1. Three Threats, Three Apologists, Three Fathers

as I say this morning we're going to be looking at the second century last time we were together we were looking at the destruction of Jerusalem that took place in 74 about 30 years or I should say probably 25 years it was all quiet on the homefront there's very little historical information we have about that era except that we know the church was growing rapidly we know that many people were coming into the Christian movement we know that Rome itself settled down restabilized under the control of Vespasian and the Christian people were not persecuted during that era the last time that had happened was under Nero Nero of course is out of the picture and with the destruction of Jerusalem and kind of the demoting I'll put it of the Jewish population in the Roman world for a time Christian people were really free to participate in life without fearing constantly the ravaging effects of persecution that ended about the Year 95 with the reign of Domitian who was the first character the Roman Emperor who came along and once again launched an official persecution it lasted for a few months it was severe but brief and then from that point on we have sporadic sometimes sustained usually not persecutions of Christian people but again a lot of the time is pretty quiet and Christian people are for the most part able to go ahead and pursue their lives even though they are members of an officially illegal religion it's not as if they were constantly facing all sorts of threats to their well-being day and night it was more or less a kind of hit-and-miss sort of thing and that brings us really to the threshold of the second century I'd like to organize our conversation around three threats three apologists that is defenders of the Christian movement and three so-called Apostolic fathers and I'd like to highlight the life of the last of these a guy by the name of Polycarp so that's what we're going to be doing this morning the three threats are first of all the political threat that would come from the wrong world itself and secondly a kind of threat from the right that would represent more or less the Jewish threat to the Christian faith and then a threat I'll say from the left more the pagan threat so we have the church more or less caught in a triangle with threats on three fronts the first of these is the political threat in which Rome is continuing to put pressure from time to time on the Christian Church to highlight this I'm referring to a character by the name of plenty nice-looking guy there you can tell plenty the younger was a proconsul of Rome he was a judge and in the Year 117 was confronted with the dilemma of what to do with people who were brought before him accused of the crime of being Christians plenty himself was a pretty fair minded guy he was a pagan he wasn't a Christian but he was wanting to do the right thing he was a good stoic Roman type guy he didn't want to just be carried away on sort of some sort of miscarriages of justice and he was not quite sure what to do with these folks and so he wrote a letter to the Emperor under whom he served whose name was trojan tra JN and this letter was written in the year 117 and it's very interesting it's too lengthy to give you the whole thing but I'd like to give you a few snippets from this letter and it gives us an interesting insight into what's happening with God's people in the early part of the second century this is 117 very early in church history and he writes this letter what's happened is that he's confronting folks now were being brought in accused of being Christians and he writes this letter asking for counsel from Trojan who was his boss and who was the Roman Caesar and he says quote it's customary for me sir to refer to you in all matters wherein I have a doubt for who truly is better able to rule my hesitancy or instruct my ignorance I was never present at examinations of Christians therefore I do not know what is customarily punished nor to what extent nor how far to take the investigation I was quite undecided should there be any consideration given to age are those who are however delicate no different from the stronger should penitence obtain pardon or as BISM has been the case particularly with Christians to desist makes no difference should the name itself be punished even if crimes are absent or the crimes that go with the name so you could tell the guys in a quandary what do I do with these folks they seem like nice enough people there obviously committing a crime to be Christians but goodness sakes what should I do and so try plenty here in order to sort of get some clarity as to his judicial responsibilities writes this letter off to Trojan he says this is the method I have followed with those who were brought before me as Christians I asked them directly if they were Christians the ones who answered affirmatively I questioned again with a warning and yet a third time those who persisted I ordered led away for I have no doubt whatever else they confess to certainly this pertinency and inflexible obstinacy ought to be punished if nothing else they should be punished for being stubborn you know so this is what he's done so far and he's wondering if this is the right approach and he proceeds along these lines those who denied that they were or ever had been Christians when they swore before me call them the gods and offered incense and wine to your image which I'd ordered brought in for this purpose along with the images of the gods and also cursed Christ which it is said it is impossible to force those who are real Christians to do I thought worthy of being acquitted so plenty says if I could get somebody to disparage Christ curse Christ I figured they're not a real Christian regardless of the accusations because I've heard that real Christians cannot do that isn't that an interesting comment so already in the year 117 you know a scant 50 years after the destruction of Jerusalem them Christian people are not only out there but they have a reputation as people whose allegiance to Christ is so deep that you cannot under any threat force them to disparage or curse Christ you know and it reminds me of that text from first Corinthians that we read a little bit earlier all the more I believed it necessary to find out what was the truth from to mate to servant maids which were called deaconesses by means of torture so he took two women who were Deaconess says in the church and began to torture them hoping to extort from them extract from them some insight into the character of this Christian movement nothing more did I find than a disgusting fanatical superstition therefore I stopped the examination and hastened to consult you for it appears to be a proper matter for counsel most greatly on account listen to this of the number of people endangered for many of all ages all classes and both sexes already are brought into danger and shall be in the future and not only the cities the contagion of this superstition is spread throughout the villages and the countryside's but it appears to be possible to stop it and put it right you know so it's very interesting isn't it we can tell even from this that the Christian movement has been touching every level of society we have no idea of evaluating you know precisely how many people with the numbers were obviously no one's running around counting noses at this point but the very fact that it's sizable enough to reach the attention of a fairly prominent Roman judicial officer and that he's concerned about it tells us that this was more than just a very tiny little provincial thing it had really begun to reach and touch fairly broadly the Roman world plenty of course is hoping that if they do the right thing they can stop it here and now didn't work the Christian faith has survived even this attempt to put a stop to it so that's what I'm calling the political threat that's sort of a ubiquitous threat that popped up from time to time here and there around the Roman world but as I say it was not sustained it was something that would happen in some places kind of hotspots of persecution many Christian people would simply go somewhere else they were in some ways a kind of floating population but in many cases some people would live their entire lifetimes not necessarily exposed to immediate threat others of course faced horrific threats as we'll see in a moment the threat that I'm saying is the threat from the right is the threat that came out of the Jewish world last time we were together we talked about how Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 AD Christian people who were Jewish escaped because they believed Jesus warning when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies flee to the hills we talked about that once the dust settled once the Jewish wars were over once Roman restabilized under Vespasian many of these Jewish Christian people wound up in what amounted to a kind of neo Jerusalem 200 miles north in a city called Antioch Antioch was probably from that point on the center of what you call a highly Jewish form of the Christian faith there were many good solid Jewish Christian people there but nevertheless the tilt was so heavily in the direction of a kind of highly Jewish approach to the Christian faith that in many ways and led them into certain forms of distortion for example of movement in Antioch in the late 1st century was called the AL ago hey al o GOI that means the people who were against logos they believed describing Jesus as logos was incorrect because it represented an intrusion of Greek philosophy into an understanding of the identity of Christ you know that John 1:1 starts in RK n ho logos in the beginning was the word you see the logos and these Antioch Jewish Christians said that's not God's truth that's Greek for philosophy because the Greeks had used logos for years for centuries to describe what amounted to a philosophical idea of the coherency of the universe going clear back to Heraclitus and the pre-socratics and so the Jewish folks who didn't like the Hellenistic world very much repudiated all of that by the early second century we have kind of an extension of that in a group that were called the Ebionites founded presumably by a character named EB Ando that's disputed but nevertheless this group represented a kind of extension of the sort of Judy izing form of the Christian faith that you hear traces of even in the New Testament they largely denied the deity of Christ Jesus Christ is not God but he is the Jewish Messiah he was born of a virgin he was adopted by God at his baptism this was called adoptionism he is highly elevated he should be adored by us but nevertheless we should reserve true complete worship for God alone so this was a kind of very Jewish approach to an understanding of Christ the closest contemporary religion that would embrace this idea would be the Jehovah's Witnesses quite similar to the ebionite movement of the early second century well the church was being threatened by that and many people were being affected by it you see in fact a later kind of expression of this movement was a character named arias he came originally from Antioch wound up in Alexandria and it was his teaching which was largely the same as what I've just described that provoked the first major council of the church's history a council that is called thank you the Council of Nicaea 325 and so that's why these people were a threat the first major church council met to deal with this particular issue you see as it had gradually evolved over the next several actually a couple of hundred years so there's this religious threat to the Christian movement on the right you also have threat more or less coming from the left this would be a sort of pagan influence this was an attempt to build a bridge or a hybrid between the Christian message and Greek philosophy and it's called largely or generally under the term Gnosticism Gnosticism comes from the Greek word gnosis which means knowledge it actually goes back in some ways to Plato if you know if Plato's philosophy you know that he had an idea of a higher world of truth transcended truth and that some people had a keen insight into it they should be the rulers Plato's famous philosopher Kings the people who really get it who are in the know should be ruling the rest of us kind of the elite well that flavor continued down and by the second century you have something of a kind of a spin on that in Christian thinking where there are certain people have a special spiritual insight the Gnostic OI as they were called as people who were in the know the people are the special insights and that they were the ones that we the rest of us should be following and and and you know really recognizing as great authorities among us the most famous Gnostic was a character by the name of Marcion he lived from 85 to 160 Marcion not surprisingly hated any aspect of the Christian faith that represented a Jewish flavor he repudiated the Old Testament he repudiated the God of the Old Testament who he called Adam I urge Demiurge was a term that Plato used to describe the craftsman or the architect of this world but this Demiurge was a person of of doubtful character a kind of demonic wrathful in modern terms you might say a God who was bipolar a God who on the one hand is showing mercy and then what next he's flooding the world on one hand he's saying be nice to your neighbor and on the other hand he's telling Joshua to go in and white people out man woman and child Marcion looked at that and said that can't be the true God and so he rejected that and said Jesus didn't come to reconcile us to the God of the Old Testament but to save us from the God of the Old Testament and Jesus came as the great gnostic master you know so this was one example Marcion was the most famous but there were others as well so you get the idea here's the church then in the middle of this set of threats all right well these threats called forth the work of three apologists actually more than this but I'm I'm going to restrict it to these three three people who gave on behalf of the church an apologia an apology apologia a pas from logos logic an apology is an attempt to defend a particular idea movement person and so on we think of apology these days as saying I'm sorry this is not what these people were doing this is apologetics and these are the first apologists for the Christian movement the first one I'd like to mention is a fella named Justin Martyr he lived from 100 to 165 he earned his last name the hard way so during his lifetime he was only known as Justin Justin was a peripatetic philosopher peripatetic means he was a walking philosopher he just wandered around the ancient world going from city to city he had a little cluster of people that followed him and he offered lectures in philosophy and it was sort of like a cross between a philosophy professor and a sidewalk musician you know he'd go into downtown Spokane put his hat out there and begin lecturing on philosophy give you a nice fluffy little letter a lecture on let's say the philosophy of Anaximander and people would gather and say oh that's interesting and they throw a buck or two into the hat and that's how he made a living so he's a peripatetic philosopher oh is that that'd be kind of a fun way to make a living actually I think I would probably starve but nevertheless sir so anyway Justin there's a fairly competent philosopher not one of the great geniuses of history by any means but a but a bright guy and he's able to do this he comes to faith in Christ somehow or other about mid-career he comes to realize that Jesus of Nazareth is in fact God among us he embraces that faith but he doesn't stop being a peripatetic philosopher and so now he's kind of a philosopher come evangelist you know he'll go and begin giving his philosophical lecture but as you listen you begin to realize that he's gradually quietly methodically and subtly drawing you to the truth of Christ and he became quite a well-known character and many people held him in quite high esteem well one of the persecutions that took place was under a character named Antonius Pius that was a Roman Emperor mid-second century and he was authorising of empire-wide persecution of Christians based in many cases on rather specious claims of criminal behavior on the part of these Christians for example Christians were accused of cannibalism you know because they gathered and as the saying goes ate the flesh and drank the blood of somebody you know they were accused of incest because they would gather in private meetings with people they call brothers and sisters and in the ancient Roman world any people that got together in private usually it meant some kind of bad behavior and so they got that reputation they were accused of insurrection because they wouldn't bow the knee to Caesar and in fact when they were told to say Kaiser kurios that is Caesar is Lord they would respond no with all due respect yay sues ho kurios Jesus is Lord and that's one than the reputation of being rebels they were accused of being atheists oddly enough because they didn't have a visible God and the Romans couldn't imagine worshipping of God you can't see you know and so for all of these things the Christians were accused of these crimes and Justin Martyr actually responds to those very charges and more he makes heavy use of the logos idea he makes a strong case on behalf of Christians being the best citizens in the Roman world they obey that the laws they obey the speed limits you know they pay their taxes they're your they're your best people and denies pious if you're so all-fired pious then why don't you recognize the virtue of these folks and put giving them such a bad time that was the general flavor of the writings by Justin Martyr and that work is in fact called apologia and apology so he's an important character he gives us a good insight into what's happening in the Christian movement in the middle 2nd century another one was a fella named IRA næss IRA Naas writes about the year 185 and later he writes a critique of Gnosticism this is the most important second century critique of Gnosticism that we have it's very lengthy in some ways quite pedestrian it'll put you right to sleep but it does give us quite an insight into what the Gnostic movement was about he responds to it in a very thoughtful way he's quite a scholarly character the Roman Catholic Church's Saint at him and he's otherwise a good guy to read and helpful for an insight into this time in history an interesting side note about IRA næss is that he was a student of a character named Polycarp that i mentioned earlier and we'll return to in a moment Polycarp had been a student of John the Apostle back in Smyrna John the Apostle of course was taught by Jesus when you read IRA næss ever so often he'll stop his kind of you know philosophical discussion of Gnosticism and he'll kind of go into the sort of reverie a kind of reminiscing and he'll remember when as a child or as a young man maybe a teenager he was on in the school run by Polycarp and he'll reminisce about Polycarp reminiscing about being in the school of John the Apostle who would reminisce about being in the school of Jesus and so when you read Ira næss the sort of uncanny feeling you get is you're still in contact with someone who knew the guy who knew the guy who knew the guy who knew Jesus you know we're that close historically to the events of the New Testament and I Rheneas gives us a little bit of that and it's a wonderful kind of really I think inspirational thing to read just for that purpose alone the third of these as a guy named Tertullian Tertullian was a Roman lawyer and he was quite capable and competent in Roman law but he became a Christian and from that point on he had one client and he spent his time as a lawyer defending the Christian movement defending the Christian message defending Christian people not necessarily particularly in court but I'm just saying philosophically defending them Tertullian was a very capable apologist for and representative of the Christian movement he's the first guy that we know of in church history to use what was a Latin term intended to describe the character of God the rather complex character of God that we find in the New Testament and he took to Latin terms put them together and produced the phrase tri-unity and from that point on we've regarded God as Trinity you see it was Tertullian who first gave us that term now Tertullian is understanding of it was not quite adequate from the church's point of view later and really it was a Gustin who even clarified this much more but Tertullian gave us the word in a pretty good initial start at the Trinitarian understanding of God and so for that we're grateful as well he's had a little bit of a dark cloud on his reputation because toward the end of his life he became a member of the so called montanus movement which was a little bit of a frenzied group that turned out going sort of sideways in many ways and Tertullian has had unfortunately a bad rap because of that connection but we'll just forgive him for that for the time being the three Apostolic fathers that I want to highlight her first of all Clement of Rome now they're called apostolic fathers because these are the people who bridged the New Testament era with the beginning of the of the Christian era after the apostles these are people who actually were acquainted with and taught by the Apostles and there's a fair number of them but there's only three that I want to mention probably the three best-known the first of these is Clement of Rome Clement was born in about the year thirty died in the year one hundred so he's actually more of a first-century character he's the third bishop and I used that word Bishop because that's the word commonly used as the Greek word episkopos which means overseer it's used in the New Testament and it would be comparable to being a pastor but the term normally uses bishop he was the first bishop of the church in Rome I'm sorry the third if I said first he's the third bishop of the church in Rome by rolling Catholic reckoning Peter was first then there was another fellow I believe his name was Lucien and check that the third one is Clement Clement is a quite impressive fellow he was the main information we have about him as a letter that he wrote to the church in Corinth you know sometimes you think about these new testament churches that's Corinthian church for example you wonder what happened Paul wrote two big letters to the Corinthian church did it fix the problems you know well it did for a while but by the time clement writes his letter which is written about the year 95 the corinthian church once again had a bunch of problems the problems interestingly were that the people that had been running the church for many many years were getting old that does happen and there were young men in the church who thought it's time for a change you ever heard that Express office and they said we need change here we need to get up to speed they wanted to put up you know screens in the sanctuary use guitars and worship I don't know it was stuff like that and so anyway these young bucks in the church were really put pressure on to set aside the older folks that have been running the church for years and try to open up a new chapter this is at the end of the first century you know nothing really changes doesn't and that nice to know that and so this is what Clement himself is responding to so Clement writes a rather lengthy letter in which he critic criticizes these young men and says you need to have respect to those folks among you that have gray hair do I get an amen out of that you know and so these young men are sort of dressed down a little bit by Clement as he tells them they are way out of line that these folks who have been guiding this church for many years though they may seem a little old a little stodgy nevertheless this is good medicine and that they should be respecting them other things about this letter that are interesting though Clement quotes considerable numbers of times from what we would call the New Testament this is interesting because by the end of the first century we already have what begins to look like a de facto New Testament Canon not official yet but a working cannon books that we understand to be part of the New Testament are already being quoted rather freely as if they were Scripture you see and so Clement will quote from New Testament documents and in some cases quote them side by side with references to the Old Testament not making a distinction now that may seem to us rather obvious but to see that as early as the late 1st century and to realize that already we have an idea of canonical scriptures floating around in the minds of Christian people is quite significant and so Clement is helpful for that purpose as well the second oh by the way in Philippians 4 3 the only time we hear the name Clement in the New Testament is from the pen of the Apostle Paul and he mentions a character Clement and some there's one a long tradition not fully substantiated but at least plausible that the Clement that Paul refers to in Philippians chapter 4 is the same man he would have been about 30 years old at the time Paul mentions him he would have gone on to his career in Christian ministry no one's ever proven that it's just kind of a hypothesis that's out there the second guy we're interested in is Ignatius of Antioch I mentioned Antioch earlier this was the bishop of the church in Antioch he was a well-known Christian leader in the year 106 approximately he was arrested as a Christian leader and taken to Rome where he was going to be executed by being thrown to wild beasts so this is one of those persecutions that occurred Ignatius is an interesting guy because as he's being taken in Chains to Rome on the road he writes letters and every true every city he visits he leaves them a letter from Ignatius of Antioch encouraging them in the faith and they're very wonderful letters they're a little bit over the top Ignatius was actually looking forward to his martyrdom we would say a little too much he talked with some degree of Glee about hoping those bright white sharp teeth of the Lions would bite into him and crunch his bone that's the way he talks so you think well Clement I mean a well Ignatius you know that's good but so anyway maybe that was what the spirit of the times demanded I'm not sure but anyway he's a he's a wonderful guy and he writes these very encouraging letters but he is looking forward with a high degree of joy to the prospect of his own martyrdom and the last of the Apostolic fathers that I want to mention to you is named Polycarp of Smyrna and Polycarp is interesting for many different reasons but just a little bit of his story as well he was born in Asia Minor he was born as you can see there in the year 69 so just at the cusp of the New Testament era just before the destruction of Jerusalem he's the youngest of these that we're going to mention this morning born at that time Asia Minor as you know is western Turkey it's where you find the seven cities that were addressed in the book of Revelation Ephesus Smyrna Pergamum Thyatira Sardis Philadelphia Laodicea those seven and Polycarp himself was born in the city of Smyrna contemporary name for Smyrna is is their eyes II Mir who's been to Izmir anybody been there okay yeah and so it's famous actually for several different reasons homer was born there as well so it's been kind of a prominent city down through history but anyway Polycarp was was born there this was of course just after the persecution by Nero Nero persecuted Christian from 64 until his own death in 68 then you've got turmoil we talked about that last time then things settle down John the Apostle was presumably exiled on Patmos during that time he returns and now for the next 20 years or so is the spiritual guide leader apostle over those seven churches and others he has with him Mary the mother of Jesus because you recall in Jesus last will and testament as he was hanging on the cross he gave Mary to John and said there's your son there's your mother and John took her in and cared for her from that time on if you visited Ephesus to contemporary ruins of Ephesus you know that there is a little house there which is actually traditionally regarded as the house where John lived with Mary caring for her in her elderly years and John himself carried on a ministry in Ephesus over this entire region so we have Polycarp who's born then in Izmir under the spiritual guidance of John the Apostle and for the next 20 years or so they have an acquaintance with each other and Polycarp actually was taught by John the Apostle and this would be in his teenage years John probably died in about the year 90 maybe a little later and at that point Polycarp who had so distinguished himself as a competent mature young man was actually elevated fairly rapidly into a position of being a leader of the church in Smyrna and so for the next several decades Polycarp was the bishop the church in Smyrna and had quite a really impressive reputation even in the pagan world as a man of integrity and competence and so on so that was that was his early career he wrote a letter he wrote several letters but one in particular that we have at our disposal is written to the Philippians so again we have a letter from one of these Apostolic fathers addressed to a church that actually we hear of in the New Testament I want to give you just one short paragraph from this letter it's much more lengthy than this but it'll give you a flavor for his own style of writing Polycarp writes brothers I write these things to you concerning righteousness not on my own initiative but because you requested it from me for neither i nor another like me is able to follow after the wisdom of the blessed and glorious paul who when he was with you in the presence of the people at that time he taught the word of truth accurately and reliably who also being absent he wrote letters to you regarding which if you examine them you will be able to build yourselves up in the faith given to you which is the mother of us all while hope follows after in love which is for God in Christ and for the neighbor goes before for if anyone is in their company he has fulfilled the commandment of righteousness for he who has loved is a long way from all sin so here we have polycarb referring to Paul and I think you can tell immediately polycarb distinguishes himself from Paul he doesn't regard himself as having anything like the authority of Paul I think also if you read his entire letter you're oppressed you're impressed with the fact that though he is a very thoughtful and intelligent leader he doesn't write at the level of quality that we find in the New Testament and this in itself to me is remarkable you can these writings are readily available early Christian writings and even the best of them in my opinion least fall far far short of the quality of what we read in the New Testament and again it argues I think for the remarkable quality of the New Testament and in my opinion for the in spiration of the New Testament that this really stands out in a class by itself even when compared with other very early Christian writings and so anyway I think Polycarp is a good example of that he was martyred in the year 155 this was the same Emperor Antoninus Pius who was launching this persecution Polycarp was in this time in the in his mid 80s he's arrested brought into the kind of the arena there that was in Smyrna the proconsul who's responsible for judging him is getting a little bit squeamish here's a guy in his mid-80s he's doesn't have a lot of relish for you know executing this fellow and so we have an interesting conversation that's recorded there were eyewitnesses present at the execution of Polycarp who recorded this and then circulated it this was these were members of the church in Smyrna who observed it wrote a letter circulated it to other Christian churches and so that's how we have his information and it reads this this is just excerpts from it as he was brought forward the 2mo became great when they heard that Polycarp was taken when he came near the proconsul asked him whether he was indeed Polycarp on his confessing that he was the proconsul sought to persuade him to deny Christ saying have respect to your old age and other similar things according to their custom such as swear by the fortune of Caesar repent and say away with the atheists because Christians were called atheists you know but Polycarp gazing with the stern countenance on all the multitude of the wicked heathen then in the stadium and waving his hand toward them while with groans he looked up to heaven said away with the atheists not exactly what the proconsul had in mind you then the proconsul urging him and saying swear and I will set the utley bertie reproach Christ polycarb declared eighty and six years I have served him and he never did me any injury how then can I blaspheme my king and my Savior one of the most famous short speeches in the history of the Christian move when the proconsul yet again pressed him and said swear by the fortune of Caesar he answered since you are vainly urgent that as you say I should swear by the fortune of Caesar and pretend not to know who and what I am hear me declare with boldness I am a Christian if you wish to know what the doctrines of Christianity are appoint me a day and you shall hear them the proconsul replied persuade the people but Polycarp said to you I have thought it right to offer an account of my faith for we are taught to give all due honor which entails no injury to ourselves to the powers and authorities which are ordained of God as for these I do not deem them worthy of receiving any account from me this is the New Testament principle don't cast your pearls before swine you know these rabid folks and this stands just wanted to see blood and cheap entertainment and Polycarp isn't going to condescend to honor them with the president but the proconsul II will the proconsul threatened Polycarp to be thrown to the wild beasts Polycarp famously responded bring them I would change my mind if it meant going from the worse to the better but not change from the right to the wrong you know it's like Polycarp is saying you know we Christians are taught to be repentant we like to repent but usually repentance means repenting from the worst thing to the better thing not the other way around so sorry I can't do as you've suggested when the proconsul threatened him with fire Polycarp said you threatened fire that burns for an hour and is over but the judgment on the ungodly is forever when polycarb was lashed up to the stake this was recorded as his final prayer father I bless you that you have deemed me worthy of this day and hour that I might take a portion of the martyrs in the cup of Christ among these may I today be welcome before thy face as a rich and acceptable sacrifice so the margin I'm of Polycarp took place described for us in some detail to conclude Sunday School lesson here back to first Corinthians 12 I want you to understand no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says Jesus is cursed no one can say Jesus is Lord except by God's Spirit meaning Jesus is Lord really meaning it you know I don't know about you I've sometimes wondered what would I do if all of a sudden I were the one who was being threatened with wild beasts or being burned at the stake or some other ghastly form of persecution or torture or pressure as a result of my claim to be a Christian what would I do have you ever wondered that you ever crossed your mind we know that today right now as I speak there are people in the world who are paying for their faith with their lives to day you know we have by the grace of God been exempted from that because we live in a wonderful world of a wonderful country of religious liberty I don't know how long it's going to last I have my misgivings to be honest with you about the future and so it may come we may have this opportunity who knows but if you're worried about it my counsel to you and my Sunday School lesson for you is don't sweat it the New Testament gives us these remarkable promises of God's grace God will give you grace to endure whatever he calls you to endure we look at these people in history and we think they were the most remarkable heroic folks and indeed they were but they were remarkable and heroic by grace which every one of them would freely admit if God isn't calling you to be a martyr today he's not going to give you the grace to be a martyr today now he may be you know you may have to endure this Sunday School lesson he'll give you the grace for that he may give you it all call you to do some tough tough things today but he'll give you the grace to do whatever he calls you to do and if indeed he does call any of us today or any other day to make the ultimate sacrifice then what in the world could ever separate us from the love of Christ Paul says that in Romans chapter 8 and he says it in the context of Christ praying for us in the face of horrific pressures and Paul says I don't think that life-or-death things present things future angels dragons demons hell anything can separate us from the love of Christ and his intercessory prayers so whatever God calls you to do today or any day realize that he's going to give you the grace to do it he gave it to Polycarp he gave it to many many others most of whom's names we don't even know he will give it to you he'll give it to me and so in the meantime let's just live in the great confidence of knowing that the God of heaven and earth has called us to belong to him as his witnesses throughout history

Channel: Bruce Gore

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Keywords: Church, History, Ignatius, Antioch, Polycarp, Smyrna, Bruce, Gore, Apostolic, Fathers, Irenaeus, Tertullian

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Length: 43min 24sec (2604 seconds)

Published: Thu May 28 2015