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Last week we looked at the first church that John wrote to and that is the Church of Ephesus. And all of the churches, there's seven of them, they represent the churches as a whole. There's not, in other words, if you recognize any of your church in these churches, then that's the point of it, is that every single one of these churches has something to say to us. Four of the churches have admonitions and encouragements. Two of the churches, Smyrna and Philadelphia, they only have encouragements. We're looking at Smyrna today. And one church, Laodicea, only has admonition. So Smyrna is a city that was part of the Roman Empire and it was competing with Ephesus for primacy in the economic standing in the area. And Smyrna was always just a little bit below, but it was considered a very wealthy city. And the Smyrnians had a church as well as Ephesus and for a while everything was going just fine, but at some point the synagogues in the area started slandering the church in Smyrna, the Christian church in Smyrna. And Jesus says, I know your tribulation and your poverty, but you are rich. And when he says I know, it speaks to the fact that he knows everything. And that is an encouragement to us, is that if we're ever in any sort of tribulation, if we're ever in any sort of suffering, it's not that God doesn't know about it. All of us suffer to some degree or another, some of us more than others, some of us less than others, but it doesn't escape God's notice. But it's also a warning that God does know. He knows what you're doing, he knows who you are, he knows what's in your heart. And there's a passage in Revelation chapter 6 that speaks to this. It says, when I opened the sixth seal, I looked and behold, there was a great earthquake and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale. The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up and every mountain and island was removed from its place. Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful and every one slave and free hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, fall on us and hide from us the face of him who is seated on the throne and from the wrath of the lamb for the great day of wrath has come and who can stand. And what you should notice is that every single category of humans is represented here. Kings, great ones, generals, rich and powerful, everyone, slave and free. So whether you are in government, in the military, whether you're wealthy, whether you have power or whether you're a slave or the lowest rung on the economic ladder, doesn't matter. God sees everything you do and everything I do. So that's the warning. And there is a, there is a comfort in knowing our suffering, but there's also a warning in knowing our actions. So when Jesus starts each letter like he does this one, he lets the church know who he is and he says the words of the first, the last who died and came to life. He says the words of the first and the last he's saying, I am the one who was, who is and who is to come. I'm the eternal one. But he also says, I died and came to life, meaning that the eternal one, the word became flesh like it says in John chapter one and he died, but then he came back to life. He was resurrected. So we know who's speaking. Jesus is dictating as it were to the apostle John and the island of Patmos. And he says to the Smyrnians, I know your tribulation and your poverty. And the tribulation they were undergoing was going to be from the Roman government, but it was caused by the slander of the Jews in the synagogue who didn't believe up until a certain point, they'd been free from this. The Romans had what's called a pantheon, which is a multiplicity of gods. They had a god for almost everything. They were polytheistic and a lot of their economic life, a lot of their social life was based on the worship of these gods, this pantheon. And if you didn't participate, you were considered an outcast. You were even considered possibly an enemy of the state and you were dealt with harshly. But the Jews were exempt. They had been given, as it were, a free pass because they were considered by the Romans an ancient religion with their own gods and they didn't have to adhere to these practices of the Romans. So what happened then was they didn't like that the Christians were sort of attaching themselves. The Christians were saying that this applies to us as well and for a long time that was accepted because the Romans viewed Christianity as a sect of Judaism. But the Jews didn't like that. They were afraid. They were afraid that some of the practices of the Christians would be credited to them and they would in turn lose their place. And this is very similar to what we saw in John chapter 11 when Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead. It says, many of the Jews therefore, verse 45, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council together. What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation. See that was the concern of the Jews when Jesus was alive. They saw that he was gathering more followers than them and they were concerned about it because they were afraid of losing their place. They weren't concerned so much with following after God, maybe some of them were, but they were concerned with losing their special place with the Romans. They were concerned that the Romans would come and take it away. And so they're concerned about the same things here in Smyrna, that at some point they're going to come and take away our place. They're going to come and have our exemption revoked. So they began to slander them. And he said, Jesus did, that I know your tribulation and your poverty, but you are rich in the slander of those who say they're Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. Now, why does he say, but you are rich? Because part of being in the pantheon, part of having an exemption is that you got to participate in the commerce of the city. And if you didn't participate in the pantheon or you didn't have an exemption, you might not get to participate in the business of the city, which would lead to poverty. So here the Christians are faced with a difficult situation that their faith in Jesus, that he lived and died and rose from the dead and that he has been raised to the right hand of the father, their belief in that, their steadfast belief in that was what was causing their tribulation. And they were encouraged, I'm sure, to give it up. But he says, they're a synagogue of Satan. Now, those are harsh words. They're very uncanadian thing to say. We just don't say things like that. We wouldn't accuse somebody of being a synagogue of Satan. But if we look around us, if we look at the things in our country in the West, whether it's the US or Canada or Europe, the things that we sanction, the things that we approve of are things that are against the word of God. There are things that are against the morality of the Bible. I'll just mention a couple of things. One that I mentioned before, and I know this can be controversial, but it shouldn't be. Is abortion. Abortion is the taking the life of an unborn child, which is why we support Open Door here in Halifax, which counsels young women who have an unexpected pregnancy and who counsels with people who are subject to trafficking. That's why we support Open Door. But I heard this conversation not too long ago, a couple of days ago. A woman was arguing that abortion should be legal because the foster care system is so bad that if a child is born and they don't have parents to take care of and they go into foster care, they might have a difficult life. And the other person said, so what you're saying is because they might have a difficult life we should eliminate the possibility altogether. It makes no sense. I've heard other people arguing for abortion saying, look, if you don't believe in abortion, don't have one. But if abortion is the taking of a life, then it's against the scriptures, it's against the commandment, you shall not kill. But there are still others. We sanction the mutilation of children who are confused about their gender. We sanction illicit immorality, things that have been condemned in the scriptures from the beginning. All of these things have the tendency to make us part of a government, not all the way across, but in some cases a government which opposes Christ. And because of this, we have to stand against it. We have to express our opinions, our hesitations, our thoughts against these immoralities and be willing to take the consequences, which there may be. There isn't really a lot right now. You might get looked at with disdain. In some cases, until recently, you could lose your job if you didn't go along with the cultural milieu. It doesn't go much past that. But it could come to a point where people are threatened, threatened with imprisonment and threatened with punishment, threatened with losing their lives. It's happening all across the world. In places like China, some churches, the pastors are arrested and put in jail and some are never heard from again. In Africa, Christian villages are attacked, people are murdered, girls are kidnapped and carried away, forced to become Muslim or die. So this suffering that he's talking about here that has come to the Smyrnians has always been. This said in John 16, if they hated me, they'll hate you. And if nobody ever dislikes you for your faith, you have to ask yourself, am I really believing as I should? So he says, do not fear what you're 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. Now notice that he says the devil is going to do it. But it won't literally be the devil because the Roman authorities will throw them into prison. They'll throw them into prison because they've been slandered by the unbelieving Jewish community. So the devil is the one who is orchestrating it. I have a friend who's this close to becoming a Christian and part of the reason that he's thinking about becoming a Christian is because he sees the evil in the world and he says this evil that's sanctioned by people in the government, that's sanctioned by people who are otherwise rational, he said this has to come from somebody that has to come from some influence and he believes the influence is from the devil. And because he believes that, he's starting to consider Christianity. My third son, Daniel, who has not been a Christian, has recently started reading the Bible and recently started asking me to send him sermons, not mine, but he's asked me to, so I've sent him a couple from Tim Keller. My son David, who is a Christian, has sent him one from a man named Sam Storms. So he's getting close, he's getting close to becoming a Christian because he has suffered. And sometimes suffering is beneficial because people who go through suffering, they'll either draw closer to the Lord, they'll cling harder to Christ or will discover that the faith is not real and they'll move away. I told this story before but I think it's a good illustration of these two people, both accused of crimes and were both convicted and it was discovered later through DNA testing, you know, maybe 10 years later that they were both innocent. But what happened is both of them, both sets of parents, both families were Christian or claimed to be. Well, the one family, when their son was convicted, they went to the church, they organized prayer meetings, they prayed even harder, they never stopped believing, they clung to Christ even more. The other family, when the mother came home, she saw her Bible, she picked it up and she threw it against the wall. If you're going to treat me like this, then I don't believe in you anymore, it was her rationale. But we don't know God's purposes and you look in the scriptures and you see some people like Stephen was stoned to death. James was martyred. John was spared. We don't know why some escape and some don't. Some of you have been through horrible things, some of you have experienced great suffering, some of you have kind of gone through unscathed. And we all want to be unscathed, but we don't get to decide that and the point is whatever suffering you're going through, Jesus knows about it and he's there with you. Whatever suffering you're going through, he has suffered as much or more, more really. And whatever suffering you're going through, you may say, well, some of it I deserve, but Jesus never deserved any of it. So the warning is, 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 for 10 days. Now one commentator says the way John writes, days could mean a period of time, it could be a year or more. And we know from history that the Smyrnians experienced suffering, this tribulation, for quite a period of time. It wasn't just for a week and a half, it was for a lengthy period of time. And so he says, be faithful unto death and I will give you the crown of life. Be faithful unto death and I will give you the crown of life. So what he's saying is some of you are going to die. Some of you are going to experience death because of your suffering. Some of you are going to be tortured, but hold fast to the truth. Hold fast to me. Be faithful unto death. When you think about it, that's what Jesus was. He was faithful unto death. Jesus is the one who lived a perfect sinless life in our place. Jesus is the one who died the death that we deserve to die in our place. Jesus is the one who then was raised from the dead. See what he says here is, be faithful unto death and I will give you the crown of life. The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death. So everybody dies in some way unless we're the ones that are still here when Jesus comes back. But everybody dies. Everyone experiences death and can you look it in the face and say I will hold fast to Christ. The passage that Edward read from Daniel is a wonderful example. Remember, Nebuchadnezzar asked or created a statue, an enormous statue. You could see it for miles around or kilometers. I'm not exactly sure how they measured it there. But you could see it for a long way and when they heard the music they were supposed to bow down to it. But Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego would not because they believed in the one true God. But just like here in Smyrna there were people who slandered them who informed the king that they were not adhering to his orders. And it made him furious. And so he ordered them. Next time you hear the music you bow down. What did they say? We have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from burning fiery furnace and he will deliver us out of your hand, O King. But if not, be it known to you, O King, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up. So they're saying we're not going to worship a false God. We're not going to worship an idol. And we know that if you throw us in the fiery furnace our God is able to save us. But even if he doesn't, even if we die there, even if we're consumed, even if the fire kills us, we're not going to worship your idol. Now you have to ask yourself, am I willing to do that? Am I willing to not worship an idol? And here's the thing, anything can be an idol. Anything that you put ahead of Jesus is an idol. It can be something, in this case it wasn't, but it can be something that is otherwise good. It could be your family. My family comes first. Well normally that sounds good, but if the family comes ahead of Christ, it's not. It could be your job. Well I have to adhere to these principles that my employers are asking me to, even if they're kind of against what the Bible says, because I need to keep my job, I need to provide for my family. It's not as easy as you say. Well you see that's the point. It's never easy. Are you willing to put Christ first? Are you willing for him to be first? That's the first commandment. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. And every time we commit a sin, we are breaking the first commandment because we sin because we put something ahead of Christ. So we go back to Revelation 3. I apologize again that I'm slow here. Revelation 2. And he says, Be faithful unto death and I will give you the crown of life. I will give you the crown of life. Be faithful unto death and I will give you life. He who has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death. The second death is what we have to fear. Not the first one. Everybody dies. Everybody dies. And you don't know when. You might say, well I'm young. I've had a long time to think about that. Well maybe you do. But maybe you don't. When you get older, like I'm getting older, you think more about it. But he's saying you will not experience the second death. The second death is judgment. According to the Bible, judgment and then hell. It's what those who are saying let the rocks fall on us because we can't stand to see the day of wrath and the day of wrath is coming. It will come. But he's promising us that if we will stand with him, if we will believe in him, if we will not let go of him, he will be faithful to us and give us the crown of life. In a few minutes we're going to share the Lord's Supper. You see, you could be here thinking, well that's all well and good but I've already compromised. I have compromised. I have not always clung to Christ. I have not always adhered to the scripture. What then? That's why we need a Savior. That's what Jesus did for us. He lived a perfect sinless life. He never sinned once. He never made one wrong choice. And you think about that, the perfect person, how our sin and our behavior must have graded on him all of his life. And yet he never once sinned. And because he didn't sin, he could take our place and it be punished in our place. Just imagine if everybody is in line to be executed. And let's say Rick hears first. He's first in line. And I'm last. Out of all the people in the world, we're all going to be executed for our sin. And I say, hey Rick, I'll trade places with you. Does that do him any good? No, it doesn't because all he gets then to do is see everybody else be executed ahead of him. But you see, the difference is that Jesus wasn't in the line. So he took our place in the line. And he'll take your place in the line. All you have to do is believe him. And believing him means you turn from your sin, you turn from your belief that you are in control, and you turn to Christ, trusting in him, his life, his death, his resurrection for your forgiveness. And that's what this table is about. So when we come to this table and hear and see the gospel preached again in the giving of the bread and the cup, give thanks to the Lord for all he has done, knowing that you will receive the crown of life and you will not experience the second death.