Oh,

thank you.

My, oh my, where would we be without Aaron? Hey, it’s good to see you all this morning. And I’m looking forward to this morning. Now granted, we are in a series on Revelation. And I have a feeling some of you are hearing that and going, Revelation, huh? What in the world are we going to dig into Revelation?

Now, when you look down here in the front, you’ll see seven lamps. Now we’ve lit the second lamp today, which signifies that we’re going to be looking at the second letter to the second church in Revelation. And when Alex asked me to preach on Smyrna First, I heard the word and I said, Oh, you’re kidding.

Then I read the verses and I, I wondered about it, but we’re going to dig in to Revelation chapter two, beginning at verse eight. If you’ve got your Bibles open to them, we’re going to be reading these verses a little bit later. But first I just want to share, I just want to share something with you.

That Carrie and I had the opportunity to do, let’s see. Okay. Other direction. Other direction. Boy, as you can tell, I’m really doing well. Other direction. Okay, other, oh,

wow.

Wait a minute. There it is. What direction did I just do? About a month ago, Carrie and I had the privilege of of flying back east to spend some time with my mom.

Now, there’s some wouldn’t know this. Look at me. And yes, I am a little bit older and that makes my mom quite a bit older. My mom is 102 years old. Wow. And Carrie and I had to go back because we were having to make some changes. Mom was moving into skilled nursing care, and we went back to spend a week with her.

At the end of that week, all through that week, really, Mom was saying she wanted us to take some of her furniture and know that we would be bringing it back. We decided we canceled our flight back, and instead we rented a minivan, and we put in an antique corner cupboard, we put in some tables, and we threw our luggage in, and we took a road trip, and we had a ball.

We did not hurry, we took about a week to go across I 80, which It does sound boring, but we had just a great time. I will tell you that I am not a historian, but I’m more of a history buff, probably emphasis on buff. But we I made my wife stop at all kinds of little places along the way.

And I think we saw about every historical marker. that was near that road. We also stopped a different thing. Like carry up there in the upper left, upper right corner for you. And she’s standing by a whole bunch of I always mess up the name. Pet petunias. I, we stopped at this petunia festival and I kept calling it a poinsettia festival.

So I finally had to picture. I’m standing next to a giant tuna petting it, and it was a petunia festival. We stopped this little town for this petunia festival. Then we stopped in a little town that said, We’re the home of, the childhood home of Ronald Reagan. And we followed the signs and came to this house that we’ve got up there someplace, and, as I was reading the instructions about the house, it said, yeah, Ronald Reagan lived here between the ages of 9 and 11.

I thought, wow, I wonder what other towns have the childhood home of Ronald Reagan as well. We went to Buffalo Bill’s house. We went to that one where Carrie’s stepping on the stones going up? That’s Boot Hill. We just had a great time. And, I found like in each one of these little towns, it was so interesting to get a background of what that town was.

I’m going to ask you today to put on your historian buff kind of outfit. And we’re going to dig into a little bit about Smyrna. Because, frankly, I did not know a thing about Smyrna. And it was so much fun finding out about it. But first we’re going to read the passage. Let’s just take a little look at the map first.

So you can grab where Smyrna is. Notice there’s Ephesus that shines and in Smyrna is just right above that, maybe 40 miles from Ephesus. Both Ephesus and Smyrna are a seacoast towns. They’re on the Aegean sea. They had massive harbors. And when you get into some of the other cities that the churches were in, you’ll see they’re farther inland.

They didn’t have quite a robust economy, but Smyrna did, and we’re going to learn about that today. Now, I don’t know if you can see, down in the lower corner, your left, you’ll see a little circle, and that’s the island of Patmos. That’s where the Apostle John was sentenced to exile. And he was down on this island, and that’s where he had this revelation.

And he wrote it down, and then, amazingly Sent it out to these seven churches. Yes, there were seven letters for those churches, but there was also the bulk of Revelation that they would hear as this letter of Revelation went from one to the next. Let’s read. And I’d ask us to read this together.

Beginning in verse 8. Write this letter to the angel of the church in Smyrna. This is the message from the one who is the first and the last angel who was dead but is now alive. I know about your suffering and your poverty, but you are rich. I know the blasphemy of those opposing you. They say there are Jews, but they’re not, because a synagogue belongs to Satan.

Don’t be afraid of what you are about to suffer. The devil will throw some of you into prison to test you. You will suffer for 10 days, But if you remain faithful, even when facing death, I will give you the crown of life. Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what He is saying to the churches.

Whoever is victorious will not be harmed by the second death. Four short verses. And when I first

have to do with it, it’s off. Oh, there it is again. Okay. What does this have to do with us? Let me just give you some of the characteristics of this church that come out that John, that John talks about. This church is going through suffering and poverty, but you are rich. I know the blasphemy of those opposing you.

This is a church that is suffering, that is having poverty, that is blasphemed against, and we have to dig into those words. That first word, suffering, in Greek, it’s really a word picture. It means you’re going through intense pressure. In other words, what the picture is in the Greek word is of a huge rock being placed on top of an individual and slowly crushing him.

Sometimes this is translated tribulation, sometimes translated persecution, sometimes suffering, like in this version I’m using, but sometimes pressure. Intense pressure that this church is going through. Then there’s the word poverty. I know your poverty. I was interested to find there are two basic Greek words for poverty.

The first word, which is not the one used here, but the first word for poverty in Greek basically means you got to work to make a living. And I’m thinking, wow, I guess I’m in poverty. But that was the Greek concept of poverty. People who had to work to be able to make a living to be able to have and meet.

But then there’s the second word, the one that’s used here, which just means abject poverty. These people had nothing. These people were broken economically. They had nothing at all. Finally, you’ve got the word blasphemy. Now, I don’t, whenever I’ve heard the word blasphemy, I think of saying something about God in the wrong way.

But it’s used here about really accusations, slander that was being brought against these people. Oh my, here we have people who are in such poverty, they have nothing. Here we have people who are under such pressure. It’s like bringing them to the end of their rope. And here we have a church that is being accused, slandered, blasphemed.

And I look at us today. And I say, God, help us make some sense of this for us. I don’t think we are pressured so much to the breaking point. We do have pressures. Yes. We might be slandered some misrepresented but not like these people were and face it when we look across the world we’re pretty rich even though we may have to work for a living

So I think we should start by going to God and asking him to make some sense of this for us.

Let’s pray. Father I thank you so much for this fact that you communicated to john on that island, and then you gave him individual letters for these churches, very personal letters for these churches. And Lord, you said, anybody who’s got ears to hear, let him hear. And that includes us today. So God, would you make this come alive to us?

Help us to understand I pray this in the name of Jesus, the one who gave this letter. Thank you, Jesus, for doing that. Amen. Amen. If we go back to this map, you’ll see this little road goes from Ephesus up to Smyrna up to Pergamon and around to Thyatira. And that’s how these were all connected.

And let’s take a road trip today. And we’re going to go and find out a little bit more about this place called Smyrna. Let me give you a few, three little tidbits about Smyrna, about the church there at Smyrna. One, this letter that was sent is only one of two of the seven letters that has no rebuke, or maybe I say no common, no, no condemnation.

Remember in Ephesus, basically he said, Hey, I’ve got this against you. You’ve lost your first love. He doesn’t say anything like that to Smyrna. And he didn’t say anything like that to the church at Philadelphia. So this church was positive, a positive letter. Secondly, Smyrna, amazingly to me, is the only city or church, the ancient church, that still has a city there today.

And the city that is on top of Smyrna, ancient Smyrna, is the city called Ismir. Let me just show you this picture of the excavations. The city of Ismir is a city of four million people. Four million people! It’s the third largest city in Turkey. This is Gora. But if you look over, look at that seven structure, seven story structure that looks like a parking lot.

Right there in the excavations. And that’s the problem that they have. Brian, yes. Is this falling out more? We’ll just keep on talking while he messes with my belt.

Anyway, that’s one of the reasons when you go to any of the other seven churches, the other six, you will find excavations underway and making great progress. When you come here to Smyrna. There’s just little sections that are being excavated because they’ve got 4 million people living on top of the rest of the things.

So they can’t really dig in that well. The third little point about Smyrna that I want you to know is it’s the only mention of it in the Bible. We never heard of Smyrna before in any of the chapters of the Bible. The only thing we can figure out and guess at this, when Paul Was on his third missionary journey and he was in Ephesus and he was teaching in Ephesus.

We read these verses Paul went to the synagogue. He preached boldly for the next three months arguing persuasively about the kingdom of God. But some became stubborn, rejected his message and publicly spoke against the way. So Paul left the synagogue, took the believers with him. Then he held daily discussions at the lecture hall of Tyrannus.

This went on for the next two years. And listen to this. So that the people throughout the province of Asia, both Jews and Greeks, heard the word of the Lord. And we believe that during this time, The news of the gospel spread through all of these cities, all these seven cities and throughout Asia Minor people began to hear about Jesus Christ and people began to accept him.

And then we believe that the apostle John, the disciple John went into this area of Asia Minor where the seven churches were, and he became the bishop of those churches and traveled between those churches and helped them until he was finally, they tried to execute him. But they finally exiled him to the Isle of Patmos.

Let me show you a picture of what maybe that city looked like. When Paul went, when John ministered there. What we find out about this city of Patmos, of of Smyrna. was that there were a hundred thousand people that lived there during this time of John. A hundred thousand people. And let me give you a few simple ideas about Smyrna.

One, it was a prosperous city. It was very wealthy. And as you look at that picture, you can see there’s a harbor that’s there. And that harbor was very active. In fact, the largest export that they had was myrrh, hence the name Smyrna. And Heir of Mur was a, it was a burial fragrance.

It was brought about because of some of the trees that were in that area. And then they exported it around the world. I was curious to find that the second largest export was wine because they had vineyards all over. And I wondered, wow, what if wine had been the first? Would it have been called swine?

No, but this city, Was of strategic importance when Alexander the Great came to power. 200, 300 years before Christ. He saw that Smyrna was strategic. And Smyrna had been destroyed by a civil war. People threw their loyalty behind Alexander the Great. So Alexander had a dream. Rebuild Smyrna. And so he did.

He commissioned his generals. He died prematurely, but he commissioned his generals to rebuild Smyrna. And they rebuilt it according to the newest plant they could find in the streets. Beautiful plazas. And this city was supposed to be one of the most beautiful in Asia Minor. And that’s where we come to the second characteristic.

Yes, it was prosperous. It was also beautiful. And it was structured to be beautiful. It was very accessible to people. It was on a trade route that went all the way over to the Persian Empire. And so goods would come from Persia, would be sent out through the seas. There was a street that went through this, and I don’t know which street it was, as you’re looking at that picture, but it was called the Golden Street.

And they paved it with, I don’t know if it was pure gold, but they paved it with things that looked golden in the streets itself. And they had temples all along it. And people would walk through it. They built temples to Sybil, temples to Apollo, temples to Aphrodite. They had temples all through this city.

If you look at that picture, you’ll see right in the center, a little square building. And I’ve put a little square around it. It’s called the Agora. And the Agora was where the marketplace was. It was where people would gather for municipal events together. All kinds of things happened. It was a beautifully constructed city.

This next picture just shows a few of the circle, at least guess what the temples might be. But if you look down in the, right at the top, see, it looks like a theater. They had a theater that would seat 24, 000 people. Let me show you the excavations of that theater. These are parts that are going on.

And what blows me away about the picture, if you can see, is the city of it. The city of it. Anyway. Schools. Ooh, hey, it works. Oh, thank you.

There we go. I’ll just take that from you later. Okay.

Anyway, there we go. Wow. They had a school of science. They had a school of medicine. They were known throughout Asia Minor for a whole variety of things. Anyway, Smyrna was an exceptional city.

100, 000 people. There was one other characteristic that I want to share with you. Smyrna was a politically stable city. Politically stable. And you wonder, what do I mean by that? Let’s look at the slide again. Way back, Alexander the Great came along, could have destroyed everything, but the Smyrnan people, they allied themselves to Alexander the Great, so they survived.

The Romans came along later. The Smyrna people were smart. They allied themselves with the Roman Empire, and they survived and Rome poured into them and continued to build up that city. Smyrna itself in about 150 years before Jesus came to the earth, they built a temple to the goddess of Rome.

It was before Rome was actually a dominant world power, but they built a temple to Rome itself. And then, actually, when Jesus was just about ready to step out into the world and start his ministry, it was 29 A. D., Smyrna and about nine other cities in the Roman Empire all put in their request that they would be allowed to build a temple for the emperor.

The emperor at that time was Emperor Tiberius, and Smyrna was given the privilege of being able to build that temple. Because of that, Rome protected Smyrna. Rome protected its harbor. Rome protected the roads that went out for trade. Rome kept that city healthy. So we wonder, what was it that caused this church to be impoverished?

pressured, suffering and blasphemed against. And I think it comes from that very last point that I was sharing about this being a very politically stable place. They realized with gratitude because of the Roman Empire, they were able to flourish. And so they built this temple to the emperor. And it wasn’t forced on people, but people could go to that temple and they could make offerings to this altar of the emperor to express their gratitude.

And most of the emperors during those early years when they did it, they didn’t force anything. They just said it’s interesting because the Roman empire had a problem. The Roman empire had so many nations they had conquered, had brought in so many different peoples. And they had to come up with some way.

How do we unify this empire? The one thing that could unify them was the peace that Rome was bringing to everybody. The Pax Ramonae. And so they built temples to that peace. And people would go and give offerings in gratitude to that peace. And then eventually, they said that’s, Kind of an ethereal thing.

Is there anything more tangible that we have? And someone suggested, yes, the emperor is more tangible. So let’s build a temple to the emperor. So they did. And Smyrna was given the privilege of building that first temple. And then gradually over a period of time, the government began to realize, wow, look at what’s happening.

People are saying their loyalty when they go to this temple, let’s make it official. Let’s build more temples to the emperors and make it official to be able to go and offer gratitude. So they did. And little by little, step by step, it became more than official. It became expected. And then came the time about the time when John was exiled to Patmos.

85 to 96 AD, when an emperor named Demetian came into control and he declared himself a god, and he took the deity of the emperor. And then the worship of Rome became compulsory for people to show that they were loyal to the government of the Roman Empire. Now they didn’t have to continue worshiping the empire, but they had to at least do it once a year.

to prove that they were good citizens.

People would go to the temple of the emperor. They would take a pinch of incense. They would drop it on this on the fire, and as it was consumed, and the instance would float up, they would say a few words, one of those being the emperor’s lord. And what would happen then is there would be a certificate that would be written, and on that certificate, it would explain that, yes, this person went to the temple.

Went to the temple, worshiped the emperor, expressed their lordship to him, and then they were free to go and be citizens of the Roman colony. And they could go to the Agora in the marketplace, they could do business, they could sell, they could trade, they could buy. They could expect the protection of the municipality and all the different services that the town offered.

But if they didn’t have that certificate. They weren’t seen as loyal citizens. This certificate that’s up there. Let me just read what it says. And I all I can do is trust this is what it says to those in charge of the sacrifices of the village of Theodelfia. Now, this is not Smyrna, but it’s another village.

I have a feeling if there were if there wasn’t a city of four million people on top of all these ruins, We’d have many more of these certificates showing up here in Smyrna, but he says, to those in charge of the sacrifices of the village Theodelfia from Oriela Baleal’s Daughter of Petrus and her daughter, Cappinus.

We have always been constant in sacrificing to the gods. And now too, in your presence, in accordance with the regulations, I have poured libations and sacrificed and tasted the offerings, and I ask you to certify that you This for us below. May you continue to prosper. And then there was a second hand that appeared a different writing that said, We are Elias Serena’s and Aurelius Hermas saw you sacrificing.

And then there was a third hand different writing that said, I Hermas certify. Now, when I realized that’s going on in Asia minor during this time, in fact, Smyrna was called the temple warden of the imperial cult. As Christians were faced with that choice, they realized they only had one Lord, and that Lord was Jesus Christ.

And many of them, when they were confronted by this choice, I said, No, I can’t make that extension. And people would encourage them to say, All you have to do is just take a little pinch and do it. Don’t worry. Don’t worry. After that, you can do whatever you want. They say, No, we only have Jesus Christ is our Lord.

And because of that, they didn’t receive a certificate. And because of that, they weren’t allowed to carry on the commerce of the city. They couldn’t start a business. They couldn’t have a livelihood. They couldn’t even go to the marketplace to buy goods. Consequently, they became impoverished, destitute.

They were pressured. Does it make more sense? what Smyrna may be going through.

I know about your suffering and your poverty, but you’re rich. I know the blasphemy of those opposing you. They say they are Jews, but they’re not because their synagogue belongs to Satan. Don’t be afraid of what you’re about to suffer. The devil will throw some of you into prison to test you. He’ll, you’ll suffer for 10 days.

It’s interesting. The message that Jesus brings to them is not, Hey, just trust me. Everything’s going to be okay. No, you’re going to suffer. But don’t give up. It’s only gonna be limited time. Don’t give up. Don’t compromise. Stay true. You may be asking, what about the slander, the blasphemy, those opposing that say they’re Jews, but they aren’t.

Again, it seems to around to that thing of the Roman Empire because the Roman Empire recognized certain religious groups and authorized them that they could continue their particular type of worship. Now they still had to proclaim their loyalty to Rome by taking a pinch and dropping it on and saying the Emperor is Lord, but then they could go and worship.

And the Jews, Judaism was one of those recognized religions. And guess what? Christianity was seen as a cult of Judaism. It was an offshoot of the Jewish faith. So for the Jews, it was a threat for them to have Christians refusing to say the emperor was Lord because it fell back upon them. So they were oftentimes the first ones to be out front accusing the Christians of not being loyal to the Roman Empire.

That was the situation in Smyrna. I don’t know how many people were martyred. In fact, we don’t have much of a record. of people that were martyred or killed in Smyrna. We do have one. And it was about 50 years after this time that John was on Patmos writing this letter to this church. That one person was a man by the name of Polycarp.

And Polycarp was a disciple of the Apostle John. He had been mentored by John while John was there in Smyrna. And gradually, as he got older, he became the bishop of the Asia Minor churches. And he was located in Smyrna. And there was one time they were having a festival. It was about 40 years after John wrote Revelation.

And the crowd said, let’s get polycarp, let’s get polycarp. And they went, they found him, they dragged him into the stadium and they demanded that he offer incense to the emperor. And Polycarp said, for 86 years have I served Christ and he has never done me wrong. How can I blaspheme my king who saved me?

And they tried to persuade him. He would not recant. And he finally was burned alive. The flames didn’t seem to kill him. And so someone ran up with a knife and stabbed him. And he died. They burned his bones. The church wanted so much to be able to take his body back. But all they could do was retrieve his ashes.

I think of that and I think of this church meeting and I don’t know, I honestly don’t know. Was this a series of house churches? The town was the city was 100, 000 people. That’s quite a bit. Maybe it was a number of different living rooms. Maybe it was one place. But I think how amazing when they received a letter that was specifically written to them.

Dictate written by John, but dictated by Jesus. Listen to this. Write this letter to the angel of the church in Smyrna. This is the message from the one who is the first and the last. The one who was dead, but is now alive. I can just picture those people sitting there, hearing that introduction. The one who was first and is last.

And I think of them saying, wow. Wow. Our town says we’re the first in Asia. We’re the first in beauty. We’re the first in, in size here in Asia Minor. But Jesus is saying no. I’m the first. I’m the one that created all things. I’m the one that created Smyrna. I’m the one that created this place.

And I am the last. I’m the one who has the last say. I am the judge of all.

Yes, you will suffer, but don’t. Don’t be afraid of that. I have the last say. I’m the one who they killed. I’m the one who died, but I rose. I rose from the dead. I am alive. And each and every one of you who are sitting in this living room or in this large room in Smyrna, I see what’s going on. And I’m writing specifically to you.

I wonder what would we do today? If we got a letter from Jesus, I wonder how he would start it. For me, it’d be fine if I just said, Hi, I’m Jesus. I don’t know how he would start it, but we would know he’s speaking to us. And I want each and every one of us to know this letter to Smyrna is speaking to us.

Yes, it was directly written to these Christians. centuries ago, but it’s also written to us at the end of this letter. It says he has ears to hear. Let him hear. And I hope each and every one of us today has ears to hear what Jesus wants to say to us.

I look at that ninth verse. I know about your suffering. I know about your pressures. I know about your poverty. I know. First lesson we can gain from this letter to Smyrna is that Jesus knows. It’s easy for me to say Jesus knows me. Jesus knows you. But what Jesus is saying in this letter is I know what you’re going through this word that’s used for suffering.

That could be persecution. It could be tribulation. It could be pressure, could be intense pressure. And I know as I look out here today, there’s a number of you that I understand. some of the pressures you’re going through. It may be a health diagnosis that is just devastating. It may be a family that’s falling apart.

It may be a work situation that’s just pressuring you. It could be finances. Who knows? Jesus knows. Jesus knows. And I want you to hang on to that. When you leave this place this morning, you don’t leave alone. Jesus goes with you. Let me share this verse. A verse in Isaiah. I’ll put it up there for you.

Isaiah 43. Do not be afraid, for I have ransomed you. I have called you by name. You are mine. When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficult difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of the oppression, you will not be burned up. The flames will not consume you.

For I am the Lord, your God. I don’t know what you’re walking through today, but Jesus does. And I would challenge you. You need to share that with Jesus. You need to allow him to walk with you into those pressures, just like these Smyrna Christians did. I don’t know how many of them survived and how many didn’t, but they walked with Jesus and he saw them.

Second lesson, he sees our faithfulness. He sees our faithfulness. Let me show you that verse 10. Don’t be afraid of what you’re about to suffer. The devil will throw some of you into prison to test you. You’ll suffer for 10 days, but if you remain faithful, even when facing death, I will give you the crown of life.

He sees our faithfulness. Now. When I was trying to wrestle with this point lesson for us, I was going to say, make sure you don’t compromise. Make sure we don’t compromise our faith in Jesus Christ. I look at those smirning Christians who were saying, I can’t put that pinch of incense for the emperor. And I can’t say the emperor is Lord because I only have one Lord.

Jesus commends that and asks us to be faithful. to hold true to that. And to tell you the truth, I’m not sure what that looks like for you. I think that’s one of the big problems we preachers make. We tell people what it is instead of letting the Holy Spirit tell you what it is. I think you know where you might be pressured to step away a little bit from that joy of the Lord, from the peace that you have with Jesus Christ.

Maybe it’s pressures at work. I don’t know. But Jesus is saying, boy, I commend you for your faithfulness. And the tests are only going to be temporary. It’s not going to be forever. But I commend you. How do we be faithful? How do we be faithful to Jesus? Yeah, I’m going to share one thing. I know, boy, when we get into Revelation, listen, I grew up on prophecy conferences.

You I know all about 666. And man, now I hear all these things about, Little chips being put underneath your skin, and I go, Oh, you’re kidding. I never thought that could happen. But I think sometimes Satan loves to distract us to look way down the road in the future instead of looking right now.

And I think one of the keys to helping us in our faithfulness, as I look around this room, I see a lot of people who are passionate about Jesus Christ. We need each other. The Holy Spirit, yes, is working within us and instructing us, but we need each other to speak into each other’s lives. And when we see something that may be going a little bit askance, let someone speak into your life and help you at that point.

There’s a quote that I read in a book and I don’t think Kevin’s here today, but Kevin Butcher wrote a book called Free. It’s a great book. If you haven’t read it yet, I’d encourage you to do it. But he has this quote by an author named Greg Boyd. The primary building blocks for the corporate temple of God, that’s us, the church, are covenantal relationships in which believers know one another profoundly, love one another deeply, care for one another unconditionally.

Only in this way do we grow in Christ. Boy, that’s powerful. I go back to Smyrna, and I wonder what a church meeting was like with those Smyrna believers. When they would get together, I wonder if they’d sit side by side, not really look at each other, sing a couple songs, have a teaching, and then leave. Or I wonder if they’d look at each other and say, oh man, I almost lost it this week.

Oh, they dragged me over to the temple, and they pressured me. I’m only grateful to say I didn’t offer that, but I need you to help me right now. I don’t know where I’m going to get the meals for my family next week. Can you help me? We’re a family together, and Jesus commends us for our faithfulness.

He also offers us victorious hope. He knows the pressures we’re facing. He knows them. He sees our faithfulness, and he offers victorious hope. He says, For those of you anyone with ears to hear must listen to the spirit and understand what he’s saying. Whoever is victorious will not be harmed by the second death, will not be harmed by the second death.

We could probably dig into that, what that means, but I have a feeling it just means the death that’s after death, which to me is the death that comes of spiritual judgment. And we don’t have to be afraid of that. I told you what started this whole trip that Carrie and I took was going to see my mom, who we moved into skilled care.

This is mom. 102. I looked at that and I said, 102? Good grief. I hope I look as good as that when I’m 80.

When, We went out to visit mom. The nurse pulled me aside and she said, the other day we found your mom down by the main entrance. Now skilled care is up on the second floor. All they could put together was mom, when she was helped to get out of bed, she was put into her wheelchair and was sitting there and she must have just walked her, wheeled herself over to the closet, grabbed a sweater, put it on, Somehow got by all the nurses stations, got over the elevator, went downstairs, and was out at the front door.

And one of the staff saw her and said, Margie, what are you doing down here? And she said, I’m waiting for the bus to go to church. And they said, Margie, it’s Thursday. And they took her back up, got her back up into her room, put an alarm on her, So she can’t get on the elevator anymore. But after the nurse told me that story, the nurse also said, there’s something incredible about your mother.

She’s not afraid of death. And I said to him, I said to this nurse, her name was Felicia. And I said, yeah, Felicia, I would agree with you. Mom’s not afraid of death. In fact, at 102, she really is looking forward to it.

She’s looking forward to go home because she’s not afraid of what’s on that other side of walking through that doorway called death. Okay. And she realized there’s so much. And the reason it’s there is because, yeah, we believe in Jesus Christ. We believe he lives. And because he lives, we will live forever.

I stopped preaching at her then, and we went on for the week and spent the time as we got to the end of our visit with Mom. I said to Mom, I said, Mom, I’ll see you next time. And there was a little silence, and then she looked up at me and she said, it would be nice if next time was heaven.

Guys, that’s the hope that each and every one of us have because Jesus lives. We know that he knows what we’re going through. We do not go through it alone. We need each other to walk in that faithfulness, to glorify him wherever we go just by living consistently for him. And guess what?

We don’t have to be afraid of the future. We know what’s coming because he lives. Let’s bow our heads in prayer. I dare have my father. Oh, Lord, I thank you. Lord, I thank you for that road trip. Carrie and I were able to take that opportunity just to go back to be with mom. But I thank you also for this opportunity just to see these Christians in Smyrna and what they went through, what they boy, how they embraced your lordship.

cost of so much. Lord, I don’t think we have any kind of life threatening compromises that face us right now. But I do think we have some faith threatening compromises, and I ask that you would reveal those to us and help us to speak into each other’s lives so that we may glorify you in the way we walk and the way we live.

And Lord, may you be lifted high. I look forward to the time. When we’re before you in that throne room rejoicing and praising with a multitude of people from all generations and centuries and places. Right now, help us to walk after you. I pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.