Revelation 2:8-11

Well, good morning, everyone, and uh welcome to our service this morning as we continue in our series in the book of uh Revelation, looking at the uh the letters to the churches, those letters that the risen uh Lord Jesus uh wrote uh through the Apostle John to the churches, and they are a sevenfold uh letter in a sense to us as the church.

Uh as we are watching this in our in our homes, uh lockdown endures and uh seems uh interminable at this point.

And lockdown for for each of us is a uh well, it's a season of trial, isn't it?

Uh at the very least, it tests our patience.

Uh, it is a season of trial, a season of uh suffering uh to uh different degrees for different people.

For some, it is a season of profound suffering and difficulty, uh, and for others it is a uh a uh a trial of uh inconvenience, economic hardship, but a trial nonetheless.

The thing about sufferings and trials is that uh they tend to be a good clarifier, don't they?

Uh that clarifies for us a couple of things.

Suffering and trial clarifies for us uh what it is that we value.

It clarifies what we value, either because we miss something or we've lost something, or uh we're fighting to maintain something.

It's clarifying for each of us, I'm sure, uh, just how important our life together is.

Perhaps it's clarifying in ways that you find quite surprising uh how uh how much you need our community life together.

For some that will be the case.

For some, it has made our life together vital and you long to be back together.

For others, perhaps it is exposed uh just how easy it is to be disconnected.

It's exposed that that surface of uh or brought to the surface, rather, I should say, that idea that maybe we're never all that attached to begin with.

Clarifies what we value, doesn't it?

It clarifies as well uh what we really believe.

This is something that uh that I for one have found and I know that others at City have, you know, ever since we began.

You know, what's one of the things you know, apart from other person-centered love, what's the other thing that City Church uh goes on about all the time?

It's you're going to suffer.

Suffering is going to come.

Yeah, we go on about it because I think the New Testament goes on about it.

Uh, but nevertheless, we have talked lots and lots about the in the inevitability of suffering and the inevitability of trial.

And we didn't expect for one second that it was all going to come upon us, uh, all of us, collectively at once.

And now it is the time where what we have said in the past and what we have said that we believe in the past is now being put to the test.

Do you feel that?

You feel like this is the point where what you've said that you believe, what you've said that you believe about God, by his goodness, by his control over all things, that you're being forced to kind of take hold of those and apply them to your heart in a way that perhaps you hadn't before?

The rubber's hitting the road, isn't it?

It clarifies for us what we believe.

Do I really believe that those things, those truths that I have heard, do I really believe that they will sustain me through this season?

Do I believe that God is both good and in control?

Am I really placing my hope in Jesus and not something circumstantial, something created?

Perhaps you've been surprised by your reaction to this season.

I think on one level that's normal.

I've been surprised actually.

I've been surprised, especially in those early days, of just how fearful I can be.

So if you're like me, it would be good to keep listening.

In Jesus' letter to the church in Smyrna, Jesus is calling the Christians to persevere, to keep going, to endure trial and suffering, and to keep putting one foot in front of the other spiritually speaking.

Smyrna, which is now Izmir in Turkey.

Smyrna was the next town along from Ephesus.

So we're we're essentially moving along the road that you would have taken if you were traveling from Ephesus to Laodicea.

Ephesus is letter number one, Laodicea is letter number seven.

And so the next town along, about 30 kilometers up the road, is the town of Smyrna.

And Smyrna had a tumultuous past, it had a lot of suffering in its past.

In fact, uh, not just a little bit of suffering, it had been utterly destroyed.

Smyrna had been leveled, laid waste, and you know, population zero.

Nobody lives in Smyrna at about uh 700 BC.

It was dead.

And it wasn't until uh 280 BC that it was refounded.

That they came along and said, No, we're gonna build this city again, we're gonna bring this city uh back to life, and it had become a major religious center, especially for the the worship of the emperor Tiberius.

And you kind of let that kind of fly by, right?

Yeah, oh they worship the Emperor Tiberius.

But one thing to remember is that in that day, in the first century in the Roman culture, uh, if you weren't worshiping the emperor, that was that was bad.

Like that was not good for you.

Uh you couldn't get a you couldn't get a job, you were marginalized in society.

Uh, religious and economic life were uh bound up with one another, okay.

But the city had died and been reborn.

Look at how Jesus introduces himself in verse 8.

The angel of the church in Smyrna write, the words of the first and the last who died and came to life.

You see, we noted last week in the uh letter of the church in Ephesus that in each of the introductions uh that Jesus writes, he introduces himself with an image from chapter one.

Last week he was the one uh walking amidst the lampstands.

But in chapter one, he also describes himself as the first and the last, he also and describes himself as the one who died and who came to life again.

End of verse 17 of chapter 1, started at verse 18, fear not, I am the first and the last and the living one.

I died, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I hold the keys to death in Hades.

Smyrna, as a city, may have been reborn, but Christ reminds him that he's been resurrected, never to die again.

Smyrna may find itself leveled, and indeed it has gone through major changes to become the city of Ismir today.

But Christ will never die again.

What a comfort to this poor, impoverished church.

This letter is one of only two of the seven in which there is no complaint.

It's only good commendation, the other letter being the letter to Philadelphia.

And they are encouraged by Jesus to persevere suffering, to keep going.

This is what we need to hear.

Jesus says to you this morning, watching this broadcast, keep going, persevere, endure the trials and griefs and difficulties that you now face.

And he does so for two reasons.

Not in typical city church fashion, the second reason has seven sub-reasons, uh, but two reasons nonetheless.

The first reason why you need to persevere to keep going until the end is because things are worse than you think.

You're welcome.

Persevere to the end because things are worse than you think.

Jesus comes to them in this letter that Denise read.

Thank you for that, sister.

Uh, comes to them and says that things are bad, but they're going to get worse.

They have been slandered, verse 9.

I know your tribulation, your poverty, but you are rich, and the slander of those who say they are Jews but are not.

Uh they have been uh falsely accused, and that accusation, uh, back up a second, who are they being accused to?

So the the Jews are accusing them to the Roman, the Roman uh authorities, the Roman governor, okay?

Uh because uh the the Jews outside of Jerusalem, outside of uh Israel, uh couldn't implement um any sort of punishment.

They had to go to the Roman authorities, right?

So they're being slandered to the Roman authorities, and Jesus says, Well, actually, that slander is going to result in some of you being imprisoned.

Verse 10.

Do not fear what you are about to suffer.

Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison that you may be tested.

It goes on in verse 10 uh to say at the very end of that verse, be faithful unto death.

Be faithful unto death.

Things are about to get worse.

The slander and accusation is going to become imprisonment, and some of you will die, Jesus says.

It's worth noting that the risen Jesus doesn't come to his followers, he doesn't come to the Christian, he doesn't come to your eye and say, uh, don't worry, uh, I've got this.

I'm going to uh pluck you out of all of this suffering.

I'm gonna stop the mouths of those who are speaking against you.

No, the Alpha and the Omega, the one who lives forevermore, says to us, I'm gonna allow this to continue.

This is the way of the Christian life.

Good Friday always precedes Easter Sunday.

Suffering now.

Glory later.

Do you believe that?

It's also worse than the thing because of the dark spiritual overtones that are here in this letter.

It's not just people, it's the enemy.

The enemy, with the definite article, right?

The devil.

The devil is about to throw them into prison.

He's behind the persecution.

Again, this is another uh way in which the book of Revelation is, because Revelation members said so this idea of apocalypse, which is uh what the word revelation is, uh, means uh uh a pulling back of the curtain.

John again is pulling back the curtain to see the spiritual structure of reality.

That just as there are you know uh angels over churches, there are dark spiritual forces at work in the world that are beyond our sight, beyond our comprehension.

We need to persevere because things are worse than we think.

Now, just a a little note on some of the descriptures here.

In terms of Jesus calling the uh the Jews a synagogue of Satan, this is not to be thought of in any sort of um anti-Semitic way.

Anti-Semitism is a wicked, wicked thing.

Judging others, condemning others, persecuting or looking down on others on the basis of their ethnicity is evil.

So, how do we understand this?

Well, first of all, it's worth thinking about what Satan does, what the devil does, it's the same thing, right?

Uh what Satan does.

Satan opposes.

He opposes God and God's King, who is King Jesus, he stands in opposition to the Messiah, and therefore to the followers of the Messiah.

The Jews in Smyrna had stood in opposition to the Christians and had sided with the Roman authorities.

They had slandered them to the Romans and in doing so had uh had taken sides with the accuser, the opposer, with Satan himself.

So Jesus, the first and the last, the living one, writes to this church that is poor, economically poorer, impoverished, that is being slandered and says, keep enduring because it's about to get worse.

And goodness me, if anything that coronavirus is teaching us, it's that we don't know what's round round the corner.

We don't know what's going to come.

We don't know what we're gonna have to go through either individually or together.

But Jesus knows the one who lives forever knows all things, and he says to you persevere, keep going.

Keep persevering even though things are about to get worse.

How would you feel if you received that letter?

Would you you know return return to sender?

Thanks, but no thanks.

What would you need to know in order to not give up?

How would what would you need to know in order not to be so despairing at this news that you actually do keep going?

What kinds of things would you need to have in your mind, have in your heart, have embedded in your soul?

And that's the second point.

Because while we need to know that things are worse than you think, we also need to know that things are better than you could possibly imagine.

So we persevere on the one hand because things are worse than you think.

But we persevere on the other hand because things are better than you could possibly imagine.

While our circumstances may seem to go from bad to worse, there are certain realities that we need to be aware of.

And here are the seven.

The words of the first and the last.

Their slanderers, their accusers will not ultimately, spiritually speaking, have the last word.

Every single one of us who has been misrepresented, misunderstood, rumors spread about that are untrue, being slandered by others.

Every single one of us needs to hear that.

We need to cling to that.

Because that means that we don't need to scream and to rant to justify ourselves, we can rest.

That Christ has the last word.

And so we persevere until that day.

Second.

To keep going, even though it means death.

And he does so not as some distant lord, some detached king, but as the one who has tasted death before us, more than that, who has defeated death.

Death no longer has power over him.

He is the one who, if you read back in chapter 1, verse 18, says he has the keys of death, that that symbol of power and authority and control.

And he says, endure unto death, because I own it.

I am sovereign over it.

Be faithful even though it means death.

Wonderfully, we know that this happened in Smyrna.

We know that people remain faithful even when it meant death.

There was a man with a slightly bizarre name.

None of us are putting it on the short list for our baby names.

His name was Polycarp, P-O-L-Y-C-A-R-P, many fish, Polycarp.

He was a leader of the church in Smyrna.

He was a young man when John wrote the book of Revelation.

Isn't this so interesting that, or at least it's interesting to me in terms of the historic reality, the historicity of the Bible, that he may well have known John.

He was perhaps about 20 years old when John wrote the book of Revelation, and we know his writings, and we know about his death.

As an older man, another wave of persecution arose throughout the Roman Empire.

And in Smyrna, people betrayed the elderly Polycarp again to the Roman authorities.

He was told by the authorities that he needed to renounce his faith, to curse the Christ and to sacrifice to the emperor.

It started off very small.

It started off as won't you just offer a little incense and say that say that you could even say that Caesar is our Lord.

He said, No.

He refused.

They said, well, if you don't renounce your faith, if you don't recant, if you don't offer sacrifices to our idols, our pagan gods, we're going to burn you alive.

Still, the elderly Polycarp refused to recant and encouraged the men speaking with him to go and fetch wood and to build the pyre.

The pyre was built in the town square, and he was given a final chance to renounce Jesus and to save himself from the flames.

This is what he said.

Eighty-six years I have served him, and he has done me no wrong.

How then can I blaspheme my king who saved me?

Eighty-six years I have served him, and he has done me no wrong.

How can I blaspheme my king who saved me?

I don't know what the rest of my life will entail.

In the same way that you don't know what the rest of your life will entail.

But I would like to get to a place if the Lord spares me where I can say that as an old man.

I don't feel I'm there yet.

But I want to be.

And I want us to persevere together so that we can say it together.

Third, the risen Lord Jesus begins his letter in the most wonderful way.

He begins at the start of verse line: I know your tribulation.

I know your suffering.

I know your affliction.

And this is the other thing that we need to know in order to persevere.

Christ knows your pain.

He knows the grief that you're feeling.

He knows it because he's felt it too.

He is one who can sympathize with us in our weaknesses.

He comes to us in our affliction, our frustration, our sickness, our worry, our anxiety, and our fear, and he says, I know your pain.

I am the one who can sympathize in your weakness.

Do not resent him if he leaves the pain there for a time.

Be thankful that he knows and that he cares and will ultimately rescue.

He then says that he knows their tribulation, but he also knows their poverty.

And then in parentheses says, But you're rich.

These guys were economically poor.

They were your breadline poor.

And Christ comes and says, But you are rich.

The church might not have had much financially, they might have struggled because many of them couldn't get jobs in the empire if you were a Christian.

What a sweet thing that Jesus reminds them of how rich they are in him.

Remember his words.

What did Jesus say in the Beatitudes in the Sermon of the Mount?

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Or Paul in Romans chapter 8, who talks about how if we are children of God because of Jesus, then we are heirs, heirs of the entire cosmos.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

Do you want to be rich on earth or rich in heaven?

It's very rare that you can have both.

This is where our suffering needs to clarify our values.

That even though we might suffer the loss of many things materially, to know that we still have the source of our deepest joy if we still have Christ.

We have a storybook version of it just in the other room.

We read it to the kids at nighttime.

But this jeweler who goes all over the place, he goes to uh to Africa and to India and he buys up all of these jewels, and then he finds the jewel of great price.

And what is it that we read in Jesus' story?

He says, In his joy, he sold all that he had in order to buy it.

Jesus is the pearl of great price.

Are you prepared to suffer loss in order to be rich in him?

He then talks about their suffering in verse 10, and it's worth noting what he says.

Verse 10: Do not fear what you're about to suffer.

Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you in prison that you may be tested.

And for 10 days you will have tribulation.

For ten days, now we could do that.

Uh you know, a deep dive into the numerology of the book of Revelation, and numbers have meanings.

Uh, the 10 tens in the Bible, sorry, 10 tens uh or usually means uh a complete cycle.

Uh so 10 generations that they're normally so 10 generations from Adam is Noah, and then you start the Noah um uh cycle, ten generations from uh from Noah is Abraham, and then you start that story, so it tends to be a complete cycle.

But for our purposes, the thing that you just need to take home from that is that 10's a finite number.

The risen Lord Jesus, who is the first and the last, the sovereign over all, who owns the keys to death and to Hades, says that you will go through a finite and temporary season of suffering.

Your suffering and your grief, if you are a Christian, is finite and temporary.

It might last 70 years, but in the context of eternity, it is finite and temporary.

Back to Romans chapter 8 again, verse 18.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

I do not consider the sufferings of this present age worthy to be compared with the glory that awaits us.

Are you saying it with me, Cameron Mitchell?

Because we looked at it this week.

Jesus is saying, Yes, you will suffer, but it won't be forever.

The trials and tribulations that we have in this world won't endure forever.

This lockdown will end.

We will come out into the sunshine again, we will be together again.

But there will still be sin and pain in the world.

We'll still have suffering and grief.

But eternally speaking, our sufferings are temporary.

That's why Paul is so mad.

I didn't write it down, but I think it's in 2 Corinthians where he talks about uh all of his sufferings, uh, all of his uh all of his uh his his beatings and imprisonments.

He says this this light and momentary affliction is giving way to an eternal weight of glory.

Ten days.

It will end.

And he promises them sickly, he promises them the crown of life.

Be faithful unto death, the end of verse ten.

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

When the fight is fought, when the race is run, and you die at the finish line, the wreath that will be placed upon your head will be the crown of everlasting life.

No more pain, no more slander, no more shame, no more tears, no more grief, no more depression, no more frustration, no more anxiety, no more discouragement, only light and life and joy and God forever.

And finally, Jesus promises this is number seven.

Jesus promises that the one who conquers will not be hurt by the second by the second death.

There is something worse than dying, and it is the second death.

Polycarp, the leader of the church in Smyrna, understood that because one of the other things that he said to his accusers as they built the pyre was he said, I do not fear the fire that burns for an hour and is quenched.

Do not fear the fire that burns for an hour and yet is quenched.

Here's the thing, and this is going to be hard for some of you to hear, but I think that the entire Bible attests to it.

You see, God is not mainly in the business of sparing us from the first death or the pain that leads up to it, but He is utterly devoted to rescuing us from the second.

It is through faith in Jesus that we are rescued from the death that matters, from the death that lasts eternally, from the death that is not quenched.

God is utterly devoted to saving you from that.

So as you sit at home this morning, feeling fretful and frustrated, bored or anxious, sick, or grieving.

I feel very heavy-hearted today.

I'm glad as I say that, I'm glad that there are lots of you who are concerned for my good and for the good of my family.

And I'm I the fact that you ask how I'm doing gives me such encouragement.

I feel heavy-hearted today.

A pastor who who um I didn't know personally, but who had an impact on me died suddenly and tragically on Friday.

And I know that others watching this are grieving today as well.

And it is in that context that Jesus comes and says, I know your tribulation, I know what you're feeling.

It's in that context that he encourages us to endure until we receive that crown of life.

He says, Don't give up.

Don't grow weary.

Don't grow weary of doing good.

Don't grow weary of how it is we have to do life together at the minute.

Don't grow weary of Zoom prayer time.

Don't grow weary of your community grips.

And goodness me, I know how wearisome Zoom Community Grip is.

Don't grow weary of tuning in.

Don't grow weary of pursuing holiness.

Don't grow weary of fighting for joy in the gospel.

Don't grow weary of picking up your Bible, even if even if in reading it it feels like sawdust in your soul.

Don't grow weary of doing it.

Because I believe that the first and the last will meet you in it.

And in the end, he will give us the crown of life.

Are you thinking of giving up?

Are you thinking of not persevering?

Remember that Christ has the last word.

Remember that he is alive forevermore.

Remember that he knows your pain.

Remember that you are rich beyond measure because of the richness of Christ.

Remember that you will receive the crown of life, and remember that you will not be hurt by the second death.

Let us pray together.

I'm not going to take questions today.

We're going to pray and sing and then close our time.

Let's pray.

I am the first and the last and the living one.

I died, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys to death and Hades.

We praise you, Lord Christ, that you are sovereign over all things, and that you are good, and that you know our weakness.

You know what it is to weep and to grieve.

You know what it is to feel frustration and hunger and thirst and weariness.

Help us now, by your spirit, to endure all of the trials and tribulations of this life, whatever wave upon wave of suffering might break over our backs.

May we reach that finish line together and receive that crown of everlasting life.

Lift our weary heads, we pray, to see the beauty of that heavenly city, to see the beauty of life with you, of Satan defeated and death death no more.

Lift our weary heads and cause us to persevere for your great name's sake.

Amen.