Sermon Tone Analysis

Sermon

In AD 197, the Church Father, Tertullian, wrote a booklet called Apolegeticus, a defense of the Christian faith to the Roman Empire.

At that time, Christians were coming out from a long period of Empire-sanctioned persecution, mostly related to their conviction that they refused to bow down to a political leader — the emperor — believing that to do so would be a breach of their faith that Jesus the Messiah alone is Lord of their lives.

Anyway, Tertullian wrote this memorable phrase in his work: “We multiply whenever we are mowed down by you; the blood of Christians is seed.”

You may have heard it’s modern adaptation, “The blood of the saints is the seed of the Church.”

Go ahead and turn to Revelation 2; we’re looking at Jesus’ letter to the church at Smyrna this morning.

Our text is on page 698 of the white pew Bible.

Suffering, persecution, and martyrdom have been the calling of the Church of the Lord Jesus somewhere among the nations throughout her entire history.

Older saints here have probably read Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, a catalogue of the stories of men and women who gave their lives for Christ.

Today, organizations like Voice of the Martyrs and Open Doors update us on the persecution and sufferings of our brothers and sisters around the world.

Afghanistan was ranked as the most dangerous place to be a Christian for the first time in 2022.

North Korea, Somalia, Nigeria, Eritrea, and India are all included in the 10 countries with the most extreme persecution.

Imprisonment, torture, suffering, even martyrdom have followed those across the globe who have become disciples of Jesus.

For some, this is the normal Christian life.

This morning, we’re going to see that life in the first-century church which gathered in a city called Smyrna.

It was another important town, wealthy, and a seat of religious and political syncretism.

While Jesus was on earth, Smyrna won an empire-wide bid to build the first temple to worship the emperor, Tiberius Caesar.

That allegiance to the Roman Empire paired with a large-population of well-connected Jewish population bred an environment which was incredibly hostile toward disciples of Jesus.

It was a church that needed encouragement.

They were being persecuted and they were suffering.

And they were one of the only churches in this series of letters to whom Jesus does not give any rebuke.

In the midst of this persecution and suffering, they were exactly where they were supposed to be.

And Jesus tells them things are going to get worse.

But, he gives them a bold and dramatic strategy for overcoming the persecution brought upon them by a godless culture - Jesus wants them to respond boldly to a culture that would silence Christian voices, that would restrict Christian involvement in the public square, which would coerce Christians to violate their consciences.

Jesus says I know your suffering, I know your pain, I know your affliction and I am going to give you two commands which will, in the midst of these circumstances where your rights are being violated, when the government is oppressive toward you, when they are trying to silence God in the public square, Jesus says you will conquer and declare the glory of God to all who are watching.

Does that sound like a strategy which we ought to get behind?

Look at the first and the last sentence of verse 10:

“Don’t be afraid of what you are about to suffer.”

“Be faithful to the point of death.”

Because Jesus defeated death and promises victory, a healthy and vital church rejects fear and embraces quiet faith.

Because Jesus defeated death and promises victory, a healthy and vital church rejects fear and embraces quiet faith.

Let’s read the whole of our text, starting in verse 8:

PRAY

Jesus calls the church at Smyrna, and all churches and all his disciples throughout the earth, to stop being afraid of what’s going on in the world and to persist in quiet faithfulness, even to the point when they give up their life.

But before we get to what Jesus calls us to do, it is crucial that we see the basis upon which that fearfulness is rejected and faithfulness is built.

Without a solid foundation, our faith will be made a shipwreck and we will languish then drown in the sea of fear.

But Jesus, the Messiah and the Son of God is the sure foundation upon which our faith can rest because, as John writes in verse 8: He is the Eternal God and He is the resurrected Lord who has conquered death.

Jesus calls himself the First and the Last which, if you know your Old Testament, is a title that is used for God Himself through the prophet Isaiah:

The covenant God of Israel, YHWH, calls Himself the First and the Last and here Jesus picks up the same title and applies it to Himself when speaking to the church at Smyrna.

Jesus says, “I am the eternal lord over all of history.

I will have the last word and in fact I AM the Last Word.”

Jesus has always been aware of the circumstances of His people and He knows the situations they are going through right now.

Your future is plain in His sight and He holds your future.

Jesus is one you can trust today and tomorrow and for eternity.

Ans specifically, Jesus is one you can trust in the midst of struggle and affliction that will inevitably fall upon you.

Because, Jesus has taken the sting from Death and the Grave.

Jesus never promised that his disciples would be free from pain or free from suffering.

In fact, he promised just the opposite.

“If the world hates me, it will hate you, too,” he told the Twelve.

And the church in Smyrna was feeling this promise acutely.

And, as we’ll see in a moment, the comforting words that Jesus gives them is, “Be faithful to the point of death.”

That doesn’t sound very comforting unless you’ve seen the words at the end of verse 8: “Thus says…the one who was dead and came to life.”

Jesus experienced death for us, a far more horrible death than any Christian will ever know.

Jesus not only experienced the physical death that is common to humanity, He also bore the full judgment and wrath of God for the sins of the world, as the Gospel of John tells us.

While he was alive, He was subject to slander, persecution, rejection, and death.

He tells the Church at Smyrna, and you believer, I’ve walked this road before.

I’ve tasted death.

But I am alive!

I tasted death and I conquered it!

Therefore, Paul says, there is no need to fear it.

the Grave does not have victory, Death has no sting for the disciple of Jesus!

This church may walk the road of persecution and suffering like Jesus did.

They may even walk the road of an unjust death like Jesus did.

But because of what Jesus did, they don’t have to lose heart.

They don’t have to give in to fear of oppression or persecution.

To live is Christ and to die is gain.

There is no way to lose in Jesus, because He won.

If we live, he is with us.

If we die, we are with him.

That’s why Jesus can tell the church at Smyrna that, verse 11, “the one who conquers will never be harmed by the second death.”

To be a conqueror for the church at Ephesus, which we looked at last week, was to recover the love they once had for God and for people.

For them to conquer was to be faithful in the mission to make disciples of Jesus out of love for Him.

For the Smyrnans to conquer was for them to stop being afraid of what might happen and remain quietly faithful when they were inevitably led to their earthly death in the name of Jesus.

Because, if the song was written in their day, they could sing the truth just as we did this morning, “One with Himself, I cannot die.

My soul is purchased by His blood.”

That is the foundation upon which our faith rests, the finished work of Jesus who made atonement for our sin before the Father, robbed the Grave of its victory, and conquered Death for us by laying down His life, by dying.

It ought not surprise us, then, that our Lord calls us to go in His way — to remain faithful to the point of death.

If Jesus conquered through suffering and death, then so shall we.

Now, lets look at the two commands that Jesus gives the church and then move into some specific application that I feel compelled to give.

First, he tells them not to be afraid of the suffering that is coming.

A Healthy, Vital Church Puts Away Fear of Persecution

Jesus tells this church in verse 9 that he knows what their going through.

He sees their affliction (by the way, that word can also be translated tribulation, anticipating the tribulation that John would speak of in Revelation 7, Jesus says I know you are going through that great tribulation and I see it and I’m here).

He sees their poverty — in the midst of an affluent city, it’s likely that these faithful Christians had a hard time engaging in the marketplace trade because they refused to be branded as those who worshipped the emperor.

They wore the mark of Christ only, not the mark of the Empire.

But in that affliction and in that poverty, they were really rich because they had the eternal life purchased by Jesus.

Earthly goods were inconsequential compared the to treasures that were laid up for them in the life to come.

And Jesus sees the slander toward them.

At this point, Christianity was still understood as a sect of Judaism (which is not entirely wrong.

Christianity is the perfect end of the Jewish faith).

But to distinguish themselves, it seems that many traditional Jews were speaking falsely about Christians and denouncing them in the public square.

Jesus saw that.

And He says to them, it’s about to get worse, but I don’t want you to be afraid.

Some of you are about to get thrown in prison, but I don’t want you to be afraid.

Nothing happens outside of my sovereign rule as the First and the Last.

You are about to experience affliction for 10 days (that’s symbolic of just kind of a short period of time.

Apocalyptic literature often uses time in a symbolic sense — 10 days, weeks, the millennium — all symbolic for various lengths of time).

And Jesus is letting them know that for some duration in the near future, there will be affliction or distress or tribulation, but there was no reason to fear.

There was no reason to fear the suffering or the anticipation of suffering, because He is sovereign over all things, including tribulation.

If we want to be a healthy and vital church, if we want to be healthy and vital individual disciples, we have to put off the fear.