Ephesus: Losing Our First Love

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Transcript:

This morning we’re going to be in Revelation chapter 2. Revelation chapter 2 I’ve thought for a long time what Jesus might say if he walked in the doors of our church as I said I’ve thought about this for a long time so it’s not just been here any church I’ve been to I’ve wondered what would Jesus say if he were to walk in the doors of the church would he would he look at us and say you’re doing a great job you’re doing everything I’ve asked you to do would he look at us and say you’re doing all of it wrong probably he wouldn’t say either of those things with a particular church. There are some he’d probably look at and say you’re doing everything just about right or you’re doing everything wrong you need to start over.

Most churches ours included are probably somewhere in the middle where he says here’s what you’re doing right here’s what you’re doing wrong here’s what you need to fix. Unfortunately we don’t have Jesus walking around here on earth nowadays. He ascended back to his The Holy Spirit is now in and among us, but we don’t have Jesus in his fleshly, earthly body walking around among us where he could just walk in those two doors back there and come in and tell us exactly what his impressions are of what we’re doing with the commands that he’s given us.

But in the early days, Jesus did look at seven churches and looked at each of them and they were all different. They were all in the same general area of the world, what we’d call now Western Turkey, which was a Greek area at the time. But there were seven churches there that he looked at and said, here’s what you’re doing right, here’re what you’re doing wrong, for most of them.

There were some churches he just said, you’re doing it all wrong and you need to fix it. But he looked to these seven churches and said, here’s where you need to improve. Here’s where your doing well, and I encourage you in that.

And here’s where you need to do better, and I encourage you in that. And here’s where you’re just being disobedient, and I’m going to chastise you in that. And folks, we can look at the examples of these seven churches and see some things maybe in our own church that God would look at us if Jesus walked in those doors today where he might tell us, you’re doing very well in this area and you need to press on and you need to keep going and you need to double down on that.

We might see some other areas in the examples that he gives and say, you know what, that describes us and maybe we’re not doing that so well. And we need to take a hard look at the things we’re doing. Over the next several weeks, I’m going to share with you some things on these seven churches.

As I started telling you last week, and we talked again about Wednesday night, praying that God would prepare us for the work that He’s calling us to do. I don’t know what plans God has in mind for our time together as a church. I don’t know what God has in mind for you individually as what He’s calling you to do as your ministry.

But I do know that as long as God has left us here with breath in our lungs, He’s got a ministry and a work for us to do, and He’s got plans for us. And so we need to begin to prepare and pray that God would prepare us to be the church that we need to be to do the things that He’s called us to do. And so we begin this look at the seven churches just as a way to sort of really hold a mirror up to ourselves and say, what are we doing well?

What are we doing not so well? It’s not just a history lesson about these seven churches, but as I said, a way to hold the mirror up to ourselves and say, what are some ways that God would want us to improve? What are some ways that we’re already doing well at what God’s called us to do?

We’re going to start this morning looking at the church at Ephesus. And whenever I think about what he wrote to the church at Ephesus, I think of a pastor friend of mine who told me years ago when he first started pastoring, he went to a small church not too far outside Oklahoma City. And let’s not kid ourselves, every church has its own traditions, has its own things that maybe we don’t even remember why we do them.

But he said one thing that drove him crazy after the first several weeks he was there was the way that they did the offering. That they would walk, as most churches do, they’d pass the plate up the aisles and they’d collect the money. That’s not what irritated him.

But what irritated him was when they got to the end, they would come up and all the ushers would dump all of the money into one plate together, and then they’d stack the plates. And he said it was just, it was annoying because it made a lot of noise. It took extra time as they’re trying to stack all these plates.

And he said, is there something we can do to change it? No, no, this is the way we do offering. This is the way we’ve always done offering.

Okay. It was so important that this is the way they’d always done things. It was vitally important that they dump and stack.

And finally, he said he went to one of the people who’d there the longest? Because he was asking people, well, why? Why do we do this?

Why is this so important? I don’t know. It’s just what we did when Brother So-and-so was here.

Okay, well, why did he start? I don’t know. That’s what they did when he came.

They were already doing it. He finally went and asked one of the people who’d been at the church the longest, why do we dump all the offering into one plate and stack it? Why is this such a big deal?

Why are we doing this? And they said, well, back in the 20s and 30s when the church started, we met outdoors, kind of a brush arbor thing, open sides, and if we didn’t do that, the wind would blow the money out of the plate. Makes sense.

You know, maybe 50 years down the road when you’ve got a building, not so much. It made sense. But we’re doing this out of a sense of this is what we’ve always done, this is the right way to do it, this is how we do things here, and have completely forgotten the reason why.

There’s nothing wrong with tradition if there’s a reason why. But the problem is when you get wrapped up in your church things, your religious rituals, and you forget about the reason why you’re doing them. That’s when it becomes a problem.

There’s a problem for the church at Ephesus, as we’re going to see. It says in Revelation chapter 2, starting in verse 1, unto the angel of the church at Ephesus write, these things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the golden candlesticks. Now, let’s stop right there.

If you’re not real familiar with Revelation, and I’ll admit there’s a lot about Revelation I don’t understand. And it’s for reasons like we just saw in verse 1, where there’s a lot of symbolism. And a lot of times you have to go outside of that particular passage to look at the symbolism and see what they’re talking about.

He’s talking about walking in seven, or having seven stars in his hands and he’s talking about walking among seven candlesticks. What on earth is he talking about? A few years ago I had a deacon who’s a friend of mine came and sat down in my office one day and said, can you explain this to me?

What is he talking about? Seven candlesticks, what do those mean? What are these seven stars?

So I start looking all through the book of Revelation. I start digging through. I start pulling out commentaries and, you know, I don’t speak Greek or Hebrew, but I know how to look things up.

Well, the Greek, it might mean this, it might mean that. And then we both got to look and I went, okay, well, just look a verse above it at chapter 1, 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 saw are the seven churches. He explains it right there. Folks, context is everything.

Let that be a lesson to you. If you don’t understand, or if you’re struggling for meaning in the scriptures, read the rest of it around it. Let the Bible explain itself.

So context is everything. So when it says he holds the seven stars in his hand, he said those are the angels of the seven churches. It doesn’t necessarily mean that every church has a guardian angel established over it.

I don’t know that that’s the case. When we got ready to move here, Charles’ car was rattling real hard. I said, well, let’s take it to Firestone.

One of the motor mounts is probably broken. We got it in there, and every motor mount was broken. We’re not sure how the motor stayed in there, except Charles said, my guardian angel has very tired arms. So all I can figure is maybe God had one angel assigned to her car.

I don’t know that God assigns an angel to every church. That Greek word angel means messenger. The Greek word behind the word angel means messenger.

And it was really somebody who came and spoke on the Lord’s behalf. That could be the angel that we think of as a created being with wings and a halo. A lot of people believe it means the pastor in those churches.

Don’t fit me for a halo just yet. It means messenger. So it could mean the pastor of those churches.

It could mean the one who was determined to read this letter that was sent. It’s just a spokesman of God who was part of those churches and who would read those, and he holds them in his right hand. He holds the seven stars in his right hand, and folks, it doesn’t matter how important we think we are in the church or how important we think our work is.

God holds us right there in his right hand. He has the ultimate power over us. So Jesus is talking about holding these seven stars in his right hand, and he’s talking about walking in the midst of the seven candlesticks.

Those seven candlesticks are the churches. And why are they put there? They’re put there to put the light of Christ on display where they are.

A candlestick doesn’t work unless it’s got some light source, some candle to hold up. And so the seven candlesticks are the churches that were supposed to be representing Christ in their respective communities. And so he’s told them, write these things, that this is being said by the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, that even though he wasn’t there in physical form, he’d not abandoned his churches on the face of the earth.

He says to the church at Ephesus in verse 2, I know thy works, and thy labor, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil, and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars, and hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name’s sake hast labored and not fainted. He said, I know, I see all the things that you’re doing. Sometimes we work for the Lord, sometimes we do what we know is the right thing, and we feel like nobody notices.

Which is okay, because if we’re only doing what we do for the praise of men, then we pretty much have our reward there. We should be doing things to the glory of God, whether anybody knows we did them or not. But Jesus is telling them, don’t get discouraged, don’t get dismayed that you seem to be working so hard, and nobody notices, and nothing’s happening, because he says, I know.

I see what you’re doing. He says, I see your works, the things that you’re doing, your labor, the things that you’re really pouring your heart into on my behalf. I see those things.

He says, and I know your patience. It takes patience sometimes to serve the Lord, doesn’t it? It takes patience to go through years sometimes of working on something that you know to be the right thing or years of praying for the same person or years of dealing with the same situation only to think, where am I getting?

We know that God’s going to take care of it at some point, but we say, when? It’s been years. God doesn’t work by our timetable, and sometimes it takes patience, and we think, where is the light at the end of this tunnel?

He said, I know your patience, that you’ve kept going, even when things seemed their darkest, even when it seemed like nothing was ever going to happen, you kept going. I’ve seen your patience. He said, I’ve seen how you can’t bear them which are evil.

that there were those in the church who were coming in and living any way they wanted and really putting the name of God’s Son to shame. That they were living in such a way where it gave Christianity a bad name, where it gave the church a bad name, where it gave Christ a bad name. And he said, I’ve seen how church at Ephesus, you cannot stand that.

You don’t put up with it. A lot of times it’s just easier to turn a blind eye when something like that’s going on. But they didn’t take the easy road out.

They said, we’re going to deal with this sin and we’re going to put it out from the church. You can’t bear them which are evil. And false teachers coming in and trying to lead them astray.

He said, I know that you don’t put up with that either. You have tried those which say they are apostles and are not and has found them liars. Be very careful about accepting what anybody, just any random person who claims to be speaking on God’s behalf, be very careful about accepting what they say.

Folks, whether it’s me, whether it’s anybody else who stands in this pulpit, whether it’s somebody you listen to on the radio or TV, be very careful just because they say they’re speaking on God’s behalf doesn’t mean that they are. You test it. You test what they say.

You test what I say against this book. What I preach isn’t right because I say it. It’s right if it matches what this book says.

He said, you haven’t just taken their word for it. They’ve come in and they’ve claimed they were apostles. They’ve claimed they spoke for God and you tried them.

That means you put them to the test. And you found that they were liars. It says in verse 3, And is born and has patience. You’ve borne all the things I’ve asked you to bear.

You have patience. For my name’s sake, you’ve labored and not fainted. They’ve pressed on.

They’ve continued. They’ve remained steady in the things that they were supposed to do. Verse 4, though, says, Nevertheless, I have somewhat against thee.

Wow, we would look at a church like that today and say they were exactly where they needed to be. I mean, they’re working hard. They don’t lose hope when things don’t happen immediately.

They continue pressing on, and they’re steadfast in the things that God has called them to do. They’re making sure that they are walking in a way that’s worthy. They don’t just let any kind of behavior go and say, it’s all right, God will sort it out.

No, they make sure that the church has a good reputation, that Christ as a result has a good reputation in the community, and they check everything that’s taught to see whether it really is from God or not, we would look at that and say that’s everything a church is supposed to be, isn’t it? And yet Jesus said, I have something against you. I have somewhat against you.

He says, because thou hast left thy first love. They’d left their first love. The church at Ephesus was doing a lot of things right.

They were doing almost everything right, but that was the problem. It was just the doing that was right. It was not the reasoning behind it.

They had forgotten why they were doing the things that they were doing. It’s sort of a grander version of the story I told about the offering plates. We’re 50 years on.

They’d forgotten why they dumped the offering and stacked the plates. It made sense a long time ago when there was a reason, but they’d long since forgotten the reason. The church at Ephesus was doing a lot of good things.

They were preaching the truth. They were living right. They were serving God.

They were doing the right things. They were making sure they had a good testimony. They were ministering.

They were serving. You list all the things that a church should be doing, and they were doing the right things, but they had lost the reason behind it in their hearts. They had forgotten that all of this is just empty religious stuff if it doesn’t come from a heart that is passionately in love with Jesus Christ. And so he says, you’re doing all of this stuff in my name, but you’re forgetting why you’re doing it in my name.

are you doing it in my name out of a sense of obligation are you doing it because it’s the right thing to do now don’t get me wrong we should do things because they’re the right thing to do but why are they the right thing for us to do they’re the right thing for us to do because the one who loved us enough to die for us said so and we should want to please him we should be like the little kid who wants to who just wants to make the parent happy wish I knew what that was like no they have moments they have moments don’t they those of you who raised small children or small grandchildren you know that even though they have their moments where you think they’re not listening they don’t care about a word I’m saying they still have those moments where you know that they just want to make you happy sometimes their little hands and feet can’t make that happen they just have to do what they feel inclined to do but really in their hearts they just want to make you happy folks do we still have that childlike love for our Savior where yes, all this other stuff is important, but I just want to make you happy.

I just want to make Him happy because we love Him. Because of all that He’s done for us, we’d do anything for Him. Do we still have that?

Is that the motivation behind our service for Him, or is it just obligation? We talked about this a little bit in Sunday school this morning. Are we here this morning just to be seen?

Are we here because we feel like we need to be? Are we here because if I don’t do such and such, if I don’t teach this class, if I don’t turn the lights on, that nobody else is going to do it, so I better be there to do it. Folks, I’m not criticizing those who come and say, I’m going to do it because it needs to be done.

God bless you for your service. Folks, we need to go a step further and say, I’m doing what I do, whether it’s a big thing, whether I look at it and say it’s a big thing, or whether I look at it and say it’s a little thing. I’m doing it because I love Jesus.

Are you here this morning serving Him because you love Him or because it’s what you’ve always done? I will tell you, there have been Sundays that I’ve gone to church out of a sense of obligation. I don’t feel like being there this morning.

It hasn’t happened here yet, but I don’t feel like being there this morning. I don’t want to get up. But I’m going because it’s what I’ve always done.

I was raised in church. And quite frankly, if I didn’t go to church, I don’t know what people do. I sort of feel like they hang around on hooks until noon, because what else would you do on Sunday morning?

No, the world out there keeps going on. But I come to church because it’s what I was raised to do. It’s what I do.

It’s what I’ve always done. I don’t know what else I would do. Now, fortunately, I always seem to get to church and get something out of it, and I’m glad that I went after all.

A couple months ago, Charla and I went on vacation, went over to New Mexico, and we were traveling on a Sunday. It worked out that, I mean, there was no other way. We were traveling on a Sunday.

And I told her, I said, I hate this. I mean, we had a good time together. We stopped and had lunch.

We drove in the car, spent hours together, enjoyed it. But I told her, I hate this. I hate not being in church.

Not because it was what I’d always done, but because I genuinely missed being together with God’s people. I missed worshiping together with God’s people. I missed all the things that we come together and do.

so there I tell you that so you don’t think I’m a heathen because I told you that there are some Sundays I just don’t want to go I’m always glad at the end that I went anyway but folks there are there are some times that I felt that way so if you ever feel that way I’m just serving God whether it’s coming to church or whatever else you do I’m just serving God out of a sense of obligation because this is what I’m supposed to do I’ve been there if you think no I’m doing this because it’s what I love I’ve been there too we’ve probably all been in both places but we need to be very careful to stay out of these places where I’m just doing it because I’m obligated, because it’s what I’m supposed to do, because it’s right. So he tells them, I have somewhat against thee because thou hast left thy first love.

They’d forgotten the passion that they had for Jesus Christ, which was the reason why they were doing these things in the first place. And we would think, okay, they’ve fallen out of love with Jesus. They’ve fallen out of love with Jesus.

That’s a, I mean, how do you come back from that? You hear couples say all the time that they’ve fallen out of love with each other. Okay, fix it.

But they’ve fallen out of love with each other, and what’s usually the result of that? They end up going their separate ways. The world thinks, oh, we’ve fallen out of love, it can’t be fixed.

That’s not what Jesus says here about the relationship with him. Verse 5 says, Remember therefore whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works. He says it’s not over.

Just because you’ve lost your first love, just because you don’t feel the same way you did in the beginning, doesn’t mean that that can’t be recaptured. Just because you don’t have the same passion in your heart, doesn’t mean that it can’t be recaptured. He says, remember where you’ve fallen from.

Go back and think about where you were when you first started out. Think about that and repent and go back and do it over again. Okay, this remember where you’ve fallen from.

I don’t know how many of you have been around new Christians before that are just excited about their faith. And we say amen, but sometimes the thought is, calm down. I don’t know.

Sometimes, hey, I’d rather see that though than just, oh, that was nice. I trusted Christ. That was nice. Now I’m just going to sit here.

But sometimes a new believer can be like a puppy, just bouncing off of everything. and they want to do this and they want to do that and they want to learn this and they want to. .

. And I have seen in church, God forbid that it should be the case, but I’ve seen in church where people say, they’ll calm down. It’ll be okay.

They’ll calm down and be just like the rest of us. Well, who wants to be just like the rest of us? What’s wrong with being excited about the things of God?

What’s wrong with being excited about Jesus Christ? I remember when I was five years old, I trusted Christ as my Savior. and I don’t remember a whole lot about that day I remember what day it was I remember that just I’d been dealing for almost a week with what I’d heard in children’s church about hell and about the fact that I was a sinner against God and I know it wasn’t the first time I’d heard it but it was the first time it really clicked in my head and it bothered me knowing I was going to hell and finally Thursday of that week I just went in, couldn’t deal with it anymore went and asked my mother that morning what do I need to do to be saved I don’t remember everything I prayed that morning except I prayed that I knew I was a sinner, and I asked Jesus to forgive me because he died for me on the cross.

Well, after that, my mother went in to call my dad at work and tell him what had happened. And I remember being so excited, I was bouncing around on the couch, jumping up and down on the couch, doing headstands. And that wasn’t me, and I knew we weren’t supposed to do that, but I was just so excited.

And I kind of look at that and say, that’s the kind of, even if a new believer doesn’t jump around and physically bounce off of stuff, that’s kind of the excitement that is there in a new believer. Why should we encourage them to calm down and be like us who’ve been believers for, I’ve been a believer for almost 25 years now. Why should we encourage them to calm down and be like us?

We need to calm up and be like them. He says, remember where you were when you started out. Remember the passion and the excitement that you had about Jesus Christ. Not that our salvation is a feeling.

It’s not based on feelings. It’s based on knowing that the promises of God are true. but still there ought to be a passion and an excitement, a love for Jesus Christ that just overflows in us.

And he says, remember where that used to be in you. Remember where you were when you felt that way. Remember where you were, where that was what drove you in your Christian service was that love for Jesus Christ. Remember that because it’s not so long ago.

He says, remember where you’ve fallen from. And he says, repent. That word repent means to change our minds.

When we see where we are now, And assuming you’re not there, I’m not going to make the assumption that you’re not there. I’ll let you and the Holy Spirit work that out. But assuming you’re not there anymore, when you see where you are now, and you see where you started out with that love for Jesus Christ that drove everything you did, and you can see the difference, and we recognize that something has gone wrong here.

Folks, we’re halfway to agreement with God already. And getting all the way to agreement with God is saying, and something needs to change. Well, hey, that’s what God says.

repentance means to change your mind and agree with God and so we agree that something needs to change and we go back and do the first works can we recapture that on our own I don’t think so but I know God can send us back to where we need to be that’s why David prayed restore unto me the joy of my salvation and renew a right spirit within me David didn’t pray restore unto me my salvation he just said renew unto me the joy of my salvation David didn’t lose his salvation we don’t lose our salvation, but sometimes we get sloppy and lose the joy of our salvation. You know what? God can give it right back.

So Jesus tells them here, I’ve got something against you. You’ve lost that heart. You’ve lost that passion.

You’re doing the right things, but the heart is not behind it. And so what you need to do is remember what that was like and repent. Agree with God that it needs to change and then ask God to change it and go back and with the power that God gives you, go back and do the things that you were doing before like you were doing them before with the heart behind them.

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 remove thy candlestick out of this place except thou repent. He says, do this quickly. Do this quickly or I’m coming to take back the candlestick.

Now some people have speculated that means they’re going to lose their salvation. That means this, that means that. What does the candlestick mean?

He said in chapter one, it means the church. He means that church is going to be no more. Not that the believers were going to be gone, but that church was going to be gone.

And I’ve seen, folks, I’ve seen this happen. I’ve seen churches that 15 years ago were just starting to decline and now are closed, are gone. Some of you may know church, and I’m not talking just about in, I’ve seen this in some small rural areas in western Oklahoma where the town’s just dried up and so there’s nobody.

But I’m also talking about some in some major metro areas where there are people all around them, but the church is just gone, closed its doors. And what he’s saying here is go back and get back that passion, get back that love for Christ that drives what you do. Otherwise, this church just isn’t going to be here anymore.

The church is going to be gone. The church is going to wither and die, he said, unless you repent. But not wanting to leave them on just a negative note, he says in verse 6, But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.

Now the Nicolaitans, there’s debate about where that name came from. But Bible scholars pretty much agree that the Nicolaitans, wherever their name came from, were a group of people who thought you could just live however you wanted, whatever excess you wanted, whatever wildness you wanted, that you could just live however. And the church at Ephesus said, no, this is not the way it’s supposed to be.

And rightly so. and they hated not necessarily the Nicolaitans, but they hated the way they lived. They hated the way they were encouraging people in the churches to live.

They hated the influence that they had on their culture. And so Jesus does commend them and say, you stand for righteousness here. And I like that about you.

He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches. To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God. Now, if you think back, the tree of life was in the Garden of Eden.

That was the tree that Adam and Eve didn’t get their hands on. They ate the tree of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Their eyes were opened, and God said, we’re going to throw them out of the garden so that they don’t eat from the tree of life and live forever.

Well, Jesus promised to those in his churches who overcome is that he will give to eat of the fruit of the tree of life. Meaning those who trust in him, the Bible says that this is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith. How do we overcome?

What does it mean to overcome? It’s not talking about good works, it’s talking about our faith. So those who have faith in Jesus Christ will overcome the world and they will live forever being able to eat of this tree of life.

So what does this have to do with us today? Because I told you this is not just a history lesson. This is how we can look at their example, hold the mirror up to ourselves, and say, what are we doing well?

What can we do better on? Well, I’ll let each of you think about how you feel we as a church are doing in that, how you feel like you as an individual are doing in that. But folks, just a couple things here that I’ve already shared, but I want to give them to you in memorable points.

First of all, faithfulness in our actions is only part of a Christian’s life. It’s an important part to be sure, folks, but it’s only part of it.