Is in my experience, that there is a connection between the things that we love and how much we are willing to sacrifice for those things. The, the more you love something, the more you are willing to sacrifice. Have you ever been at the store and you saw something and it caught your eye and you say, I like that. I wanna buy that. And you walk over to that thing and then you grab the price tag and then you decide, I don’t love it that much. And you walk away from that thing because there’s a love that we have for something. And if we love it enough, we’re willing to sacrifice more. But if we don’t love it quite that much, we sacrifice a little bit less. Now you see this with your kids, that when you have kids, you realize because you love your kids, how much you are willing to sacrifice for your kids.

And your kids are completely oblivious to it. Might I add? Maybe someday they will look back and with fondness, understand the sacrifices you’ve made. Sometimes we’re doing chores on Saturday and my kids will turn to, to me and my wife and say, well, how come you don’t have a list of chores the same way that we do? And you wanna do one of these things at ’em and say, let me tell you all the chores that I do for you every waking moment of my life. Because the more you love something, the more you are willing to sacrifice for that thing. Yet in our culture right now, there’s not a lot of things that we have to sacrifice so much that we’d be willing to give our life for. That’s happened over the course of our country. We’ve had soldiers willing to sacrifice their life for our freedom and for our country.

But for most of us, that’s not something that we have to deal with Day in and day out, in July of 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. Was speaking at Syracuse University. Now, I’ll remind you that three days later, excuse me, three years later, in 1968 is when he was assassinated. But standing in front of Syracuse University students, he’s giving a speech. And in that speech, he said this before, the victories won, some may even have to face physical death. We must come to see that there are some things so eternally true, that there are worth dying for. And if a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live. It’s not just the Martin Luther King Jr. Believed and loved the movement that he was representing racial equality. He was willing to die for it. What are the things in your life, in my life that we love so much that we say that is a belief that I would be willing to pay the ultimate sacrifice for?

When we kicked off last week, Gary kicked off a new sermon series that we’re in on the book of Revelation, specifically the seven letters to the seven churches in Revelation. If you’re new to Tree Hills, we kind of do a rhythm where we go back and forth between topical preaching. Even if we do topical preaching, we try and preach exegetically. That means just really diving into scripture in God’s word. And then we’ll do a sermon series where we just kinda work line by line through a text in the Bible. And so that’s what we’re doing now last week when Gary kicked it off, he kicked off with this phrase. He said, revelation wants to shift the church’s focus from the threat of Rome to the promise of Christ. That the backdrop behind the Book of Revelation is that there’s persecution going on. That there are trials and tribulation, that, that Rome is seen as the bad guy for the early church.

And the letters are trying to say, okay, instead of your focus being on that, on your present day circumstances, instead, the focus should be on Jesus, on what he has done for you, on what he will do for you. Now, there’s seven letters in chapters two and chapter three of Revelation. And they go in order like this. For a long time in church history, people were saying, Hey, why is it that in that order and what, what’s, what’s the meaning of the order? But now it’s pretty easy to look back and know why the order is what the order was. If you pull up a map, this is modern day Turkey, Asia Minor at the time. So if you pull up a map and look at it, it goes exactly in order. So the line of the island of Patmos which was over near Greek in kind of the southeast corner here, that’s where John would’ve been.

And John, the order that he writes is first he writes to Ephesus which Ephesus was the closest church to where John was, and then to Smyrna, and then to Pergamum, and then to Thy Tire. And then the Cyrus Sardis, then to Philadelphia, then Leia, and then, so it’s just in order. So Jesus is writing the letter, he’s giving it to John. John’s going and taking it and delivering it all around. It’s not John physically doing it ’cause he’s in prison, but he’s sending a messenger to go around. And so the reason that they’re in the order that they’re in is simply because that’s the order that the messenger would’ve taken them to. Today we’re gonna talk about Smyrna. Last week Gary talked about Ephesus. If you didn’t get to catch that one, I’d encourage you to go back and watch it online. Great message.

To kick us off today, we’re gonna talk about Smyrna. Here’s a few things about the second letter, a few things about the Church of Smyrna that are important to understand. The first is that it was an affluent port city. You could tell on that map that they were close to water. And so because of that, they were very affluent that that port city, that access to the rest of the mainland had made a lot of money go in and through the city, that they were described by one ancient rider as the loveliest of all cities. So not only was it Aflo, it was a beautiful place to live. The population was around a hundred thousand people. I think sometimes when we’re looking at the Bible, we think of small cities and we think of like a little village, but it was big. It was a hundred thousand people that lived in Smyrna.

And now if you think of where Smyrna was physically, now present day, it’s the city of Ismir. So I got two pictures. One is a picture. We don’t really exactly know what Smyrna looked like. This is a modern day artist that used some of the research that they did to say, okay, this is our guess of what it might have looked like. So you could tell there’s this big port city really beautiful. This area right here is where all the temples were. That was called the Crown of Smyrna. So we do know that the, the crown of Smyrna, where the temples were set up above the city and looked out to everything else. If you looked at what this city looks like, modern day in Turkey, ISMI is a city of a population of about 3 million people. That’s what it looks like.

It’s a big tourist destination. Of course this was from a tourist website. So whether it actually looks this good or not, I don’t know. I’ve never been there. Now here’s some specific things about the letter itself, not just the city, but the letter one. It’s the shortest of the letters. It’s just four verses long. Some of you are like, maybe we’ll get out of church early today. Doubtful. But you know, it is the shortest. It’s one of only two letters with nothing negative to say about the church of the seven letters, five of ’em, five of the churches. Jesus like, Hey, you need to fix these things and stop doing these things. And he is calling them out for things that they are doing wrong. But Smyrna is not one of those churches. Smyrna is just encouragement. And the reason that there’s encouragement is because the focus of the letter is persecution.

That the whole point of the letter to Smyrna is that Jesus is recognizing that they’re currently facing tribulation and that they will face more tribulation. And it makes you kind of pause and back up and say, well, why, why does Jesus allow persecution to happen? It’s interesting that Jesus knew persecution would happen In John chapter 15, verse 20, Jesus says, just as they have persecuted me, so will they persecute you if you are my followers? And that’s been true for the entire history of the church. So, so why does Jesus allow it? Have you figured out that in life oftentimes struggle leads to success, that sometimes the things that are the most valuable goals to perceive in life, we don’t accomplish those things without some type of struggle in order for us to get there? James, the brother of Jesus writes in his letter.

He says, count it all joy, my brothers. When you meet trials of various kinds for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness and let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete lacking in nothing. One of the phrases we use with our kids a lot is you can do hard things. We’ve got a 12-year-old, a 10-year-old, a 6-year-old, and constantly they’re, they’re doing something, whether it’s homework that they’re doing that they don’t really like doing, they get stuck on something or whether it’s an activity that they’re trying to learn and work on. And they will get to that moment where they’re frustrated and they wanna quit and they wanna walk away. And we, we look at ’em and say, you can

Do

Hard things. Sometimes they don’t like it when we say you can do hard things.

But

What we want them to understand is that

Struggle is okay.

If they’re gonna accomplish

Wonderful, great

Things, have

A career that lives up to, to their

Giftedness, that in order to do that,

They have to go through struggle. The book, the book

Grit by Angela Duckworth

Talks about struggle and

Persevering through

Struggle. So why does Jesus allow persecution?

It’s interesting when we look at the

Capital C Church, the history of the church,

That the moments that the church

Grew

The most was under persecution.

Oddly,

The the times that the church

Doesn’t face

Persecution, it tends to not do so

Great. Now look at the

Church in United States right now, that by every metric in the last 50 years, church attendance has gone down. Churches have

Closed their doors.

Christianity or the, the faith,

The

Belief in Christianity has diminished, not increased.

It’s

One of the places in the world that

That it is the

Safest and easiest

To be a Christian.

And yet when we look at

Other parts of the world where there is

Persecution, that

Is where the church is

Thriving and growing and flourishing.

And

So somehow in a way that we don’t understand that something

About

Persecution causes

Christians

To really own their faith, you don’t have a nominal faith. If

You face persecution, you

Own it and you

Persevere.

We’re gonna do something a little bit different. We

Are gonna look at all four verses.

We’re gonna read it

Together

And then I’m gonna walk

Through those

Verses line by line by line. But as

We read the four

Verses, I’m gonna ask all of us to stand up.

We’re gonna read those four verses

Together, and we’re gonna actually read

It together

Off the screen. That wasn’t the intent at the nine o’clock. But then everybody started reading with me and I was like, all right, let’s do

It. So we’re gonna read together.

It’s on the screen. Revelation chapter,

Chapter two,

Starting in verse eight.

Let’s read together. It says this,

And to the angel of the church in Smyrna Wright,

The words of the

First and the last who died and came to life. I know your tribulation in your poverty, but

You are rich.

And the slander of

Those who say that they are

Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan, 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 and for 10 days you

Will have tribulation. Be

Faithful unto death. And I will give you the crown of life.

He

Who has an ear, let him hear

What the spirit says to the churches.

The one who conquers will not be hurt

By the second death.

You may be seated.

So let’s break it down verse by verse of what exactly

Does that mean? So first

Verse says this, the angel of the

Church in Smyrna, right,

The words of the

First and the last who died and came to life. The first phrase, the angel in the Church of Smyrna has some debate. When you look at biblical scholars, some would argue that there is a literal angel that represents every single one of the churches, and that’s who the letter is to. Most biblical scholars would say, well, the word angel really just means messenger. And so it’s not a literal angel that, that it’s going to, every one of the letters starts with that same phrase, but instead it’s a messenger to that church. And then the declaration that starts, the whole thing says the words of the first and the last. If you have a Bible that has red letters, this is Jesus is talking. It is a message straight from Jesus. And he’s identifying himself with a title. So first he says, the words of thee.

Jesus is saying, I am the first and the last. We’ll see where that title is found in scripture in a moment. And then he says, who died and came to life. He’s talking about himself. He’s saying, I Jesus, who died on the cross and rose from the dead. It’s me who’s sending you this letter? It’s, it’s Jesus who’s giving the encouragement that phrase, the first and the last. We see it multiple times in the Old Testament. But here’s a great example in Isaiah, it says, listen to me. Oh, Jacob in Israel, whom I called, I am He. I am the first and I am the last. And sometimes you’ll hear modern skeptics falsely say, well, Jesus never claims to be God in the gospels or in the New Testament. And that’s just not true. It’s just that Jesus who claims to be God over and over and over again in the New Testament, he tends to do it by using a phrase from the Old Testament when God is referring to himself and gives himself a title.

So in this passage of United, say, it’s Yahweh, that’s saying he is the first and the last. Jesus picks up on the titles of Yahweh from the Old Testament. He uses them in the New Testament. Just like here, Jesus is saying He is God the first and the last, that he died on the cross, and that he rose from the dead. Then in verse nine it says, I know your tribulation and your poverty, but you are rich and the slander of those who say that they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. So we’ll break this into kind of two parts. Let’s talk about that first part. First. He says, I know your tribulation and your poverty, but you are rich. That that idea of poverty, but you’re rich. In Proverbs, it talks about some people claim to be rich and yet they’re really poor. And then other people look to be poor, and yet they’re really rich. It, it’s comparing and contrasting outward wealth versus internal wealth. And that’s what Jesus is saying. He, he knows that they are physically poor, but he’s saying you are spiritually rich. And Jesus also says that he understands their tribulation. That that we talked earlier that Smyrna was one of the wealthiest cities in Rome, and yet the Christians there were in poverty.

Why? It’s because

They’re facing persecution. Now,

Here’s a little bit about

The backdrop behind the scenes of Smyrna that helps make this make a little bit more sense. So we talked about the crown of Smyrna was all those temples, there’s all kinds of different temples that existed in Smyrna. Here’s a few of them. One was the temple of de aroma.

So

Here’s what Rome did around 1 95 BC

Is Rome was a polytheistic culture. So they say, Hey, you worship, there’s lots of gods, you worship all the gods. But they decided, Hey, what if we add

A God to the mix and we’ll make it the

God of Rome?

They,

It was a female goddess called Roma. And what they said is, okay,

All the characteristics

That we want our citizens to have, we want them to be loyal. We want them to,

To be good people.

We’re gonna just

Ascribe those characteristics to this

Goddess. And we’re gonna say to all of ’em, Hey, you can worship

The other gods, but you also have to worship our God, the goddess of

Rome. And so

There’s a

Huge temple we know in Smyrna, that was the temple of Oma. There was also an emperor in Smyrna to Emperor

Tiberius. It

Was built around 26

Ad. So, so this is

Very new, very recent i i built

Within the

Last a hundred years in the town. What would happen in the first century is getting a temple built in your town was a big

Deal. Probably the best present

Day example would be the Olympics committee. That the

Olympics committee,

They go around to all these different towns and the towns try and roll out

The red carpet and say, here’s why you should let us host

The Olympics, whether it’s the Summer Olympics or the Winter Olympics. And then they make all these promises,

Hey, if you’ll let us host the Olympics,

We’ll build a new arena.

We’ll build a new stage, we’ll

Build new amenities and all the things that, that you need in order to host

The Olympics here. So that’s

What would happen in the first century. The towns would say,

Hey,

If you’d be willing to build the temple, here

Are

All the things that we give you and we’d be willing to do for you. And so

They had just built

The temple to Emperor Tiberius. And when you build a temple, you don’t build a small temple, you build

A really

Big temple. In addition to that, they had temples to all kinds of different existing Greek

Gods.

And then at the time that this letter to Smyrna was written, we know historically

That they would’ve be

Begun progress on a temple for emperor Dian. Now, emperor Dian was the,

The, the Caesar

At the time that the letter was written,

All

Caesars claimed deity. But Dian, he, he

Did a little bit more. He,

He didn’t just claim deity. He said, Hey, not only do you have to worship me as God, hey, he wanted

To require people

To worship him as God. He, he

Would say, if

You don’t worship me as God, then there are going to be consequences. So

This is what that would look like, that they would require

Roman citizens to go into the temple and they’d have to do two things. The one that they would offer incense, and then they would have to simply declare

This phrase, Caesar is Lord, that’s it. They

Say, Hey, just come in, burn some incense in my temple, proclaims teaser is Lord, and then you can go about your way. But the early Christians, they wouldn’t do that. Why? Because even though everybody around them was polytheistic, they believed in all kinds of gods. And they say, okay, yeah, we can add on one more God, that’s fine Christians. They didn’t believe that they Roman monotheistic. Really, the only religions at the time that were monotheistic were the Jews And the Christians, they said, no, we believe that there’s only one God. And so they said, we can’t go in and claim that Caesar is Lord, because we know that only Jesus is Lord. The backdrop of another famous verse that you, you might’ve heard, you’ve definitely sung some songs about it. In Philippians two 11, it says, and every tongue confessed that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

We hear that when we just, we know it’s true. Yeah, Jesus is Lord. But the backdrop of this verse was that Caesar was requiring people to proclaim that Caesar is Lord. And so Paul is, is playing off of that and saying, no, no, no. Hey, someday, every tongue in the whole world, every tongue that has ever lived or ever will live, they will bow the need to Jesus and declare not that Caesar is Lord, but instead that Jesus is Lord. And so the Roman temple is requiring people to say, Caesar’s Lord, the Christians wouldn’t do it. So what happened as a result of that? Typically persecution always kind of follows the same path that persecution starts with just being ostracized. And we’re going to mock you or make fun of you, or we’re gonna just socially cast you out and say you’re not allowed to participate in some things.

But then the next step would be economic oppression. And we know that’s what was happening in Smyrna, that, that if you’re the Roman authorities and you say, we wanna make sure that people have to come in and say, Caesar is Lord. What they started doing is they saying, in order for you to trade goods, to buy and sell things, you have to come into the temple, burn incense, say that Caesar’s Lord, and then we’ll give you a stamp of approval, a certificate that allows you to go and buy and sell goods. Well, so now the Christians weren’t willing to do that. So what happened to the Christians? Now, they faced economic oppression. They were no longer able to buy and sell goods. That’s why they were so poor. The next step after economic oppression tends to be imprisonment. After imprisonment comes physical abuse or torture.

And then beyond that becomes execution. Well kill you for it. It’s not just that the Christians in Smyrna were poor, that, that, in Greek, there’s a couple different words for poor but the word that he uses here Toya is extreme destitution, like the poorest of the poor that they could possibly be. I think sometimes when we read about persecution and the New Testament, we think about it as well, that happened a long time ago. But praise God, that doesn’t happen anymore. And in our country, it really doesn’t happen. Even when we talk about people that are being persecuted in, in the scheme of things, it’s not really

Persecution, but you know that

Persecution is happening right now all around the

World. There’s a website

Called Open doors

Us.Org,

And it’s a map of countries around the world and it grades them based off persecution. All the, the countries you see that are

Read,

They would consider those extreme levels of persecution. The orange would be high

Levels of persecution. The most

Persecuted country in the world over here is North Korea. That in North Korea,

It

Is a crime to be a Christian punishable by one of two things, either being sent to a concentration camp

Or

Execution, sometimes execution by firing squad or other means like

That. If you go to the website

And click on any country, it will give you news articles,

Recent

News articles from that country talking about

Persecution.

It’s interesting. As I was preparing for this message this week,

There was

A headline, not, not through this website, a national headline. This is, this is taken right from Newsweek. Newsweek, not just some like

Uncle’s blog

Spot like Newsweek, a big national news organization. And their headline is that 70 Christians were

Beheaded

In a church, is what we know about it. Some Islamic radicalists go into a church,

They arrest

Or or tie up everybody. And then they behead them one by one by one 70 different Christians that are beheaded.

And so

Even though we sometimes think, well, hey, no, it’s, it’s not hard to be a Christian. There’s not a whole lot of sacrifice.

If we look at the world, there’s a lot of

Persecution going

On. So what do we do with that?

What, how then should we live different knowing that? And as

A result of it

The second half of that verse, verse nine has this, this thing that some people

Argue about. Okay, what

Exactly does it mean? I, I think it’s pretty simple. He says

This

Slander of those who

Say that they are

Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. So, so here’s some backdrop to, to make that make a little bit more sense. One is that Smyrna had the largest Jewish population of any Asian city. So we’re an Asia minor, and there were a lot of Jews that had gone to this city. That another is that there’s this,

There’s this idea

In Rome of a Roman in informant, it’s a,

It’s a word called dator. Dator

Was someone that would

Report to authorities,

Things that they knew were happening that shouldn’t be happening. And so the idea here is that there’s some, this group of individuals that they’re claiming to be Jews, even though they’re not Jews, and they’re going to the Roman authorities and they are

Tattle

Tailing on the Christians. They’re saying, Hey, I know that you’re saying that everybody’s

Supposed to be say that Caesar’s Lord, but this group

Of Christians, they are not. And so I, I wanna turn them in. And then there’s that last phrase, the synagogue of Satan. Well, well, Satan is a person that we see in scripture, but the word Satan simply means

Accuser.

So it’s saying that there’s this synagogue, this group

Of

Accusers informants that are turning on the Christians and turning them into the Roman government. Verse 10 says, do not fear what you are about to suffer. Now just, just imagine for a second that, that you gather together. It’s probably a small church in Smyrna, and they’re gathered together and they’re excited. Like, Hey, we got, we got a letter from Jesus. Like, I mean, you’re probably high fiving like, guys, this is the most exciting news that we could possibly hear. And then the letter specifically to you, your, your church, your group Jesus talking says, Hey, do not fear. You are about to suffer. It’s not great warm fuzzy news. They’re not probably turning to each other and hugging each other. Did you hear what he said? We’re about to suffer. Yes. Like this is heavy news. And then Jesus goes on to say, behold the devil is about to throw some of you into prison now.

Now pause for a moment and, and let’s unpack that. There is a spiritual reality that exists that is different than the physical reality that we are aware of. And that is that Satan at every turn wants to harm the expansion of the church. That sometimes, especially with our western mindset, we don’t think of the fact that there’s a spiritual reality that exists connected to the physical reality. And yet we see that over and over and over in scripture. And so there, there are these demonic forces that Satan, who, who his whole goal is to steal, to kill, to destroy. He is trying to harm the church, but also understand Jesus doesn’t say that Jesus is going to cause us to suffer. He’s saying it’s the devil’s schemes that are going to do that. And there’s a distinction that God is sovereign. So all things that happen are happening because God allows them to happen.

And yet when we think of pain and suffering that exists in the world, that God does not cause those things to happen. It seems similar, but they’re very different that God allows, but he does not cause. What is the cause of pain and suffering that’s sin in this world? It’s the devil. It’s evil. He says that the devil’s about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested and for 10 days you will have tribulation. We’re not exactly sure what the 10 days are. It could have been a literal 10 days that were about to happen. Some scholars say, well, the 10 days represents a a longer period of time of tribulation. Some scholars would look to 10 days. Sometimes in prophetic literature, a day represents a year. So they’d say, well, hey, is this 10 years of tribulation? We’re not sure. But we do know that Jesus is saying, you’re about to face tribulation. You’re about to face persecution. But he says, be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life. So he’s saying bad things are gonna happen. And it doesn’t say, I’m gonna save you from those things. I’m gonna prevent those things from happening. No, he says they are going to happen. But he says, if you’ll be faithful, faithful unto death,

Love

Me enough to be willing to sacrifice and die, he says, I will give you the crown

Of life

In Greek. There’s two different types of crowns. One, if you’ve been around the church for a long time, you’re, you’re more familiar with, it’s called a dim. So dim

If if

You’ve been around church, there’s that, that famous old song bring forth the royal diadem and crown himm Lord

Of of all. So

It’s a king’s crown that they would wear a king or a queen. That’s what a diadem was. But

There’s this other Greek word

Called a stefanos, and that’s a crown of garland that represented joy and victory. You’re, you’re probably familiar that when you look at old

Greek pictures of the Olympics, because

The winner of the Olympic event, they would give them a crown of garland.

Jesus is saying that, that if we would be

Faithful even unto

Death, that there

Is a crown of victory, a crown of joy,

That he is ready to

Present. And then the last verse,

He says, he who has

An ear, let him hear

What the spirit says to the churches.

The one who conquers will not be heard by the second death.

The, there’s two phrases here

That we see in every single letter.

So all seven letters. Jesus has this phrase, he who has

An ear, let him hear what

The spirit says. I I

Think it’s important for them at the time to say, we’re not just

Casually

Listening to the letter, but instead with

Our, with our heart, with our soul,

We’re leaning in and we’re absorbing what the Holy Spirit wants us to hear from. And I think that applied to them then, and I think it applies to us. Now, how often

Do we hear scripture, read scripture?

We’re just, we kind of check the box and we keep going.

But Jesus

Say, well, no, if you

Have an ear,

Let him hear what

The spirit

Is saying, that the Holy Spirit has a message

That just

As there was a message for the church in Smyrna, there’s a message today

For us

Right now. And then this idea of conquering is a theme that is in all seven letters. And Jesus says, the one who conquers will not be

Hurt by

The second death.

You say, well, what’s the second death? What’s the first death? So we see two different types of

Death in scripture that the

First death is a physical death. A first death

Is when we

Die. But the second

Death we see in scripture

As a spiritual death, where

Do we get that from? In Revelation chapter 20, the end of

This book,

Verse 14, it says, then death in Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.

This is the

Second death,

The lake of fire. And

If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of

Life, he

Was thrown into the

Lake of fire.

I think sometimes

We like to,

In our modern kind of American way of viewing Jesus, we say, well,

Jesus is just always

Talking about love and grace and compassion, and he never talks about righteousness and he never talks about repentance, and he never talks about things that, that don’t make me feel warm and fuzzy like

Hell.

And yet, in the New Testament, there’s one person who talks about hell more than anybody else,

And it’s Jesus.

And and wouldn’t you say that the most unloving thing you could possibly do is know that hell exists and never mention it? And so Jesus is this warning. He says that we can be saved from the second death. Now, now, sometimes we, we think

Of hell

And we’re really influenced by

A, a lot of

Cultural things. Dante’s Inferno probably

Paints the picture of hell more

For our culture than anything else. And Dante’s Inferno is not part of scripture.

So this idea of, of all this, this

Fire and pitchforks and that that’s not in the Bible, primarily what the Bible

Says that the spiritual death is, is a

Separation away from God, an eternal separation away

From God.

And he’s saying that we can conquer

That spiritual

Death. How?

By

Having a relationship

With Jesus,

By making Jesus

Our Lord,

By being faithful even unto

Death for

Him.

There’s a

Really interesting historical

Church figure that ties to the

Letter to Smyrna. It’s a guy named Polycarp.

This is

Probably not what Polycarp

Looked like, but it’s one of

The thousands of pictures you can find of the internet of

Polycarp. But polycarp’s

Interesting for a handful of reasons. One is that a

Lot of the church fathers point back that Polycarp was discipled by John,

John the Apostle John, who wrote the gospel of John, who

Was the one that that

Wrote down the letter of Revelation. Revelation comes from Jesus, but it’s John who pins it

That, that

John discipled

Polycarp. Now, they would’ve had a big gap in age that

Polycarp would’ve been around 28 years old when John died. But,

But

Probably in his twenties when John’s in his late eighties and nineties,

You

Have John hanging out with

Polycarp pouring

Into

Polycarp

Polycarp’s from Smyrna.

So

Probably as a young man, if he wasn’t in the room when it was read the first time, he was definitely very familiar

With the letter that was given to his group of people, his church. So he

Was very familiar with

What it said. He

Would go on to become the bishop

Or the pastor over the church

In Smyrna

History, early church fathers would say that it was the Apostle

John that ordained

Polycarp

To become the pastor

Over the church

In Smyrna. And it’s probably not surprising based off

The letter

That

We just read to Smyrna, that throughout his life, he faced a lot of persecution, a lot of

Tribulation, a lot of trials. And one of the well-documented things is how his life ends. He’s about

86 years old,

And Rome has been trying to find him as the leader of the church and execute him. And he’s been in hiding and some type of an informant goes and tells the Roman government, Hey, hey, we found out where this guy is.

And so a group of soldiers

Go out to a little farm outside of Smyrna and they find Polycarp. Of course, the the group of soldiers didn’t know what Polycarp was gonna look like. They didn’t expect to find an 86-year-old man. And so the way it’s recorded, it describes this process where they go and they say, Hey, we don’t want to arrest an 86-year-old. If you would just deny your faith in Jesus, if you just say that Caesar is Lord, and we could just be done with this, we’ll leave you here and we’ll just go back. And Paul car said, no, no, no, I can’t do that. And then he said, before we leave, would it be okay if I spent some time in prayer? And you got these young guys and he’s 86 and said, I mean, sure, we’ll, we’ll let you do that. So he spends time in prayer, and the records say that he prayed for each and every one of those soldiers by name.

Then they take him back to Smyrna. He goes through kind of a process and they eventually bring him into a theater, a large arena where there’s lots of people. And the Roman leader pulls him in front of the crowd. And this is, this is the leader of the church. So, so the Roman idea is that, okay, if, if we can get him to deny his faith, then the church followers are all gonna flood. They’re all gonna fall, and this will be the end of it. And so they bring him in front of everybody and, and he’s this 86-year-old frail man. And they’d say, Hey, if you would just utter the phrase, Caesar is Lord in front of everybody, we can just be done with this. You can go back to your farm, live out the rest of your life. And Polycarp says, well, no, I can’t do that three different times.

The leader says, if you would just say the three words, Caesar is Lord, I mean probably. He’s even saying, you don’t even have to mean it. I mean, just say it out loud. Just say loud enough for everybody else to hear, and then you can go back to praying and live your life. However, you once and three times, polycarbon denies saying it. And then he, he utters this phrase, which we have recorded. He says, 80. In six years, I have served him and he has done me no wrong. How then can I blaspheme my king and Savior? You threaten me with a fire that burns for a season. And after a little while, it’s quench, but you are ignorant of the fire of everlasting punishment that is prepared for the wicked. But why do you, Terry, bring forth what you will? And they burned him at the stake, the Polycarp, I mean with three little words, all the pain, all the suffering, all the tribulation goes away. All he has to say is Caesar is the Lord. Maybe he crosses his fingers while he says it, but he says No. ’cause Polycarp grew up with that letter to Smyrna. And he knew what it meant to conquer. He knew what it meant to have that victory crown that Jesus was offering, that he would be faithful unto death. And that’s what he was willing to do. The amount he was willing to sacrifice was equal to the amount that he loved.

What would it look like if we grew up a generation of Christians that that wasn’t nominal Christians? Not just Christians that kind of went with the flow, but instead Christians that had the passion and the love of Polycarbon that said, Hey, I want that crown of victory, that joy, that conquering How? How do we get there? I, I think there’s three things that, that we pick up that apply today from the Church of Smyrna, that they had courage, that Jesus encouraged them to have courage. He knew what they were facing and said, have courage. Despite those things, he encouraged them to persevere. Whatever you’re going through right now, whatever challenge, whatever tribulation, there’s this encouragement, persevere, keep up, keep going day after day. And then most importantly was this idea of an eternal perspective. This world is temporary. But if we take a step back, look at what Jesus did for us on the cross, that he conquered death.

He conquered death, not so that I can have just this amazing, wonderful life right now, although that’s a part of it. But he conquered death so that for all eternity I could be in relationship with God, the creator of the universe. And so my encouragement to you, to me, to all of us is can we have e courage? Can we have that courage? Can we have perseverance? And can we live with eternal perspective? Heavenly Father and I thank you that even though the letter to Smyrna is a hard letter, a challenging letter that that involves persecution, God, I thank you that there’s an application for us today, right now, in this moment when I pray that we could raise up a church, a generation, or that does have courage, that does have perseverance no matter what the obstacle is, and has an eternal perspective in how we live and how we operate. When we do recognize that we have brothers and sisters believers around the world that are being persecuted today. And so we lift them up to you. Help us not to be ignorant of them. Help us to keep them in our prayers. Help us to know their stories, to understand what they’re willing to do for you and for your name. So the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.