To the Churches in … Ephesus and Smyrna: Beware Small Compromises | J.D. Greear

[Music] Apocalyptic visions, mysterious creatures, dramatic warnings. No wonder the book of Revelation is so scary for so many. It's a book depicting the end of the world as we know it. It's chaotic. It's messy. And yes, it can be pretty scary. But the Apostle John didn't write this book to fill us with fear. He wrote it to give us a message of hope, comfort, and certainty. The hope of knowing that Jesus holds the final victory over sin and death. The comfort of knowing that he will come again and make all things new. And the certainty that God will once again dwell with his people. [Music]

To the angel of the church in Ephesus, write the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands. I know your works, your toil, and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen. Repent and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. Yet this you have: You hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers, I will grant to eat of the tree of life which is in the paradise of God.

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 know your tribulation and your poverty, but you are rich. And the slander of those who say that you are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison that you may be tested, and for 10 days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto 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. The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death. Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy. And blessed are those who hear and those who keep what is written in it. Amen. Amen. Amen. Happy Father's Day, everybody. Revelation 2. Revelation 2. If you got your Bibles with you, Revelation 2.

Earlier this year, I read a great book, uh, called *Challenger*, written by a guy named Adam Higenbotham, which explained how a series of small compromises led to the greatest space disaster in our country's history, namely the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle on January 28th, 1986. It would depress me if I asked you to raise your hands and tell me how many of you weren't even alive in 1986. So, I'm not going to do that. But in case you weren't around for that, here's the basic story. NASA, in an attempt to revive lagging public interest in the space program, took a took on a pretty bold project of sending up seven astronauts into space, including a couple of regular citizens, non-astronauts, most notably an elementary school teacher named Christa McAuliffe, who was going to teach school lessons live from Earth's orbit. There was a lot of buzz about it. I was in grade school. I remember everybody being super excited about it. And uh a launch date was set for sometime toward the end of January.

Well, behind the scenes, some of the engineers had begun to warn NASA that uh the design of the rocket had a potential defect. Namely, the booster rocket had this this ceiling mechanism that they thought might fail in cold weather. Basically, when the rocket was at full blast, the whole structure expanded by a few inches, which created these gaps in the seams where the parts came together, gaps through which fuel could escape and ignite an explosion. Well, engineers had rather brilliantly developed this little O-ring sealing mechanism that sat right along the inside edges of the seams so that as the rocket expanded, the rubberized ring would slide into the gap and plug the hole. It worked well, but some of the engineers warned that cold weather might cause the elastic seal to stiffen so that it wouldn't seep properly. And if that happened, the whole rocket might explode. But nobody thought that would be a problem. I mean, these rockets took off from Central Florida, a place that hardly ever gets cold, except that the night before the launch, temperature dropped to 26 degrees Fahrenheit, which is just crazy. Uh, in Central Florida, a handful of the engineers told management that they they ought to delay the launch, but management was under a lot of pressure because they'd already delayed a couple of times and the whole nation was ready for the event. Higherups at NASA were pressuring the engineering firm to just give the green light. There was this now infamous late night phone call where the engineers laid out their uh case to the managers for why they should delay. And one of the managers just exasperated said something to the effect of, "Hey, where is your courage? Sometimes you just got to bite the bullet and go for it. Sometimes you got to take a risk." One of them even said to these uh this group of engineers, "I am appalled that you would suggest that we delay again. Good grief. When do you want us to launch? Next April." Eventually caving to pressure, the engineering firm okayed the launch and 73 seconds after lift liftoff. Tragically, the Challenger exploded instantly killing all seven crew members aboard. Later, it was demonstrated beyond any doubt that the explosion was the result of O-ring failure. Some compromises lead to disasters. And that's exactly what I am reminded of when I read Jesus's messages to the first two churches of Revelation 2. Be wary the danger of small compromises.

In case you've forgotten, the book of Revelation was first and foremost a letter written to seven churches that the Apostle John had helped to plant across Asia Minor. The book relays encouragement for these churches about getting through a difficult time. And it encourages them by means of a vision from Jesus about what's really going on in the world and a vision of Jesus sovereign over it all. But before John gets into the substance of what's coming in the future, he relays specific messages to each of the seven churches, messages in which Jesus diagnoses their problems individually and then gives them specific encouragement. The things that Jesus comments on are specific to those churches and yet they're relevant to the church in every era. So, we're going to take the next couple of weeks to just look at these letters. We're literally going to read somebody else's mail. How many of you have ever received an email that was intended for someone else? Raise your hand. How many of you have ever gotten a really negative email that was intended for someone else? Done. Right. A few of you. How many of you ever intended a negative email for someone and it went to someone else? Raise your hand. Um I was uh this is a few years ago. I was in our office and um one of the other pastors and I were uh we were dialoguing with this business partner who honestly just he was really being a jerk to us. I mean just repeatedly. And eventually he sends back this excuse and um and it was it was just it was absurd. And so our pastor, other pastor, you know, forwarded it to me and said, "This guy used this really goofy like light blue font when he when he wrote and he said he obviously is using this font to make us try to make us think about heaven, I guess. So it covers up the fact that he is shoveling us a load of of CR, right?" Except he didn't forward it to me. He replied all to me and this guy. So I I jump out of my chair and I run like down the hall to his office. I bust into his office and I kid you not he is like he is face down on the ground and he is like I said I said hey and he goes I know I know I hit reply all and uh and we had a lot a lot of of of damage to uh undo but um you're getting a message that is intended for somebody else but the Holy Spirit intended for you to see it because there's stuff in it for you and me too.

The first letter, chapter 2, verse 1: To the angel of the church in Ephesus, write. Ephesus was the richest city in the richest part of the Roman Empire. It was the region's primary shipping port, which meant that ships from all over Asia and Africa and Europe brought their products into Asia Minor through this port in Ephesus. As a result, Ephesus was diverse and cosmopolitan and multiethnic. It boasted the biggest amphitheater in the region, also one of the biggest libraries in the world, the ruins of both of which you can still see today if you ever travel there. They're pretty fantastic. Uh just pretend they're up here on the screen. Uh there they are. Okay. Um amazing things that that just are are breathtaking. Ephesus was an extremely spiritual city. Not in the sense that it was Christian. In fact, quite the opposite. Ephesus housed more than 50 different temples to pagan gods. The biggest one was the temple of the goddess Diana. Her temple is literally categorized as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. In fact, to give you some perspective, it was four times bigger than the Parthenon in Rome. Scholars say that the result of all this was that spiritualistic and pagan practices were so mixed into every aspect of Ephesian life that you could hardly do anything without having to make some kind of sacrifice to the gods. For example, to get involved in one of the trade guilds so that you could just buy and sell in the marketplace, you had to pledge allegiance to Caesar as Lord, and you had to make an incense offering to him in the temple. And unless you participate in these pagan rituals, it was hard to get a job or play in a sports team or even to get your kids educated. The point is, it was hard to be a Christian in Ephesus, much harder than for you and me here in the triangle. The Apostle Paul planted this church in Ephesus. That story is recorded in Acts 19 if you want to go back and read it later this week. Later, Paul would send Timothy to be its pastor. That means both first and second Timothy in your Bibles are written to the Ephesian church, as is the book of Ephesians of course, and now this letter. So they got four letters from the Holy Spirit just for this one church. Later on the Apostle John himself would serve as pastor there. And according to church tradition, probably the coolest thing of all about this church, Mary, the mother of Jesus made this church her home church, which I imagine led to some banging Christmas Eve services. Am I right? This year playing the Virgin Mary in our pageant is well, Mary herself.

To the angel of the church in Ephesus, write. You say, "Well, who is this angel fella here?" It's possible that angel might refer to some kind of guardian angel who is assigned to each individual church, which is a pretty cool thought, you know. Though if there's one of those for the Summit Church, I bet he's tired. I bet he's tired. I bet he hates our multi-campus strategy. Uh, but most scholars say that angel here most likely means pastor, because the word angel in Greek technically means messenger, and the pastor is the messenger for the church. The pastor is the angel, which I find quite flattering. From now on you can call me Angel JD or Reverend Dr. Angel Greer. Either one of those is fine. Okay. Verse one continues. Verse one continues: the words of him who holds seven stars in his right hand and he walks among the seven golden lampstands. If you remember from chapter 1, John had told us that the seven golden lampstands, they represented the seven churches and the seven stars represent the seven angel pastors. So, what we have here is a picture of Jesus literally walking among his churches, which is an image that I love. He is here this very weekend walking in the midst of his church.

In verse two, John commends the Ephesian church for a number of things. Firstly, he commends them for their toil for Jesus, which means they were fervent in their mission work. They were busy in evangelism, busy in loving their community. He commends them for their patient endurance because apparently they had suffered a lot of opposition for their faith. And yet they would not give up. They stayed faithful even in the face of great persecution. And furthermore, they tested those who call themselves apostles and are not and found them to be false. In other words, they called out false teachers. They compared what they were teaching with the scriptures. And they called out wrong doctrine and they refused to tolerate either. In verse six, we learn that they they hated the works of the Nicolaitans, which Jesus says, "I also hate." Now, you're like, "Nicolaitans? That sounds like a kids TV channel. You know, Nicolaitans at night or something or like it's a division of Santa's Christmas elves or something like that." All very good guesses, but no. But no, the Nicolaitans were the disciples of a guy named Nicholas. Most likely the same Nicholas that was mentioned in Acts 6 who had been one of the original deacons in the church in Jerusalem. Which means he started out really well. But according to the church father Irenaeus, Nicholas began to say that it was okay to participate in the spiritualistic pagan practices in Rome as long as you don't really mean them. For example, he said, "You can pledge allegiance to Caesar as Lord. You can call him the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. You can even offer a sacrifice at his altar as long as you know in your heart that you don't really mean it." For us, that would be the equivalent of saying, "It's okay to fly the pride flag on your window as long as you don't actually mean it." The Ephesian church hated those kinds of compromises and so did Jesus. And they resisted them. Doctrinally solid, busy for Jesus, suffering faithfully under persecution, and refusing to compromise. What you should take away from all that is that this is a really impressive church. And yet, "I have this against you," verse four, "that you have abandoned the love you had at first." One small but devastating crack in this church. They had lost their first love. And yet we read that description of them and we say, "Well, no, wait a minute. Doesn't all their faithfulness show that they hadn't lost their first love? In fact, aren't those things, correct doctrine, zealous mission work, faithfulness under persecution, aren't those the definition of what it means to love Jesus?" No. And it's a great irony of the Christian life that some of those most faithful to the doctrine and fervent in the mission have hearts who are cold and far from Jesus. In fact, in what might be the greatest irony of all, often it's our confidence in and our fixation on our correct doctrine and our practice and our busyiness for Jesus that keeps us from fellowship with Jesus because we substitute faithful work for him and right beliefs in him for fellowship with him. I'm not saying right doctrine and faithful labor are not important. Of course, they are. I'm just saying true Christianity is more. And it is very possible to be characterized by all of those things and have no fellowship with Jesus at all.

Friend, God saved you to know him and to love him and to depend on him, not just to believe correct stuff about him and work for him. In fact, to be totally honest with you, this has probably been my most recurring sin: correct about Jesus, busy for Jesus, bold for Jesus, but not in love with Jesus. In fact, I wrote out a list this week, a list of signs that this might be true of you, too. You said, "Where'd you get this list from?" Basically, it's a recounting of my own life. If I kept a journal, this would be what you would see most often recurring in my journal. Five signs that you have lost your first love. Number one, you tolerate private heart-level sin. You avoid outward sins. Those would embarrass you and get you into trouble. In my case, may lead to me being fired. But in your heart, you hold on to grudges. There are people you love to despise that you hold them in bitterness and unforgiveness, and something inside you tells you it's not right, but you don't want to let that go. Or maybe there's pride and self-exaltation. You just love to entertain. You love to be in the spotlight. You love it when people are praising you. Or maybe they're sexual fantasies that you let yourself mentally indulge in. You don't let yourself act on them because that would ruin your reputation, but you indulge in them in your heart even though you know they grieve the Holy Spirit. You see, what that shows is that what you most care about is not Jesus. What you most care about is what other people think about you. And the reason I say that is because you tolerate secret sin on the heart level. Even though you know it grieves the Holy Spirit, if you were really bothered with love of Jesus, you wouldn't tolerate it on the heart level either.

Here's your second sign: prayerlessness. Jim Cymbala says, "A Christian's passion for Jesus is measured less by his church activity and more by his personal prayer life." He says, "You can always tell how popular the pastor is and the worship team is by who shows up on Sunday morning, but you can tell how popular Jesus is by who shows up at prayer meeting." So, how much time do you spend in communion with Jesus every day? I mean, if you love somebody, you enjoy being with them, right? If I tell Veronica that I love her, but I never spent time with her or show any interest in hanging out with her or only do obligatory dates with her, do you really feel like my professions of love are going to carry any weight with her? Of course not. When you love somebody, you want to be with him. Is your knowledge of scripture driving you to communion with Christ, to depend on Jesus, to fellowship with Jesus? There's number three: passionless worship. You might know all the words, all the songs we sing, but how often do you feel them? It's like Awtoer always said, "Christians don't tell lies, they sing them." When we worship together, here are the realities that these songs express. Are they real to you? Is he real to you? Is grief over your sin and joy in your salvation, is that real to you? Or are those just theological concepts that you assent to? You say, "Well, I'm just not that emotional of a person." That's not true. I see how you talk about politics. If I bring up DEI, you get passionate on one side or the other. I see how you talk about your kids or your grandkids or about the Cane's loss to the Panthers. You're plenty passionate. You're just not that passionate about Jesus. And by the way, when I say passionate, I'm not just talking about middle schooler's flurries of emotion either. Real passion goes way beyond that. An older pastor friend of mine, Larry Osborne, um he says, he says, he says, "Hey, remember that first time you held the hand of your wife or husband if you're married, that first time you held their hand when you were dating, remember all what that felt like? All those butterflies?" He said, "Man, I'll be honest, after being married for 40 years, I don't always feel those same butterflies every time I touch my wife now. But that doesn't mean our passion is gone. In fact, our love now is less like butterflies and more like the Mississippi River. You look at the Mississippi River and don't think it's doing much, but why don't you step in it and try to swim against it and you'll realize how strong that current is. At some point, you got to get beyond the butterflies and get into the real passion for Jesus. Being passionate about worship is less about hands up and more about feeling deeply the realities that our theology expresses.

Number four, here's your sign: You don't talk much about Jesus to others. C.S. Lewis said, "The most reliable indicator of what you care about is what you talk about." No matter what you say, if you don't talk about something freely and spontaneously whenever you get the chance, you're just not that into it. For some of us, conversation rarely turns to Jesus unless we're in church mode or unless we're at small group because honestly, you're just not that into him. You say, "Well, again, I I I just think religion is a private matter." So is family, but you talk about your kids plenty and your politics, and everybody knows about that new hunting rifle you got or that new TV show you're watching.

You'll talk about these things with total strangers. They got a Taylor Swift shirt on. You're going to talk to them about her. And if the opportunity presents itself, because you're into those things, you just don't talk about Jesus that much because he doesn't engage your heart like that.

Number five, one more very closely related to that one: Lack of evangelism. When you're in love with Jesus, you yearn to see those he died to save brought back to him. It's what dominates your prayers. In fact, let me just ask you straight up: When was the last time that you shared Christ with somebody? When was the last time you shared Jesus with somebody? Or here's another way of asking this: If God were to answer at midnight tonight in one fell swoop every prayer you prayed last month, just said yes to all, how many new people would be in the kingdom tomorrow? Oh, but look at all these theology books I read, and look at all the money that I gave, and look at all these things I bravely posted on my social media account, and all the people whose theology I corrected. Yeah, but when was the last time you shared Jesus with somebody? Jesus said there's more joy in heaven over one sinner that repents than over 99 who are already his. I'm pretty sure that means there's more joy in heaven over one sinner that repents than 99 of your awesome Facebook posts. And I believe if you love Jesus, your heart's going to be like that, too. I don't care how much theology you know. If you're not yearning to see people brought to Jesus, you've lost your first love.

Friend, look at Jesus's warning to this church. Verse 5, remember therefore from where you have fallen. Repent. Do the works that you did at first. If not, I'll come to you and I'll remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent. Remove your lampstand means he will take his presence away from our church, take his presence away from you. That's an illusion. And by the way, back to the prophet Ezekiel, where Ezekiel sees the light of God's presence leave the temple because of Israel's sin. And God is saying that's not just an Old Testament thing. My glory, my presence will depart from you. Hear this summit. Listen. There are churches all over the world that are doctrinally faithful, morally upright, crazy busy in ministry, but Jesus' presence is gone from them because he is not loved, cherished, prized, or sought there. And that's shown by how they inwardly entertain hate and unforgiveness and gossip and lust. It's shown by the fact that they just don't pray that often. The worship production quality might be high, and people may like to put their hands up during worship, but y'all responding to quality entertainment and passion for Jesus are not the same thing. These places, they don't care that much about people coming to Jesus anymore because they can't remember the last time they wept over somebody who doesn't know Jesus or were personally involved in bringing somebody to him. Remember from where you've fallen and repent. Don't try to hide behind your Bible knowledge and your busy Jesusy calendar. The whole point of your salvation is for you to know him and love him.

Y'all, the Pharisees knew the scriptures like the back of their hand. But Jesus said they missed the whole point of those scriptures, which was knowing God. Jesus told them, John 5:39, "Hey, search the scriptures because you think in knowing them you have eternal life." They thought eternal life came from knowledge of the scriptures. Jesus said, "Eternal life comes from knowing me through the scriptures." Point is not how much you know the Bible. The point is knowing God through that Bible. It's like Charles Spurgeon said, "I might know this book of thine from beginning to end," and I can repeat it all from Genesis to Revelation. And yet it may be to me a dead book, and I may be a dead soul. God did not save you, friend, because he needed you. He didn't save you because he needed somebody to defend him with correct doctrine. He saved you to know you and to walk with you, to love you and be loved by you. So repent, John says, and return to your first love. That's letter one. It's kind of a rough one, right? So, let's go on to number two. It's a little more positive.

Verse eight, to the angel of the church in Smyrna, right? The city of Smyrna, today called Izmir in Turkey, was another beautiful, prosperous port city. The city took its name from the perfume that was created by crushing the fruit of a small thorn bush that was indigenous to the area. The perfume made from that plant was called myrrh, which you've probably heard of. You know the wise men: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Myrrh was from Smyrna. Myrrh was in the name of the city. Jesus uses myrrh as a metaphor for this church. This was a church that was made beautiful through crushing, through suffering. Interestingly, this is one of only two churches in John 7 about whom Jesus says nothing negative. They got a perfect 10 with no deductions. Jesus says in verse 9 that the church in Smyrna was known for two things: persecution and poverty. Undoubtedly the two were linked because see the only reason people in so rich a city would be poor is if they were excluded from public life. And see that's what was happening in Smyrna. Believers there suffered financially because of their faithfulness to Jesus. Their persecution appears to have come from two places. First, it came from the culture around them. The city of Smyrna was the hub of emperor worship in Rome. The temple of Dea Roma was there, which literally meant Rome is a goddess. At this temple, Caesar was worshiped as the very son of God. By the way, for what it's worth, Rome did not care if Christians worshiped Jesus. Scholars say that Rome had two basic religious rules for its entire empire. Rule number one: You can worship whatever god you want to worship. We don't care how crazy, ugly, backwards, or dumb. You can worship it. But rule number two: You just can't say your god is the only god. You can't say he's the supreme god because then you'll think that you as his followers should be able to rule with him. So worship whatever god you want to worship, but you got to confess that Caesar is the king of kings and the lord of lords. That was literally inscribed on the temple of Dea Roma: Caesar is the king of kings and lord of lords.

Interestingly, some Christian traditions say that when the 2nd-century Roman Emperor Hadrian built the Pantheon, which housed gods from all over the Roman Empire, Emperor Hadrian, in an attempt to make peace with Christians, offered to put a statue of Jesus in the Pantheon. Now, you might imagine that Christians would have felt honored, like, "What, little old us, we come from this backwoods place in Galilee. Look how far we've come. One of our guys in the great gets a spot in the great hall of gods." No way. You might suppose they would have responded that way, but you'd be wrong. Jesus, they said, will never stand as one God among many. Jesus is the king of kings and lord of lords, not Caesar. And there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. You will not put Jesus in your hall of gods as one option among many.

Same is true today, right? Nobody cares. Nobody cares, friend, if you say that Jesus is your savior. Nobody. It's when you say he's the only savior, he's the only way to heaven, that he and he alone decides what we can do with our bodies. That's when you get into trouble. That's right. So, they experienced persecution from the culture around them. But that was not the only place persecution came from. Again, verse 9, look at it. I know the slander of those who say that they're Jews and they're not, but they're actually a synagogue of Satan. Jews were supposed to be God's people, and yet they turned out in Smyrna to be the biggest persecutors of the believers there. And what Jesus is saying to this early church is, "Hey, those look like my people, but they're not."

Honestly, y'all, I think the hardest thing for me to reckon with has not been persecution from those outside the church. The hardest thing has always been persecution that comes from within the church. When criticism or persecution comes from outside the church, I mean, I expect that, right? And by the way, can I just say this real quick? I don't like using the word persecution to describe what we go through here in light of what our brothers and sisters in the Middle East and Russia have to deal with. Getting lied about on social media is not the same thing as them going to prison and having their kids taken away from them. I think we should probably say the word persecution for them. Okay? But still, but still, the pain caused by friendly fire has probably been the hardest for me. Some of you have experienced that with friends and family. People you thought would understand and support you in your walk with Jesus and encourage you. They're the ones that became your biggest critics. I always have to remind myself that Jesus's crucifixion was a joint project between the secular establishment on the left and the religious establishment on the right. The true gospel of Jesus ends up offending both of them, and both of them attack the gospel from different sides. See, the gospel offends the secular left by saying that Jesus is Lord of our bodies, for example. That you just can't decide for yourself what your personal rules are for sexual orientation or gender or marriage and calling that pride. The gospel challenges the secular left when it says that all human life is sacred. You can't just discard a human life in the womb because it's become inconvenient to you. The gospel offends the religious establishment on the right, however, when it tells us that we should be filled with grace and generosity, that we should respond to our secular leaders with submission and honor whenever we can. It challenges the religious establishment on the right when it says that we Christians are responsible not only for our own needs, but that God holds us responsible for the needs of others around us, even our enemies. It offends us when it tells us that God wants us to love the immigrant and the stranger and the vulnerable and to treat their needs like we would our own.

Hear me, friend. If you are living in step with the gospel, you will make enemies of both the secular left and the religious right. And I'm not trying to say the left and right are equally evil or depraved. They're not. I'm just saying that the true gospel ends up offending them both. Notice verse 9. Jesus says these Jews were of the synagogue of Satan, people who were supposed to be God's representatives are actually now the instruments of Satan. You see, Satan has two tactics. He opposes the church from the outside in the form of Caesar's persecution. He also does it from the inside, from those who say they worship God. Again, never forget this: Jesus' opposition, Jesus' crucifixion was a joint project of secular left and religious right. And if you and I are going to stand with him in our day, you should expect opposition from both directions.

Also, Jesus's counsel, verse 10: Don't be afraid. Now, "Don't be afraid" sounds like encouragement, right? Don't be afraid. But look what he says next: 'Cuz you're about to suffer. It's actually, by the way, he says the devil, that's the one that's doing it. See that? The devil's the one doing it. He really hates you. Also, he's going to throw some of you into prison, and you will experience affliction for 10 days. Well, 10, that's not that bad. 10 is a number in the Old Testament that means maximum amount. So, you're going to suffer in prison for a long time and be faithful to the point of death, which means some of you are going to die. I'm like, when does the encouragement start exactly? Like, can we get to that part? This is the next phrase: Be faithful to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life. Jesus's answer: Don't be afraid of all of that because I hold the crown of life. I get the last word.

Notice verse 8, he reintroduces himself to this church. What we saw in Revelation 1, he reintroduces himself as the first and the last. It's like we saw last week. When you're going through tribulation, Jesus wants you to know that he was there at the beginning and he'll be there at the end. And if he's there at the beginning and he'll be there at the end, that means he's in charge of everything in the middle, too. Verse eight, "I died," he said, "and I came back to life." In other words, just like God transformed the evil that happened to me, Jesus says he transformed it into good. He took my cross and used it for your salvation. He transformed my cross into resurrection. He's going to do the same thing for your pain. All of your pain and your suffering I'm going to use as part of my good plan. And one day it all ends in resurrection for you just like it did for me. I love the imagery of the tapestry I've often used to illustrate this to you. If you go into one of these gigantic castles they have in Germany, for example, on the wall will be these gigantic tapestries, beautiful, ornate, intricately woven pictures. But if your guide, and if they don't do this, you should ask them to do this. If your guide shows you the back of the tapestry, it looks like this random, chaotic mess of threads. Front side, perfect beauty and design. Backside, random, jumbled mess. One day Jesus is going to flip over the tapestry of my life, with what felt like all these chaotic strands, and I'm going to see that it was woven together into one glorious picture of the reign of Jesus in me and through me in the world. My life feels like this right now, right? But one day it's going to look like this. So don't be afraid. I can't promise you it'll end quickly, but I promise you it will end. And I can promise you that when it does end, what will shine out from you is the redemption and the victory of resurrection. The fulfillment of God's good plan often takes longer than we would like it to. But it always ends in beauty and resurrection because Jesus is the first and the last.

Several years ago, I heard a talk by a guy named Steve Saint whose father, Nate Saint, was murdered in the 1950s on the banks of a river in central Ecuador. Nate Saint was part of a small group of missionaries called the Auca 5, which included Jim Elliott and Roger Youderian and three other guys who tried to establish contact with an unreached hostile tribe known as the Waorani tribe or the Auca Indian tribe and to share the gospel with them. All five men were murdered by people from that tribe on January 8th, 1956. They left behind wives and several small children. And one of those small children they left behind was little Steve Saint, whose dad was Nate Saint. Later Steve was part of a group that went back to that same tribe, befriended them, and in one of the most remarkable grace stories I've ever heard, Steve personally led to Christ the man who had murdered his father, Min-Kai, baptized that man, and then pseudo-adopted him into his family to serve as his kid's surrogate grandfather, replacing the man that he had murdered. At this conference where Steve spoke, he talked about the difficulty of growing up without his dad. But then he talked about the joy of seeing all that used as part of God's glorious plan of redemption. God flipped the tapestry over. Steve Saint said, "Why is it that we insist every chapter of our lives be good when God promises only that in the last chapter he will make all the other chapters make sense?" Why do you insist that every chapter has to be good in your life in order for God to be good when what God promises is that he's the first and the last? That means it might not make sense in the present, but it will in the end. What we have now, church, in our 10 days of tribulation, what we have is the Jesus who stands above the church as the first and the last, who was dead, and is now alive, who now holds the crown of life, ready to bestow that crown on all those who remain faithful to him.

Jesus has offered these churches, Ephesus and Smyrna, and us two things if we will remain faithful to him. The first is his presence, and the second is his commendation. His presence. Some, if we remain faithful to him, his presence remains with us. He literally walks around our lampstand. Listen, pastoring here in the Triangle and what many call the educational hub of America, with more PhDs per capita here than anywhere else in the nation. Okay? I mean, people move here. If you're new here, you're like, "I thought this was the Bible Belt." I'm like, "No, this is like a little hole in the Bible Belt where the buckle goes. Bible Belt goes around here, but it ain't here." And so, I've been told for years, you know, if your church doesn't change its views on sexuality or gender identity, then it's going to become increasingly irrelevant and die. One guy even told me that if we did not change our convictions about gender, we were going to have to shut our doors within the decade. Now, I don't want to get too far ahead, but in the next letter to the church of Pergamum, Jesus describes that church as faithful in just about every way. They're zealous for mission. They have good doctrine, but they compromised on the issue of sexuality. That was the one thing Jesus said was wrong with that church. And Jesus removed his presence. People say to me, "If you don't soften your stance on this, you're going to lose people." Y'all, I don't know about you, but I'd rather lose the approval of a culture than the presence of Jesus any day. Right? You can have CNN and the New York Times; I'll take Jesus.

It was a lesbian couple that started to attend our church a few years ago. I got to know them, and one of them reached out and asked if she could meet with me. I gladly said yes, and she came in the office. She said, "Hey, I need some advice. I started to come to this church about a year ago, and she says, 'I believe what you're preaching, and I want Jesus in my life.'" And I was so excited about this Jesus I was encountering that I tried to get my wife to start coming with me, but she looked you up and she read y'all's statement of faith and she said, "Ain't no way I'm going to that church." She said, "They think our lifestyle is sinful." So she found—she said she went on the internet. She found us a liberal affirming church, you know, with a rainbow flag out front. She said, "We're going to go there." She said, "So to try to compromise with her," this lady said, "I went with her." She said, "We went three weeks in a row, and on the third week we walked out of the church, I looked at her and I said, 'Jesus ain't in this church. And we got us a choice now. We can go to Summit where they don't condone our lifestyle, but Jesus is, or we can go to this liberal church where they accept us, but Jesus ain't.'" She said, "I don't know what you're doing, but I'm going where Jesus is." She then broke down, started to cry there in my office, and she said, "I've accepted Jesus as my savior, and I'm ready to follow him. Can we pray for my wife?" Then she started to go through the process of dissolving the marriage. About six months went by, and I got a message out of the blue from the wife, or the ex-wife now by this point, who was asking to meet with me. She comes in the office. She said, "Hey, um, I got to tell you a story. My ex-wife who went to your church, she just kept inviting me and I would not come." Well, one week she was out of town, so I thought I'd sort of slip in incognito. Wouldn't have to sacrifice my pride and I just check it out. Now, Summit, I've been your pastor for a long time. Okay, I know you, you know me, I love you. You love me. I can count on one hand the total number of messages I've preached here in 20 years. I can count on one hand the total number of messages that were exclusively on the subject of homosexuality. The week that she came was one of those weeks. She said, "I couldn't believe it." She said, "I couldn't—" She said, "I said to myself, I knew it. These people are obsessed with us." She said, "So, I pulled out my notebook and I said, 'I'm just going to write down all the hateful things he says and I'm going to show it to my ex-wife as proof that she—"

Shouldn't be here."

After 10 minutes, she said, "Though, I was crying and I looked down at my pad and I didn't have a single thing written. And I said, I can't tell you exactly what she said, cuz she cussed. She said, she said, she said, I looked down at my pad and I said, 'Dang it, this is the most loving anti-gay sermon I've ever heard in my life.'" And she looks at me sitting there in my office. She starts to cry and she says, "I know this is true and I want to go with God. What do I do?"

Listen, Summit, don't compromise. I don't know about you, but I want the presence of Jesus more than I want the world's acceptance. Amen. Summit, be faithful. Be faithful because if we're faithful, God will crown us with life. A life which you experience not only in eternity, but a life you experience right now; right now in our church's life, in our families, in your prayer life, in your workplace, the life of Jesus.

One of the young men who would have first heard this letter was a young man named Polycarp. Tough name, many fish, okay, but Polycarp was a member—that's not really what it means—but Polycarp was a member of the church at Smyrna. He was a personal disciple of the Apostle John. Polycarp would have been in his 20s when John wrote Revelation. And in 115 AD, Polycarp became the church of Smyrna's pastor. Polycarp was a faithful leader. He was worthy of everything Jesus said in his description of this church in Revelation 2. True to Jesus's prediction, Polycarp suffered as did the church in Smyrna that he led. Eventually, the Roman proconsul in Smyrna ordered the execution of Polycarp because Polycarp refused to take the oath of allegiance to Caesar and call him the king of kings and lord of lords.

According to church history from people who said that they were there when the soldiers came to take Polycarp off to be burned at the stake, Polycarp asked for a few minutes to pray. Observers said he did so as calmly as if he were just praying before a good night's sleep. And soldiers brought him before the proconsul. The proconsul said to Polycarp, "Reproach Christ and I will release you." This was there in one of the amphitheaters in Smyrna. Polycarp responded, "86 years have I served him, and never once has he wronged me. How could I blaspheme my king who has saved me?" The proconsul then said, "Swear to the power of Caesar." And Polycarp said, "I swear to the power of one much greater than Caesar. Give me a day and I'll teach you about him." The proconsul said, "I will tame you by fire since you seem not to be afraid of the wild beast." And all the people gathered around that execution place. They cheered. Polycarp then looked at the crowd. Then he said, "You think I'm afraid of this fire? It burns for just a minute and then it's all—it's gone. You ought to be afraid of the fires of hell. I'm not scared of these temporary flames." He then looked at the soldiers and said, "Go ahead, boys. Bring on the fire."

According to one person there, the fire formed a circle around him, but his body didn't burn. The proconsul then ordered a soldier nearby to stab him with a spear. And when the blood—when he—when he did, the blood came out of his chest from where he'd been stuck with that spear, it extinguished the flames. Now, whether or not that last part is true, I have no way of knowing. What I do know is that it provides a powerful image of the church in the world. The blood of our faithful suffering puts out the fires of hell in our families, in our communities, and in our world. So be faithful, and in time, you will overcome.

Some—there's always a temptation to compromise with the world or to back off of the gospel. We can't do it. You can't do it. Losing the presence and power of Jesus isn't worth it. Compromise always feels like an easy way out, but I'm telling you, it leads to absolute disaster. A disaster far worse than the challenger disaster. If the church is going to be the challenger and it's going to walk with Jesus in the heavenlies, it cannot compromise in even the smallest of things. Jesus's conclusion for both churches, verse 7 and 11 says the same thing: "Let everyone who has ear listen. Let everyone who has ears to hear listen to what the spirit says to the churches. Because the one who conquers, I will grant him to eat of the tree of life." That's what he says to Ephesus and to Smyrna. "I will grant that he will never be harmed by the second death." His counsel to both churches: look to me. What else matters in life? Jesus says, "What's it profit you if you gain the whole world and lose your own soul? If you live a pain-free life with no trouble at all, and then you lose your soul for eternity, what good is that?"

Friend, listen. He's the first and the last, which means he's going to have the last word. But right now, the word he offers you right now is one of forgiveness and healing and salvation if you'll receive it. The most important question you'll ever consider is, have you accepted his word of salvation? He stands at the door right now and he knocks. What else matters in life more than this? Some—what else matters to our church except for his presence? May this Jesus that walks among the lampstands, may he find us faithful.

I want you to do two things. I want you to stand to your feet and I want you to bow your heads at all of our campuses. As long as we stand to our feet at the same time, if you will, I just want you to bow your heads there. Bow your heads. Our worship teams are on their way up. Here's what I want you to ask: Where are you compromising and grieving the Holy Spirit? And where do you need to surrender something to him? We're just going to open up these altars like we often do at the Summit Church, these altars down front at every campus. You got something you need to surrender, I'm going to put our prayer teams up here, some of our pastors, and you can come and pray with them. Surrender to Jesus. Pray with them. Or if you want to pray by yourself, then you can just gather around the altar—by that's fine, too. Maybe you just need prayer to hold on to Jesus in the midst of your trial. Listen, we were singing the song earlier. And I know not every campus did this, but one of the words of one of the songs was, "The word heals." And I just had this sense as we were singing that that there's somebody here that the word of Jesus is ready to heal. I could be wrong, but if there's something resonating in your heart right now on one of our campuses, you're like, "I think that's me," I just want you invite you to come down and get prayer over that. Let's see what Jesus wants to do with that because he's a strong savior who says, "Call to me." Maybe you just need to receive Christ. You've never received Jesus as your savior. You just come down here in a second and you take the hand of one of these people standing at the altar, one of these pastors and prayer team and say, "I need to receive Jesus." Whatever it is, this altar is open and it's time for us to do business with the Jesus standing here walking around our lampstand. Lord Jesus, give courage to obey and courage to respond. Jesus, don't remove your presence from us. Jesus, help us be faithful and to love you more than anything. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. Amen. Right now, if that's you, as our worship teams come, you come and you—you take advantage of this moment to meet with the Lord. [Music]