Text: Revelation 2:1-7

My purpose for this message: We may be in training to suffer—which is good; the suffering church is a pure church.

Delivered: May 9, 2010

 

Dear Smyrna EFC, LISTEN! 

                                                                         Love, Jesus

 

Revelation 2.  Jesus’ second letter to a church.  Smyrna was a suffering church.  A letter to the editor from last week illustrates how Americans tend to view suffering differently than people in, say, China, or Somolia .  READ.

I would like to thank the very kind and generous woman who gave me an umbrella the other day when I was forced to walk in a drizzle.  She couldn't give me a ride, but insisted that I take the umbrella. I wish there was a way to get it back to her.  Also, thank you to the young couple who later picked me up and gave me a ride into Millersville. As if things weren't bad enough, I had broken a shoestring.  These Good Samaritans made a big difference to me that day.

To Americans suffering includes things like broken shoelace or walking in the rain; the store won’t honor the guarantee or my car breaks down; my child wasn’t picked for the school play, or I get a traffic ticket or IRS audit.

And don’t we live to avoid such things?  Our Christ was the Suffering Servant (Isaiah 53:11) yet even we Christians want to keep our distance from suffering.  Take our praying: what percentage gets much beyond “God, keep us safe, God, keep them healthy, God, keep us from trouble…”? 

10 days ago in Somolia, Yusuf Ali Nu was gunned down in his home by al Shabaab militants.  Searching house to house for members of a rival militia, they recognized Yusuf as an underground church leader they’d been looking for and sprayed him with bullets.  He left behind a widow and 3 children: 7, 9, 11.

Chinese lawyer Gao Zhisheng is missing.  In 2005 he raised a public fuss about how China treats religious citizens, and began defending Christians in court for free.  He was imprisoned and brutally tortured in 2007.  In early April, he was released after 13 more months in prison.  2 weeks later he vanished and has not been seen since. 

When it comes to suffering, we’re still on training wheels.  READ Revelation 2:8-11. 

PRAY.

 

1.     Background 

Message from Jesus (the words of him who is the First and the Last, who died and

came to life again), given to John, mediated by the church’s angel (to the angel of the church in…), for the people who were part of Smyrna’s family of faith. 

Smyrna.  Today, that ancient site is Izmir, Turkey’s third largest city of some 4 million people—almost all Muslim.  Just 35 miles NW of Ephesus, ancient Smyrna was the second most important city in Asia with a magnificent port.  The church was either a plant by Paul or the Ephesian church. 

1.     What’s good:

a.     Your afflictions 

Afflictions don’t seem like something good but down through the centuries many Christians have believed afflictions are honorable.  The apostles got flogged and then rejoiced.  … because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name (Acts 5:41).   In Smyrna Christians were treated as religious underdogs in a place where pagan temples to Zeus, Apollo, Aphrodite, and Asclepius clotted the city streets. 

Even Jews despised these believers (9).  Slander.  The Roman empire tolerated Jews worshiping someone other than the emperor or Greek gods, but not Christians.  So Jews hated Christians for one, claiming that Jesus was the Messiah, and 2, for jeopardizing their special status with Rome since pagans had a tough time differentiating between Jews and Christians.

Jesus called them fake Jews, part of “a synagogue of Satan”.  Wow!  Judaism 101 says you’re a Jew if at least your mother is Jewish, or if you’ve gone through the formal process of converting.  So why weren’t these people Jews?  READ Romans 2:28-29. 

There is related and very heated argument in some circles today—even among some evangelicals: Since Jews, Muslims and Christians all serve one God, do they serve the same God?  No!  If God says this is who I am, these are my priorities and plans—and I repudiate that identity and plans, then no, I don’t serve Him.  READ John 5:37.  his voice nor seen his form… Why?  Because they …do not believe the One He sent.  (John 5:38). 

Jesus has always said, If you’re not with Me, [you’re] against me.  Matthew 12:30.  At Keystone we remind you there’s no middle ground; can’t be neutral.  Do you serve Jesus, or do you serve Satan?

b.     Your rich poverty

The second good thing about the Smyna church is that they were poor.  That’s good?  If the prosperous port made some residents wealthy, few of them were Christians.  Perhaps the church had been planted among the lower classes; or maybe the risks of faith were too high for most of reputation and wealth.  Few Christians owned their own homes, or had investments, or could provide educations for their kids.  Vacations were rare and Sunday collections, small.  

Still, Jesus insisted, “You are rich!”  His kingdom is the “upside-down kingdom” where everything is different from what you’d expect.  READ Revelation 3:17.  

 

2.     What’s bad:

Nothing.  Nothing.  This is one of two churches who receive no criticism; nothing needs corrected.  Think about that for a minute: how could any sinful person not need some correction?  How could any sinful church not need some correction? 

I don’t know that I can explain, but here’s my theory.  Maybe this church understood something not all Christians understand: that the Christian life is not a life without sin, it’s a life lived at perpetual war with sin.  There’s a reason you see so much military language in Keystone’s vision.  John White wrote a book on following Jesus called The Fight.  In Ancient Paths we read John Piper’s book on the Christian life called Battling Unbelief.  The most faithful disciples of Jesus’ still sin, it’s just that they are in a state of war and remain on a war footing.  If they fall, instead of justifying, papering over, hiding, denying, they repent—“God, I blew it; forgive me and help me turn from this in the future.”  And then immediately rejoice in the forgiving grace of God. 

Afflictions had probably purged the Smyrna EFC of nominal Christians, and those who were left kept waging war against the sin that so easily entangles.  

 

3.     What’s needed: do not fear, face the test, be faithful

My son’s class motto at West Point is “Loyal ‘til the End”.  Jesus gives the church the bad news that their afflictions will get worse: jail for 10 days, then even death for the faithful.  Hardly a great church marketing tool: come join our church and die!

Like Job, the devil will test you (10).  Do not fear (10), be faithful to the end (10).  Did you know that the command do not be afraid is the most repeated command in the Bible?  By nature we are afraid.  Be faithful to the end.  As I said several weeks ago, we need to tell unbelievers the hard truth that if they come to Jesus, while some of their life will improve, some of it may get pretty ugly.  Satan puts a bullseye on your back.

When persecution lands on our shores, I predict church membership will plummet from sea to shining sea.  That’s when the church will regain her power.  Not the political power we too often bank on, but spiritual iron in the hands of the Holy Spirit. 

 

4.     What’s promised: The crown of life; not face 2^nd death.  

Those who are loyal ‘til the end will receive the crown of life.  What about those who deny Christ in the extremities of persecution?  This was a great debate in the church during the mid 200’s A.D.  What do you do with people who sacrificed to the gods to save their skin?  Should they be brought back into the church?  Usually they were, although usually requiring some sort of penance. 

The real question was—and is, what does renouncing Christ in the face of persecution say about my faith?  I don’t know the answer to that.  All I know is that here, Jesus promises that the martyr will not be hurt at all by the second death.  The second death is the lake of fire according to Revelation 20:14.  Is he saying that those who don’t overcome (11)—who dodge martyrdom by renouncing Christ, might be hurt by the second death?  Possibly.  Especially when you read in Revelation 21:8 that in heaven, not only will there be no room for murderers and the unbelieving, but also for the “cowardly”.

 

Concl:

Because I am not strong, I am glad we are not persecuted.  But because I love the church, I am sad that we are not persecuted.  Suffering purifies any church.  No more games.  Pretend Christians—the dabblers, disappear lest they be caught up in a net of suffering.

God is not unjust when we suffer.  C. S. Lewis wrote of Christians, We were promised sufferings.  They were part of the program.  We were even told, ‘Blessed are those that mourn…’”

Maybe the broken shoestring, the guarantee not honored, the car not working, the child not chosen, the audit, is simply part of God’s training to one day face the real suffering the enemy puts us through?

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.  (Romans 8:18)