| Revelation 2:8-11 - 18 October 2009
Andrew Lim
If the postman delivering Christ’s seven letters
was making a circular tour of the seven cities
Smyrna would naturally be the next city to call
- it was some 35 miles north / up the coast from Ephesus
- a day’s journey north of Ephesus
Smyrna is today called the city of Izmir on the Aegean coast of Turkey
The city was founded 1000 years before Christ
- it was a beautiful city
with stately buildings and well-laid out boulevards
- it was a cultured city / there was a stadium / a library
- one of greatest thinker that ever lived / Homer / was born there
But more than anything else / it was an intensely patriotic town
25 years after the death of our Lord Jesus
numerous Asian cities were competing with one another to see
who will erect the most distinguish and prominent temple
to honor the Emperor Tiberius
And it was Smyrna / who was accorded that distinctive honor
So the city of Smyrna was proud of the Roman Empire and Roman Emperor
To their credit / the Romans brought peace
what was called the Pax Romana / or the Roman peace
they built roads / that allowed commerce to flow
they provided protection to the common people
they dealt decisively with thieves / bandits / terrorists
they dealt with pirates / and kept the seas safe
and the people began to have hope of peace and prosperity
And before long / one man / Caesar
came to embody the spiritual expression of Rome
and temples were built to Caesar / and a priesthood set up
and religious rituals were developed / until finally
the emperor himself became like a deity to be worshipped
There is a name given to this / it’s called the Roman Imperial Cult
And once a year / at the Roman Imperial Temple
everyone under Roman rule was required to take a pinch of incense
throw it to the flames / and make the verbal confession
that Caesar is Lord
if he did this obediently / the magistrate would then issue him
with what was called a vitellus / a written certifications
confirming his worship of the Roman emperor
Now the thing is this / the Romans weren’t stupid
Let’s not think the Romans were stupid to worship a mere man
They weren’t even exactly convinced that every Caesar was divine
They didn’t think that deranged men like Caligula or Nero were divine
The Roman Imperial Cult was something bigger than the worship of a man
At the bottom of it all / it had nothing whatsoever to do with religion
But it had everything to do with politics
Let’s not forget that the Roman Empire was vast / and growing
and the unification of the empire was foremost in the ruler’s mind
for without political stability / there’d be no security and prosperity
But with the Roman Empire
comprising all kinds of ethnic groupings under their control
keeping peace and stability was no easy task
And the worship of the emperor was one effective means
of sniffing out any rebels in the land
and the issuing of the vitellus / the certificate
was one way of keeping the citizens in check
In reality / Rome couldn’t care less who you really worshipped religiously
Rome couldn’t care less to what god or gods you give your worship
As long as you swore allegiance to Caesar / you were free to worship
Zeus / Cybele / Apollo or / Yesu of Nazareth
you could devote yourself to Greek mythologies of Mount Olympus
you could be an animist and worship the spirits
that lived in rocks and trees and mountains
you could worship the fertility goddess of Artemis
or Aphrodite the goddess of love / for all Rome cared
The Roman Imperial Cult was a political means
of ensuring the stability of the Roman empire
But this put the Christians in a most precarious position
No Christians would willingly stand before the Roman altar
and make the two-word verbal declaration / Kaisar kurios Caesar is Lord
The only declaration they would make was Christos curious / Christ is Lord
This expectation was not a problem to most of the people there
because their religion made no unequivocal / exclusive demands
on their loyalty to one God
But the Christians knew their scriptures / they knew Phil 2:10
“At the name of Jesus / every knee shall bow
and every tongue shall confess that Jesus is Lord”
And this / was the dilemma the Christians faced
they were some of the most outstanding citizens there
they did honest work / they were civic-minded worked / peace-loving
they raised their families and contributed to their communities
they obeyed the biblical teaching to honor + pray for those in authority
But this one thing / the worship of Caesar / they could not and would not do
Even when some sympathetic understanding magistrates
listened carefully and understood their inner conflict
and helpfully suggested that they just simply mouth those two words
without having to mean them
Christians couldn’t bring them to do so
and they dissented by the thousands
And depending on the local leadership / that act of dissent
could mean anything from exile to execution
And Smyrna / because of her intense loyalty to Rome
was one of those cities where emperor worship was non-negotiable
But in reality / it wasn’t so much the Romans as the Jews
who made it especially difficult for the Christians
It must be noted / that the loyalty of the Jewish community
to the Emperor was never tested
The Jews were exempted
from any obligations to make a sacrifice to the Emperor
- and they guarded that privilege with great care & passion
- they didn’t want others to be granted that same privilege
in case any abuse might end up
with them having to lose it themselves
So they curried favor with the authorities
and got them to test the patriotism of the Christian
And the Jews would often act as informers against the Christians
They would go the city officials and turn the Christians in
By doing this / they not only sought to destroy the Church
they also gained brownie points as faithful citizens
And history tells us that this was exactly what the Jews did in Smyrna
they make the Christians out to be treacherous political rebels
and therefore dangerous to the Empire
This was the same Jewish opposition
that made demands on Pilate / to have Jesus crucified
But they were not satisfied with the death of Jesus
- they hounded Paul throughout his missionary expeditions
- it was the Jews / who instigated the men and women
of the city of Pisidian Antioch to drive him out of the city
- it was the Jews / who incited the people
to stone him / and nearly got him killed / in Lystra
- it was the Jews who caused a riot in Thessalonica
- it was the Jews so vigorously opposed him in Corinth
- when he was back in Jerusalem / it was the Jews who arrested him
in the temple and nearly killed him
And in this letter / Jesus sums them up / saying
“They are a synagogue of Satan” / v.9
Now / it is to such a church / that Christ writes His second letter
Of the seven churches
three were both commended and condemned by Christ
two were commended by Christ without finding any fault in them
two were condemned without giving them any praise
This is one of the two churches
in which Christ did not have one single condemnation for them
He had nothing negative to say about this church
- there is nothing but commendation in this letter
- there is not one single accusation
Here in this letter / Jesus says
“There are the words of him / who is the first and the last” / v.8
He wants to make it clear to us that He / because He is God / is eternal
Amongst other things / this means
that there wasn’t a time when He did exist
He did not one day came into existence / He has always been
There was never a time when God was not
and then / in time / He began to exist
For if He did
then there must have been a time in which God was not
and to say that would be to diminish His greatness
He has had no beginning / and there will be no end / with Him
There is no “yesterday” with God
“yesterday” is not past for God / like it is for us
And there is no “tomorrow” for God
“tomorrow” is not future for God / like it is for us
Both yesterday and tomorrow are one eternal moment for Him
This means that He is always available
and when we become gripped by fear / He is here
And He comes to this suffering church / and He says:
“There are the words of him / who is the first and the last”
Then / in the same way that He said to the church at Ephesus
He says to this church / “I know”
He has a most intimate knowledge of what this church is going through
He knows five things about them
First / He knows their “afflictions” / v.9
He knew that they are being persecuted
He knew that it was a dangerous thing to be a Christian in Smyrna
- there was no telling if you would live the next day
Secondly / Jesus says “I know your poverty”
Many of the Christians were the poorest in that wealthy city
The Christians were openly robbed / and stolen from
and the authorities would not do anything to protect them
and pillage and plunder had reduced them still further
to a poverty hardly known before
And many Jews and pagans would not trade with Christians
- their businesses were boycotted
- it was not always easy for them to find employment.
- and because they refused to worship the emperor
many had their properties confiscated
But Jesus says to them / v.9 “I know your poverty / yet you are rich”
They may be poor in material things
but to Jesus / they were rich in righteousness
for not bending the knee to an earthly ruler
If you lost all your money / how much will you be worth
These people lost everything / yet were rich in God’s sight
Third / Jesus says I know the “slander” you go through
Who slandered them / v. 9 / “those who say they are Jews and are not”
Jewish people were deliberately misrepresenting Christians
speaking evil against them
poisoning the minds of the people against the Christians
They were mocked at / laugh at / and caricatured
- they were the object of slander
- they were accused of cannibalism
because they talk of eating the body
and drinking the blood of Jesus in the communion
- and they were accused of sexual orgies
because the meetings they held / were called “love feasts”
The Christians at Smyrna suffered great afflictions
But there was more and worse to come
Fourth / Jesus says “I tell you / the devil will put some of you in prison
to test you” / v.10
And He says: “For ten days you will be persecuted”
It could refer to the period that covered
the arrest / trial / sentence and execution
of one of their greatest martyr Polycarp
whom I will talk a little more later
But the Greek language for “ten days” / could also
be translated figuratively / as ten years / or ten periods of time
The Smyrna church did actually suffer ten years
of the most intense persecution under Diocletian
And historically / there were exactly ten periods of persecution
that spanned two and a half centuries
beginning under Nero in 67 AD
and ending under Diocletian in 303 AD
History bears evidence that altogether / ten emperors
subjected the Church to sustained persecution
that lasted almost 300 years
And through those long years / the early Christians
had seen the inside of many prisons
and over the last twenty centuries / many faithful Christians too
Its a cost of discipleship quite unknown to the average New Zealander
but in many lands / imprisonment and torture are the Christians’ lot
So Jesus says to them / verse 10
“I tell you / the devil will put some of you in prison to test you”
Fifth / Jesus says “Some of you will even have to suffer death”
And He says to them “Be faithful / even to the point of death / v.10
It does not mean: “Be faithful until the day you die”
It means “Be faithful / even if it should mean death”
“Be faithful / to the extent of being ready to die for my sake”
I want to take some time to describe the persecution of one of Smyrna’s sons
Polycarp
At the time when John received his revelation
there was this old bishop of the church at Smyrna
an old bishop named Polycarp
Saint Polycarp was converted by the John the Apostle
And he became Bishop of Smyrna
On February 23rd AD 156
there was a sudden upsurge of persecution / led by the Jews
Eleven Christians were seized / tortured and thrown to wild animals
At the end of this orgy of bestiality
the crowd clamoured for the blood of the old bishop himself
And by the time he was taken into the stadium
the crowd went into a feeding frenzy / they went berserk
they demanded that Polycarp be thrown to the beasts
and again it was the voice of the Jews which cried out the loudest
The proconsul didn’t have the heart
to put such an old revered man as Polycarp to death
And so he tried to persuade Polycarp
to swear an oath of allegiance to the emperor
which would have granted him immediate freedom
So he said to Polycarp: “Deny Christ and we will let you go free
I beg you to do that / Consider your grey hairs
Swear by the genius of Caesar / Revile the Christ
And Polycarp replied with these memorable words:
“Eighty and six years have I served Christ and he never did me any injury
How then / can I blaspheme my King and Saviour”
And turning to the proconsul / he said
“You threatened me with a fire which burns for an hour
and after a little while is extinguished
But you are ignorant of the fire of the coming judgement
and the eternal punishment reserved for the ungodly”
But the proconsul took pity on him
and so on the grounds that the games were officially over
he refused the mob’s request for Polycarp to be thrown to the lions
Instead he ordered that Polycarp should die by fire / supposedly humane
And you know something
the Jews hated him so much they didn’t mind breaking the Sabbath
by gathering sticks on the Sabbath for the bonfire
In fact / the most diligent of the crowd
to fetch firewood for the execution were Jews
Polycarp stood by the stake / asking not to be fastened to it / and prayed”
“O Lord / Almighty God / the Father of Thy beloved Son Jesus Christ
through whom we have received a knowledge of Thee
I thank Thee that Thou hast thought me worthy / this day and this hour
to share the cup of Thy Christ among the number of Thy witnesses!”
The fire was kindled / but a wind came / drove the flames away from him
which would only prolong his agony
So a soldier thrust his sword into him / to put an end to his suffering
Polycarp died / martyred by the Romans / at Kadifkale
which was atop the hill near modern-day Izmir
Here we have a very old man / but he wasn’t going to deny Christ
- not even for the sake / of a few more peaceful years
This / is the stuff of which the Church is made
And I am sure you have heard it said
that the blood of the martyr is the seed of the church
and where there is blood spilled / there is the growth
We should never pity the church / in persecuted lands
We have ourselves to pity
All over the world / churches that are mushrooming
are churches that understood that the cost of discipleship
Remember the words of our Lord
“A servant no greater than master
if they persecute me / they will also persecute you”
Jn 15:20
Paul said to the Philippians: “It has been granted to you
not only to believe in Him but to suffer for His sake”
Phil 1:29
Paul himself was imprisoned / flogged / and persecuted
And he writes these words to us:
“All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus
will be persecuted” / 2 Tim. 3: 12
Dietrich Bonhoeffer / who knew what it meant to be faithful unto death
wrote these words: “Suffering is the badge of the true Christian”
He himself was hanged
for his aborted assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler
He wrote this classic: The Cost of Discipleship
Back to our text / in order to assure the Christians at Smyrna Jesus says:
“I was dead / and I came to life again” / v.8
Of everyone on this earth / we say “He lived and he died”
Of Jesus only we can say / “He died and he lives again”
To the Smyrnan believers
these words would become for them a great comfort
Jesus reminds them that he had broken the tyranny of death
If the first mark of the church is love / the second mark is suffering
This message is somehow not fitting in the society we live in
It does not seem to cost us a lot / to be a Christian here
Maybe one day it will cost us our lives
and then maybe / on that day / this letter will speak to you
But if being a Christian does not seem to cost us anything
why do you think this is so
It is in part due to the fact that
the world has influenced us too much and
we have compromised so much / the world does not find us a threat
Young people searching for meaning in life
sometimes come into church / as the last straw
And how many young people have said:
“We go to church thinking / that she is the last bastion
of justice and righteousness and love
but we don’t see any difference between them and the world
They are just as caught up with the same craziness / drive / greed”
The ugly truth is this that:
We tend to avoid suffering / by our compromise
- we aren’t bold enough / to rebuke blatant immoral practices
- we mind our own business / lest we offend anyone
Result: We remain respectable conventional inoffensive and ineffective
And the world sees nothing in us to hate
Scriptures says “Be careful when men speak well of you
for so their fathers did to the false prophets” / Luke 6”26
But let’s face it / the gospel is unavoidably offensive
John Stott identifies two areas we often compromise
First / the message we preach
Preachers are afraid to address the serious demands of the gospel
We hear fewer and fewer sermons
on human sinfulness and their rebellion against God
We don’t remind ourselves of the anger of God
the need for conversion / the distinctiveness of Jesus Christ
the reality of hell
And if we do preached them at all
they have become so disguised / they’re almost unrecognisable
- we dilute and sugar-coat the gospel to make it more palatable
Why are we like that? / Because we are afraid of man
But Proverbs 29:25 / “The fear of man lays a snare
but whoever trusts in the LORD is safe”
Where are the Amos’ and the Isaiahs’ / the Jonathan Edwards’
Where are the men with neither fear nor favour
The prophet never cease to remind me of Martin Luther
who before the Diet of Worms / was told / either to recant or die
He replied: “Unless I am compelled
by the testimony of Scripture and conscience
I cannot and will not recant / Here I stand / So help me God”
Philip Brooks says to the man who preaches the Word of God
“If you are afraid of men and / a slave to their opinion
go and do something else / Go and make shows to fit them
or go and paint pictures which are bad
but which suit their bad tastes
But do not keep on / all your life / preaching sermons
which say / not what God sent you to declare
but what they hire you to say”
Demaray says such a person
has “no concept whatsoever / of the ambassadorship of the call”
But the preacher who has no conception whatsoever of his call
has no message to preach
and the world is not brought to its knees to bow before Jesus
And we wonder why its so easy to be a Christian in this land
We escape suffering by our compromises
Secondly / We escape suffering by not speaking up
against the gross misuse of the church as an institution
- we baptise babies indiscriminately
whether their parents are Christians or not
- we marry people indiscriminately
whether they are marrying Christians or not
- just look at the indiscriminate use of the church
as an institution for weddings
Stott says that if the Church stopped the compromise
if the Church proclaim the full gospel and tighten the discipline
with love but without fear
- the church will suffer / there will be such an outcry
we’ll be called names / puritanical / Victorian / rigid / unloving
perhaps every more derogatory names
But the church will once again find herself where she belongs
- outside the gates / in the wilderness
Of course
we’re not advocating / a harsh lovelessness / towards those who’re weak
we’re not to court opposition & antagonism with rashful indiscretion
I’m simply suggesting that / on clear moral and spiritual issues
we should never compromise
I’m simply saying that if we do not suffer
could it not be because we have been compromising
Smyrna was a suffering church
because she was an uncompromising church
Unlike Ephesus / Smyrna still stands today / after 3000 years of history
In the Turkish city of Izmer / there is a church
the oldest church in Izmir / called the Church of Saint Polycarp
reconstructed in 1620
Her lamp-stand has not been removed all these years
What does this tell us / it tells us
that a suffering church has a longer life than one who loses her love
And Christ makes them a promise / He says to them:
“Be faithful unto death / and I will give you a crown of life” / v.10
Nobody in the ancient world could miss what He was saying
In the ancient games in the Smyrna stadium / a garland is crowned
over the head of a winner at the games
And knowing this / Jesus uses this analogy / and He says
“Be faithful unto death / and I will give you a crown of life” / v.10
And He makes on final promise / He says:
“He who conquers / shall not be hurt by the second death” / v.11
Death / as we know it / is horrible / but there is a fate worse than death
Jesus says:
There is something far worse than death - the second death
Fear not him who can kill the body
Fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell / Lk 12
In that great hymn How Firm a Foundation / the fourth verse says:
When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie
My grace all-sufficient shall be thy supply
The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design
Thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine
“The flame shall not hurt thee”
does not mean that I shall come through unscathed
I shall die / but I shall not be touched by the second death
To the Ephesus Church He said: Do BE AFRAID of losing your first love
To the Smyrna Church He said: Do NOT BE AFRAID for your life
It is better to lose your life than lose your love
If the first mark of a true church is love / the second mark is suffering
One follows the other
If you truly love you will be willing to suffer for those you love
The fact that this church suffered
is a clear evidential proof / that this church / has not lost her first love
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