Ephesus: Losing Our First Love

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There are people who seem to only be interested in revelation and prophecy and the end times. And that’s important. It’s important that we study those things.

It’s important that we know those things. But they would want to study that to the exclusion of anything else taught in the Bible. And the fact is, Jesus is coming again, and in light of that, he’s given us things to do in the meantime.

As we start what I think will be a few-week study of the book of Revelation, We may get into the prophecy aspect of it in terms of the telling of what things are going to happen in the future. But what I’d like us to focus on are the instructions we can glean from this book on how we’re to live right now, of what we’re to do in light of what’s coming in the future. In light of the fact that Christ is coming again, he’s given us some things to do.

And we’re going to look at about nine verses out of the book of Revelation today that give us instruction. They were not written to us, but they were written for us. And I believe they are instruction for us about how to live and how to live as Christians and specifically how to live as a church.

Now, I’ve decided to call this series that we’re starting today, If Jesus Came to Church. And I’ve heard people talk for years about what would happen if Jesus showed up in church. And a lot of times what those things are meant to do is to discredit the church.

I remember a Christian song. I say a Christian song. It was a song from a Christian radio station that I heard a few years ago that my dad played for our college Sunday school class to go along with something else he was talking about.

And it was talking about the man saying about his Jesus and that his Jesus would never be accepted in his church. He said, my Jesus will never be accepted in my church. And I remember hearing that song and thinking, my goodness, man, you’ve either got to get a different Jesus or a different church if that’s the case.

If your Jesus would never be accepted in your church, It’s either because you’re serving a false Jesus or you’re in a false church. One of the two. And I remember my dad asking me, what did you think of that song?

Because I hadn’t heard it prior to his playing it. And I said, to tell you the truth, and if you don’t know us already, you’ve got to know, in our relationship, I’ve always been the old man and he’s always been the young man. Not that he’s irresponsible or anything.

No, my dad’s a very responsible man. Always has been. But in terms of our outlook on life, he’s always been, I guess, more progressive, more modern than I am.

And he asked me what I thought of the song. I said, to be quite honest, I found it offensive. Because the whole song was predicated on the idea that, oh, these church people, they know nothing of Jesus.

They care nothing of Jesus. Folks, I don’t believe that there’s this total disconnect between churches today, between biblical churches today, and Jesus Christ. I don’t believe that Jesus Christ looks on his church with disgust. I think there may be groups masquerading as churches that Christ would look on with disgust because neither their teachings nor their hearts are right. But when we talk about true churches that follow God’s Word, I don’t believe that Jesus Christ looks on us with disgust. Because we are, after all, people for whom He died.

The Bible says He gave Himself for His church. Now that doesn’t mean that He didn’t give Himself for anybody else. That doesn’t mean that anybody outside the local church can’t be saved.

But it is a statement that Jesus Christ gave himself for his church. And I believe that Jesus Christ loves the church. I believe that the church, for the most part, loves Jesus Christ, or we ought to.

And I think most biblical churches, well, let me rephrase that. If they don’t love Christ, they’re not a biblical church. Biblical churches love Christ even if we don’t always show it.

And the question has been asked in all kinds of sermons and all kinds of songs, what if Jesus came to church? What would he say to us? And usually the idea is that he’s disgusted with us and we need to straighten this out, we need to fix this.

Folks, my answer is I look through the first few chapters of Revelation and see what Jesus said to some very real literal churches, what he actually said to some churches in that day, indicates to me that he did not overall look at these churches with disgust. He looked at them as bodies of believers that he loved, that nevertheless had some problems that needed to be straightened out. but folks, we’re also taught in the Bible that the Lord chastens whom He loves. If God didn’t care about His church, He would just let us behave however we want it.

And yet, just like children, He chastens us and He disciplines us. And He sands off the rough edges. Not because we disgust Him, but because He loves us and says there’s more to this than just what you’ve been doing.

And there are seven churches that He speaks to in the first few chapters of Revelation. So if the question is asked, what would happen if Jesus came to church? What would Jesus say if he were to come to church?

The question has already been asked and answered. Because in a very real way, Jesus was present in those churches and told them his impressions. Well, what if Jesus came to Eastside?

Ladies and gentlemen, I think if Jesus Christ showed up in physical form at Eastside, I believe, first of all, I don’t believe that he would not be accepted in our church. Because I believe that when he comes back, we will see him for who he is. And when he does come back, the Bible is clear that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess.

So this idea of Jesus showing up and not being accepted, I don’t know where that came from. But I believe if Jesus showed up in physical form at Eastside to critique us, I believe that he would find some areas where we’re lacking. I also think he would find some areas where we’re doing well, and I believe he would encourage us in those, as well as challenge us in the areas where we’re lacking.

And I believe that as we study through these seven churches, we can find things, probably in each of these churches, that apply to our situation, and say, well, what does the Lord Jesus Christ say about that? So that we would know from His Word, not just speculation, not just somebody’s idea in a song, but actually from His Word what He wrote here, written in red and white, not in black and white, but in red and white, what Jesus Christ would say if He came to church at Eastside, what He would tell us about what we’re doing. This morning we’re going to start in Revelation 1, verse 19.

Revelation 1, 19. Jesus speaking to John says, Write the things which thou hast seen and the things which are and the things which shall be hereafter. The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest. And by the way, before this in Revelation chapter 1, I didn’t want to preach through the full chapter of Revelation chapter 1.

I encourage you to go back and read that for yourself. But what’s happened up to this point is John, he says he was on the Lord’s day in the Spirit. It was a Sunday and he was worshiping and suddenly he had a vision.

He had a revelation of Jesus Christ. And he saw Jesus walking in the midst of seven candlesticks, seven lampstands, and holding seven stars in his hand. And now Jesus shares with him in verse 20, the mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches.

So this vision that John has had, Jesus tells him, when you saw me walking amongst the seven candlesticks, those were the seven churches that we’re about to speak of. And he said, the seven stars that you saw were the angels of those churches. And ladies and gentlemen, that does not mean that each church is assigned an angel.

There are some people that I’ve read about recently that have fallen into this idea of territorial spirits, that there are angels in control of certain areas of the world, certain groups, certain people, and that there are also conflicting demons. Folks, that’s not what it’s talking about. Many times in the Bible where you see the word angel, you need to take a closer look at it because the Greek word angelos that that comes from means messenger.

Now, in some cases in the Bible, we see the messenger being one of the created beings, the cherubim, the seraphim, the ones who sat around, who were around God’s throne worshiping in the book of Isaiah, or they would be people, they would be what we think of as angels like Gabriel and Michael. But a lot of times in the Old Testament, when we’ll see an angel, it can be Jesus Christ. A lot of times when it mentions an angel, an angelos in the Bible, It’s referring simply to a messenger. Ray and I had a long discussion about this because he was, when he was studying, he’s been studying the book of Ephesians.

He’s been teaching through the book of Ephesians in our Sunday school class downstairs. And teaching through that, he looked at what we’re going to look at this morning about the church at Ephesus. And we were talking for a long time.

He kept coming into the office. I don’t mean to sound like he was bothering me. I didn’t mind.

But I was trying to study something else and he kept coming and asking me things. And then I got sucked into it and wanting to know. And what we discussed as we dug further in here, when he’s talking about the angels of the churches, he’s talking about literally messengers to the churches.

And these angels of the churches, these seven stars, are literally the people who would carry this message to those churches. We’re not talking about territorial spirits that have control over the churches. We’re talking about those who would deliver the messages.

Some people have said the pastors of the church doesn’t necessarily have to be the pastor. Whoever the messenger was that God was going to send this message to the churches through, was the angel of that church. And so Jesus tells him, when you saw me walking among the seven candlesticks with seven stars in my right hand, the candlesticks were the churches, and the stars were the messengers to those churches.

Then he tells him in, not Ephesians, excuse me, Revelation chapter 2 verse 1, unto the angel of the church of Ephesus, again, unto the messenger of the church of Ephesus, write, and Jesus Christ is telling John, write this down so that you can send this message to somebody in Ephesus who’s going to exhort the church with that message. Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write, These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. He says, here’s what you’re supposed to tell the church at Ephesus.

Tell him that this has been spoken by the one. Tell him that, begin this message by saying this message came from the one who holds the seven stars in his hand and walks among the candlesticks. Tell the church at Ephesus that the message they’re about to hear comes from the one who holds all of these messengers in his right hand and is present among those churches.

There’s a lot of debate about what the book of Revelation means. And not just, we talk about sometimes post-millennial, pre-millennial, amillennial, all the, I’ve told people before I’m pro-millennial, whatever God’s going to do I’m in favor of. That’s a joke, thank you for, anyway.

But there are also people who debate, well, maybe this actually was fulfilled in A. D. 70.

Or maybe this is all just spiritual. It’s not literal. Folks, these were literal churches, and these were literal churches that were going through persecution at the time. Now, as I said, there are people who say the entire book of Revelation was fulfilled in the year 70. And they think that because there was persecution, and they think the Antichrist was Nero and all these things.

Folks, they were undergoing persecution. And even if this book applied to what was going on in their time, I also believe that this book points to something that’s to come. But he wrote to churches that were undergoing severe persecution in the Roman Empire at that point.

And it would have been easy in the decades after the death and resurrection of Christ, after he had gone back to heaven to think, here we are sitting out here in western Turkey, cut off from the apostles at Jerusalem. Jesus Christ is no longer physically present with us. We’re out here all by ourselves.

We’re suffering complete and utter persecution, and we’re completely alone. If Christianity was tomorrow made illegal, and you found yourself cut off from the church, we weren’t able to get together, we weren’t able to even see each other because we’d been scattered everywhere, and you’re trying to live as a Christian and being utterly persecuted. I mean, they’re hunting you down like a dog.

Would you not find that a little bit discouraging to try to be a Christian? In large part, that’s the world they lived in. It would have been very easy to feel like we’re completely alone here.

And Jesus is reminding the church at Ephesus that these messengers, these people who carry God’s message forward, he had them right here in his hand. They may feel alone, but he had never dropped them. He had never put them down.

They were right here. And as for being alone, as for feeling alone, he reminds them that he walks in the midst of the seven candlesticks. That it didn’t matter how alone they felt, how separated they felt.

Jesus Christ was there in the midst of them. So if the question is asked again, what if Jesus came to church? Well, it’s all hypothetical because I believe Jesus is already with the church.

Not in a physical sense, but Jesus Christ is already with the church. These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. He’s reminded them that he has always upheld them and preserved them and protected them, and the one who does all of that for them is the one who’s speaking.

He says in verse 2, I know thy works and thy labor and thy patience, how thou canst not bear them which are evil, and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles and are not and has found them liars. So he tells them, I know you and I know the things that you’ve done. I know the work you’ve done.

When he says, I know what you’ve been up to, that’s not a fearsome thing for them. That’s not a frightening thing for them. Because what he’s saying is, I’ve seen the good things you’ve done.

He says, I know your work, the good works that they had done. How they had behaved themselves, how they had lived as Christians. He knew this.

He recognized it. And that’s also a reminder to us that God doesn’t forget. God sees what we do and He doesn’t forget.

We may think there’s no reward for living a godly life, especially when we look around and we see the wicked prosper. We may think there’s no reward for living a godly life in Christ Jesus, but let me assure you, God sees and remembers. I know thy works and thy labor.

They had labored in the gospel. The fact that there were seven churches there and even more in Western Asia was because somebody had gone and taken the gospel and started churches, and these churches had gone out and shared Jesus Christ and the message of salvation with others around them and had led others to Christ. And part of the reason that the Christians were persecuted was because they were growing. And in turn, they grew because they were persecuted.

We still see that going on today in China where you may have more underground Christians in China than you have real born-again Christians in the United States at this point. And they’ve grown in the midst of persecution. I know thy works and thy labor, that they’ve been faithful to carry the gospel, to teach, to preach, and thy patience, that they had undergone persecution and they had borne their burdens with great patience.

And instead of giving up, they had stuck it out. And how thou canst not bear them which are evil. And it’s not talking about how they walked around and they just hated sinners all the time.

It’s talking about their works and when people would come into the church and try to corrupt them and try to mislead them, as we’re going to see in just a minute, and try to encourage them to be involved in all sorts of wickedness. They couldn’t even bear it. He said, we’re not going to put up with this.

We’re a good group of people. And how thou hast tried them which say they are apostles and are not and has found them liars. There were people in this day who walked around posing as apostles, saying, oh yeah, we walked with Jesus.

We served Him. We were part of the inner circle. But the things that they taught, the things that these false apostles taught were not in line with what the other apostles taught.

It was not in line with the gospel they had been told. They were not in line with the Scriptures. What I mean is the Old Testament Scriptures because that’s what they had at the time.

What they taught was new doctrine. It was not in line with anything that they had ever heard from God. And instead of just believing everything they were told, instead of believing everything they heard, He said, we know that.

. . Jesus said, I know that you’ve tried these people and found them to be liars.

See, some would call it negative to use a little critical thinking and take everything we hear through a filter and decide whether it’s from God or not. Some people find that to be negative. But that’s actually something God encourages, that we not believe everything we hear.

That’s why I tell you on a regular basis, if you hear it from me, check it against the Word of God, because I’m not the standard, this book is. They tried them and they found them to be liars, and they had no fellowship with false teachers. And he said, and has borne and has patience, and for my name’s sake has labored and has not fainted.

They showed tremendous perseverance, not only in clinging to the name of Christ in times of persecution, but actually going out and trying to spread the gospel. See, it’s enough. I mean, it’s good enough if we’re being persecuted for Christians just to remain Christians, just to continue to identify with the name of Jesus Christ under persecution.

Folks, it’s yet another thing in the midst of that same persecution to actually go out and try to grow and advance the kingdom. And they had been very diligent and very perseverant in those things. And is born and has patience and for my name’s sake has labored and has not fainted.

And what they had done, everything they had done was not to grow their own kingdom, but to grow His. Because He said, you’ve done these things for my name’s sake. Today, we can go out and try to reach thousands, and we can try to bring in millions, talking people and dollars.

And we can try to do all these things and build wonderful facilities and do great works and do it all so that our church gets a good name. And I’m not saying that’s what we do, but it’s very easy for a church to slip into that mindset of trying to build our own kingdom. He said, all these things you did weren’t even for yourself, they were for my name’s sake, he says.

Folks, this by any standard, the church at Ephesus was a great church. Verse 4 though, he says, nevertheless, that’s never a good thing. When somebody starts telling you all kinds of good things, I like this about you, and you’re wonderful at this, but, oh that’s never good, why couldn’t you have just left it at that?

He says, nevertheless, I have somewhat against thee. And I was reading on this again this morning and somebody made a good point, I thought, on this. He said, we read this word, he said, maybe it’s the fact that we don’t speak the king’s English so much anymore.

He said, but we have a wrong idea about what this word somewhat means. Today we would look at that and say, nevertheless, I have somewhat against thee, and think, oh, but there’s one little problem. Oh, I have one tiny little thing.

Okay, at the expense of nitpicking, here’s this. No, when he says, I have somewhat against thee, he means there’s a problem. I have something against you, and it doesn’t mean teeny tiny microscopic problem.

Nevertheless, I have somewhat against thee. Folks, we have a problem here that needs to be addressed because thou hast left thy first love. They had a problem, and it was that they had left their first love.

Folks, that first love was Jesus. It was their love for him. It was the passion and the zeal that they once had for him when they first came to him.

And somewhere along the way, they had left it. Tell me how that would not be a big problem. Let me ask you, do you remember, you don’t have to raise your hands, I’ll probably know just by looking at your faces, do you remember the joy that you had when you first got saved?

Okay, I can’t tell by some of your faces. But think about the joy that you had when first you realized that you had that problem of sin and that you were going to hell because you had sinned against God and yet Jesus Christ had died in your place and done what you couldn’t do for yourself and that He freely offered that salvation, He offered that forgiveness and you accepted it and all those sins were forgiven and your eternal destination was changed from hell to heaven. Do you remember the joy?

Do you remember the passion you had for serving Christ? Do you remember wanting to tell other people? Folks, when I was five years old and got saved, I remember I was at home at that point, asked my mother about it, we talked, I prayed and got saved, not because I said some words, but because in my heart I asked Jesus Christ for forgiveness on the basis of His death for me.

And I remember at that point my mother went to go call my father at work and tell him the good news. And I was so excited I caught myself jumping up and down on the couch, which I wasn’t supposed to do. And then I felt conviction about that and got off the couch.

I think to this day she probably still doesn’t know that. But I was so excited. And then, folks, I didn’t understand everything about the gospel.

I understood enough to get saved. I understood that Jesus died for me. And I got in trouble for trying to go and convert kids on the playground.

I remember asking my second grade teacher, who was kind of an odd duck anyway, one day after recess, did she want to go to heaven when she died? She said, what are you about to do to me? I said, nothing.

I was so excited. And there have been times since then when God just seems to get a hold of me, and I get so excited about Him and serving Him, but then there are the times in the interim where we just kind of let that fade. When I ask you, do you remember the joy and the passion and the zeal and the love you had for God?

And you remember back to that. Are you remembering yesterday? Are you remembering this morning?

Or are you remembering 20 years ago? Look at yourself the day you got saved. And folks, our salvation is not based on feelings.

Just because there are some days I wake up and I feel a thousand miles away from God doesn’t mean it’s true. Just because I don’t feel like I’m the Christian I ought to be doesn’t mean I’m not saved. I wasn’t saved because I felt joy and passion and zeal and love.

I wasn’t saved because of those things. I was saved because of the blood of Jesus Christ. And I don’t lose the salvation just because I lose the feeling. But folks, shouldn’t there be more to it than just, yeah, I’m saved?

And folks, we exhibit this when a new believer tells us, I got saved. Or a child tells us, I got saved. That’s nice.

That’s nice. Can’t even muster up a little bit of enthusiasm for them. Folks, that’s an incredible thing.

Somebody destined for hell has been born again into the family of God and is now destined for heaven. That ought to give us cause to shout. Think about when you trusted Christ for the first time and that feeling you had.

And think about where you are today. Have we lost something? Have we lost something?

Folks, I’ve lost something. Not my salvation, but I think sometimes the joy of my salvation. We can lose that from time to time, I believe.

David wrote, restore unto me the joy of my salvation. And we excuse it and we act like it’s normal. I’ve seen people first get saved, especially a few people that came out of a rough way of life and got saved and just turned 180 degrees. Completely different.

And they were on fire for God so much so that they kind of irritated some of the more established Christians because they were really putting them to shame with their love and their zeal for going and telling people about Jesus. And here in a, not an older Christian, but a more mature Christian, somebody who’d been a Christian for longer, say, they’ll get over it, we all do. What?

And whether we would say that or not, we tend to think that, that it’s just normal to lose our joy, to lose our zeal for God over time. Folks, it may be normal, but it’s not right. Why do we accept that?

Folks, it’s a problem. And he told them it’s a problem. The problem here wasn’t that they just, a few people in the church had a few off days.

The problem was that the church at Ephesus as a whole kind of slid down out of that first love they had for God. that first love they had for Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. So when Jesus came to their, when Jesus walked among them, when Jesus showed up at church at Ephesus that day, if I can phrase it that way, he told them, you’re doing great in all these areas, but we’ve got a big problem here.

Folks, if we’re doing great in all these other areas, but in here we’ve grown cold, it’s a big problem. But he gives them the solution. He gives them the remedy here.

He says, remember therefore, from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works. Or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of this place, except thou repent. I’m sorry, out of his place.

I always thought that said this place until I was rereading it this morning. One letter can change the whole meaning of something. He says, remember, therefore, from whence thou art fallen.

Think back to where you were that you’ve fallen from. And he’s not talking about falling from grace. He’s not talking about falling from salvation.

But that place you were at before, remember that place. Remember where you were. Remember where it is that you’ve slidden down from.

And he says, repent. That word repentance, I’ve told you before, means to change your mind and turn it around. When we talk about repentance toward God for salvation, what we mean is this idea of realizing our need for a Savior.

In our natural state, we think we can do it on our own. We don’t need God. When we repent, we say, God, I really do need you.

I can’t earn this myself. My own righteousness can’t earn this. And we change our mind about our need for a Savior.

We trust Christ. Folks, when he says here to repent, remember from whence thou art fallen and repent. Realize where you were and where you are now and change your mind about thinking that that’s acceptable. At this point, they had grown to where they were doing all the right things, but they were doing it with a cold heart.

Their love for God had grown lukewarm, maybe. He said, remember from whence thou art fallen and repent. They probably thought it was acceptable, like we do.

Well, don’t get over it. We all do. Folks, if that’s our way of thinking, that it’s acceptable, it’s normal, that it’s just the course of the Christian life to lose our excitement about God, we need to repent of that idea.

We need to change our ideas from thinking that it’s just normal and acceptable to go with the flow in our Christian life. Remember from whence thou art fallen and repent and do the first works. And he’s not telling them that any action was going to fix this.

He’s talking about going back to doing things the way you did before. When you had that love, when you had that heart for God. He says, or else I will come unto thee quickly and will remove thy candlestick out of his place.

By the way, when it says his place, it refers to the candlestick. I will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent. Unless you change the trajectory you’re headed on, I will remove this candlestick out of his place.

And people have debated and debated and debated about what that meant. Reading the commentaries and reading what everybody else said about it, I had no idea. So many people think it’s talking about losing their salvation.

That doesn’t read that way to me. I started looking back at it again today, and I thought, well, maybe there’s some kind of clue in the word candlestick. But he’s already told us what the candlesticks were.

It was the church. So I thought, well, maybe this word remove. And folks, there are a lot of places where the Bible talks about removing something, taking it away, making sure we don’t have it anymore, or making sure somebody doesn’t have it anymore.

When I looked at this word remove, that’s not what it means. This word, the word is kaneo in Greek. I didn’t notice that at first, but I noticed when I searched for it, this same Greek word is used in a few other places in the New Testament, and not one of it means taking something completely away from somebody.

It has to do with moving from one place to another. When the people mocked Jesus on the cross and it says they wagged their heads at him, meaning they were mocking him, but they moved their heads from side to side in some kind of mocking fashion, that same word for wagging is the same word we have here. In every instance that this word is used in the New Testament, it simply means to move something from one place to another.

And when I saw it was kineo, that made all kinds of sense, because we use words from that in English. That telekinesis, when you can supposedly move things with your mind. When you don’t take it out of existence, you just, if you really can do it, you move it from one place to another.

There’s kinetic or kinesthetic energy, which is the energy of motion, moving things. Brought to mind the word kinetic learner. My wife is a kinetic learner.

She learns by doing things. Drives me crazy. I learn