Monday, June 24, 2019

Strong Church/Smyrna


Strong Church/Weak Church 12


          Smyrna, to me, is one of the most interesting churches in the Bible. Like Daniel, nothing negative is recorded about it. I am quite sure it had weaknesses, for it was human and everything human is faulty, but none of them are recorded in the few Scripture verses that discuss the church. For this reason, there will be no Weak Church/Smyrna post, only today’s post about its strengths.
The Agora of Smyrna
circa 500 BC
          Smyrna was a substantial city in Turkey along the Aegean Sea. It rivaled Ephesus, which was located about 40 miles away, in trade until the harbor in Ephesus silted over and the rivalry declined. Smyrna was originally founded as a Greek colony, and later passed into Roman hands in the New Testament era. Although it was ravaged during the Middle Ages, it still exists today as the Turkish city of Izmir. It is huge, slightly bigger than Chicago, in fact. To this day, its most famous resident was Homer, the Greek poet. Homer probably wrote the two most famous poems in history, The Iliad and The Odyssey, from a cave along the river in Smyrna about 800 years before Christ.
          Religiously, in the first century it cultivated the typical pagan deities of the day, with some extra-curricular worship of Homer thrown in one the side. Included in this was a very active Dionysian cult. Dionysus, also called Bacchus, was the god of alcohol and sex from whom we derive the term for a wild party, a bacchanalia. (Grasping this informs as well our understanding of the problems of the church at Corinth too.) This god so embraced by Smyrna, supposedly resurrected from the dead, is given special attention in John’s short epistle when John emphasizes Christ’s own real resurrection in Revelation 2.8.
In fact, here is the entire brief scriptural record on the church:

Revelation 2:8–11 (KJV 1900)
8 And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write; These things saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive;
9 I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.
10 Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.
11 He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.

          In these few verses I see two strengths of the church at Smyrna.
Notice, they served the Lord even though they were poor. Their poverty is mentioned specifically, drawing attention to something that so often prevents people from serving God. It bears repeating, there is no negative spiritual mention about this church which rather shoots a hole in the prosperity gospel theology, amongst other things.
Beyond that, spiritually speaking, poverty engenders two very helpful attitudes on the part of the Christian. First, poverty brings us to realize what our true riches are. When Jonah lost everything a man could lose, including light, he saw an unvarnished value in the mercy of God. Money and the material things of this life so often cloud our vision, and when that fog is lifted we see how wonderful are our relationships, how deep our eternal spiritual blessings in Christ.
Corporately, churches need money to operate. Buildings and staff and ministry are expensive. But many a church can and has focused too much on their income stream, valuing people based on what they give, equating blessing with good offerings, pushing giving at the expense of other spiritual graces, or desiring the things money can do more than the things the Holy Spirit can do. Smyrna was blessedly free from such temptations because it was broke.
Secondly, poverty brings us to the place of dependence upon Christ. Without question, the weakest church of the seven discussed in Revelation is the church at Laodicea. Not coincidentally, it was a very wealthy church. Jesus spoke right to the heart of the matter when He said, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God (Mark 19.24). It was the rich young ruler who thought he needed nothing, and people/churches who do not need anything from God exercise little faith in Him.
If your church has millions of dollars coming in, or a healthy amount socked
Izmir, Turkey, present day
The Agora is on the right side of the foreground.
away in a capital improvements fund count it a blessing. But if you have neither of those there is no need to count it a curse. Poverty in a church can be a wonderful blessing.
The second primary strength I see in the church at Smyrna was that they stayed right through persecution. Along with poverty, tribulation is specifically mentioned in Revelation 2.9. This persecution took verbal form in their fellow Jews who denied Jesus was the messiah. I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan. These Christ rejectors may have been Jews ethnically, but any Jew who turns his back on Jesus is in some sense not considered a Jew by God.

Romans 2:28–29
28 For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh:
29 But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.
Romans 9:6
6 Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel:

          This verbal persecution from the Jews toward the church in Smyrna later manifested itself as physical persecution, in trial, prison, and martyrdom. Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life (Revelation 2.10)
          In Robine Lane Foxe’s massive 1986 work on the era, Pagans and Christians, he tells story after story of those days. I will share just one with you. Sitting in the church at Smyrna that day the letter from John was read to them was a 27 year old young man named Polycarp. He listened eagerly to the Apostle’s message for that apostle, John, had personally won him to Christ. John became his mentor, training him for the ministry. In fact, within just a few short years after he first heard Revelation 2 read he became the pastor of the church at Smyrna. I am sure that passage of Holy Writ was exceeding precious to him and to the people there.
          Polycarp became very influential in his generation, the first generation to claim Christianity without anyone alive who had actually met Jesus. Polycarp stood loyally for the authority and authenticity of Scripture, and for apostolic theology. He refused the bishop of Rome when that bishop attempted to assert control over the church at Smyrna, an example in the historical record similar to what I spoke of regarding Ephesus last week.
S. Polycarpus
engraving by Michael Burghers
circa 1685
          As an old man, after having served Christ faithfully and well for decades as the pastor there he was brought before the authorities during a time of persecution. Just as John warned, the Jews were his most vigorous accusers. He was found guilty of being a Christian, and was burned at the stake with faggots of wood contributed by the Jews. And he went willingly, untied. I am sure he was thinking of John and of John’s words to his church written some sixty years before.

Revelation 2:10–11
10 Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.
11 He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.

          At eighty-six years of age, Polycarp, longtime pastor of the church at Smyrna, convert and disciple of the Apostle John, was given one last chance to recant. His reply? “Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He never did me any injury; how then can I blaspheme my Saviour and King?”
          They were made of stern stuff in Smyrna.

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