Smyrna | The 7 Churches of Revelation

On this Day of Discovery, author and Cornerstone University President Joe Stoll explores a land rich in Biblical history, modern Turkey, and the city of Izmir. Here lie the excavations from the ancient city of Smyrna. In the first century, Smyrna was a thriving port city of the Roman Empire. And in this community, a group of Jesus followers came together as a church. One of seven churches addressed in the beginning of the Book of Revelation, written by the Apostle John, once the young disciple of Jesus Christ. Revelation is a book that for many speaks of a terrible future for the world and mankind, culminating with judgment and God's wrath being poured out on the earth. But this final revelation of Jesus Christ unveils far more than a final world war and cosmic destruction. It also reveals a yet future time of restoration and peace, a time when suffering and tears will cease. The book begins by revealing the heart of the resurrected Jesus for those he's left behind, with seven personal letters to seven first century churches that stood in contrast to their culture, located within the borders of what we know today as modern Turkey. The second letter is to the church of Smyrna. Journey to the seven churches of Revelation, the letter to Smyrna on this day of discovery. What you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia, to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea. Then I turned to see the voice that spoke, and having turned, I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the seven lampstands, one like the Son of Man. And to the angel of the church in Smyrna, write, these things says the first and the last who was dead and came to life. I know your works, tribulation and poverty, but you are rich. I know the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. Do not fear any of those things which you are about to suffer. Indeed, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and you will have tribulation ten days. Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death. We're standing amongst the ruins of ancient Smyrna, which as you can see is tucked right into the middle of the thriving Turkish city of Izmir. But Smyrna in its day was a thriving city as well. In fact, Smyrna was known as one of the finest seaports in the world. If you were to take a straight line west from Smyrna, it was the closest seaport to Europe. In fact, you'd end up right in Athens, the gateway to the rest of Europe. So Smyrna was an important city in its day. Smyrna was known for its beauty and its architecture and its gorgeous flowers in this almost tropical climate. But Smyrna was known for something else. Its citizens took pride in its history. In 600 BC, the Lydian King Attalus conquered Smyrna and actually devastated it, left it as a humble, tiny village. Then when Alexander the Great came through here, in a dream he had a vision to rebuild Smyrna and rebuilt it into one of the most spectacular cities of its day. So the folklore and all of its literature was filled with references to death and resurrection. That we are the city who once was dead and have now come to life. And it's that theme that Jesus Christ picks up on when he writes his letter to early Christians suffering in this city. This claim to fame that Smyrna was that city that once was dead but has been resurrected now to a far better life was underscored by their major commodity. Smyrna held the exclusive rights to the import and export of the valued fragrant spice called myrrh. Actually hence their name, Smyrna. Myrrh was not only valued for its fragrance but it was valued for its use in burial procedures. In fact, they sold just countless amounts of myrrh to Egypt when the embalming process was to preserve the body for its right to the afterlife and myrrh was a very key ingredient. I wonder if when the wise men came to celebrate the birth of Christ that the frankincense and myrrh that they brought, I wonder if that came from Smyrna. And I think too of the death of Christ where they wrapped him and anointed him with myrrh. That probably came from Smyrna as well. So no wonder Jesus camps on this theme that early Christians who just may face death for him would be resurrected to a far better life. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that Jesus opens his letter by saying, I am the first and the last, the one who has died and risen again. Then he says to them, I know your tribulation. Interesting how all of the letters begin with that phrase, I know. In Revelation chapter 1 in John's vision, Christ is seen as walking amongst the lampstands saying that he is present with the churches. But he's not just present, he's intensely aware of what they're dealing with. And he says, I know what tribulation you're under. The word tribulation there is the word for an ancient torture where they would take the victim and lie him on his back and then put weights on his chest, one upon another upon another until those weights began to crush and make it so he couldn't breathe anymore. What a vivid picture. Jesus recognizes three weights on the chest of this church. Number one, their poverty. Number two, their slandered as a subculture by the Jews in this town. Number three, he predicts that they will face imprisonment and even death. It's kind of a foreboding warning, I would say. But at the end of the letter, he encourages them to persevere. Let's think about that challenge, that weight of their poverty. Taking a stand for Jesus Christ in the Roman Empire, and particularly here in Smyrna, often meant being cast into an impoverished state. You may lose your job. You'd certainly be kicked out of the trade unions because you wouldn't worship the gods of the trade unions. You're such a despised minority that even if you set up a little kiosk somewhere to sell your wares, who'd want to buy from Christians? So Jesus says to the believers in Smyrna, I know your tribulation and your poverty. Then he does something interesting, parentheses. He says, but you are rich. Fascinating. It's all in the definitions, isn't it? We think being truly rich is to have a big stack of stuff and a huge bank account. God says, that's not true riches. And he says that in their poverty, they're rich. It reminds me of my all-time favorite story about Jesus Christ in Luke chapter 12, when he's walking through the crowd and there's a man in the crowd who catches the eyes of Christ and what a privilege. Now Jesus, this magnate rabbi, looks at him and he gets to talk to him. And he says to Jesus, Master, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. You know, I'm thinking like if you get one shot at Jesus, that's probably not a good thing to say. I think if I had one shot at him, I'd want to say something so profound that he would say, hmm, I never thought of that. Let's have dinner and talk it over. But Jesus responded to the man in the crowd by making an amazing statement. He said, take heed and beware of greed, for a man's life consists not in the abundance of the things that he possesses. Think that through. So counterculture, that our lives do not consist of earthly riches. Then he told the story of a rich fool who had so much that he had to tear down his barns and build bigger barns, threw a party for himself, and God showed up and said, this night thy soul shall be required of you. And he wasn't a fool because he had a lot of stuff. Jesus said he was a fool because he was not rich toward God. I think the believers in Smyrna were rich toward God, though they were in poverty. Of course, being impoverished, because one doesn't deny the name of Jesus Christ, was not limited just to the believers at Smyrna. In fact, throughout all of history, that's often been the case. In our own lifetime, believers in Russia were marginalized and impoverished as a church. I remember being in Russia with a friend of mine who was a pastor of a little local assembly, and he said to me one day, hey, let's go visit my mom. So we climbed in the van and we drove about an hour and drove off the main highway down a smaller road, then onto a dirt road, and a couple miles back that dirt road was this little shantytown, little huts almost. He pulled up in front of one of them, and his mom, who is a widow, came running out to see us, and her babushka, reddened face, smiling and rejoicing. I thought it was to see my friend Victor, but as we walked into her little house that only had two rooms, I walked by the garden that she had planted and noticed she had a pig in the stye over there, and I said, oh, your mom's got a pig, and he said, yep, she raises that in the summer and eats it in the winter. This woman had nothing. We went in and sat down around the little primitive table, and she served us some vegetables, and she was just beaming, and all she could talk about wasn't Victor, about Jesus and about how much she loved him and how much he meant to her and how she couldn't wait to get to heaven, to be with him forever, and I kind of felt so convicted. You know, here, like most of us, I have a lot. You know, affluences just filled up my cup, and here this woman had nothing, but I thought she's got everything, and I thought all she had was Jesus, and that made her truly rich. It was like the believers in Smyrna. All they had was Jesus, but that made them truly rich, and then I thought, I have so much that there are times I wonder if I need Jesus, and that makes me truly poor. So when Jesus said to the believers in Smyrna, you are poor, but you are rich, what a wonderful statement and what a wonderful lesson for us to learn. Underneath the plateau of the excavations here in the city of Smyrna are these caverns and arches and rooms, which are all a part of the ongoing excavation of this ancient city. In fact, you may hear some clanging and banging in the background as the work proceeds. But being down here reminds me of the second weight of tribulation that was placed on the early church in this ancient city. As Jesus said, I know not just your poverty, but that you are slandered by the Jews of the synagogue of Satan. This made life very tough for the early Christians, this slander. It gives whole new meaning to that, sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me, because these names really hurt the early Christians. The Jews wanted to be distanced from the church. The Jews, interestingly enough, had a cover with the Roman Empire. They had an exemption from claiming that Caesar was Lord, since their one God was the God of Israel. These early Christians threatened that exemption because they were trouble for Rome. So they wanted to kick the Christians out of the synagogue, and in so doing they slandered their name. So the slander was that these Christians had orgies in their gatherings. They said that at these love feasts, they ate the body of Christ and drank his blood in communion. So the slander was that these early Christians were cannibalistic in their feasts. They called each other brother and sister. So the slander was that they were anti-family. In the structure of Rome, the family was very important, that these were people who did not care about their families, just about each other. It was those kinds of things that caused additional pressure, that marginalized the Christians, that alienated them, that made them a despised subculture. So Jesus says, I'm well aware of your tribulation and the great weight of the slander that is thrown against you. So Jesus writes to these suffering followers of him at Smyrna, that he knows the weights of their tribulation, that he knows the weight of their poverty, the weight of the slander hurled against them. Then he announces that there is a third weight yet to come, tells them that their faith will be tested because they will be thrown into prison, and some of them would die for his namesake. It wasn't good news. There were no executive prisons or nice places where they locked up Christians. To be imprisoned probably meant that you would be thrown into a rat-infested dungeon full of human excrement, very little light, and certainly not much food. And to die, well, you'd be thrown to the wild beasts in a public arena while the crowds cheered, or you'd be burned at the stake, or some other horrific way to die. Sure enough, that's exactly what happened to these believers. In fact, some of the famous martyrs of the church were martyred here in Smyrna. The most famous of them was Polycarp, the bishop of the second century church. Polycarp lived long and distributed scriptures. He guarded the church against heresy. He's one of our most famous heroes. He had a dream one night in his older age of his pillow catching fire, and he told his friends the next day that he thought that was God warning him about being burned at the stake for his faith. And sure enough, the pro-council of this area of the Roman Empire sent guards a few days later to get Polycarp and bring him before the pro-council. Polycarp welcomed them in, and he had his servants prepare a meal for them. He said, just wait, let me feed you. And he said, could I have one hour to pray? And he went apart and prayed for an hour, and in that prayer there was so much energy and passion that the guards heard it, and their hearts became guilty, for why would we extinguish a life in a man like this? But faithful to their duty, they hauled him before the Roman leader. And the Roman leader, looking at this old man himself, wonders, how can I put this man to death? And he pleads with Polycarp to deny his faith, and Polycarp made that famous statement. He said, I have served my master for eighty and six years. How can I now deny his name? So the pro-council, in anger, said, I'm going to throw you to the wild beasts. He said, you can do whatever you want, I will not deny Jesus Christ. So they stacked up the wood and made a stake to burn Polycarp to death. Normally they would nail people to the stake so they wouldn't move. Polycarp said, you don't need to do that. Just tie my hands. I will not move. They lit the fire. Legend has it that a wind came along and literally swept the fire away from Polycarp like a sail full of wind, and he didn't die. So the guard commanded one to go and stab Polycarp, and indeed, they did. He died there for Jesus Christ, just as Christ predicted would happen. But Jesus added a little note in the letter. He said, these tribulations will only last for ten days, which was a metaphor in those days of just a short time. Then he said, after these are over, I have something special for you. See I think life is a lot like a feature length film. We freeze frame it in Smyrna with the poverty and the slander, the imprisonment and the death of these Christians. If that's all you have, you're in total despair, why wouldn't you deny the name of Christ? But there's more. And Jesus Christ is the executive producer. And at the end of the film, there is great reward. And Jesus adds that at the end of the letter. So Jesus is the executive producer of the feature length film. I don't know what we'd call it, maybe like suffering in Smyrna. But in each one of these letters, he gives these Christians a sneak preview of what is to come, of the end of the film, the end game. And to the believers at Smyrna, he says, to those of you who overcome, or to those of you who endure, I will give you a crown of life. That was a very significant statement for people in Smyrna because the crown was the symbol of the city of Smyrna. Probably taken from the fact that up on the Acropolis overlooking the city were their embattlements and it was in a shape of a crown. So the crown was on their coins. Crowns in those days were what people got if they won a victory in the games. Or at great festivities, everybody would wear a garland of a crown. Crown is what emperors wore. These Christians had no crowns. They were never involved in the festivities, they never won the games, certainly they weren't in the emperor's court. The fact that they never wore crowns was a visible symbol of their disenfranchisement with society. But Jesus said, hang in there, and at the end I will give you a crown of life. And they did hang in there. For them it was not game over, for them it was game on, here we come. And I think they must have believed what Paul wrote, Paul himself a martyr, when he said for me to live is Christ, and to die, oh, that will be game. So Jesus told them, overcome, and great is your reward in heaven. You know, I guess it would be easy to look at these letters like these were believers living in a far different world 2,000 years ago. But one thing that strikes me as I study these letters is how relevant they are to us today. Take for instance the church at Ephesus, they stood tall, they did not compromise in the midst of all of that pressure, and they had a great church. The problem was they did all the church things and functioned in church world for all the wrong reasons. It wasn't because they loved Jesus Christ and that this was their opportunity to worship Christ in their work and that the love of Christ motivated them to do this. How easy it is for us to get caught up in that, like I'm a deacon, I'm an elder, I sing in a worship team, I do the drama, I welcome people, I do small groups, it's just my obligation, it's my duty, I'm a Christian, these are the kind of things that I do. Well, if you read the letter to Ephesus, Jesus is not impressed with that. In fact, he says, I'll take the power of your church away if it's just a duty and habit and project, and if your work for me is not an act of worship and a response of love. So we've got to go to school on that. Maybe the reason why so many of our churches seem to be so powerless is because we're doing church for all the wrong reasons, and that could be. Or I think of the church at Smyrna and the pressure that they were under. I think of their impoverishment, for instance. There are people today who decide they are not going to break their commitment to Jesus Christ and to his kind of integrity to keep their job. Because they don't cheat on contracts, because they don't go to the strip clubs with their friends on trips, because they refuse to compromise their commitment to Jesus Christ. Sometimes they're demoted, sometimes they lose their job. It's easy for us to become alienated today for our stand for the cause of Christ in the marketplace, isn't it? It's a lot of pressure. But will you stand? Even think of the slander, interestingly, our world, the Western world, is moving kind of into this neo-paganism, very similar to the world in which these early Christians live, where our claim for Christ, that he is the only way, our stand for life, our stand for human sexuality, has pushed us to the margins, and we're often called names and despised and rejected because of that. Christians at Smyrna took their stand, because they knew great was their reward in heaven. I think even of Christians all over the world today who are imprisoned for Jesus Christ. We've kind of gotten a hall pass on that kind of thing in the West, but there are literally tens of thousands of Christians right now, as you and I are watching this, who are suffering imprisonment for Christ, and many who are paying the price of martyrdom. So this is not old school stuff, this is extremely relevant. It's the same Jesus who lives today, lives in our hearts, lives in our midst, that would write letters exactly like this to us. We'll all have to answer the question personally. Are we willing to stand, knowing that great is our reward in heaven?