Simple Faith

Guest (Male): What are you doing for the cause of Christ? Here's a thought from Pastor Bill Henry.

Bill Henry: Jesus doesn't only know what's going on in the churches, the works of the churches, but he knows each individual Christian's work here within the church. And are you at work within the church? Are you doing work for the Lord here? You're serving the Lord here at this church or wherever your home church is. Jesus sees those neat things that you're doing.

Pastor J, Pastor Bill, others may not see those things you've done. We may not know who comes in to clean up the sanctuary. Anybody know who does that? I do, but most people don't. I love this. Jesus sees, he knows.

Guest (Male): Sharing the love of Christ and being faithful to his word should cause people to love us, right? After all, we're sharing the best news ever. We should be popular, well-liked by the world, and invited to all the best parties and highly sought after, right?

Greetings, this is Simple Faith with Pastor Bill Henry from Simple Faith Calvary Chapel in Vancouver, Washington. As we continue our study in Revelation, we've come to the letter from the Lord to the church in Smyrna. And we'll see that being well-liked and respected for our Christian faith isn't necessarily part of God's plan. In fact, you may be shocked at what the world says about the world's opinion on Jesus and his true followers. Here's Pastor Bill Henry now with today's message.

Bill Henry: And so we see here to verse eight, and to the angel of the church in Smyrna write. Now we've come to the second letter here in Revelation chapters two and three of the Book of Revelation. And if you remember, this is the Book of Revelation, it is the revelation of Jesus Christ. If you look at verse one of chapter one, some of your Bibles even say the revelation of John or John the apostle, that's not what it says. If you just read verse one, this is the revelation of Jesus Christ.

And he's now asked John, he's told John, hey I want you to write letters to these seven churches. And so we've come to the second church and it's in Smyrna. They're both all in Asia Minor, what we would call. And notice it says now Smyrna. Ephesus was the first letter that we studied a couple weeks ago now. And this second letter is to Smyrna. Now Smyrna's roughly 35 miles. And it was a large and wealthy city then, a city on the coast. And unlike Ephesus, you can still go visit Smyrna today, although it's called Izmir on the western Aegean coast of Turkey. You can go Google Maps it, looks like a beautiful place. So you can still go there today.

Now it's interesting to note that this is the only place within the New Testament that Smyrna is mentioned. And even though Jesus as he is speaking to seven different churches here within these letters, it's interesting to note that Paul when he wrote all of his letters, he only wrote to seven different churches as well. But even in Paul's letters or even in these letters, there's something worth noting that we might not see right away. But do you notice how Jesus never talks about how many people are going to the church? Is it a large church, is it a small church? Are the numbers great, are the numbers small?

Now the reason I bring this up, we were on vacation last week and even then you talk to people, you start and you try to bring the Lord in, "Oh you go to church? Well what church you go to? How big is your church?" It always comes up, second or third question. Even at pastors' conferences, I get that asked all the time, "Well how big is your church?" I went to an Alistair Begg conference a few years ago, pastors' conference, and it was really interesting because it's back east in Cleveland. And most of the churches there are about 25, 30 people. The average church in the United States if you didn't know, it's about 90. That's the average size of the average church.

But the first question almost it came out of all of our mouths, "Well how big is your church?" And it wasn't to really brag but I guess it just kind of gives you a sense of what's going on. But the Lord doesn't deem it worthy a worthy point to address. Perhaps we shouldn't worry about how large a church is or how small a church is, but how deep a church is. How deep a church is in the things of the spirit of God. How deep a church is in the things of the word of God. How deep a church is in loving God, loving one another and loving a world that is lost. A church that is deep in loving obedience to the one who has saved us and a church that is deep in sharing the good news of Jesus Christ, the gospel.

I'll be honest with you, we don't pray for large numbers here at Simple Faith, we just pray for deep, a depth, people that believe and they're alive and on fire for Jesus Christ and his word. Now he goes on here in verse eight, he says these things says the first and the last, who was dead and came to life.

Now if you guys will all take out your Bible codebooks, did you bring your Bible codebooks today? Okay, I'm just kidding. If you're visiting there, we don't have a Bible codebook. There's so many books out there, the codes of the Bible, the secrets in the Bible. I'm not saying the Lord couldn't do things like that but my goodness, I think it was somebody back in the 1800s says I'm not worried about the things I can't understand in the Bible, I'm more worried about the things I do. There's so much within the word of God and this is plain. This sounds weird at first, doesn't it? These things says the first and the last who was dead and came to life. What does that mean? Well this is Jesus describing himself.

How do we know that? Let's go back to chapter one. Remember the title of the book, it is the revelation of Jesus Christ. He is continually to reveal himself. And when you go through chapter one you're just like, whoa, he is, was and is to come, he is God Almighty, he is the I Am, the Great I Am. And so even as he's writing to Smyrna, he's continuing to reveal himself. And by the way, he takes a portion of what he says about himself in chapter one to every church, every letter. He takes a portion. These things says the first and the last who was dead and has come to life. Jesus Christ is he who is the first and the last. He always has been and he always is and he always will be. He is God Almighty.

Again that's what he's asserting here, he is God Almighty. And we need to understand this. He was dead and came to life. Now again I think that there are many, even some maybe here today or watching or listening, you still like Jesus is the babe in the manger. You know that cute little baby that we just celebrated at Christmas time. And you like Jesus in the manger because he's safe. He doesn't tell you what to do. Oh well he's in the manger still, I can still do what I want to do, live how I want to live but still call myself a Christian. He is no longer the babe in the manger.

He also is no longer the surfer dude Jesus that many have on their wall. You know the blond flowing hair, the piercing blue or green eyes, almost like "Hey bro let's go catch a wave." And again, he's my best bro. And even though he no longer calls us enemies or even slaves but friends, we still need to remember who he now is. He is the risen Lord, he is no longer hanging upon the cross. Some Christians like to think of Jesus forever hanging upon the cross and oh he has to forever suffer for my sins. And thus he can't really help me right now because he's still nailed upon that crucifix over there or on my neck or wherever.

No guys and gals, Jesus Christ is the risen Lord. He is the first, he is the last, he is the beginning, he is the end, he who is, who was and is to come. He is the Great I Am. He was dead but now is come back to life. He alone has power over life and death. And he's reassuring the church, they're saying look, remember who I am. I'm not the babe, I'm not the surfer bro, I'm no longer on the cross, I am risen from the dead and I am God. I am God Almighty. And I think today within the church we need to remember this too. As we come more and more here the church in America towards persecution, outright persecution.

We have people in our church already that have lost their jobs because they won't yield to the homosexual agenda, they won't yield to the transgender agenda. It's getting worse and worse. But all we need to do is remember that God is on the throne. No matter what comes our way, Jesus is God and we are his and he is ours. And that also means by the way that all of his promises that we have within his word, they're yes and amen because God wrote them. And by the way, there's no expiration date on the Bible. Truth is truth forever and God's word is true forever. He is the first, the last. I just love this, he was dead now he's alive.

Look at verse nine, "I know your works." Now if you go to each of the seven letters, again this is another thing that Jesus tells each of the churches, "Hey I know your works." And you know, sometimes like in this letter, it's works that are good. He doesn't have anything negative to say about the church there. But in other letters Jesus sees the works of the church and he's not very happy. He actually corrects them and condemns them. And this is not only true of these seven churches but of all churches throughout all church history including today. That again Jesus knows our works because back in chapter one he told us he is there in the midst of the church, in the midst of the seven golden lampstands.

How do we know what seven golden lampstands is? Get out your book again, the book of codes. No, you can just read it at the end of chapter one. Jesus tells us plainly that the seven churches are the seven golden lampstands and he is standing in the midst. Jesus Christ is here now today. He says, "I know your works." You see, we don't have to go to Kentucky to find the presence of God. Jesus is here now. But do you believe that? Do you believe that?

And here's the interesting thing, Jesus doesn't only know what's going on in the church, the works of the church, but he knows each individual Christian's work here within the church. And are you at work within the church? Are you doing work for the Lord here? You're serving the Lord here at this church or wherever your home church is. Jesus sees those neat things that you're doing. Pastor J, Pastor Bill, others may not see those things you've done. We may not know who comes in to clean up the sanctuary. Anybody know who does that? I do, but most people don't. But we come and we like it that it's clean for the most part, right? You know somebody's actually wiping off the handles making sure we don't get the Coronavirus. I love this. Jesus sees, he knows.

Santa Claus, he knows who's been bad or good. That's a sad thing most people have kind of turned Santa Claus into Jesus, he sees everything knows all. No, no, no, God does. And not only does he see the good things we do and also maybe we're not doing the things that we should do, maybe we're living in sin and rebellion. God sees that. Maybe nobody else does. You think you're getting away with it, you're not. And God loves you enough to tell you you're not. Repent of that today. But he also sees our struggles, he also sees our hurts and our wounds and he wants to heal you. Come to him. He is the God who restores what the locusts have eaten. He is a God who restores us, who heals our especially our hearts and our minds. And he can heal our bodies, sometimes he says no.

Now it's interesting because Jesus is everywhere at one time. The theologians call this omnipresent. Jesus is everywhere all the time, this is part of his Godhead. And his presence is here now even within the church, his bride, his body. And you know, we just need to understand he is right here, he is here now. Do you understand that even when we're alone Jesus is here? We know that, right? Because if you're a believer in Jesus Christ you have the Holy Spirit, the Bible says tabernacling, living within you and me. We can't make a temple with human hands for the God of the universe to dwell in but he can dwell in our hearts.

So we know that he's here in that way, but he also tells us when we come together as the church, as we're stirring each other up as we're told in Hebrews to love and to good works. His Holy Spirit is at work by the gifts he's given to us. And as we seek to edify or lift up to build up one another, Jesus is here, his presence is here. Do you realize that this morning? That God is here. When you're singing praise songs it's not to some God that's so far off he can maybe barely hear you, make sure you sing extra loud. No, he is here right now to receive our praise and worship. He is here right now to minister to you and to me. He is here right now to convict us of sins or to correct us if need be because he loves us.

Now in James chapter four verse seven through ten, it says so humble yourselves before God, resist the devil, he will flee from you, come close to God and God will come close to you. Now remember, he's talking to Christians here, James is. But look, come close to God and God will come close to you. Wash your hands you sinners, purify your hearts. Again this is to Christians. For your loyalty is divided between God and the world. Let there be tears for what you have done. Let there be sorrow and deep grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter and gloom instead of joy. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up.

God wants to lift us up. God wants there to be revival in each one of our lives even here now this morning. So what did Jesus know? "Hey, I know what's going on." Look at verse nine as it continues. He says "I know your works, tribulation and poverty, but you are rich." You see Jesus knew completely about the tribulation and the poverty that those within the church there were experiencing. Now again we just need to understand this is not talking about the tribulation, the Great Tribulation that comes in in chapter four of Revelation. No, this is simply talking about their daily tribulations.

As Christians they were having tribulations. I mean Jesus says look, I know your daily tribulations, I know your trials. You're my followers. And remember as followers of Jesus Christ guys and gals, you and I, we're going to have tribulations. We're going to be hated for the name of Jesus. How many of us are stoked about that? Woo-hoo, they hate me. You know I saw an article just yesterday, I clipped it for our prophecy update and it's interesting it was a secular guy it looks like writing in a secular newspaper. He says why do so many people hate Christians? And he's like well it's because they teach misogyny and they you know are pro-slavery and all these different off-the-wall things, right?

It's like look guys and gals, you and I are going to be hated because we love people enough to give them the message of the messenger. In other words we are the messenger, the message God gives us is a message that is going to be hated by the world. And if we tell people that, guess what? They're going to hate us for it. They're not going to go, "Oh thank you so much for telling me I'm a sinner on my way to hell. Thank you so much for telling me that the wages of sin is death, eternal separation from God in hell and then the lake of fire for all eternity where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth."

And thank you I guess for telling me that the free gift of God is eternal life through his son, Jesus Christ. That we all need to repent or turn away from our sin and to Christ and to Jesus, to believe in him, to receive him as the Lord and savior of our lives. You see when we tell people that, it's the good news, it's the great news, man that we don't have to go to hell, that we're already were headed there. But you know what? People will hate you when you stand up and speak this gospel whether it's on TikTok, whether it's on Instagram, whether it's at work or school, sometimes even in our homes. They will hate you.

Jesus said beware when everybody speaks well of you. Does everybody like you at work, everybody like you at school? I can guarantee why because you're not sharing the gospel. "Well I'm living the gospel. You see it's better to live it than to speak it." That's not what the Bible says. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. I don't know of anybody that ever saw someone says, "You know what? I'm going to follow Jesus just because I see what you're doing." Now how we live by the way should back up what comes out of our mouth. But it's important that it comes out of our mouth and they're going to hate us for this and thus we'll go through tribulations. And that's the thing that he's talking about here.

And we need to understand that they were being persecuted for this. They're going through tribulations for this but notice, Jesus says they were also in poverty. So not only were they experiencing persecution from the Gentiles and the Jews alike, they were also struggling with poverty. Now maybe there's some people here you're struggling with poverty here this morning. Maybe those watching or listening online. You know it's interesting, Toli and I have we've had our share of those times as well. I remember we lived in a garage apartment for three and a half years just barely struggling, just barely making it by. But you know it's interesting when I even think back then, we were still better off than 95 percent of the world.

I think that most of us here in America for the most part don't know what true poverty is. If you've traveled overseas or even just been to Mexico, you know what I'm talking about. I think it'd be a great idea for all young people maybe from the age 19 to 20 or something to go live in a third-world country for a year and then come back to America and just what changes it would show of what true poverty is. But here's the thing guys and gals, maybe you are experiencing poverty today. Maybe you think you're rich of the things of the world but here's the thing, notice what Jesus says here. "Tribulation and poverty but you are rich," he says here. "But you are rich."

You see, even if we're in poverty we need to remember that we're always rich in Jesus Christ. And by the way, that's where true riches are. Anybody know anybody who's died? Please raise your hand, I'm not saying this to be glib, anybody know anybody who's died? Okay, can anybody here that just raised your hand, did any of those people who died take anything with them? No? Well then why do we live like that? I remember years ago reading about a guy, he had to be buried he was taking it with him, he was buried in his Cadillac. And they buried this thing. Well the story was they were actually burying it back up, they took him out of his Cadillac, put him back down in the ground and they're restoring the Cadillac today, he didn't even get that.

And by the way he obviously didn't take them with him because it was still there. You know you see this with the Egyptians when they go and you know you find Tutankhamun's tomb and it's all full of gold and all these different things. So when they get to heaven or wherever they're going, they'll have all the riches that they need. Well guess what? You open the tombs and guess what? It's all still there. We don't take any of this with us what we call riches here on the earth.

But you know what we do take and have for all eternity? The riches that we have in Jesus Christ. The riches that we have. Second Corinthians 6:4 and 10 says this, "But in all things we commend ourselves as ministers of God in much patience, in tribulations, in need and distresses," then in verse 10 it says, "as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as nothing yet having possessed possessing all things." You see when we're in Jesus Christ, we possess all things.

Hey we might be headed into where all of a sudden we lose our houses, we lose our retirements, we lose everything, even maybe our lives. It's like so what? We can still sing Zippity-Doo-Dah. We can still sing you know I'm so happy, so very happy, I've got the love of Jesus in my heart. Why? Because we have Jesus. And in him we have all riches that again that are going to last for all eternity. James 2:5 and 6 says "Listen, my brethren, God has not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs in the kingdom which he promised to those who loved him." God has chosen us. Hasn't he chosen the poor of this world? Don't put your trust in the riches of this day. If all of a sudden you you lost everything tomorrow, would your faith go with it? Would you be so mad at the Lord oh Lord I can't believe you're letting this happen if all of a sudden you go to the doctor and now your health is taken away, you have cancer, you have two weeks to live or six months or whatever maybe somebody you love and you get mad at God? If you do, you're holding on too tight to those things. You need to let them go and lift them up in praise.

Guest (Male): This has been Simple Faith with Pastor Bill Henry from Simple Faith Calvary Chapel in Vancouver, Washington. Today we brought you a message from Pastor Bill's series in Revelation. It's our sincere hope and prayer that you've been blessed by the words you heard from Pastor Bill today. If you'd like to share today's message with someone, it's available at our website to either watch or listen, and you can actually download an audio MP3. We have a large number of Pastor Bill's messages archived and you can find them all at simplefaith.org. That's simplefaith.org, just click the media tab.

We also stream Simple Faith at 1place.com. And if you'd like to contact us, just click the contact us tab on our website, and there's a tab at the top of our homepage where you can also send in a prayer request. And you can also call us at 833-BY-GRACE. That's 833-294-7223. And if you'd prefer the US mail, our mailing address is PO Box 55, Battleground, Washington, 98604. And when you support this radio outreach with a donation of any amount, we're going to send you a copy of a classic book from legendary Christian preacher and apologist D.L. Moody. It's called The Overcoming Life. It's absolutely a must-read for any Christian and it has been read and enjoyed by millions of believers. To get a copy of this wonderful resource for a donation of any amount, go to simplefaith.org and click the give tab.

Here at Simple Faith Calvary Chapel, we have three services on Sunday morning at 8:00, 9:45 and 11:30, and a great time of study in God's word on Wednesday evenings at 7:00 PM. For more information and directions, go to simplefaith.org and you can also follow us on Facebook and Instagram. Thanks for joining us today and be sure to join us next time as our series in Revelation continues here on Simple Faith with Pastor Bill Henry brought to you by Simple Faith Calvary Chapel.