Letter to Smyrna
Pastor Marq Toombs • June 28, 2020
Sermon Overview
REVELATION 2:8-11
Jesus’s letter to Smyrna was to a suffering church. They were being persecuted for bearing witness to Jesus Christ and they are commended for their faithfulness in the face of suffering. They certainly weren’t perfect, yet suffering brings about a purity of faith in which Jesus delights.
Sermon Transcript
Grace and peace be with you from the Lord, Jesus Christ.
It's a heavy day. We've heard it in the confession of our sins, we've heard it in the announcement of giving to a mission that is at the heart of this church. We feel the burdens of our culture, we feel the stresses of life weighing down upon us. And then, we've just heard a letter that Jesus wrote to a church in the midst of her suffering. We're listening in on the reading of someone else's mail and we feel the weight of that.
And quite frankly, I stand before you with even more fear and trepidation today than I normally feel when I'm in front of you. I'm thankful that Zach pronounced the word ‘Smyrna’ so I would know how to say that in the course of this sermon. But also know that we have a challenge before us. We are an affluent and comfortable people and we've just heard a letter written to a poor and afflicted people. And the challenge for us will be to find a way to identify and relate with the poor and the troubled.
An old saying goes, when pastors gets up, often they are called upon to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. And this sermon may feel that way to you in many ways. But just know that whatever affliction you might feel in the course of this sermon, that your pastor has felt it as well as this has afflicted my soul as I reflect upon my own life and my own resistance to suffering and hardship, and yet, we are called upon by Jesus to enter into suffering and hardship. And so, if you will, come with me to Smyrna. Let's visit Smyrna Pres in Asia Minor. One of the seven churches of the part of a presbytery that Jesus presides over. A church that is different than the other churches that we meet in this presbytery because it's a church that is poor, a church that is afflicted. A church that is suffering. And they find themselves already in the midst of difficulty, in the midst of hard times. And then Jesus sends them a letter.
Imagine what it would've been like for those Christians to receive a letter from the Lord Jesus Christ in the midst of their affliction. The anticipation as it's unrolled and as the pastor gets up to say, "We have a message from Jesus today." And they wait with bated breath to hear what Jesus will say to them. What will Jesus say to us who are poor? To us who are in tribulation? What is His message to us? And they don't find the relief that perhaps they were expecting or hoping for. What they are told is that Jesus remembers them and that He reaches out to them and He reassures them that He is engaged with them, participating in their life. But He doesn't offer them a hope of immediate relief from their suffering. It's an unexpected letter in that they didn't expect to receive the letter from Jesus. It's also unexpected because they didn't hear exactly what they might've wanted to hear, what you and I would want to hear if we were in the same kind of situation.
Think about who wrote this letter. We say Jesus and that conjures up all sorts of images for us. But think back to a couple of weeks ago when we saw the vision of Jesus as He revealed Himself to John on the Isle of Patmos. Remember that magnificent and glorious vision of Jesus. In each of these letters, Jesus takes a part of that vision and He puts it at the introduction to say, this is who I am in relationship to you. And in this letter, He relates to His people as the one who was dead and is now alive. He relates to His people as someone who suffered extreme suffering for their sake. And now He is reminding them that He is with them. He is the first and the last. He is the Alpha, the Omega. He is the Faithful Martyr. So what is this letter about? Why does Jesus send this letter to the church of Smyrna? What is He trying to convey to them?
It might surprise you to learn that what Jesus is doing in this letter is simply preparing this church for martyrdom. He is preparing this church for martyrdom. Reminding them that like the Lamb of God who was slain for the sins of the world, these lambs are going to be led to slaughter and He is going to be with them every step of the way. It's a hard letter to receive, it's a hard letter to reflect upon, especially for those of us who live very comfortable lives and we've not experienced the kinds of things that the church in Smyrna experienced. We don't experience the kinds of things that our brothers and sisters in India are currently experiencing. We're not experiencing the kinds of things that our friends in Lebanon are experiencing or our friends in Mexico in South America. As we look around, there are people who are in the body of Christ in the Church catholic, the church universal around the world who are suffering in ways that we can't even imagine. That doesn't make you wrong, it doesn't make us bad or evil. It means that we are in a different situation than they're in.
But we need to remember their suffering and we need to reflect upon what it means to follow Christ in the world. And so, I want you to think with me through this letter at the different things Jesus conveys to the church. One of the things at the heart of the letter is Jesus is insistence that God is a suffering God. And He points to Himself when He says this that He is the first and the last. He is the one who was dead and now lives. Our God is a suffering God. Our God is not like the other gods of the world. Our God is not like the other gods of the nations. Our Lord and King is not like the lords and kings of our land. Our Lord and King suffers because of us. He suffers with us. He suffers for us. And He invites us into His suffering for it's in His suffering that we actually find life. It's that we find the purification of our sins. It's that we find a way to be conformed to the image of Jesus.
At the heart of the New Testament, you find a passage that describes Jesus's descent into suffering. And it began the moment He came on mission into the world, giving up His place of privilege. Letting go of things that He could've held onto. Descending into the world in the form of a man, and not simply in the form of a man, but going deeper than that, taking on the form of a slave and going even deeper than that, living a life of absolute obedience to God. And going deeper than that, living a life of obedience to God that led Him to death. And going beyond that, even death of a cross. When you look at the life of Jesus's descent into our experience, His descent into our world, it is a story of humiliation, it is a story of suffering and sacrifice because of His people, for His people, and with His people.
And so, He says to the church of Smyrna, "Look, I know what you're going through." And this is not intellectual knowledge. He's not saying to them, I know the data points of your experience. The Greek word that's used there indicates that He's saying to them, "I know by experience what you are experiencing. I know by experience what it's like to face trouble, testing, tribulation. I know by experience what it's like to be completely emptied, to become poor, to set aside riches. I know what's it's like to be apprehended and abused by others. I know what that's like by my own experience."
But rest assured that whatever you're experiencing, whatever you are facing now, whatever you are about to face, I'm going to be with you every inch of the way. We've heard countless times over the last several months, we're in this together. We're all in this together. We'll get through this. When Jesus says it, He means it. But notice in the letter, He doesn't promise relief, He doesn't take away the suffering. He simply leans into it and enters into it with His people. He has two messages for the church in the midst of this suffering. The first one is, do not be fearful. The second one is, be faithful.
I don't know how many times I've heard well-meaning pastors with a spirit of triumphalism say, "We're not a people of fear, we're a people of faith." And in a sense, they're right about that. But Jesus knows that His people are fearful. He doesn't get onto them for being fearful. If your life was on the line, if your property was being taken away, if your loved ones were being dragged off to prison, you would feel a real sense of fear. That isn't even happening to us and we feel a sense of fear, a fear of the unknown. We live in these unstable and uncertain times. And fear is generated among us. Change my mind on that. We feel it.
Do not be fearful for what you are about to suffer. I can't imagine what it would have been like to be a member of the church at Smyrna. You just want the pain to stop. You just want it to be over, and you get a letter from Jesus, and in the letter, you think surely He's gonna tell us, hey, there's a deadline to your suffering and it's gonna fall on this day and from that day forward, it's going to be peace and quiet. But no, they get a letter that says, "Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer." They're already suffering. They have been suffering and now they have to suffer some more. So it's difficult to hear this kind of thing, isn't it? We're accustomed in our tradition and in the reform tradition, e love to emphasize the fact that everything is a gift. We'll say that faith in Christ is a gift of grace. And it is, praise God. Faith is a gift. But if you read the apostle's teachings carefully enough, you find out that faith isn't the only gift that comes from grace. The Scriptures tell us that to has been granted to you for the sake of Jesus Christ, not only to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, but also to suffer for Him. Suffering is a gift of grace. And we are called to enter in to the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ.
To what end and to what purpose? On one hand, it is about participating in the life and the experience of the Lord Jesus Christ, of identifying with Him even in the pain and the sorrow of life. On the other hand, it's about transformation. Becoming like Christ. Being conformed to His image. How do we get there? We get there by means of suffering, by means of hardship. It's hard for us to hear, isn't it? We are American citizens. And I do thank God that I was born in the United States of America. We could've been born anywhere, but we were born here. That is a gift. That is grace. And we're accustomed to living as individuals in a culture that prides itself on certain unalienable rights. And we believe that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, among those being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You know the thing.
And it's good as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough, does it? It's not the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is simply a good thing to say. A good thing for a society to pursue. But when the Gospel comes to us, we learn that the Gospel requires more than the pursuit of happiness. And sometimes, it doesn't even allow us to pursue our own happiness. We're called upon to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. And the apostles teach us that it is through many hardships, through many sufferings that we must enter the kingdom of God. And somehow, that message gets lost. And what is actually seeped into our churches, which what has seeped into our families, into our own consciousness, is a perverted form of the prosperity Gospel. Don't we actually believe that God owes us something for being nice people? For being church-going folks? For paying our taxes and tithing on occasion?
Don't we actually believe that by doing these things, that we're in an exchange. We give so much to God and God is obligated to give so much back to us. And so, in our lives as affluent and comfortable American Christians, we often find it strange when we enter into suffering or hardship. When something that makes us uncomfortable comes our way, when we're pushed beyond the boundaries of our comfort zone, we immediately start thinking something is wrong. God must have turned His back on me. Atlas shrugged. Where is God in the midst of the difficult times that we're facing? A legitimate question.
But part of the reason we ask the question is because we've grown so accustom to living a life of comfort and ease. And Jesus invites us to enter into an experience of suffering with Him. In light of recent events in the last few months, many pastors and theologians that I follow and that I appreciate, that have influenced my thinking and living, have begun to think ahead about the days to come and I think it's worth considering what might happen. This is not a prophetic statement that I'm about to make, but it simply helps us think about where we are and what might happen.
So one pastor theologian says, "Whatever is just over the horizon, we are likely in for a decade, perhaps several decades of regular or periodic turmoil. The specifics will vary from place to place, but churches around the world are likely to find themselves in volatile times." In other words, this is an echo of what Jesus said to the church at Smyrna. "Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer." Something is coming our way. Hard times and difficulties will come to our neighborhood, will come to our families, will come to this congregation for various reasons. And if we're listening to what the Spirit says to the churches, instead of running away in fear, we will lean into that with faithfulness. We will prepare ourselves to be martyrs for Christ. And the word martyr there doesn't mean that you're gonna all die for Jesus, although we should prepare for that kind of thing as well. But we are preparing to be witnesses of the Lord Jesus Christ in the world. Witnesses of the Gospel. Witnesses of the word and the deeds of Jesus Christ in the world. To point the world away from ourselves to our Lord and King. We need to prepare for that.
There's an interesting phrase in this letter. You see the phrase 10 days. You will suffer for 10 days. That's an echo of an Old Testament story. If you wanna learn how to suffer well, if you wanna learn how to enter into the experience of hardships in a faithful way, look at the lives of your forefathers who have already done it. In the Book of Daniel, we learn about some Hebrew young men who are in exile. They're in a tough spot. They're living in a world that is hostile to their faith and their way of life. And they ask themselves to be tested. They ask the people around them, the governing officials, to test them for 10 days. It has to do with a certain kind of diet and I won't get into the details of that other than to say they were going to avoid meat and wine and only eat veggies. I don't know if that's a keto diet, I don't know what that would be. But that's what they do for 10 days. And they say, "Test us and see what happens." And they are tested. And they come out of the other side of that test, compared to other young men, in a much healthier and better way than the other men.
When I was a young man, I spent some time in Arkansas one summer. And just before I took that trip to Arkansas, my mother came to the car and gave me a Bible and said, "Do me a favor. While you're away, read the book of Daniel." I don't know why you tell a guy going into the ninth grade to read the Book of Daniel. But in Arkansas, I decided at one point I should read Daniel because my mother's going to ask me if I did. And it occurred to me in reading Daniel that maybe I should do what Daniel did. I wondered, "What would it be like to eat vegetables for 10 days?" And I set myself to that task to see what it would be like. And I would love to stand up here and report to you that at the end of that 10 days, I had an existential experience that the heavens opened and I saw the glory of God. But I didn't make it to the end of the 10 days because at some point, all I got for my trouble was a painful case of appendicitis. I haven't been able to eat vegetables since. I mean.
The point of the 10 days is that the suffering doesn't last forever. There is a limit. What is that limit? It's different for everyone. In the case of some of these Christians, it meant that they were going to die. It meant that their lives would end. It meant that what the psalmist says, "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his holy ones," would be fully realized in their experience. Death comes to us in a lot of different ways, for a lot of different reasons. It's not just the death of a dream, it's not just the death of an idea, it's not just the death of a ministry that is at stake here. It is the end of life. And in this letter, we see Jesus shepherding the church, providing end of life care to the church at Smyrna. Let that soak in as you reflect on this text later in the week that Jesus is providing end of life care for this church.
Flannery O'Connor is an author that gets a lot of play in my family. And she says something interesting about suffering. She says, "What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course, it is the cross." You need to know that there is no repentance without suffering. There is no obedience without suffering. There is no endurance without suffering. If we are going to follow the Lamb of God into the world, if we are going to conquer our own fears and our own faithlessness, we must suffer. We must take up the cross and deny ourselves. We must live for another and not ourselves alone. We must live with a view to being conformed to the image of Jesus. And we do this for the life of the world. It is through the sufferings of Christ and through the sufferings of His people that life comes to the world.
And so, we must heed the counsel of the Spirit of Christ in this letter and conquer our fearful and fickle hearts.
I want to end with a story that many of you have probably heard before. But it's a story related to this passage. It ties into Smyrna. About 50 years after the apocalypse of John was circulated among the churches and after John himself had gone to be with the Lord, Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna, was arrested and dragged into the stadium in the city of Smyrna. This is a place where gladiators fought and beasts devoured each other and devoured slaves and prisoners. He was dragged into the center of that stadium and called upon by the governing officials of his day to swear by the fortune of Caesar. Repent and say, "Away with the atheists." That is what Christians were called in those days. "Swear and I will set you at liberty. Reproach Chris." And Polycarp answered in this way. "80 and six years have I served Him. He never did me any injury. How then can I blaspheme my King and my Savior?" The governing officials said, "I will cause you to be consumed by fire if you will not repent." And Polycarp said, "You threaten me with the fire which burns for an hour. And after a little, is extinguished. But your are ignorant of the fire of the coming judgment and of eternal punishment reserved for the ungodly." He did not fear what he was about to suffer. He was faithful unto death. Killed by a dagger in his heart and flames consuming his body. He was a faithful witness of the Lord Jesus Christ. As the Moravian Christians once said, "Our Lamb has conquered. Let us follow Him into the world with a cross onto the altar, even unto death." Brothers and sisters, do not be fearful. Be faithful. "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches, the one who conquerors will not be hurt at all by the second death."
Let us pray.
