Sermon Tone Analysis

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The second of John’s messages to the seven churches of Asia Minor went to the church in Smyrna.
Of the seven cities that originally received Revelation, Smyrna is that only one that still exists.
Its name today is Izmir.
In the first century, Smyrna was considered the most beautiful city in the entire region.
The Aegean Sea was located immediately to the west.
From its shores arose Mount Pagus on which Smyrna was situated.
Its streets were so beauti­fully paved that one of them was called the “Street of Gold.”
This may be what John had in mind when he wrote that the streets of the new Jerusalem were /pure gold, as it were transparent glass/ (Rev.
21:21).
The pleasant breeze that ascended Mount Pagus from the gulf during the summer provided year-long comfort to the city’s inhabitants.
In addition to its beauty, Smyrna was known for its culture.
Several temples, an athletic stadium, a library and the largest public theater in Asia Minor were among its many places of inter­est.
It is estimated that nearly 200,000 people had easy access to these facilities in John’s day.
Smyrna’s temples are of special interest to those who study the book of Revelation.
One of these temples, for example, was dedicated to the /Dea Roma/, the God of Rome, as early as 195 BC, making Smyrna one of the earliest centers of the Roman cult in Asia Minor.
Another temple was later built to honor Emperor Tiberius.
All in all, the people of Smyrna had an exceptional devotion to the Roman state religion and despised any whom they suspected of disloyalty to the state.
This made the church of Smyrna especially vulnerable to persecution.
Although we know a good bit about the ancient city, the church that was established there has been all but forgotten.
Paul may have founded it during his third missionary journey (AD 54–56).
Acts 19:10 says that during this period/ all they which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus/.
It’s very likely, then, that Ephesus served as Paul’s center of operations for the two and a half years that he was there, and that during this time he made frequent missionary trips to other parts of the region.
This may also account for the founding of the Colossian church and perhaps a few others.
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The Sufferings of Smyrna
In verse 9, the Lord Jesus took note of three things about the church at Smyrna.
He said, /I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty/.
These three things are all joined together by a single possessive pronoun, which suggests that they are connected.
And indeed they are.
The church’s tribulation and poverty are the direct result of its works.
We’ll come back to this idea in a minute.
First, we need to understand that the Lord’s statement to the church expressed his commendation of and concern for the church, and was not meant to be in any way critical of it.
This doesn’t mean that Christ didn’t want the church to suffer or that he had not ordained its suffering.
The fact is that nothing happens to the church, or to anything else for that matter, apart from his sovereign appointment.
Rather, he designed the church’s present distress to teach the people to trust him without reservation.
This comes out also in the description that Christ gave of himself in verse 8.
He said that he was /the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive/.
As God, Jesus sovereignly controls history so that nothing happens without his foreordina­tion, not even the martyrdom of his precious people.
The entire course of history is in his hands.
And as man, and particularly one who bore the bitter pains of hell both in his life and especially on the cross, he can sympathize with his people in their distress.
He therefore assured the brethren in Smyrna that they were not alone.
Their hope of a better life is found in the fact that Christ not only died but also arose again.
Interestingly, another one of Smyrna’s myriad of temples was dedicated to Dionysus, the god of wine who delivers people from the madness of the present world by intoxication.
He also claimed to have been resurrected.
Of course, his resurrection was fic­titious and therefore offered no real consolation to those who worshiped him.
But the Lord Jesus Christ did return to life and was seen by hundreds of witnesses.
His resurrection was the great sign of his victory.
It offers real comfort to those who come to him in faith.
We also need to understand what those works were for which the Lord Jesus commended the church at Smyrna (v.
9).
Certainly they would have included what we commonly refer to as “neighborly gestures,” but this by itself does not account for the church’s tribulation and poverty.
A believer’s neighbors will not usually object if he wants to do a good deed for them.
In that sense, good deeds are relatively safe.
But they also provide only a very low level of friendship.
The trouble usually comes with one specific good deed — evangelism.
Apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, people do not want to hear that they are born sinners, hating God and righteousness, and therefore deserve the severest wrath of God.
They are offended to learn that the only means of escape is the death of Jesus Christ, and that they must cast themselves entirely upon him to be saved.
John preached this, and look what happened to him!
He spent several years on a rocky, desolate island named Patmos.
The brethren in Smyrna apparently were just as faithful as he was.
How do we know this?
From the fact that some of the brethren were imprisoned and tried for their faith.
This was apparently a very severe testing, although thankfully it was also be short-lived.
The tribulation that the church experienced, then, was the result of its works, especial­ly its preaching of the gospel.
Its proclamation of the word of God also made it susceptible to poverty.
Believers at Smyrna found it difficult to keep their businesses because they gloried in a risen Savior and refused to acknowledge the gods of Rome.
Taking peoples’ money and property is often a very effective way of controlling peoples behavior.
In the Old Testament, thieves and vandals had to repay their victims double.
In some cases, as when the crime affected business property, the restitution could be as much as seven-fold.
Today our laws prescribe monetary fines for certain offenses in an effort to deter them.
Even in the work place, supervisors have the power to suspend without pay those employees who involve themselves in some misconduct.
Poverty encourages conformity to expected standards.
For the Christians in Smyrna, however, conformity was not an option, since it would have involved a denial of the faith.
There are worse things than poverty, but in this case the church was not as poor as it seemed.
What the church lacked in finances, it more than made up for in its faithful adherence to the gospel of Jesus Christ —the greatest treasure of all.
Christ said, /I know thy … poverty (but thou art rich/.
Although the gospel may not feed a man’s hungry children, it is worth more than all the gold in the world.
It has the power to uphold and strengthen God’s people through the worst persecu­tions.
According to verse 10, the persecution of the church at Smyrna had not yet peaked.
Prison still awaited some, and perhaps death for others.
The forecast was not very pretty.
However, one item in verse 9 stands out from the rest.
Jesus also knows /the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews/.
Apparently, these false Jews were a sect of Abraham’s physical descendants that troubled the church.
Perhaps they were annoyed that the church at Smyrna had converted some of their Jewish brethren and Gentile proselytes to Christ.
We know from Ignatius’ letter to the church fifty years later that a sizeable part of its membership came from a Jewish background (/To the Smyrneans/ 1).
It’s also possible, of course, that these false Jews were even more antagonistic.
Perhaps they had tried to in­filtrate the church, as the Judaizers had done in Galatia and elsewhere, to undermine its orthodoxy.
Or, since they believed that Christianity had cast off the law and substituted in its place the blasphemous worship of a convicted felon, they could be the ones who instigated the church’s persecution.
Which of these is true, if any, cannot be known with absolute certainty.
The important point here is that Christ condemned their lying and hypocrisy.
They may have been biological descendents of Abraham, but they were certainly not Abraham’s children in faith.
In the eighth chapter of John’s gospel, Jesus dealt with this matter head-on.
He told the Jews of that day that their faith had been misplaced.
They prided themselves on their connection to Abraham, but Jesus said, /Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.
He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.
When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not/ (John 8:44–45).
The Lord is no less clear about this in his words to the church at Smyrna.
He says that they are not really Jews at all, that they belong to the synagogue of Satan.
The implication here is that those who worship God through the Lord Jesus Christ are true Jews and true members of the synagogue of God.
The fact that these so-called Jews still took pride in Judaism suggests that the temple, its chief source of glory, had not yet been destroyed.
Since this took place in AD 70, the book of Revelation must have been written sometime before that.
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