We'll begin reading at verse
nine and read the remainder of the chapter. Revelation chapter
one, verse nine. I, John, and that's the apostle
John, I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and
kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus, was on
the island of Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony
of Jesus. On the Lord's Day I was in the
Spirit, and I heard behind me a voice like a trumpet which
said, Write on a scroll what you see, and send it to the seven
churches, to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia,
and Laodicea. I turned around to see the voice
that was speaking with me, and when I turned I saw the seven
golden lampstands, and among the lampstands was someone like
a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and
with a golden sash around his chest. His head and hair were
white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like
blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing
in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters.
In his right hand he held seven stars, and out of his mouth came
a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining
in all its brilliance. When I saw him, I fell at his
feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand
on me and said, do not be afraid. I am the first and the last.
I am the living one. I was dead and behold, I'm alive
forever and ever. And I hold the keys of death
and Hades. Write therefore what you have
seen, what is now and what shall take place later. The mystery
of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand and of the seven
golden lampstands is this. The seven stars are the angels
of the seven churches. And the seven lampstands are
the seven churches. All right, let's seek the Lord. Our Father, we give you thanks
for your word. We give you thanks that by your
spirit you inspired men to write what is true. so that here, when
we are so many years removed from the events that are recorded
there, we can still know and understand these things by which
you brought about and are bringing about our salvation. Lord, bless
this worship service. Give us a spirit of worship.
May your Spirit come among us and enliven our spirits, for
Lord, the flesh cannot please God. And we are not here in the
capacity of the flesh. We are here, Lord, in the hope
that our spirits would hear the testimony of your Spirit, that
we are the children of God. Send forth your Spirit, Lord,
crying, Abba, Father. Send it into our hearts that
we may in turn also cry out, Abba, Father. Lord, forgive our
sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We confess that
we are sinners and that apart from the blood of Christ, we
would appear as nothing but sin in your sight and would certainly
receive the deserved punishment for sin. And Lord, even though
we've been washed clean by the blood of Christ, yet our conscience
bears witness in us that indeed we have sinned and that we continue
to do that. And so Lord, we come again and
ask for fresh applications of that gracious work that cleanses
our conscience and purges them from the sense of the need of
works and of performance in order to gain your favor. May the joy
of the Lord fill us, Lord, and may it be our strength. Bless
your people throughout this world today as they gather to worship
you. Bless the men who will be teaching and preaching your word. Give them a knowledge of Christ.
Fill their heart with grace that they may speak gracious and wonderful
things to your people. Lord, go out searching for your
lost sheep today and find them and bring them home. Bless the
preaching here today to the hearts of those who have gathered. And
blessed be your name, both now and forever, amen. You can begin turning your Bibles
to Revelation chapter two. We'll begin reading in verse
eight. To the angel of the church in
Smyrna, These are the words of him who is the first and the
last, who died and came to life again. I know your afflictions
and your poverty, yet you are rich. I know the slander of those
who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. Do not be afraid of what you
are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put
some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution
for 10 days. Be faithful even to the point
of 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 will not be hurt at all by the second death. Now the church of the Lord Jesus
has experienced some measure of persecution and trouble since
its very beginning even to now. But those sufferings, afflictions,
the persecution that it suffered has increased and decreased in
severity from time to time. At the time that John wrote the
book of Revelation, the church was suffering horribly from persecution. First, it suffered persecution
at the hand of the Jews, but God has pretty much destroyed
the Jewish nation by this point, sending the Roman army to destroy
the city, destroy the temple, make it into a heap of rubble,
and the Jewish people were scattered to the nations. And the gospel
became primarily a message among the Gentiles. It was known most
among them. And it was not long that it was
known among the Gentiles that the Gentile rebels began to take
notice. In particular, the government
of Rome took notice. The reason that it took notice
was this. Roman government, much like all the governments established
by men, was so full of pride that the leader of that government,
the emperor or Caesar, actually believed himself to be a god
of some sort or another, and believed that he should be worshipped,
And therefore it was required of all Roman citizens that once
a year they offer an oblation, some kind of offering, by which
they go to the shrine of Caesar to do this, and while there declare
Caesar is Lord. No believer could do that in
good conscience. First of all, no believer can
in good conscience bow before an idol. or worship an idol at
all. Secondly, no believer recognizes
anyone as Lord other than the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why
Paul said, if you will confess with your mouth Jesus to be Lord. And in what book do we find that?
The one written directly to the Romans who lived right there,
that is in the city of Rome, right there where emperor worship
was at the highest pitch. And he says to the people of
that day, in that place that salvation came by acknowledging
that Jesus is Lord right in the face of those who demanded that
you declare that Caesar is Lord. You see, faith in its declarations
Well, its declarations may change from time to time. I'm not meaning
that the truth it declares changes, but faith always expresses itself
in such a way that it is a confrontation to whatever the culture of that
day is doing in opposition to God. For instance, In the days when
the Roman church held sway over almost all of the civilized world
and held people in bondage to that system of religion, what
became the rallying cry, if that's the right word, or what became
the big declaration of faith in that day? The just shall live
by faith. which stood in direct opposition
to what the Roman church was teaching. Well in this day The Roman government
was teaching that Caesar is Lord, and you must worship according
to that or suffer the consequences. And believers said, no, we will
not confess Caesar to be Lord. He can be Caesar. He's not allowed
to be Lord. There is one Lord of all. It
is the Lord Jesus Christ. Him alone do we worship. And
we will bow to the rules and laws of Caesar so long as they
do not violate the laws of our Lord Jesus Christ. And Caesar
blew a gasket. He couldn't stand that. Men are
tyrants at heart. All of us are. We all want to
be absolutely free in what we do, and even if that requires
that we rule everyone else and force them to acknowledge our
right to do whatever we want. Caesar was no different, he just
had the power to carry it out to a great degree. And so the
church is living under the persecution of this dictator, this emperor,
this self-glorified figure, and they lived under his persecution
because they would not give him the honor that he thought he
deserved. Now, in this great suffering,
this time of great persecution of the church, the Lord Jesus
appears to John while he's on the Isle of Patmos and gives
him these visions and these messages in order to strengthen, encourage,
rebuke, and comfort his people in this time of persecution.
Now you and I, living here in the United States of America,
In 2016, we're not suffering much of the same kind of persecution
yet. Most of our persecution comes
in terms of just being irritated with what we see going on around
us. But you can be sure of this,
unless God intervenes and stops things from going in the direction
they're going, The time will come when it will be dangerous
to be a believer in Christ in this country. But here in the book of Revelation,
God brings words of comfort to his people at the time of their
greatest persecutions, so that you and I, at whatever level
of trouble, affliction, and persecution we suffer for the gospel, we
can find comfort in the things with which Christ comforted them.
It's just like the story of Job. Who here has suffered like Job
has, or Job did? Nobody. Nobody here has had their entire
family wiped out in one day. Nobody here has had all their
possessions wiped out, their health taken away from them,
so that they are miserable in mind, miserable in body. And then have three so-called
friends come, and rather than comfort you, heap condemnation
on you. Now, Job had it just about as
bad as a person can have it in this world. And then God spoke to him and
showed him how he should face those circumstances. Now, you
and I may not ever have suffering like that, but what God told
to Job, if it works for Job, it'll work for you and me too.
And if what Christ said to the church and to the churches in
this day of severe persecution, if it was good in such troublesome
times, then it'll be good in our day now. Now there are seven
letters written to seven churches. Five of those church letters
had rebukes in them. Only two contain no rebuke from
the Lord Jesus Christ. Here's one of them, Smyrna. The
other one's to the church in Philadelphia. And both of those
churches were kind of small. Both of those churches probably
suffered more than any of the other churches did. And yet in
the midst of their suffering and their troubles, Christ had
nothing but comfort for them. And he says here to Smyrna, these
are the words of the first and the last who died and came to
life. Now, Smyrna knew what trouble
was. even to the point that there
were those among them who had died for the cause of Christ.
And so when Christ comes to them to build them up, what name does
he carry? Now, in all seven letters, he
identifies himself by some characteristic that was revealed in chapter
one. That's why I read that passage to you earlier. And he says,
here, I'm the first and the last. I died and came to life again.
Now by calling himself the first and the last, he's saying I was
here at the beginning, I'll be here at the end. Time has no
consequence, or time has no effect on me, it's of no consequence
to me. I am the Lord, I change not,
therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed. So he identifies himself that
was here before the persecution started, who will be here when
the persecution's done. He was here before these so-called
powerful men rose to power and began their persecutions, and
he's gonna be there when they are nothing more than worm food. He's the first, he's the last.
He's the beginning of God's creation. He's the reason that creation
was made, and he is the purpose to which all creation is moving. He's the one that made the world.
He's the one that'll bring it to an end. And then he says,
I died and came to life again. Now, if you were involved in
some activity that might bring you death, Would it not be good
to hear words of comfort from someone who's died and come back? Someone who, for lack of a better
way to put it, someone who survived death. Now we're all on our way
to death, aren't we? We can't avoid that. Not all
the medical science in the world can keep you alive forever. One
of the most powerful phrases in scripture is, Andy died. And someone comically said, Andy
is the most popular man in the scriptures, because I don't know
how many times it says Andy died. But you read back there in those
Old Testament genealogies, And it says, so-and-so lived so many
years, and he died. And so-and-so lived so many years,
and he died. And they're big numbers. This
is before the flood, and people are living six, seven, eight,
900, almost 1,000 years. But it doesn't matter how long
these guys lived, it ends with this, and he died. Read on the Drudge Report, I
think I just read the headline, but the headline was, scientists
say, the next person to live 1,000 years has already been
born. In other words, they're so convinced of medical advancements
in the next 50 or 60 years, they believe they're gonna be able
to get someone, I mean, they're just, and have learned how to
handle diseases enough that people will live regularly as they did
before the flood. 700, 800, 1,000 years. But you
know what? They're still going to die. I
don't know whether that's ever going to happen or not, but they
may live to be a thousand. So what? At the end of a thousand,
they die. We are all on our way to death.
How good to hear a word for someone who's already been there. You
say, I just wish I could talk to someone who's died and then
comes back and they tell me what it's like. Well, here he is.
Here he is. Here's someone who suffered death,
who not only suffers the death that we who believe shall die,
he suffered the death of an unbeliever. He suffered the death of a sinner
before God in his sin. He bore our sins in his body
on a tree and died under the penalty of it. He is the only
one who has experienced death to its full capacity. And then he came back. Now, we who are dying, and we
all are, how good to hear from someone like that. He says, I died and I came to
life again. In his next words, I know your
afflictions and poverty. Now, when we suffer, and are
made sorrowful one way or another. And there's lots of ways that
can happen. Yes, it's good when our friends, our brothers and
sisters in Christ come and express their sympathy. But when there
is someone who has gone through exactly what you're going through
and can really and honestly say to you, I know what you're going
through. Their words of comfort mean so
much more, don't they? When they've had the same disease
you've had, when they've lost the same things you have. For
years, I had to be a pastor and go to funerals and try to say
something nice and comforting to people who had lost parents,
children, spouses, friends, whatever. And I could sort of come up with
something to say, but it's only been recently that I've ever
had to experience anything like that for myself, when my parents
died here the last few years. And so at least when you lose
your parents, I can say, I know, I know your sorrow. Why? Because I've experienced it. A brother preacher of ours here
a couple, about six, seven weeks ago. His wife, he lost his wife
to cancer. Now, I can't say to him, I know
your afflictions, because I don't. I can imagine them. I have a
wife, so I can maybe kind of imagine what it would be like
to lose her, and even what I can imagine. It's a horrible thought,
but having never lost one, I can't really say to my friend as much
as I'd like to, I know what you're going through. But brothers and sisters, there's
not a thing you're going through that the Lord Jesus Christ cannot
say, I know your afflictions. He was tried in every point just
like us. Or someone may say, well, I have
lost a spouse, or I've had a troublesome spouse. You think the Lord never
had that? Oh, in the days of his flood,
he didn't marry that, but we're his spouse. You think we've never
given him trouble? You think we've never walked
out the door on him? There's not a thing you suffer
that he does not know. And when he said to these people
in Smyrna, I know your afflictions, he was not just saying, I'm aware
of what's happening to you. He says, I know what's happened
to you. Why? Well, he knows what's happening
to them because the same kind of thing happened to him and
for the same reasons. Do you remember when our Lord
was here, the troubles he had? the persecutions he suffered,
and why did he suffer it? For the very same reasons they
were, because of the message he was preaching. Now he came,
and he set himself forward as the way, the truth, and the life,
and no one comes to the Father but by him. And he suffered for
saying that. All that he did, And all that
he said can be summed up in that. I am the way, the truth, and
the life. No man comes to the Father but by me. He said, I
am the Son of God. He said, I am the Son of Man.
He said, I am, I am. And all these things were building
blocks to bring about that message. I'm the way, the truth, and the
life. No man comes to the Father but by me. And he suffered. He
suffered persecution. Why, right away, the religious
leaders were up in arms about him. And it was them who later
called for his crucifixion. Do you want to know what else
he suffered for it? In John chapter 6, our Lord had many disciples,
more than the 12 that we're familiar with. But he had a lot of disciples
that followed him around regularly. And they were gathered around
listening to his message, and he declared to them in more clearer
terms than ever before their absolute need of him. He declared
God's absolute sovereignty over this business of salvation. He
declared to them that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood,
and they didn't understand what he meant. But he really brought
it down to a point in John chapter 6. about who he was and their need
of him. And this was the result. And
from that time on, many of his disciples no longer followed
him. Now, we have this little group. How heartbreaking it is when
even one decides to leave and no longer walk with us. But you
know something, we realize this, if they depart from us, it's
not us they're rejecting, is it? It's the Lord. But still
it hurts. Think of this. Our Lord had fed
5,000, the day before, had fed 5,000 men, plus their wives and
children, and they followed him to the other side. And he told
them the truth, and nearly all of them no longer followed him. You see, Judas wasn't the first
one to betray the Lord. Judas was not the first one to
walk out on him. And you know that that hurt. And then, of course, betrayal. The Lord knew that. He knew what
it was to have his right-hand man, as it were, Peter, deny
him in the very hour of his greatest trial. As the old saying goes,
a friend in need is a friend indeed. Well, I guess Peter wasn't
much of a friend, was he? Though Christ was the friend
of sinners, quite often those very sinners did not prove to
be his friends at the most important hour. And Judas, 30 pieces of silver was all it took
to talk him into turning his so-called friend over to death. Our Lord said to Smyrna, and
he says to you and me, I know your afflictions, whatever they
are. I've been there. I know what
it's about. We have trials, don't we? Trials
of circumstance. As Job said, man is born to trouble
as the sparks fly upward. I don't know what your circumstances
are. living in a civilized country
such as we do, we're probably not gonna have
to go without food and shelter. It's almost illegal to do that
in the United States. But there are other circumstances,
and we do get stressed out over finances. We get stressed out
over whether our goals are achieved. We worry
about matters of life and then we worry about matters of death. We may be worried about the direction
of our nation. These are all trials. And every
one of them comes and puts a question mark on the promises of God. But here's what our Lord says,
you have not entered any circumstance which I have not entered before. Persecution, so far, at least
as far as I know, none of us have had our goods taken away
from us, none of us have been imprisoned for our faith, and
none of us have been put to death for it. But we have suffered
whatever level of persecution is lawful in our day and time,
people who distance themselves from us because of Christ. Oh, the grief. of the wall that
exists between spouses, or between parents and their children, or
that wall that rises up between old friends, and that wall is Christ. If you ever, I say, have you
ever, did you? Since I suppose nearly everybody
here professes to be a believer. Did you ever sense that once
you came out of whatever you were in and professed this gospel
and trusted this Christ, that all at once your friends from
before stepped back a couple of steps? Well, maybe your family did.
Maybe not. I mean, some were able to deal
with it. Many are not. To the believer, Christ is all,
which makes it very difficult to have warm and easy fellowship
with those to whom Christ is not really very much at all,
if anything. And I'll tell you here for me,
and I imagine many of you will identify with this, of the trials
that I face. Failure. And I don't mean just
failure, you know, I wanted to make so much money and I didn't.
I'm not talking about that kind of failure. I'm talking about
moral failure, failure in trying to do what is right. Now you
say, the Lord never failed. No, He didn't fail, but you know
something? Our failures were laid on Him. Our failures were
laid on him, and he came before God with those failures charged
to his account, and he faced God as we would face God, and
he experienced within himself all that we would have experienced
had we come before God in those failures. Now, I don't know what
that would be like emotionally, but I know this, that in some
way, which I'll not try to explain, the Son of God lost that sweet
fellowship that he had with his father and cried out, my God,
my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And when we sense failure,
it may be that our failure offends our pride. Well, that's just
as well, that's maybe why the failure came. We became so proud
that we hadn't failed in that way, God says, all right, I'll
just show you what happens when I'm not holding you up and we
fall down. While that sense of failure may
produce that kind of grief, I'm talking about something even
more serious. What that sense of failure does
in making us feel cut off from God. Or that breaks our heart
in the knowledge that we have sinned against our Father. You
remember when the prodigal son came home and he had that little
speech made up, part of it was true. He said, Father, I've sinned
against heaven and against you. The unbeliever, he realizes he's
broken the law and he says, I've sinned against the law. I've
broken the law. And he feels the right way to
fix that is just to go out and start doing the law and then
it'll be repaired. But what do you do when you realize
your sin is against a person and it's against someone who
loved you and cared for you and you return that love and care
by rebellion? What do you do then? Poor old David. You say, poor
old David, he got himself into it. Well, we get ourselves into
all our troubles, so I can sympathize with David and his troubles. And how heartbroken he felt when
it was laid at his feet by the prophet Nathan, that God had
been so good to him and blessed him so much, and in return, David
had spited him with his rebellion. And David crumbled inwardly and
he wrote that psalm that begins with, have mercy on me. So often our sin will put a question
mark in our conscience on whether or not we know God. And you know, when our Lord bore
our sin in his body on the tree, the people that were around him
put a question mark on whether or not he was the son of God.
They said, let's just see. He said, I'm the son of God,
now let's see if God will have him. And isn't that the testimony
that comes into your ears when you recognize the greatness of
your failure before God? Are you really a son of God?
You say you are. Well, if you had looked at David
on that night with Bathsheba, or looked at him as he schemed
to cover it up by the death of Uriah, you might have said, I
don't care what David's done to this point. He ain't no believer,
because no believer would do that. Be careful that you never
say that, because the Lord might just let you do that to prove
a point. Do you know our sin or what we
might call righteousness or doing the right thing, that's not what
reveals whether we are the children of God. It's not whether or not
we sin, that's a given. It's what we do with our sin
that proves whether or not we know God. David sinned an awful sin, we've
sinned awful sins. The issue is not whether we've
sinned awful sins. The issue is what do we do with
our sins once they come home to roost, so to speak, once their
guilt is pressed upon our conscience. And David did what every believer
did. He went right back to the God against whom he sinned and
pled his mercy based upon the death of the Lord Jesus Christ.
You said, well, the Lord Jesus Christ hadn't even come and died.
Well, he hadn't died on earth, but he was a lamb slain from
the foundation of the world in heaven. And even though the blood
had never been shed upon the earth, God saw that blood from
heaven. And David pled God's mercy through
that substitutionary sacrifice, and he found it. He found it. I know your afflictions. And then some of you may suffer
from one of the most difficult trials of all, and that's the
trial of prosperity. I would never pray for God to
send me trouble, though I confess that trouble is often more good
for us than ease. But the Lord taught us to pray,
lead us not into temptation. So I would never ask for trouble.
But prosperity carries a great danger. The Lord did not say
how difficult it is for the poor to enter the kingdom of God.
He said how difficult it is for the rich to enter the kingdom
of God. And while we could apply that to all kinds of riches,
the fact of the matter is those who are rich in this world's
goods have a real struggle with the gospel. And the reason is
this, there's a great deal of pride to be found in riches and
the gospel calls us for us to humble ourselves in the sight
of the Lord. There's a great deal of self-reliance
in those who have become rich because they think that it is
by the efforts of their own hands that it happened. And whether those riches are
actually in dollar bills or whether they are in a perceived riches
of their own righteousness, it doesn't matter. It's still the
same thing. They've been trusting in themselves so long, it's almost
impossible that they could trust in God. Grace and prosperity rarely occur
in the same place. And yet, Most of us in the United
States must say, at least compared to the rest of the world and
nearly everybody else in history, we're prosperous. We've got plenty to eat, homes
to live in. And it's really easy, really
easy to put our trust in that. But the Lord knows all our afflictions
and he knows our poverty, even if we think we're prosperous.
But here Smyrna was suffering persecution and afflictions of
all kinds. The Lord says, I know them. He
says, I know your poverty. I know that you all struggle
to make ends meet. But then he says this, yet you
are rich. If you want to be happy and comfortable
in this world, You who are children of God realize this, no matter
what you have or don't have in this life, you are the children
of God and that makes you rich. It says of the Lord Jesus Christ,
you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he
were rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, that through
his poverty we might be made rich. And if he became poor for
me, then I am rich in him. I'm rich in those things that
count. I am rich in that treasure which neither moth nor rust can
in any way decay. I may not have a great deal of
treasures compared to others, that is treasures in the bank,
but I have treasure in heaven. And treasure in the bank can
be taken away, it can be gone in a moment. Had a friend trying to boast
about our present president and the one he hopes is president
the next time, and he says, stock market hits a new high. I remember thinking, so what?
I'm remembering how October of 1929, The market was way up here, and
in about a day or two, it was way down there. And I remember
how the market in 2007, I believe it was, at the end
of it was way up here, and in the process of a year, it was
only half as high. In a moment, people lost fortunes. And now it's back up, and everybody's
swell with pride again. You know what's gonna happen?
I don't know when, but it'll go down again. Why? Because the
treasures of this earth cannot be trusted. They come and they
go. But treasures in heaven are unaffected
by the decisions of politicians. Treasures in heaven are unaffected
by the wrath of people who oppose the gospel. Persecution can't
touch them. Yet you are rich. He says, I
know the slander of those who say they are Jews and are not,
but are a synagogue of Satan. How did he know that? Because
they slandered him when he was here. He came and he associated with
what would have been considered the riffraff of the day. And
they said, he's a glutton and a winebibber. Why, he's the friend
of sinners and tax collectors. You know something? They were
right about him being a friend of sinners and tax collectors.
But he wasn't a glutton and he wasn't a drunk. But they heaped
all this scorn on him. You say, yes, I've been scandalized. People have said bad things about
me that just aren't true. They have accused me and those
I worship with of this, that, and the other. They've never
accused you like they did the Lord Jesus Christ. He knows.
He knows the slander. So what does he say? Do not be
afraid of what you're about to suffer. All right, we've already suffered
some. You know what the Lord says? You're gonna suffer some
more. He that would live godly in Christ
Jesus will suffer persecution, says the apostle. Barnabas, I
believe it was, preached these words of encouragement to the
people. We must go through great tribulation
to enter the kingdom of God. And so our Lord who suffered
all kinds of tribulation and affliction, he says, don't be
afraid of it. Don't be afraid of it. I tell you the devil will put
some of you in prison and test you and you will suffer persecution
for 10 days. Now, like I said, right now,
you and I don't stand in fear of being put in prison. These
fellas did. At any time, some soldier representing Rome's authority
might show up at their door and drag them away to prison, and
believe me, there was no such thing as prisoner's rights in
those days. And they threw you in a hole, and you didn't get
anything worth eating unless your friends would show up and
bring food for you. And when they did, they were
doing so at the risk of their own freedom, for to identify
yourself with a prisoner in Romans prison didn't put you in good
light with the authorities. That's why Paul said to Timothy,
do not be afraid of me, excuse me, do not be ashamed of me,
a prisoner of the Lord Jesus Christ. Demas, he said, hath
forsaken me, having loved this present world. What do you mean?
Well, Demas had walked around with Paul and been a helper of
Paul so long as everything was going good with Paul. As soon
as Paul ended up in prison, Demas said, I am not going to get myself
mixed up in that. And he abandoned Paul in prison. He said, the devil will put some
of you in prison to test you. When your trials come, whatever
they may be, it is for testing. And it is not for your destruction.
It is not for the purpose of grinding you down. It is for
the purpose of proving that indeed you are a child of God. It is
for the purpose of silencing the mouths of those who slander
the people of God. And he says you'll suffer persecution
for 10 days. Now, your trial may last longer
than 10 days on a calendar. He's using a symbolic term there.
Yes, you will suffer for a particular amount of time, or you will suffer,
but it will be for a set time. Whenever you go into a trial,
you may not know when it's going to be over, but the Lord does.
Every trial he sends has its set purpose, it has its set severity,
and it has its set time. It begins on a certain day and
it ends on a certain day according to God's decree. And he says
ten days because ten days really isn't that long. And brethren,
if your trial lasts for your whole life, it's only ten days compared to
the life to come. Paul says our light and momentary
affliction. Now who's that saying light and
momentary? Paul, who's been arrested, who's
been beaten, who's had to fight wild beasts in the Colosseum.
Paul, who's been chained, Paul who's been whipped, Paul who's
been rejected and suffered nearly everywhere he went. And he says,
our light and momentary affliction. The time will come when you will
close your eyes to this life and open them to the next. And when you see what the next
life is like, this will be your conclusion. I didn't suffer much
and I didn't suffer long for this. Ten days, he says, now
be faithful even to the point of death and I'll give you the
crown of life. Might some be called upon to
the point of death, to suffer to the point of death? Sure.
And if you're a child of God and you're called upon to do
that, when the time comes, grace will be given to you and you
will stand in Christ, even to the point of death, and you will
receive the crown of life. Verse 11, he who has an ear,
let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Now I'm
preaching to a crowd of maybe 25, 30 people this morning. I
don't know who among you has an ear to hear. Not everybody
in the world does. Bible says the hearing ear is
of the Lord. And if you can hear, give God
thanks. If the word of His grace, you
can understand it. Give thanks, because not everybody
has that ear. He that has an ear to hear, let him hear what
the Spirit says to the church. He who overcomes will not be
hurt at all by the second death. I love the power and the definiteness
of that promise. He who overcomes, and what is
it to overcome? Simply to keep believing. Simply
not to be deterred from Christ by all the persecutions and troubles
of this life by all its temptations That every time you fall by grace
you get up so that the whole time of your life you are standing
by grace alone and if at the end of all this you are still
believing, then you have overcome. For the scriptures say faith
is the victory that overcomes the world. It doesn't mean by
faith we somehow overcome the world. It's merely the fact that
we believe is the victory that overcomes the world. For all
that the world can throw at us, we keep believing. For all the
doubts that our fleshly conscience may pile upon us, we keep believing. For all our weaknesses, we yet
cling to Christ. And he that overcomes like that
will not be hurt, and I love this, at all by the second death. There is a first death. And in
all likelihood, everyone here will experience it unless the
Lord returns before you die. You will experience that. It
may come to you with pain. It may be a slow process of getting
sick Withering up and dying it may be real quick I'd have a
head-on collision before you even know you're in danger. You're
gone. I don't know But these bodies Will be hurt
by the first death But he that overcomes Will not be hurt at
all won't even be touched at all by the second death. I Love
that Illustration of salvation of those, they call them the
three Hebrew children, thrown in the fiery furnace. They wouldn't
worship that false god that Nebuchadnezzar had set up, though they were
given opportunity to. And they even tried to scare
it to them, fire up the furnace. All right, fellas, you see where
you're going if you don't worship. Now worship, and will your God
be able to deliver you out of that furnace? And they said,
whether or not our God will deliver us, we don't know. But we know
this, we're not gonna worship that image. And so they took
those three and they threw them into the furnace and Nebuchadnezzar's
waiting to feel the sense of gratification that comes with
the destruction of his enemy and he looks in that furnace
and behold there's four guys walking around in there. And
he looks at the soldiers and said, didn't we just throw three
in there? And they said, yeah. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego,
three of them all went in. He said, well, I see four in
there. There's one in there looks like
the Son of God. That's because that's who it was. And he went into that furnace
with them. And then they came out. And I
love this, it says, there was not so much as the smell of smoke
on them. They didn't come out coughing
and hacking, suffering from smoke inhalation. They didn't come
with their clothes all burned and singed, scalded, maybe blisters,
no. They came out perfectly whole,
utterly untouched. And whatever furnace you go into,
brethren, the Lord goes in there with you. And most importantly,
that furnace of God's wrath, he went in there with us or we
went in with him and we come out without so much as the smell
of smoke upon us. We are not hurt at all by the
second death. He that has an ear to hear. Let
him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Lord, bless
your word as only you can. In Christ's name we pray, amen. Eric.