Your Afflictions And Your Poverty

 “To the angel of the church in Smyrna write:

These are the words of him who is the First and the Last, who died and came to life again. I know your afflictions and your poverty—yet you are rich! I know about the slander of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you life as your victor’s crown. Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who is victorious will not be hurt at all by the second death. (Revelation 2: 8-11)

His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. (II Peter 1:3)

 The Lord said to Aaron, “You will have no inheritance in their land, nor will you have any share among them; I am your share and your inheritance among the Israelites. (Numbers 18:20)

 

 In today’s passage, Jesus has no complaints about the church, but He warns them that they’re going to face persecution. The going can get tough even if you don’t deserve it. People – even religious people - would slander them. Some of them would face death. And Jesus tells them, effectively, not to worry but to remain faithful.

That’s the obvious part of the passage, but there’s a sentence that needs some more attention: “I know your afflictions and your poverty—yet you are rich!” Are you rich? Of course, the answer depends on how you define “rich.” For most of us, it tends to mean “More than I have.”

But Jesus tells them He’s seen their poverty – but they’re rich! Clearly, Jesus’ economy is different from ours. It’s not that He doesn’t understand poverty. It’s that there’s a type of richness that has nothing to do with money that He considers more important.

I hear some people say that until we bring someone out of poverty, they’re not going to listen to talk about their souls. And I’m not saying that we shouldn’t help those who are in poverty – but it seems too often that the emphasis is so much on financial poverty that we never get around to addressing a sort of poverty that could be ended so much quicker. Equally, I hear people talk about the rich as if we should aspire to be like them (or help others to be like them) when, in fact, all they have is money. Neither way of thinking fits with what Jesus has to say. We are rich even if we are poor. We are rich if we have Him, and poor otherwise. Fixing someone’s poverty won’t make them rich even if they get all the money in the world.

But it’s easy to fall into the “I’m poor” mentality. So when the going gets tough, we need to remember that God knows our afflictions and our poverty. He knows that we are being slandered. But the truth is that because we have Him, we have an inheritance that makes us richer than we can ever imagine.