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Someone finds that amusing. Hey. What movie is that from? Lord Lord of Rings. Good. Because a lot of you weren't born when that came out. It's a great movie series, but it's based on a even better book series written by a guy named Tolkien. And if you don't know, Tolkien was a Christian
and he put a lot of spiritual allegory into this story. It was basically describing the gospels, describing the world we live in, describing evil and the battle and putting it in a different kind of context.
And that that that kind of explains the whole purpose of of of the story was that guy Bilbo, the little hobbit. He had this ring that's called the ring of power and he had found it. Had it for a long time. He liked the power it gave him. He liked what it it did. And he would use it, not use it, use it. But he realized maybe, as you saw, it was like actually destroying them because it was made by the evil one who sent it to all these rulers, these different rings, and and it gave them power. It it it gave them the things of this world you would want, but ultimately he can control them with it.
And everyone who got it, it looked like they're winning, but in the end they were destroyed. And so then Bilbo now gives up the ring and they send the fellowship of the ring. This group with Frodo Baggins and all them go and that's the whole book series. They're on this journey to
destroy this ring, to stop the power, and they do nothing but suffer and struggle the whole time. But the truth is they're the heroes. And even though they struggle and they don't get the they don't get the riches, they don't get that, they win. And for them winning looks like losing the whole time.
And and then Gandalf the wizard in there is he's kind of a Christ type in this story. He's he's a picture of Jesus and and he's this powerful wizard who's their friend. He comes in. He does fireworks. The kids love him. He's he's nice. He he loves them. But in this moment when he sees that he's he's fallen in love with this ring, he says, you need to let it go. Is it that hard? He goes, no.
And yes. He wants the ring, but he knows it's gonna destroy him. And then he ends up yelling at Gandalf. It's your fault. And and he gets angry. And so Gandalf kind of powers up a little bit and says, do you take me as the conjurer of cheap tricks?
And he's like, scares him. And he says, but I'm not trying to rob you. He's blaming you. Like, you're trying to keep me back. You're trying to hold me back. You're gonna make me suffer. And he's like, I'm here to help you.
And that's really a great picture. I love that illustration that story because it kind of explains what's going on in these seven letters we're looking at in the book of Revelation.
It starts off with sending these letters to these real churches that were in Asia at the time. There there's seven of them and and the the Jesus is is is writing to them. And for almost every one of them, he has some condemnation, has some throat punches.
He says, here's here's what you're doing well. Good for that. But here's what you gotta stop doing. You gotta figure this out. And he challenges them. But there's a couple, two in Perdido that he he doesn't have any condemnation for. And we're gonna look at one of them today.
And the the one that he has no condemnation, he's trying to encourage them. They are like the fellowship of the ring. They are gonna suffer and suffer greatly.
And they're gonna suffer because of their faith, because of the cause, because of the mission, because they're going on. And he's gonna encourage them because he says this is a necessary thing. This is a good thing even though it's gonna feel like losing but you're actually winning.
And really what he commends them for is that they stay faithful. They overcome And he says this is what we need to do. You need to overcome. In other words, the challenge he has for them is what's your precious?
What's the ring? The encouragement and the challenge and the big idea is simply this that I want to talk about today is when winning feels like losing choose winning.
I talked about this kind of concept two weeks ago when we were doing the groundbreaking. I said, hey, we're going to be on mission with God if we're going to be faithful and go where he wants us to go
winning is gonna feel like losing. And I said this comparison to my dad said in actual combat. When you're in the middle of combat, it doesn't matter if you're winning, you still feel like you're losing.
And that's really the Christian walk, our life. Oftentimes if we're gonna trust the Lord and trust his love and trust that he really does love us and wants to help us not rob us, we're gonna have to make choices that life's gonna feel like we're losing. And in that moment,
we need to be willing to give up the ring of power and choose winning. In other words, we're called to be the bride of Christ. That's what the church is. That's what we are as Christians. The bride of Christ. And what he's saying is if I am the bride of Christ, I already have a ring. And you can't have two wedding rings.
And the struggle that I think we have today is many of us want both rings. We're like Bilbo there. I know I need to go this way. I know this is with a but my precious. And what you gotta decide is what's your precious because you can't live in both worlds. And it's an encouragement depending on who you are.
This letter is and that's why I love how he who do you take? Am. When Jesus writes to these churches, he introduces himself. And what's interesting is is his introduction is a piece of that full description in chapter one. And as you study these churches,
in the introduction of how he describes himself is the answer, part of the answer to what they're going through. And what you're gonna see is he is the God who loves us. He is
kind. He is gentle. He is saying, I'm here to help you, not to rob you or hurt you. But he also says, don't trifle with me because I am not the conjurer of cheap tricks. I'm the Lord God Almighty.
And so we're gonna look at that and and and see and encouraging. We're gonna read four verses and I'm gonna explain how this works because in this passage, I think there's two things that tell us how to choose winning that he encourages them with because that's what they're doing.
And so we're in Revelation chapter two starting in verse eight.
I'm just gonna read the four verses then go back and make the two points. He says 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 who is dead but is now alive.
I know about your suffering and your poverty, but you are rich. I know the blasphemy of those who of those opposing you. They say they're Jews, but they're not because their synagogue belongs to Satan. Don't be afraid of what you are about to suffer.
The devil will throw you into prison to test you. You will suffer for ten days. But if you remain faithful, even when facing death, you will 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. So he goes, this is what I have to say to the churches. Now this is an important part too. The first thing we gotta remember is he's writing to churches, not just to people. Now people, we are the church.
So we understand that one of the steps of understanding what it means to be a faithful follower of Christ is you can't do that without being a part of a church. We're not Rambos. It's not the cafeteria plan of spiritual maturity. We are called to commit to a body of Christ.
And and and and and we live in a world that tries to fight that even in Christianity. I don't need to. I'll just watch online. I'll watch the speaker. I'll do that. It doesn't work that way. He's calling he writes to a body of Christ. Not just write this to Bill. It's more to us as a group.
And so here we go. So what does he say? There's two things in here. I think he says that when winning feels like losing, choose winning in our life. And the two things are this. We gotta look and we gotta listen. We gotta look and we gotta simple. What do I mean by look? We need to look at Jesus,
not our suffering. We need to look at Jesus, not our suffering. Like when you're suffering with something like first, there's three kinds of suffering. There's types of suffering. There's common suffering. We live in a broken world
and and our bodies break down and and and we get older and we get up in the morning. We're like, wow, that didn't hurt yesterday. And you get to an age that when something starts hurting, you're like, I think this is gonna feel this way the rest of my life.
Your body doesn't mend. And sometimes we live in a world that you know, economies, there's storms, we lose houses, we have the natural disasters, we we lose a job, we do there's suffering that's common to just living in this world. There's also suffering that comes from carnality, us choosing
to embrace the ring of power and ignoring God. Some of the suffering is we do dumb things, you know, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. So some of our suffering is our own fault.
And and and and and so that causes us problems. And a lot of times we get confused. Sometimes we don't see that. We don't listen to God. We do our own thing and then things aren't working. And we're like, why does God hate me? And God's like, I'm not hating. You're hating yourself. Just open your eyes and and stop being that way and those suffering will go away.
But the suffering he's talking about here is the third kind. It's for the cause of Christ. Means I'm gonna suffer
because I'm on mission with God, because I trust him, because I'm doing what's right, because I'm winning, because I'm in the fight, because and God says that's a good thing even though it feels like a bad thing. And even though it feels like losing, it will cost us greatly, we actually win.
Now here's the thing. No matter what problems you're going through or what kind of suffering, any of those three is the same answer. The same answer of how to deal with it is to look and to listen. And the first thing is you look to Jesus, not your problem.
You look at him, not your problem. I mean think about it. When you're driving a car, what happens if you're driving down the road and you keep looking at something over here? What same with a bike.
You you you naturally go towards what you're looking at. Right? So if you're in a car, you're gonna run into something, you're gonna get in a ditch. On a bike, it's even worse. Trust me. Trust me. A lot of my common suffering is because of my stupidity of suffering that some of my aches and pains are caused by all the crashes on bikes because I get too interested in something else and don't pay attention to where I'm going.
And so the reality there is if I don't look to Jesus, if I just keep fixating on my suffering and then getting angry like Bilbo did at God like, why is this happening? And just worrying about that and only caring about that, you're only gonna get into worse problems.
So look to him. In what way? And that's why I said the description of him, how he describes himself, and the context of where they're at gives us an answer of what he's asking us. He waved at me.
And and so look in verse eight is this answer. He says, write this letter to the angel of the church in Smyrna. So he's saying, this letter to the angel. So the first thing he's putting in contrast of what you're looking at. Instead of looking at this, look at this. Smyrna,
it's this it's it's the crown jewel of Asia for the Roman Empire. It is massively wealthy. It is a beautiful city.
It's called a crown city in that they were the first city that actually did emperor worship. And emperor worship wasn't about a religious thing as much as it was about approving your loyalty to the Roman Empire.
And so you have all of that going on. It's it gets all these rewards, all this money, and they call it crowns to do because they have so many statues. The laurel rees, a crown, as they described, that meant victory, that meant prosperity, that meant it it's prosperous by the world standards. It has it all going. It has the religious. It's got political clout. It's got economic clout. It's got all that. And what we're gonna see in a minute is it's got everything that these Christians there don't have.
They're being persecuted and pushed out. So they're in contrast, if you're sitting there, it looks like why are they winning and I'm suffering? He says, okay. You see that. But here's what I need you to look at. He says, this message is from the one who is first and last who is dead but is now alive.
Two things in this description. This description out of chapter one goes to them and it's actually answers what they need to look at instead of their problem. You need to understand and see Jesus as the first and the last and the one who was dead and came to life. That's both a powerful statement and a very understanding
grace filled loving encouraging statement. The first is the first and the last That comes out of the book of Isaiah.
And what he's saying is he says, I am the Alpha and the Omega. That's the alphabet. A to Z. I am the first and the last. I am the A and the Z of all that's ever existed. I was here before this. I'll be here after this. I'm here during this. I created this. I am the entire thing. It is me. I am life itself. I am existence itself.
I am the it's I'm not a resource. I'm not I'm the source. I'm not just the conjurer of giving you kinda happy lives. I am the essence of all that is holy and true and real. I am eternity.
I am. Jesus is even described as the great I am. That word for I am is hard for us to understand in English because it means I am. That's what it means. The best way you could say this, I am existence itself. I am life. I am meaning. I'm everything. We look to God and we want him to give us stuff that we think will give us meaning. He wants to give us himself and a relationship with him because he is the first and the last.
And we need to remember that. That is way bigger than anything we're going through. But then he says, and and and if you're suffering,
he says, I'm also the one that died but came back to life. Which means out of me being the great God of all that is and was and ever will be, I made you. I know you. I know you better. You know yourself. I know what's right. I know what's wrong. I know what you need. You need to trust me.
And you need to trust me because knowing all that, we sinned against him. But God took on humanity himself. Jesus has still got a body. That's a permanent thing he did. And he came into this world and lived a perfect life that we couldn't live and died to give us a life we could not earn. That's how much he loves us. And
he beat death. So what he's saying is, here's why if it life if if if winning feels like losing, choose winning. Is because what he's saying is, I've already died for you and came back to life. So now you will never truly die if you trust me. So even if you do die, you didn't die.
Even if you die, you're like Obi Wan Kenobi. If you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine. We win. We win. He says look to that. And when you look to that, you gotta commit to that.
What that means is, do you understand that to truly be a Christian says, I am willing to lose my life for this cause because this life is only temporary, but the eternal life is forever. But we fear that because we get stuck with, I precious.
And we think only about the now. We have a temporal view of things. The first and last means, I have the eternal perspective. You have a temporary perspective
and you need to trust me. So that's the first thing we gotta do. We gotta look at that. But it's not just look and think about it. A lot of times they say, okay, that's gonna solve my problem. I'm just gonna keep looking at That's gonna help because you're gonna your perspective will change. But when your perspective change, you then gotta listen to him.
Not just look at him, you gotta make some actions, some choices. You gotta listen to what he says, which will help us understand who he is and understand what he's asking. And then we gotta choose to not just when it says to listen at the end of that passage and understand.
He who has ears to ear, let him hear. And that hear means not just I heard the words, it meant I'm applying it. So you gotta move into action then. It's not just endure something. It's not just roll up in a ball and say, okay. I'm just gonna go through this. It's I grow through this.
And I go through this. Not just go through it, I go as I'm going through it. And so what does that look like? Well, that's what the rest of the verses say. In other words, look to Jesus not your suffering and listen to Jesus not your fears.
Listen to him not your fears. Because when when I'm not looking at him accurately and I'm only and I'm stuck looking from this world's perspective and not understanding his love for me and the fact that he died for me and called me to something different. And then you realize that he's actually gonna say, listen to me. You might die for this.
Are you willing?
So when things don't go right, we get scared. And when get scared, we start listening to the fear. And when we listen to the fear, we make stupid decisions. I
can't do that and here's why. And when we and then when someone like me gets up and says here's what God's word says, we need to trust him this way. You're like, you don't know my story. Out of your pain you start yelling at me like Bilbo yells at Gandalf.
I mean you don't stand up and yell. I mean that has happened before.
But in your heart, you're angry. But what does he say? Because the first thing he says to listen isn't jump right to action. The first listen is to understand his love. Because look what he says, I know. His first thing to listen to is Jesus, I know. I know what's going on. I know what you're going through.
Because look what he says, I know about your suffering and your poverty. That word for suffering is a word used for how they would torture people to death in that day and execute you is they put giant rock on you till it crushed you. It means to suffer by being crushed under a burden. He goes, I know you're being crushed
and I know you're poverty. And that word for poverty there is there's two words for poverty. We think poverty being broke, there's one word that means like I bought too much on Amazon and I think I might have to sell a kid or a kidney.
I mean the first one is yeah, you get financial straits, get trouble. You might lose a you lost a job. You go, okay. I might lose this house. I might need to move out of any and it's struggling but there's the second word and that's the one that's used here. It means absolute destitution. It's part of their persecution.
Their businesses are being taken from them. Their land is being taken. They're kicked out of their houses. They have no way to make money because they're Christian. Because of their faith, they're being actually targeted.
And so they when they say they're poverty, it's not like they're just stupid with their money and spent too much and ranked up the credit cards. They have nothing. Nothing. And that being crushed is in this day and age what was happening was
when the Roman Empire started doing this emperor worship is a way, like I said, to declare loyalty. So it wasn't just religious. It was this. But you know, Christians aren't gonna say he's God. Neither would Jews. But Judaism
was considered an ancient religion. When Rome took over a place, one of the ways they kept the peace was, alright, that's your entry. You can keep practicing it. So when it came to this idea that you had to go once a year and declare the the emperor to be Rome, that was also a political thing. It was an act of fealty.
But they said, okay. You get you get an exception. You just have to sign this. You just have to declare loyalty to Rome. You don't have to declare him because you're you believe there's only one God. We'll let you stay that way. And Christianity slipped in because it came out as a subset. They're all Jewish. It started off as a subset, but these Jews got mad and they got angry and people were attacking them because of their faith. And so they got them disqualified
from that exception. So now they're literally being arrested and they can be put to death for treason. So they're at the point that that poverty, that crushing this wasn't just, okay. You're broke and it's hard and people don't like you and you're being yelled at. They're literally dying now because of their faith.
They're dying for it. Even though they're doing the right thing, they're staying faithful.
And a lot of us get confused. We get, why would God do that? So, like, we get angry. Like, God, I'm trying to serve you. Why is it getting hard? Why is this happening? What's going on? It's like, we have to understand that it getting hard isn't wrong. Winning will feel like losing in this world. But don't get me wrong. Don't hear what I'm not saying. We live in a culture where we've had a lot of prosperity. God has actually blessed us. We have more money than anyone else has had. We do well. That's not wrong. Prosperity itself is not you saying, my precious.
The difference is which ring do you want? Which ring do you pursue? Which ring makes your daily decisions for you? Having things and being blessed in that way is not the problem.
The problem is when you say that's the goal and that's hard. And when God says, if you're gonna trust me, I need you to just give that up and I need you to go this way with it. So in our culture, it'd be like,
we keep need to move forward. We're called to stay faithful. He says if you stay faithful, you overcome. Let's let's keep reading. Look what he says. He says this. He goes, I know the poverty. I know that.
But what does he say? He goes, you but you are rich. I know the blasphemy of those opposing you. They say they're Jews, but they're not because their synagogue belongs to Satan. So he's talking about Satan. There's an evil agenda. It's not just generalized evil. There's an agenda to try to get us to grab the ring of power and to walk away from God wants us to do and to destroy us because there's an enemy that does not like God's plan and he wants to be God. And every time we fall for that and we want and he doesn't care if you come to church.
He just doesn't want you to engage in what God wants you to be about.
And so we're getting duped. He says, but if you stay faithful, he goes, don't be afraid of what you're about to suffer. Don't be afraid. He goes, the devil will throw some of you in a prison to test you. That testing is not a testing where God's saying, okay, you're gonna fail and I'm gonna send you to hell.
He's saying this in the sense of the test is gonna make you stronger. It's gonna make you more like me. It's gonna make you more like like like like if you go to the gym, you wanna get stronger. I play baseball and I could hit good line drives but I had no power and I wanted to hit home runs. So I started lifting weights.
And what I learned about trying to get stronger is your time in the gym, you constantly fail. That's the point. You have to train to failure. But the thing is if you keep doing it, your failure point is higher and higher and higher. You got stronger.
God's gonna allow some struggling because some of the struggle is exactly what we need. And he even says it'll be for ten days. That's figurative. That's not literal. 10. 10 is a test.
The number 10 in the Bible is always used as a test. It's why when God says test me it comes to our finance to say, hey, I'm not doing this to rob you. I'm doing this to help you. When he asked us to tithe, why does it have to be 10%? Because God picked that. Tenth is a number of testing.
And what he means by testing is it's for us. It makes us stronger. Wanna have the money out of that? See, that's the problem. I want my precious. If you trust God through the test, what he's challenged you to do, you will be stronger. You wanna stop worrying about money?
Literally start tithing and doing what God asked you to do. It sounds weird because it sounds like I can't do it. I just can't figure it out. Can't do it. And even if you're still broke, you won't worry as much. It's a gift. It's not robbing you. God's trying to rescue you from slavery to stuff.
Don't get stuck wanting the ring of power. Commit to the cause. Give to what he's caused. He says don't. He says because look what he says. You will suffer, but if you remain faithful,
even when facing death, I'll give you the crown of life. So what does it mean to remain faithful? Does it mean to just keep believing in Jesus but keep acting like the world?
Remaining faithful means I'm gonna do what he's asked me to do. We talked about it a few weeks ago. God's made it really clear what he's put us on this earth for. To bring glory to him by trusting him and worship him with our lives by being people that know, grow, and go.
That's my summary of all the commands in the New Testament as the church is supposed to be. We need to know God personally. We need to know his love. We need to know that he knows who we are. We need to know his love for us and we embrace it. Then we continue to get to know him. It's what worship is all about. That's what coming to this time is all about, reading your bible and praying. All that is getting to know him in a deeper way. But not just to know about him out of curiosity,
it's in order to apply it to our lives because it's the way to live. God built us. So trusting him with our life, which means our time, our talent, our testimony, our treasures, is actually putting into practice the plan God gave us to really experience life, to truly win.
And if you look at it, we need to be a part of a church. He says we need to grow. We need to grow in community with one another. We can't just sit in a row. We have to be in circles. You have to be. You cannot grow to maturity by yourself.
There's a lie. The synagogue of Satan, this enemy that tries to lie to us is trying to trick the church into you could be disconnected and just read some bible stuff and be on your own and get out into nature. You know why? Because that makes you useless in what God built you for. We you need to actually
join a specific body of Christ and commit to it, not just attend. And then through that, we go. He said, go make disciples by doing all these things. And how do we go? We live intentionally.
We now, instead of my precious of taking the blessings and the things God is giving us to experience our own enjoyment at it, we are stewards. We are not owners.
So we take those things. The time God's given us and we serve. We serve with the talents he's given us and the gifts. We serve in order to share the gospel with people. We use our story and our testimony to reach out to a world that's that's that's
We need to be like Gandalf in Beale's life. Get rid of that ring. You need to trust the Lord. We give of our money and we give first. When he says be faithful, he's not just saying, hang on and keep doing what you're doing. He's saying, be faithful.
That's the answer. And the problem is when you're suffering, the number one thing we do as Christians is we pull back the second it gets hard. And he's like, no. The answer is to lean in especially when it's hard. This church is suffering like no other church and yet they're doing the most.
So that's why he has no throat punch form. And he says even unto death. I think what a lot of us struggle with is what it really means to be a Christian. It comes down to the question here, is this is either super encouraging or super threatening to you? Because at the end, look what he says.
He says, anyone with ears to hear must listen to the spirit and understand. That means apply it. What he is saying to the churches, whoever is victorious overcomes
is the word. Instead of just going through, you'll get over the top of it, will not be harmed by the second death. What's the second death? The second death is to be separated from God through all eternity. You see, if you're born twice, you die once. If you're born once, you die twice.
That's why when life when winning feels like losing choose winning because we were built for eternity. But if you only live for now and you win now, then you're done. Because if we don't know the love of God, we will be eternally separated from God. Hell's a real place
and it's God just giving you what you wanted your whole life. I want what I want and I don't really want to listen to you. I wanna be separated from you. So fine. You're gonna go on and eternity be separated and feel what's like to be without the Holy Spirit. You think this world is bad? The Holy Spirit is called the restrainer. He's actually holding back evil.
The result of all of our collective sin and evil in this world without the Holy Spirit unchecked, that's hell. It's not demons torturing you. It's just being left alone to your own hearts in the darkness of that. And what he's saying is, if you overcome, if you put your faith in me,
you're not gonna experience that. You win. But here's what it's implying that could be scary.
It's not saying you better do this or I'm taking away your salvation. It's not like do this or I won't love you anymore. What he's saying is that even if you come to church, he's saying that anyone who truly has received my love and embraced it and now has the holy spirit
will do this. Doesn't mean we do it all at once. It's a process. We slip back every now and then, but we're at least committed to it.
Which means there's people sitting in church right now that you've been in church all you can tell me all the doctrines. You say you believe in Jesus, but you're heading to hell right now because you're not a Christian. You know why?
It's not that you're sinning. It's not that you struggle with it. But in your mind, you've already decided what I'm saying. I do not have to be faithful to that. I do not have to be about the gospel. I do not have to honor God with my money. I do not have you have an excuse for it all and you won't do it. What he's saying is if you consistently won't do it or at least admit, I know I need to and I'm gonna start letting go, but you're just saying, nope. I don't have to. I could love Jesus and do that. I could have both rings. You're heading to hell.
Because every Christian, true Christian, he says is gonna overcome. You will win. You will. So my my my don't hear what I'm saying. So you're threatening me so then I better do this or I'm going. You don't just automatically do it. Fine. I'll do it. You need to ask yourself, how can you say you believe in Jesus and his love
but for whatever reason refuse to trust him with your life? You need to get to the heart of that and unlock that.
And then some of you are saved but you've just started being seduced by the ring again. And the answer is to not to say, but I can't do this God because of all the problems I'm having. He's saying, do it and you'll still have problems. But they're gonna be because you're winning.
Why have problems and lose when you can have problems and win?
And he says, the way to do this is, are you prepared to go in like a good soldier and say, I'm willing to give my life for this. Jesus died for me. I'll give my life. If you start with that commitment, the other fears, you don't listen to your fears anymore.
I use I I do this a lot. And it it it sounds like a morbid game and it sounds like there's an easy answer. I play the what's the worst thing that can happen whenever I'm afraid of a decision that I thank God I'm reading scripture. I need to do this.
And I have all this fear. Like, if I trust God without, like, planting this church. I'm like, ministry's already super lucrative. Why would I no. Just kidding. It's not. I was like, I was kinda broke to begin with. And I'm like, now I'm gonna do ministry that I don't even get a paycheck at first.
I'm just gonna go do this. And I'm like, I could barely support my family as it is. Now we're gonna walk away from that? And you know what? God didn't make it rain. It's not like I just got rich because I did it.
I mean, he took care of all my needs, but so I go into that and you you face this moment. Am I gonna trust God with all that I have to be to be all in because that's where joy and victory really comes from or not?
And when I look at those fears, the way I dealt with is this. He says, you know, even unto death, I said, what's the worst thing that can happen?
It's like, well, the worst thing can happen when we come out here and nobody comes to the church and and and and and I can't figure it out. And and and and now we I lose the house that I got. I'm living in my car.
What's the worst thing can happen after that? I lose the job. I lose that. I can't find another job. I'm living in my car. What's the worst that can happen to that? Well, then someone steals my car.
And now my family's just living on the streets. Can't get a job. Can't do anything. What's the worst that can happen to that? My wife wakes up and goes, you know what? You're an idiot. Somebody else would have already found a job and they leave me. Now I'm by myself on the street.
What's the worst that can happen at that? I get killed living on the street. It sounds morbid, but in the end, if you take every problem you have and say, what could happen worse than that? What could happen worse than that? You know where you're gonna end up? I could die.
And what God has taken that fear away because he's like, yeah, you might. And you gotta be willing to. Because if you die, it doesn't matter. You didn't really die. You
have eternal life. It's more critical. You are well, if you read the book of Revelations, the way it talks about the saints who died because of their faith, it is like this special honor. You are the most like Jesus if you died for the sake of others in the cause of the gospel. So
in that contrast, when he says be willing to die, is it really that bad to be willing to not have the trip you want, not live in the house you want, not have the car you want, struggle financially to pull back in order to tithe? Is that really that big of a sacrifice?
Is choosing to not spend all your time on your hobby and your kids hobbies and choosing to be here consistent and serve in the body of Christ so the the gospel can go forward? Is that really that terrible when God says, even dying would be an honor. You gotta take away the fear.
And the way you take away fear is face the facts. It'd be better to die
than to keep wearing that ring of power because that's where real death comes. And he's saying and this church is doing that and so he's encouraging them.
Says, I know what you're going through. I know what it is, but you're gonna overcome and you're gonna have victory and then you're gonna have the crown. This is called a crown city. He says, but you're gonna be the ones with the crowns. So what he's telling us is what my big ideas. Yes.
If we are gonna really trust Jesus with our lives, winning is gonna feel like losing. You're gonna lose stuff. It's like guardian of the guardians of the galaxy. You know what I see? Losers. We're all a bunch of losers. We're all people that have lost stuff. But if we lose stuff for the sake of Christ, that's victory.
That's victory. So what you have to decide is the example we get from this church and what Jesus says to this is, am I willing? Am I in? Do I and bottom line is I come to church but do I really trust Jesus?
Is he really that ring that brings life or do you want him to be about the resources you want instead of being the source?
And the fear is until you let go of that, you'll never get it. You'll be consumed by your precious. This church didn't and God commends them even though they're going to suffer. He says, they will be victorious. And you know why? Victorious means in the end you win.
So what he's really saying here is, it'll all be good in the end. It'll all be good in the end. So if it's not good, it's not the end. It'll all be good in the end if I trust Jesus, if I go all in, if I look to him and I listen to him and I live that life, it'll all be good in the end. And if it's not good, it's not the end.
If I don't listen to Jesus and I run after the things I want now, you might get them and it'll be all good until the end. Which one would you rather have? It'll all be good in the end, which means all of eternity or it'll all be good now until it ends. There's a victory on that side.
So what he's really trying to charge us up and pump us up about is, guys, be encouraged by this. If you're in that fight, what it means is he knows. If you've been faithful to God and you're still struggling and suffering, God knows.
He's not trying to rob you. He's not being unfair to you. He's not treating you what he's saying is you're becoming more like me. You're being crushed for the sake of me. You're you're you're a part of what I'm doing, and that's okay. That's that's where winning comes. You're willing to follow me and trust me. Don't be discouraged.
Be encouraged. Matter of fact, the book of Isaiah,
Revelation is a lot like the Old Testament prophecies. That's why it confuses all you people who became a Christian and say, I just read the New Testament. You don't understand. It sounds like the Old Testament. God's the same. And in the Old Testament, he was writing to God's people and he say, hey, you're gonna suffer right now.
But don't worry. All these nations around you that are persecuted and attacking you, they they're victor they're the empires of the world. They're the Romans. There's the Assyrians. They're all the Babylonians. They look all impressive. None of them exist anymore. None of them exist anymore.
And he goes, and in the end, they had a temporal time, but you are gonna be victorious. And he talks about the destruction. Look up. The scary thing. Don't take me as a conjurer of cheap tricks. I am the first and last, the alpha and the omega. And that could be scary, but it's meant to be encouraging. If you wanna be faithful, if you love Jesus and you're suffering,
you can look to him and you can listen to him, and you are winning. And matter of fact, that's what Isaiah said when God told him to write this to God's people. He said, with this news, the same kind of news we just talked about here. The news that, yeah, it's gonna be hard. There's gonna be suffering. With this news,
strengthen those who have tired hands and encourage those who have weak knees. He says, say to those with fearful hearts. See, we get fearful. We don't wanna do it. And he says, be strong and do not fear for your God is coming to destroy your enemies. He is coming to save you. We are on the winning side. Stay faithful.
Be willing to be like the church in Smyrna because it will be good in the end.
And if it's not good, it's not the end. And he says, this should encourage us. Some of us, you you you your hands are tired and your knees have gotten weak is what he's saying. Some of us, you know what that means to have tired hands and weak knees? It means I'm losing my grip
on life. I'm losing my grip on hope. I'm losing my grip on what this means. And now my legs are tired. My knees are weak. It means I'm losing my grip, and I just wanna lay down and quit. And I don't understand why God's allowing this. I don't understand. He's saying because you're winning. Just keep going. Keep trusting.
Keep looking to him. Look to who he is, the first and the last. He is the God of all and he knows all. He says, I know what you're going through because I already did it. So get a grip, get that strength, and just keep going. When winning feels like losing, grab a hold and run forward and choose winning. Choose trust.
Choose to just surrender all of these things God's asked you to surrender to and go for it and then see what happens. And even if you die, you go on to the greatest victory of all. You go on to the glory of eternity with a God that loves you, a God that will say, well done, good and faithful servant.
A God that will embrace you because he already died for you. Why does he let this happen? Why does this happen when we get the weak knees and the tired hands? The name Smyrna answers the question for us. Smyrna is comes from the root word for myrrh. Smyrna means myrrh.
Myrrh was one of the things that a bunch of rich wise guys came and gave Jesus. They were all prophetic of who he would be. Be a king, he'd be this, but he was gonna die. Just like he said, the one who died and came back to life. Because myrrh was used to embalm bodies and put in tombs because it gave off a sweet aroma that covered the stench of death.
And and and and and and and but here's the deal. So he says, you are in the city of myrrh. You're in the city of this thing that gives off a sweet aroma when there's death around. And but here's the key. The only thing that made myrrh put off the sweet aroma, you guessed it, it has to be crushed
before it puts off the sweet aroma. The bible says that Jesus was crushed for you and me. He already went first. That's why he said, I'm the one that died, but yet I came back to life. He when he says I know, he says, because I already went first.
I already did this for you. I did this so you could have victory. I died and was crushed for you and gave off the sweet aroma of my love, my grace, my mercy to give you a life everlasting.
Something better than that stupid thing you wanna do with your life right now. The thing that you wanna avoid guide on, God, because you think if I just had this, I'll be happy. If I just had that, I'll be happy. He says, that will never bring it to you. What'll bring it to you is the sweet aroma of my death for you. And when you are in these moments, that if you go all in with me, you're gonna be Smyrna.
You're gonna have these moments that God is gonna put us in crushing moments, in moments when we wanna quit, in moments when it feels like we're losing. But that crushing is supposed to produce the beautiful smell and the aroma of Jesus through us. That's how we defeat darkness.
That's how we win in this world. It isn't we go fight every political battle. We go run out there and say, gotta have this. We don't fight darkness by punching it. You fight darkness
by turning on a light. Do you get that? Go try to fight dark. You're swinging around and all you're getting is sweaty, exhausted, and breaking things. But God says, turn on the light of his love in your life. Be faithful to that light. Stay in the light and understand
that there is a God who loves you more than you love yourself. And it doesn't matter if you are losing. It doesn't matter if you lose your life. That is winning. So when you feel like life,
it's winning is actually feels like losing. Choose winning. Choose to go for it. Choose to dive into his grace. Choose to look to him. Choose to listen to him and understand that nothing can separate us from that love. Nothing can stop us. Nothing on this sort of shoe we should be afraid of. We should be willing. And that is what worship is all about. And that's what we're gonna do to close this out because I'm running out of breath. What we gotta do is we are gonna shout out to the God that already said, whatever you're going through that's making you afraid, to give him your life, to give him your life, and to trust him. Whatever is causing you to fear or suffer, he's saying, I know. I know. I know. And we need to look at who he is and listen to him and say, I know who you are. I know what you have done. I know what you promised. I know where the victory is. And I'm gonna shout that to you because worship
destroys worry. And it turns on the light in our life. That's why we sing. That's why we sing these songs. That's why we come to church. That's why we embrace one another. That's why we are the church. That's why under the glory of God, we will choose winning even when it feels like losing.
Thanks for joining us online this weekend. Let us know if we can help you in any way. Make sure to follow us on social media and connect with us on the We Are Rock Point app for prayer and everything happening here at Rock Point.