at first, our first love.

We would remember, we would repent, and when we would continue to practice as

you change us from one degree of glory to the next, God.