Now it’s often said that the church as an institution does better in adversity than it does in prosperity. Well, it was certainly that way for this church at Smyrna, which is an example to us of a church under the cross. That is the cross that Jesus tells us remember to take up whenever we follow him. But at this point, before we begin this morning, what I want to do for a second or two is to remind ourselves what we mean when we talk about a church. It’s my experience that if you assume people know things, they likely don’t. Of course, most of you do because that’s why you’re here. But let me remind us of what we’re doing. This word church – kirk in Scottish, Kirche in German – the word church comes from a Greek word which is used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint. And wherever it’s used in the Old Testament, it translates the idea of the assembly of Israel, God’s covenant people, as they are assembled.  

For example, God calls Israel out of Egypt, and he calls them to gather to meet him, to assemble before him at Mount Sinai. And so they did, they left Egypt, they came to Mount Sinai, they gathered around the mountain. God visited them. God made his presence known among them, and then through his spokesman Moses, God made his voice heard. God doesn’t have a voice of course; God isn’t made up of stuff. He doesn’t have a larynx, he doesn’t have, he doesn’t have lungs in order to project his voice. God uses instruments when he’s speaking to creatures. He uses donkeys, as we know from Balaam’s donkey and from some people in the pulpit. And he also uses human voices. He makes his voice heard by Moses, and by doing so makes his word known. 

So whenever the church gathers on the Lord’s day, she does what Israel did at Sinai, she assembles before the Lord her King. This is what Peter has in mind, when the Apostle Peter writes this in First Peter 2: “As you come to him” as you come to him, that is, as you assemble to him, as you gather to him, “the living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” 

From time to time your pastors in the church may wander into this room that we’re in just now, and it will be empty. And we may from time to time wander around the chairs and pray for the people we know where they, well, we used to know where they sat. And I’m reminded of where they were sitting when they were all here. The ones in there watching and who will come back, God willing, when it’s safe to do so, and when you’re ready to do so. But we’ll do that. But when this room is empty, there’s no church, this building isn’t a church. It becomes a church on the Lord’s day when the Lord’s people are in the building, when they’re assembled to God for worship. Now the reason for all of that is because God’s people are a covenant people. God has entered into a covenant relationship with his people, and that’s the key, I think, that unlocks this particular letter that we’ve read together this morning, because it points us to the covenant Lord, to the covenant assembly, and to the covenant promise. Let’s look first of all then at the covenant Lord. At the beginning of each of these letters to the churches, some aspect of God and of our Savior Jesus Christ is selected for our consideration. So listen to Jesus as he speaks: 

“And to the angel in Smyrna write: The words of the first and the last, who died and came to life again.” 

Revelation 2:8

Now the church is in Smyrna, modern Izmir in Turkey, founded by the Greeks, taken over by the Romans, somewhere in the 15th century becoming part of the Ottoman Empire. Today, Izmir, Smyrna is a vibrant city, modern city. Just last year, October 30, 2020, it suffered a massive earthquake, magnitude of seven on the Richter scale. The word Smyrna means “myrrh”. “Myrrh” in the sense of the wise men – gold, frankincense, and myrrh – that myrrh. It was one of the ingredients in the anointing oil that they used in Exodus 30 for the priests. It appears in Psalm 45, which is a picture of the heavenly Bridegroom – the King — and his queen, his church. We’re told there that the myrrh was among the spices of the heavenly Bridegroom King in Song of Solomon, a hymn to the relationship between Jehovah and Israel, between the Lord and his church. Myrrh and frankincense surround the divine Beloved as he comes looking for his bride. In fact, myrrh and frankincense grow in the garden, that is, the bride Israel and the church. Myrrh was one of the gifts brought by the magi. It was also used in the preparation of Jesus’ body after death for burial. All these little elements then are present here because the speaker in this letter is this Beloved one. He’s talking to his bride the church; the Beloved is speaking to his bride the church.  

And what should we think about then when we think about him, the heavenly Bridegroom? Well, we should think of him in two ways. We should remember that he is the eternal God.  

“The words of the first and of the last.” 

Revelation 2:8

This is language taken from Isaiah chapter 44:  

“Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of Hosts: ‘I am the first and I am the last; and beside me there is no god.'” 

Isaiah 44:6

This is God self-identifying. In Revelation elsewhere it says,  

“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the ending.” 

Revelation 21:6

At the end of Revelation, Jesus says,  

“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. “ 

Revelations 22:13

God is designated seven times in Revelation in this way, which points, of course, the number seven in Revelation is symbolic, as we’re told in the very first verse of the book, symbolic of perfection of completion of fullness. The fullness of the Divine Being is caught up in this language, “the first and the last.” And as you look at the use of this elsewhere in the Scripture, you discover that what this is saying about Jesus is that he is the eternal God, that he is the sole Creator of all things, that he is the sovereign Lord of all history, that he is the eternal and unchangeable One who cannot be compared to anything else in creation, because he doesn’t belong to the order of creation. He whose purposes cannot be thwarted. He comes before all things. He brings all things to their ultimate perfection. He is the origin and the goal of all history. He is the beginning and the end. This language of beginning and end, by the way, is borrowed from the Greek philosophical tradition and it’s utilized by Christians; here is utilized by the Holy Spirit himself and placed in the Bible. Now Jesus as the eternal God is before all things. And we’re told in him all things hold together, and his destiny, his goal is that he would unite all things in heaven and on earth, all things in himself at the end of the story.  

So although in his human nature Jesus was born of a woman, in his Divine nature the wise man tells us in Proverbs 8, and in his divine nature his goings forth where from of old, from everlasting from before the world was. So eternity then is a quality that belongs to God as God, and therefore to the Father who’s God, and the Son who’s God, and the Holy Spirit who’s God. As the eternal One, he is the first cause of all things, and you’ll know that the Apostle John tells us that right away in his gospel in the first chapter.  

“All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made.” 

John 1:3

So eternity which includes immortality is peculiar to God as God. Remember that he is the eternal God. But also remember this, that he is the living Savior, the living Savior. For God in Christ assumes a human nature. He does not turn from being God into being human. He assumes a human nature; becomes the instrument through which he lives a human life as such because he had a human nature. In his human nature, he was mortal while in his divine nature he remains the eternal Lord. That’s why he puts these two things together in the text. “The first and the last.” And now “the one who died and came to life.” There is the mystery of the incarnation right there, within the space of a very few words. Mortal as man, immortal as God. But now in his human nature, having died, he is now alive. That’s what he’s saying here, he died and came to life. And so right at the very beginning of this letter what is Jesus doing? He’s signaling to us this is the end game: “Here, what happened to me in my human nature is going to happen to you and your human nature.” For everyone connected to Christ the story is that you will die, and you will come back to life. That is the big story. He now lives in the power of an endless life, and at our resurrection we will share bodily in that resurrected life that Jesus now has. There’s the good news of the Gospel – he’s the Covenant Lord, Eternal God, Living Savior. Living Savior.  

Secondly, the covenant assembly. And there are two things to note here, what Jesus sees. You see what he says,  

“I know, I know your tribulation and your poverty…and the slander.”  

Revelation 2:9

Greek: blasphemy. He sees. He knows there’s nothing, there’s nothing hidden from him. Church of God, you need to know Jesus knows our circumstances, he knows our weaknesses, he knows our fears, he knows where we’ve sinned, he knows where we’re doing well as a church, as a church body. He knows all of these things. That means that you can never sense for one second that you’re on your own, that we’re muddling our way through here. There’s been a lot of muddling as we’re trying to put these protocols into place as a church and so on. That Jesus knows the circumstances of our lives, and he knows this church. Notice that, what he says to the church: three things he knows, he knows the tribulation.  

He knows their tribulation. That word means trouble, doesn’t it? He knows the trouble churches go through, periods of trouble of one sort or another, but here this word tribulation is a technical word. Jesus defines how he means us to understand it in John chapter 16. Let me read what Jesus says there: 

“If the world hates you, know that it hated me before it hated you. If they persecuted me, they’ll persecute you. In this world you will have tribulation.”  

What he’s saying to the church is: that’s the feature of the age, between my resurrection and my return again. Sometimes you’ll hear, people will ask you, does the book of Revelation talk about the Great Tribulation? Yes, it does it does right here. The tribulation is great not because it’s intense, but because it lasts such a great time. From the resurrection of Jesus until the return of Jesus there is tribulation aimed at the church of God.  

What for? For following the clear demands and commands of Jesus. We’re not talking here about the trouble we get into out of our own foolishness or sinfulness or willfulness as a church. We’re not talking about those times in Israel, where the church has sided too much with this state perhaps, or nation, or subculture or whatever it may be, and gotten into trouble for doing so. We’re not talking about that kind of nonsense that we get ourselves into sometimes. No, when Jesus talks about tribulation here, he’s talking about the trouble you get into for following the clear commands of Jesus.  

Now, of course, there are some clear commands of Jesus that might attract the applause of the world. I mean if we read in the scripture that we should love one another and love our enemies and so on, what does it mean to love? Well, love is defined in our society as something you feel, and of course we all know what it’s like to fall in love. I suppose we all know how what it’s like to fall in love, those of us have fallen in love know what it’s like to fall in love.  

But when the Bible talks about love, of course, is not something you fall into, and when it talks about us loving people, it’s not something that just happens to us. In First Corinthians 13, we learn this: love is something you learn. You read First Corinthians 13: Love doesn’t keep a record of wrongs. Love is patient. Love is kind. Go down the list. What is it telling you? It’s telling you that love is learned. Love is learned. It is a virtue that is learned when we teach our children patience, when we teach our children not to hold grudges, not to hold a record of wrongs. When we tell people in a counseling class, “Listen, you’ve come in here and you’ve told me what she did. This, that, and the other thing. Although it’s usually the other way around, by the way. Keeping a great big, long list, that men have a bad memory, so they just forget all of these things, people, other people have good memories, and they remember all of these things. But here’s the point, in the lessons on love it says, “Love keeps no record of wrongs.” Now if we did all of that what would we be developing would be developing the virtue of love. Now the world may like that, they may not like that. They may not like the fact that in loving we love Jesus first. So suffering can come from the world, but the suffering in view here is specifically because of the Gospel.  

Tribulation, poverty. Actually the word there means destitution. It’s a very strong word – abject poverty – they were impoverished people in this church, and yet Jesus adds – did you notice in brackets there – you are absolutely destitute, but in real terms you’re rich. What do you mean by that? Well, he meant spiritually rich in the language of James:  

“Has God not chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom.” 

James 2:5

Now that’s not, that’s not a judgment of people who are rich by the way, but these people in this church they were poor. And yet though they were poor, it was as having nothing and possessing everything. My parents were particularly poor. My mother was a great woman of faith, and I remember she set us an example really of this. I never heard her complain ever about anything, about not having anything or not being able to do something or go somewhere. She took exquisite delight in the most simple, basic things of life. She was so grateful for everything she had because the greatest prize to my mother was to be in Christ. It was. I’d come in from school and there she would be with our Bible open, praying. What an example for a wee boy growing up in those circumstances. Having nothing but possessing everything. 

And then the third thing that Jesus mentions here is that the name of Jesus was being blasphemed. And the church was being blasphemed. They were making attacks, verbal attacks or otherwise, aimed at Jesus’ people precisely because they were Jesus’ people. An attack on Jesus’ people is an attack on God. Remember what Jesus said to Saul of Tarsus, who was persecuting the church of God? 

“Saul, Saul why are you persecuting me?”  

Acts 9:4

You hit the body, you hit the head. You touch the church; you poke your finger in the eye of God. The Bible teaches that. Specifically, this hostility was coming from members of the synagogue. People who called themselves Jews, but didn’t, didn’t live as Jews. They rejected the Jewish Messiah. He was the Messiah they did not want. They rejected him and they became agents of Satan. We don’t know how, what Jesus means at this point. This is what it very likely means: that round about the time or probably leading up to the fire, great fire of Rome, the Jewish authorities in Rome may very well have started to circulate the fact that Christianity, which had been regarded as a Jewish sect, and therefore had a protection of the Roman law, was in fact not a Jewish sect and therefore the protection of the law had been taken away from them.  

That may very well be the case that was being referred to here. But Jesus traces all opposition to him, on the basis of the lives of his people lived well. He traces all this back, do you notice, to Satan? Satan is described as an adversary, an accuser, a destroyer, a liar, a slanderer, and the devil. We don’t know the nature of the, of the opposition. You know sometimes it’s possible for a state to assault the church full-on.  

There’s the example of Haman in the story that’s told in the book of Esther. Haman was a figure in the in the court. He came to the Emperor of Persia, and he said to the Emperor of Persia this, he said,  

“There are certain people scattered and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom. Their laws are different from that of other people, and they do not observe the king’s laws.” 

Esther 3:8

What happened with Haman was he woke up one day, he was offended by a Jew, so he wanted to eradicate the Jews. His recommendation to the emperor was that he should annihilate the Jews in every city, in every village, in every town within the Persian Empire. The entirety of the story of redemption and the coming of Jesus was under threat because of Haman. He was an instrument of Satan. And that could happen, couldn’t it? There is a, there is a world in which that could happen. When people suddenly wake up, and if you think of all the laws that have been, just being passed by every government, I think, in the Western world over the last 20 or 30 years. One day they’re going to wake up to the fact that those laws are threatened by Christians. We don’t hold to them. We don’t hold to the value, the principles behind those laws, and they’ve been passed by every party in Congress, so it’s not this is not a party political thing. This is just a reality of living in a modern, secular society.  

Well, Jesus reminds us of the malignant intention of the devil, who’s out to destroy the church of God. It was Jesus who called the devil “the father, the liar, and the father of lies.” Proverbs 21 talks like this:  

“The words of a whisperer are like delicious morsels; they go down well into the inner parts of the body.” 

Proverbs 18:8

People listen to these whispering things. You know sometimes we talk about, we talk about periods of persecution and life of the church, and we like to talk them up as these were periods of growth for the church, I think we were doing that when we first heard of the crackdown in China on Chinese Christians, a number of months ago. We thought this is, this is great this may lead to growth in the church. In fact there’s a saying that we sometimes use “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” And so it has been in places and at times. But do you know very often the blood of the martyrs just means lots of dead Christians. Jesus sees, and what does Jesus say? Well he says to them, 

“Do not fear what you’re about to suffer.” 

Revelation 2:10

In other words, there’s more to come, more on the way. What’s going to happen is that, that there’s going to be something general happen. Ecclesia contra mundum. The church against the world. The world’s going to turn on the church. Know this, that in the church in Smyrna there would be ordained a minister in the church, and we read about this minister later in his life. He’s 86 years of age, and we read the story of what happened when Polycarp was taken prisoner by the authorities. Let me read to you from a contemporary account: “The whole multitude both of Gentiles and Jews who lived in Smyrna cried out in anger with a loud shout. This is the teacher of Asia, the father of the Christians, the puller down of our gods, who teaches numbers of people not to sacrifice or to worship to our gods.” That was the charge, and after shouting all of this they demanded that he be thrown to the lions. Well, the authorities refused to do that, so the crowd then turned up the volume and the rhetoric. They called on him to be burned alive. They didn’t wait for an answer. They went, the whole mob went, and gathered wood, they built the fire, they put him on the fire, and there they burned Polycarp to death.  

Listen to his prayer: “Oh Lord, Almighty God, the Father of thy Beloved Son Jesus Christ, through whom we’ve received the 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.” Jesus prepares the church for that, prepared Polycarp for that.  

“Behold the devil is about to throw some of you in prison.” 

Revelation 2:10

Prison in those days was not a punishment. Prison was a holding place, before you went on trial and before you went to execution. By telling them that some would be put in prison, Jesus is telling the church some are going to die. Now in the New Testament, John Stott says, “In the New Testament, suffering is an indispensable mark of every true Christian and every true church.” It just comes. You don’t have to look for it. You don’t have to make it happen by being rude, or arrogant, proud. You just have to live like a Christian and they’ll still come your way. It’s a reality. Jesus said,  

“Blessed are you when people shall revile you and persecute you utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so persecuted they the prophets who were before you.” 

Matthew 5:11-12

Jesus, Jesus knew poverty. Jesus knew blasphemy aimed at him. Jesus knew arrest, imprisonment, and death. And what is Satan’s agenda in all of this? What is Satan’s agenda in the troubling and tribulation that he sends to the church? Jesus tells us the answer: it is that you may be tested. That’s a good thing. That’s a good thing. Jesus is saying these false charges, these proffered concessions, these proud blasphemies, these physical abuses, social exclusion, and severe limitations, and destroyed careers, and being put to death ultimately, Satan wants to prove that you’re not really a Christian. He wants to prove that when push comes to shove, as we used to say in Scotland, when it comes to, when it comes right down to it, and they say to you, “We don’t have to have any trouble here. Just you take a pinch of this incense, and just throw it on the fire. A little, this little burning fire that’s in front of the bust of the emperor, you just take a little pinch of it. Then it’ll be over with, you can go on your way, nobody will ever bother you again. You’ll be fine, there’ll be no record, no follow-up, no prison, no death. It’s just a little concession.” That’s what they offered Polycarp, and Polycarp said, “For 86 years, I have followed Jesus.” I’m simplifying it for time. “I’m not going to desert him now.” 

Well, there’s a covenant promise here, covenant promise. That’s the last thing, that for those who are faithful, faithful to death, those are the overcomers. And remember the best may suffer the most. The promise reminds us, Jesus’ promise reminds us, that we are never truly alone, and our lives are never fruitless. There is a crown of life, the crown of life. The crown is life. Here’s the movement for the believer, the life and death of a Christian is crowned with life. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. And that life is eternal life. You share in the eternal life of the eternal God, who has called you into fellowship with his eternal Son. You have eternal life. And eternal life includes within it, Jesus goes on to say in verse 11, immunity from the second death. 

What is the first death? The first death is the separation of the soul from the body. That’s what happens when you die physically. The body dies, the soul remains alive and goes into eternity, either to heaven, to hell. That’s the first death. The second death is the separation of the soul and the body together from God forever. Forever. Eternal separation from God forever, being cast into the, as it were, into the judgment of God. Into the dark side, as it were, under the, under the vengeance of God, away from him, away from this pleasure, the delight, the happiness the face-to-face fellowship and communion that the church of God enjoy – all of that gone. Immunity from the second death is God’s gift to those to whom he gives the crown of life. 

I want to ask you today: do you know Jesus Christ for yourself? Do you know him for yourself? I ask you who are watching, maybe you’re watching, it’s from the safety of your own room, because you don’t really want to be seen coming into a church building, but you’re prepared to listen to see what we have to say. I want to ask you: do you know Jesus Christ for yourself? You know you can, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you can be saved.