Turning Point - David Jeremiah

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
From precious oils to priceless diamonds. Extreme pressure often produces
exquisite results. The same can be said about the pressure
of persecution.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Today.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
On turning point, doctor David Jeremiah looks at the legacy
of the persecuted church addressed in Revelation, a church about
which Jesus had only positive things to say, to introduce
today's message, the Suffering Church Smyrna.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Here's David.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
Throughout history, if you have read it at all, you
know that the Church of Jesus Christ has often been
persecuted here in this country. Over these last years, we
have begun to fill the edges of that. Here I
can tell you some stories even about our own church,
where we have been pushed into a corner that we
didn't want to be pushed into because of our commitment

(00:54):
to the gospel. So let me ask you to do this.
Listen carefully to these next two days of teaching. We're
talking about the suffering Church, the Church of Smyrna, Revelation
chapter two, verses eight through eleven, and don't forget. During
this month we're making available the whole series in a book.

(01:15):
It's called Escape the Coming Night. It's a two hundred
and ninety page a book that gives you a contemporary
commentary on the whole Book of Revelation. It's our gift
to you during this month if you invest with us
at any level. So whatever gift you send, just please
ask for the book and it will be sent to you.
Is our way of saying thank you for being a

(01:36):
part of the ministry of turning point around the world.
And now here's part one of the Suffering Church Smyrna.

Speaker 4 (01:47):
As you become familiar with the message from the Lord
Jesus Christ to the church at Smyrna, you will see
our Lord's own formula, its very own formula for encouraging
those who were going through suffering. It is literally a
personal letter written from Jesus Christ to a church that

(02:11):
was going through terrible tribulation and poverty and persecution and suffering.
And so you asked the question, what would the Lord
say to such a church, how would he.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Communicate to them?

Speaker 4 (02:23):
And that you don't have to wonder anymore, because before
we're finished, you will know exactly what the Lord said
and what we ought to say and how we ought
to respond. Now, the second church to receive a letter
from the postman of Patmos was the Church of Smyrna.
It was a little church situated some thirty five miles

(02:44):
north of Ephesus, founded years earlier as a great colony
on the summit of a huge hill called the Hill
of Pegas. It was founded originally in one thousand BC,
and it was captured as and destroyed by host forces
in approximately six hundred BC. It was rebuilt by General Lasimachus,

(03:07):
one of the four generals of Alexander the Great. It
was rebuilt between three oh one and two to eighty
one BC. It was a matter of pride with the
inhabitants of Smyrna that the city there had died, but
it was alive again. Smyrna was the proudest and the

(03:27):
most beautiful city of Asia, and it was considered by
historians the most beautiful city that the Greeks ever built.
The city sloped down to the sea with its splendid
buildings up on top of a rounded hill, the hill Pagus,
and it constituted what was known to the people in

(03:50):
Smyrna as the Crown of Smyrna. For as you approached
the city from the sea, with the buildings the way
they were at the top of the mountain. It looked
like a crown. Along the slopes of the hill. Coming
down from the top of the mountain was a huge amphitheater,
one of the largest Greek amphitheaters ever built, that would
set around twenty thousand people at one time. The coins

(04:12):
that are still around from Smyrna that have been found
and discovered tell us that it was a city of
great pride, for on the coin was written the first
city of Asia, sort of like San Diego, America's finest city.
In those days, Smyrna was the first city in Asia,
the finest city in Asia. Some people called Smyrna the

(04:34):
Glory of Asia. It was here that Caesar worship was
centered for all of the eastern part of the Roman Empire.
And beside all of this, Smyrna also boasted that it
was the birthplace of Homer, the great Greek poet. The
city is still alive today, one of the few cities,

(04:55):
and it's in Turkey. If you travel to Turkey, you
will go to a city called Ismar. That is where
Smyrna was in the days of John. You will notice
in the letter that he wrote to them as the
first and the last. It was a real confrontation with
their native pride. To these people, the first and the
last were the glories of Smyrna and the culture and

(05:17):
beauty of the city. The city Smyrna got its name
from its chief product. It was an export an aromatic
extract from a thorny tree, which was a kind of
a spice used by the ancient people and embalming their dead.

(05:39):
The word smyrna actually occurs three times in the New
Testament in connection with Jesus Christ. And I'm going to
read to you how that works, and I'm going to
change the word a little bit, and you'll understand.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
What the word means.

Speaker 4 (05:53):
At the birth of Jesus, when the wise men came
from the East and opened their treasures, they present to
Jesus gold and frankincense and smyrna. At the crucifixion of Jesus,
those who stood by offered our Lord wine mixed with
smyrna to help deaden the pain of his suffering. Mark

(06:17):
fifteen twenty three. At the burial of Jesus, Nicodemus came
with Joseph of Arimathea, and the two men took the
body of the Lord down off the cross and wrapped
his body with linen, and in the folds of the
linen they placed one hundred pound weight of alos and
Smyrna John nineteen thirty nine. Smyrna, you see, is just

(06:41):
another way of saying the word mrr. And it got
its name from the chief export of the city, which
was murr. They made murr in Smyrna and exported it
all over the world, and it was used in embombing,
and it was used as a kind of an anesthetic
to deadened pain. It was a very popular commodity in day,
and it made all the people who were in the

(07:02):
business insmurt are very wealthy. Isaiah, the Prophet, has an
interesting omission. I want you to turn to chapter sixty
of Isaiah and verse six, and in the sixth verse
of the sixtieth chapter, there is an interesting statement about
the future ministry of Christ. Look down in the middle

(07:22):
of the verse and it says, all they from Sheba
shall come and shall bring gold and incense, and they
shall show forth the praises of the Lord. That's concerning
the future coming of Christ. Notice in his second coming,
two of the commodities that were there at his birth,
at his crucifixion, that were associated with his birth. When
the wise men came, two of those commodities are still there.

(07:44):
Notice what it says, he shall be associated with gold
and incense, But murr is missing. For you see, murr
is associated with the suffering and the death of Christ.
It was given to Christ on the cross to dead
andess pain. It was put in the robes when he
was buried as a part of his burial. But when
Jesus comes again the next time, it's gold and incense.

(08:07):
There won't be any mrr because he's not coming to suffer.
When he comes again, He's coming to reign. And Isaiah
makes that little omission.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
There.

Speaker 4 (08:15):
Isn't it interesting that every john and tittle of the
Word of God is inspired, Even the omissions are inspired.
So murr, the chief export of the city of Smyrna,
is the commodity that made it a great city. Now,
in the city of Smyrna there was a church, and
the letter that John writes is written not to the

(08:37):
city of Smyrna, but to the church in Smyrna. Nobody
knows for sure when the church was started there's anything
about it in the New Testament. It is probably covered
under the statement in the Book of Acts that talks
about Paul's ministry in Ephesus for three years, where it
says in Acts chapter nineteen that everybody in all of
Asia heard the word of God from the extended minute

(09:00):
history of Paul while he was in Ephesus. By the way,
the word Smyrna perfectly describes the church that was present
in the Roman culture. The Christians in this city were persecuted,
and as one writer I read said, they were lying
embalmed in the precious spices of their own suffering. Even

(09:20):
the process of manufacturing MRR illustrates what was going on
in the church there, For MRR was only manufactured as
it was crushed. They would take the herb in which
the extract was located, that little thorny tree, and they
would crush that herb until the extract came out of it.
And in the city of Smyrna, the believers were like that.

(09:42):
They were crushed in the city until the perfume of
their suffering filled.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
The city itself.

Speaker 4 (09:49):
You will notice as you read the little letter, which
is the shortest letter written of the seven that in
this letter there is no condemnation of the church at all.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
There's not one negative word said to this church.

Speaker 4 (10:00):
Philadelphia is the only other church in which there is
no condemnation. All of the things that are said to
this little church in Smyrna are positive and encouraging and
strengthening things. Now, before we go on, we need to
ask ourselves a very important question. If we're to understand
what's going on with this letter, why, above all the

(10:21):
other churches to which John was writing in behalf of
the Lord Jesus Christ, why was Smyrna suffering. The suffering
of the Christians in Smyrna is described for us in
three words, and I'm going to cover them quickly, But
you look down in your Bible. I know thy works,
the tribulation and poverty, and blaspheme of them.

Speaker 2 (10:40):
Watch first tribulation.

Speaker 4 (10:43):
The word tribulation here is the Greek word flips us,
and it really means pressure. In the letter to the Church,
Jesus says, I know your tribulation, I know your pressure.
It literally means the kind of pressure that comes upon
a person if a rock is put upon his chest
and that rock is allowed to press down on tim
until little by little he is ultimately suffocated from life.

(11:08):
It is like the grinding of a millstone until wheat
is ground into flour. It is like the pressure that
squeezes wine out of the grapes. The Christians were under
constant pressure from the pagan society around them. There was
never a moment of relief. There was never a day off.
It was constant, uninterrupted pressure to be a Caesar worshiper.

(11:29):
And if they wouldn't, they never let up on them.
Everywhere they went, every place they visited, there was always
this pressure to conform, to conform, and they lived in
that pressure every day of their lives.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
Some of us think we live under pressure. We don't
know what pressure means.

Speaker 4 (11:46):
Our pressure is oftentimes their self induced by our temptation
to take on more than we should or do things
maybe that aren't in the will of God. But in
that particular time, their pressure came because of their stand
for Christ, and they never got away from it. Notice
the second word I know by tribulation and thy poverty.
There are two key words for poverty in the New

(12:06):
Testament language. I'm not trying to get academic or in
lecture with you, but understand this.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
You need to know these two words.

Speaker 4 (12:13):
The one Greek word is the word panaea, and it
shouldn't be hard to figure out that we get our
word penny from that word. That word in John's day
referred to a man who had to work for a
living and just got by.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
Most of us would qualify under that word.

Speaker 4 (12:30):
That man in John's day was considered to be a
poor man forced to work hard just in order to survive.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
Panaea.

Speaker 4 (12:38):
The second word is the word you would spell like
this if you were to put it down in writing.
It's p t cch e I a tokia and it's
a word that means absolute poverty abjac beggarly, destitute, poverty.
It is the word that was reserved to describe someone
who was absolutely utterly without any means whatsoever. It describes

(13:03):
a man who is unable to put food on his
table for his family. And in the midst of the
wealth of the ancient city of Smyrna, where businessmen thrived
on the export business, the believers were tokiya. They were
absolutely poverty stricken. They had nothing. You see, their poverty

(13:25):
was due to their faith in Christ. Not only were
they mobbed and looted and robbed by the citizenry who
didn't like the fact that they wouldn't bow down to
their caesar. But they were boycotted from the business place.
The trade unions wouldn't let them come and do business
because they weren't Roman citizens in good standing. They were

(13:46):
kept by businesses from being advanced in their ability to
make a living. And they were shut down because they
considered that these Christians were disloyal to the emperor, and
thus they were disloyal to the empire. And the only
way I could deal with them is to starve them out.
Let me tell you something I don't know. If you've
ever been under pressure, there's a kind of heroic excitement

(14:09):
that comes when you're under persecution. You ever been under
attack by the enemy, when that attack is accompanied by
daily financial and family burdens, and you don't know how
you're going to feed your family, or what you're going
to do to clothe your children, or how you're going
to care for the putting a roof over their head.
You got all the pressure, and now you've got poverty too.

(14:32):
It's a load almost too heavy to bear. And that's
the way it was in Smyrna for the believers, pressure
and poverty.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
Notice the third word, and.

Speaker 4 (14:45):
It says, I know thy works and thy tribulation, thy poverty,
and I know the blasphemy of them which say they
are Jews and are not, but are the Synagogue of Satan. Now,
the word blasphemy there maybe should be better translated by
the word sl It literally has to do with persecution.
The word blasphemy is translated by our word slander, and

(15:07):
it refers in the text to a group of Jews
who had been drawn to Smyrna because of the business
opportunities generated by the merv business. And these were probably
Jewish converts who did not want to leave the synagogue
or the Jewish traditions, and they tried to marry the
works of Judaism with the grace of Christianity. Remember when

(15:30):
we studied the Letter to Ephesus, there were men in
Ephesus who said they were apostles and were not well.
Smyrna had a group of people who said they were
Jews and were not. Here are two churches we've met already,
and we've got little cult impostor groups in both churches.
Doctor Morse's commentary the Revelation record got a very interesting

(15:51):
statement about these two churches. This is what he says,
as one group of false teachers in Ephesus wanted to
continue the apostleship, so the other in Smyrna wanted to
continue the priesthood. And eventually the two got together in
a vast worldly system with an imaginary apostolic succession and
an elaborate visible priesthood, both having conquered the laity and

(16:14):
placed them again in a legalistic bondage under a complex
system of ritualistic ordinances, sacrifices, and penances. This system was
experienced its embryonic development among the cliques in the churches
in Smyrna, where the heavy pressure of a large colony
of ethnic Jews was encouraging such compromise.

Speaker 2 (16:34):
Do you see what he's saying now here? Our Lord
is writing a letter to this church. Do you have
a picture now of what they were going through?

Speaker 4 (16:43):
They were really under the load poverty, daily pressure, and
all kinds of persecution from the false cult to this
congregation that was torn apart by pressure and poverty and persecution.
Jesus Christ writes this letter and it is filled with

(17:04):
just the very counsel. They needed to keep their faith
alive when it would have been easy to let it
die out. The letter's written to us too. You know that,
don't you. Anybody here got any problems, anybody here got
any pressure, anybody here been through any persecution, anybody got
any financial problems. Hear these poor Christians going through terrible suffering,

(17:30):
and Jesus says, be fearless and be faithful. Let me
tell you why. Number one, the reputation of Christ is
better than the reputation of Rome.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
Watch this now, how did Jesus address the church?

Speaker 4 (17:49):
He said these things, say if the first and the last,
which was dead and is alive. The title was chosen
by the Lord from the vision of chapter and it
was meant to disarm fear, even as it was clearly
marked out to do back in the first chapter when
it was written. Smyrna was a perfect church to be

(18:11):
so addressed. In her suffering and persecution, she needed to
be encouraged by the one whose name transcends all of
the limitations of space and time. Christ was the first
in the dawn of creation, and he will be the
last at the end of creation. And this claim to
eternity is based on the resurrection of Christ from the dead.

(18:32):
The eyes of the church that was suffering were to
be fixed on the mighty fact of the resurrection of
Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
What are you saying in this? Is this?

Speaker 4 (18:42):
Through all of the trial you shall ever have. I
am the beginning and the end of it, and I
shall be there all the way through it. I am
the first and the last. I have been dead, and
I am alive. And when the Christians in that little
group in that church heard these words, came to their mind,
and my estimation is this. The citizens of Smyrna, who

(19:05):
fought against the believers and slandered them with false accusation
and scorn, stood in proud opposition to these humble believers.
After all, their city was the first in all of Asia,
and the culture was the last word. Were they not
the city that had died and come alive again? How

(19:26):
proud they were, and the more to be despised were
these peasant believers in Jesus said to them, fear not
and be faithful. You need to be courageous because you
are citizens of another country, and the country where your
citizenship is presided over by a king, an eternal God.

(19:48):
Who has been dead and come alive. He was their
resurrected savior, and they were to take heart.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
You see what he's doing.

Speaker 4 (19:57):
Jesus is giving this little band of suffering believers something
grab onto, in contrast to what everything around them is saying.
The reputation of Christ was more important than the reputation
of Rome. Notice number two, the recognition of Christ was
better than the recognition of Rome. There's just one little

(20:17):
phrase in this passage of scripture that has brought me
to tears more than I'd like to say. As I
have read it, we passed over it, but I want
to go back to it. Unto the Angel of the
Church of Smyrner right, these things saith the first and
the last, which was dead and is alive.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
I know, I know.

Speaker 4 (20:40):
Does anybody understand what I'm going through? Does anybody care
what's happening to me? Do you ever say that, here's
the Lord Jesus saying to the suffering believers, my dear
brothers and sisters. I know in the original text, in
many of the best manuscripts, the words thy works are
not there. They're in some of the manuscripts, but they're not.

(21:02):
And so if that's true. If that's the way it
should be read, then what Jesus said is this, I
know thy tribulation and thy poverty. I know the blasphemy
of them which are Jews and are not but are
of a synagogue of Satan.

Speaker 2 (21:18):
What Jesus is saying is I understand what you're going through.

Speaker 4 (21:24):
And the word for no is not the word that
means just to know about it or to be aware
of it. It's the little word ouida, which means to
know by virtue of having experienced it. What Jesus is
saying is is they're suffering with poverty and persecution and
all of the things that are pressed down upon them.

Speaker 2 (21:42):
He says, listen, I know, I understand.

Speaker 4 (21:48):
He had been there, you see, before them. Just as
John was their companion and brother in suffering and intribulation,
Jesus was also their companion and brother in suffering and intribulation.
What kind of encouraging words these must have been to
those believers. What a tower of strength to that suffering

(22:10):
church and suffering Christian I know here is the Mighty
God and the suffering Savior, saying, I know he knows
the intensity and the duration of our suffering. And he
allows not a tear too many, and not a blow
too severe. He knows everything that's going on, and he
presides over it personally. And my friend, if you're suffering,

(22:31):
if you're under pressure, if you feel like everything is
going the wrong way in your life, the Lord Jesus
who wrote to the church at Smyrna, knows you. He
knows exactly what you're going through. He knows how much
you can take, and he won't let you have one
minute more.

Speaker 2 (22:47):
Than what he will equip you to deal with. I know,
did he know?

Speaker 4 (22:53):
The one who lived for three years under the daily
sentence of death says, I know you're pressure, your filipses.
I know. The one who had no place to lay
his head and was poor than the foxes and the
birds that he himself had created, said, I know your poverty.
The one who had been hounded, falsely accused, whipped light about,

(23:18):
brutally beaten, and hung on the Roman cross says, I
know your persecution.

Speaker 2 (23:23):
Hebrews four p. Fifteen says this. Don't you love this verse?

Speaker 4 (23:27):
For we have not a high priest which cannot be
touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in
all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. When
you go to Jesus and you tell him your problems,
my friend, you're talking to a brother who understands.

Speaker 3 (23:47):
What an encouraging word to put a period behind. For
this day's program, we're talking about the Churches of Revelation
in this series called Escape the Coming Night, and we're
in the midst of our discussion of the second of
the seven Churches of Revelation, and this is called Smyrna,
the Suffering Church, a church about which Jesus said only

(24:09):
good things. And we'll have the conclusion of this discussion
tomorrow right here on Turning Point. I hope you'll join us.
Wednesday and Thursday we'll talk about the church in Satan City, Pergamus,
and then on Friday we're going to turn our attention
to Easter for one day as we interrupt our series
in the Book of Revelation, just for an Easter message

(24:31):
on Friday. I hope you'll be with us all week,
and don't forget. You can get a copy of Escape
the Coming Night, which is the compatible book to this series.
It's yours for a gift of any size to Turning Point.
Ask for this book when you send your gift today.
Thanks for helping us. We'll see you tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (24:56):
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(25:17):
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(25:40):
Get all the details when you visit our website. David
Jeremiah dot org slash Radio. This is David Michael Jeremiah.
Join us tomorrow as we continue the series Escape the
Coming Night on Turning Point with Doctor David Jeremiah