Lent message: The Letter to the Church at Smyrna, No Rebuke, only Encouragement (2:8–11)

Prepared and preached by Pastor Steve Rhodes for and at Bethel Friends Church in Poland, OH on Sunday, March 16, 2025

Psalm 23 is probably the most memorable and memorized:

Let’s say it together:

Psalm 23:title–6 (ESV)

23 A Psalm of David.

¹    The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

²       He makes me lie down in green pastures.

     He leads me beside still waters.

³       He restores my soul.

     He leads me in paths of righteousness

for his name’s sake.

⁴    Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil,

     for you are with me;

your rod and your staff,

they comfort me.

⁵    You prepare a table before me

in the presence of my enemies;

     you anoint my head with oil;

my cup overflows.

⁶    Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me

all the days of my life,

     and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord

forever.

I invited all of us to read it together because those words must have been so crucial to the church in Smyrna.

Today’s Theme:

In pulling back the veil, Jesus encourages the church in Smyrna. Jesus tells them they will have trouble but receive a crown of life.  

Let’s read

Revelation 2:8–11 (ESV)

To the Church in Smyrna

⁸ “And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write: ‘The words of the first and the last, who died and came to life.

⁹ “ ‘I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are rich) and the slander of those who say that they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. ¹⁰ Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life. ¹¹ He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death.’

1. Come! Take Your Crown. That is the main point.
   1. As we look at these verses, we see a Goal—A Crown of Life Won by Jesus Awaits Us.
   2. I believe that is to be encouraging. Who here does not want to receive a Crown?
   3. Don’t you want to receive a crown from King Jesus?
   4. Do we want to hear Jesus say, “Well done, my good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:21 and 23).
   5. I once heard of a son who may not have said it, but he wanted his father to be proud of him. No matter what, he wanted his father to be proud of him. His father always expressed his pride in his other son, but not the younger one.
   6. Isn’t it encouraging that we can receive a Crown from King Jesus. However, receiving this crown may not be easy. I dare say that it isn’t easy.
   7. Let’s pause a moment. Is this Christian life easy?
   8. Is the Christian life supposed to be easy?
   9. 2 Timothy 3:12: In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted…
   10. The Christian life is not the easiest life. We will face hardships.
   11. So, let’s look at what Jesus says regarding this.
2. Persecution: many frightening things stand between us and the Crown of Life.
   1. This is what Jesus says. There will be difficult times. However, we are to stand firm. We are to stay the course. We are to persevere.
   2. This instruction is first and foremost to the church at Smyrna, but I believe it is also to us. I think these letters represent all the churches as well as specific churches. Let’s consider Smyrna.
   3. Smyrna was a beautiful and important seaport boasting a population of about 200,000, quite large for its time. It was a center for science and medicine, and the birthplace of the noted author Homer. It was also a regional center for emperor worship in the first century, whose citizens were expected to burn incense to Zeus once a year.[1]
   4. Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, was born in A.D. 69 and could have known the Apostle John whose writing he quotes. A defender of orthodoxy, Polycarp was martyred about A.D. 155 because he refused to deny his faith in Christ.
   5. Marcion will later deny that the God who created the world is the Lord, Jesus Christ. He will claim that there is nothing to God but love, then an evil, false god was responsible for the suffering and death of Jesus. Valentinus will convince many that everything physical is evil, that the spiritual world alone is good, that heaven is made up of “aeons”— angel-like, almost divine beings, one of which fell into sin and created the world. To Valentinus, even Christ is an aeon that adopted a human body.
   6. Many will consider this nonsense to be wisdom, but Polycarp will know better. He will defend the truth of the Trinity, the truth of the Divine and human natures of Christ, the truth of Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection for sinners.
   7. The year was A.D. 155, and the persecution against Christians swept across the Roman Empire and came to the city of Smyrna. The proconsul of Symrna, swept up in this persecution, put out an order that the Bishop of Symrna, Polycarp, was to be found, arrested, and brought to the public arena for execution. They found Polycarp and brought him before thousands of spectators screaming for blood. But the proconsul had compassion on this man who was almost a hundred years old. He signaled the crowd to silence. To Polycarp he said, “Curse the Christ and live.”
   8. The crowd waited for the old man to answer. In an amazingly strong voice, he said, “Eighty and six years have I served him, and he has done me no wrong. How dare I blaspheme the name of my king and Lord!” With that Polycarp became a martyr.[2]
   9. So, Jesus calls these people a “Synagogue of Satan.” That is strong. What does that mean? Citizens of fallen Babylon worship the beast.
   10. A Synagogue of Satan may mean that they are aligning themselves with the Roman culture.
   11. Consider Paul’s ministry. He would go to the synagogue first and declare Jesus the Messiah. Sometimes he would be there one week or three weeks or months. He eventually gets kicked out and goes to the Gentiles and evangelizes Gentiles.
   12. In the Roman world, the Jews were a legal religion.
   13. In 48 B.C. Julius Caesar passed a law prohibiting all new religions except those of ancient standing. From 125 B.C. until that time (48 B.C.) Rome had been in civil war and the new religions were the hot beds of the war. So, he got rid of all new religions. Judaism predates the Roman Empire. Romans could trace their history to about 700 B.C., but Jews could trace themselves back to the second millennium. There were many court cases where Gentiles would drag Jews into court saying that they were illegal, but every time the Jews won as an ancient religion. They were allowed to govern themselves from their Torah. They could not be drafted into the army. They had to be able to have stalls to buy their food at the market. There were limits: If the Jews are proselytizing or getting into the Roman government, then Rome put their foot down. In 17 A.D. The Jews were expelled from Rome: The Roman Historians and Josephus say this is because a high-level Roman official becomes a proselyte. Later in Acts, the Jews are expelled from Rome again by Claudius. Historians suggest this was due to a disturbance caused by Christus. In Acts, when Paul and Silas are in Philippi, they are arrested and accused of being Jews and causing a disturbance to the status quo. The worst thing to do in Rome was to disturb the status quo.
   14. Paul would go to the synagogue and then be kicked out.
   15. He then proselytizes Gentiles. To the Romans, this makes it look like the Jews are proselytizing. This puts the Jewish community in threat from Rome. So, in several places in Acts, the Jews align themselves with the political leaders.
   16. In Revelation: The Jewish community aligning themselves with Rome against the Christians makes them a Synagogue of Satan.
   17. This only appears in two places: Smyrna and Philadelphia: the two good churches.
   18. The source of the persecution of these churches is the Jewish actions.
   19. Lastly, regarding this, Jesus says that they will be persecuted 10 days. In their time, 10 was a number of completion much like the number 7. This is from the Jewish pool of imagery. They will be persecuted until the time is complete.
   20. Means: Because Jesus died and lives again, our crown of life awaits us.
   21. If we persevere to the end, stay strong, and overcome, we will receive the crown. Now, if we notice this crown of life means we will not receive the second death.
   22. Let’s go a step further, what is the second death? I notice that John does not tell us what the second death is.
   23. John wants to leave us hanging. This was common in their culture. In literature, they would introduce an idea and let it wait. In Rev. 20:14, we find the second death is the Lake of Fire.
   24. Notice that in persevering, you will receive a crown from Jesus.

• Some applications:
  1. I find it encouraging to know that Jesus knows what we go through.
  2. In verse 9, Jesus tells them that He knows. He knows what they are facing.
  3. Jesus knows when we are facing troubles having to do with our faith.
  4. We are now in a post-Christian society and when we have to stand up for our faith, Jesus knows.
  5. If you need to stand up and have integrity at the workplace and face negative ramifications, have no fear, Jesus knows.
  6. If you lose friends because you are not involved in the behavior of the world, Jesus knows.
  7. If you witness for Christ and you lose friends for that or face ridicule, have no fear, Jesus knows.
  8. If your business is threatened because of your Christian integrity, have no fear.
  9. If you, your family, your morals, are in danger because you stand for life and marriage, have no fear, Jesus knows.
  10. This post-Christian culture has been a surprise to us, but not to King Jesus, He knows.
  11. It is going to be okay.
  12. When we overcome, there will be a crown of life eternal.

Closing:

Psalm 23:4: Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, the Lord is with me.

How can you fear the valley if your Savior has trod its path ahead of you and returns to carry you safely through it.

The American missionary Adoniram Judson arrived in Burma, or Myanmar, in 1812, and died there thirty-eight years later in 1850. During that time, he suffered much for the cause of the gospel. He was imprisoned, tortured, and kept in shackles. After the death of his first wife, Ann, to whom he was devoted, for several months he was so depressed that he sat daily beside her tomb. Three years later, he wrote: God is to me the Great Unknown. I believe in him, but I cannot find him.

But Adoniram’s faith sustained him, and he threw himself into the tasks to which he believed God had called him. He worked feverishly on his translation of the Bible. The New Testament had now been printed, and he finished the Old Testament in early 1834.

Statistics are unclear, but there were only somewhere between twelve and twenty-five professing Christians in the country when he died, and there were not churches to speak of.

At the 150th anniversary of the translation of the Bible into the Burmese language, Paul Borthwick was addressing a group that was celebrating Judson’s work. Just before he got up to speak, he noticed in small print on the first page the words: “Translated by Rev. A. Judson.” So Borthwick turned to his interpreter, a Burmese man named Matthew Hia Win, and asked him, “Matthew, what do you know of this man?” Matthew began to weep as he said,

We know him—we know how he loved the Burmese people, how he suffered for the gospel because of us, out of love for us. He died a pauper, but left the Bible for us. When he died, there were few believers, but today there are over 600,000 of us, and every single one of us traces our spiritual heritage to one man: the Rev. Adoniram Judson.

But Adoniram Judson never saw it!

And that will be the case for some of us. We may be called to invest our lives in ministries for which we do not see much immediate fruit, trusting that the God of all grace who oversees our work will ensure that our labor is not in vain.[3]

Do you know Jesus?

God created us to be with him. (Genesis 1-2)

Our sin separated us from God. (Genesis 3)

Sins cannot be removed by good deeds (Gen 4-Mal 4)

Paying the price for sin, Jesus died and rose again. (Matthew – Luke)

Everyone who trusts in him alone has eternal life. (John – Jude)

Life that’s eternal means we will be with Jesus forever. (Revelation 22:5)

Pray

[1]   (2014-03-15). The Moody Bible Commentary (Kindle Locations 82566-82570). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

[2] Leith Anderson, “Can Jesus Trust Us?” Preaching Today, Tape No. 126.

[3] Adapted from Julia Cameron, editor, Christ Our Reconciler (InterVarsity Press, 2012), pp. 200-201