Revelation 2:8-11

October 13, 2019

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts at 15:40 in the audio file.

Or, Christians Only Have One Life to Suffer

It is possible to learn by watching others who have problems. It is also possible to learn from those who don’t. The church in Ephesus had problems, Jesus called them to repent, and the Spirit calls everyone with an ear to hear and learn. The church in Smyrna had a different sort of problem, a kind that didn’t require repentance. Likewise, the Spirit calls us to learn, and to conquer like Smyrnaeans.

Prior to last week I had never thought about being like a Smyrnaean. I am now.

Of the seven messages to the churches in Revelation 2-3, the message to the church in Smyrna is the shortest. According to history, Smyrna was the smallest of these seven cities. It was the operational base for no apostle; we don’t even know for sure who started the church there. This is the only place in the Bible that Smyrna is mentioned (along with 1:11 where Jesus first named all the cities).

The city itself was 30 or more miles north of Ephesus, another port city like Ephesus on the Aegean Sea. They boasted a large mountain and good trade and claimed to be the home of Homer. Mostly they boasted in worshipping the Roman Emperors. In AD 26 Smyrna won a bidding competition to build a temple to the Emperor Tiberius (Tacitus, Annals, Book IV), and their allegiance to Rome was well known. This would have been an easy place for Christians to compromise in order to keep themselves out of trouble.

But Jesus has no reason to call the church to repent. This doesn’t mean that Christians in Smyrna were sinless, but it does mean that as a community they were shining bright as a lampstand. Of the seven churches, only the Smyrnaean and Philadephian churches received no call to repent.

The Smyrnaeans were not cold souls like the Ephesians. They were not flirting with false teaching and idolatry and sexual immorality like those in Pergamum and Thyratira. They were not dead in good works like those in Sardis, or lukewarm like those in Laodicea. The Smyrnaeans were the kind of Christians that every Christian should want to be like. And yet they would have had a hard time convincing other believers to make Smyrna a destination.

Words after Death (verse 8)

The message to the Smyrnaeans follows the pattern of the other messages, starting with a fitting description of Jesus.

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

I keep thinking about what angels Jesus tells John to write to. While there is something to be said for the idea of seven different messengers taking these messages from the island of Patmos, where John was exiled, back to the cities on the mainland, it introduces more questions than it answers. How did these human messengers coordinate their travel to Patmos, or did they come individually? Did all seven start in Ephesus, but drop off by one until the last and lone messenger made it to Laodicea? I only have a small dogmatic in the fight, but I still think a heavenly rather than a human being fits with the vocabulary and supernatural context of the revelation.

Jesus identifies Himself with another part of the initial vision, this time from 1:18, where He also added that He held the keys of Death and Hades. The first and the last picks up Old Testament descriptions for Yahweh, the LORD, that describe His ever-existence and omni-control (such as Isaiah 44:6). As the first He is the grounds for what happens, as the last (ὁ ἔσχατος) He is the goal for what happens. As first, nothing was before Him. As last, nothing is beyond Him.

What is especially fitting to the Smyrnaean Christians is that Jesus, as the first and the last, is also the one who died and came to life. This is a historical truth, but here it is a glorious title. The good news includes the details, and they[...]