Coronation: The Adrift Church

Transcript

JRNT 503
02/23/20250
Coronation: Part Four, “The Adrift Church”
Revelation 2:1-7
Jesse Randolph

There is a story out there from nautical lore about a cargo ship named the Octavius. And as the story goes the Octavius left London, England in the fall of 1761 and set sail for China. The crew and the ship arrived safely in China. They unloaded their cargo and then they turned back around, loaded up with goods to deliver back to London. Well, the captain of the Octavius detecting that there was unseasonably warm weather in the area decided to try a new route by cutting through the always icy Northwest Passage, that sea lane that connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans by way of the Arctic Ocean. So with good weather on his side in the fall of 1762, the captain of the Octavius steered the ship into the icy waters of the Northwest Passage. Well, the ship never made its way to its destination. It never got back to London and it was officially declared lost. Then, thirteen years later, in the fall of 1775, a crew of whalers on a ship called the Herald working in some frigid waters off the coast of Greenland happened upon this lost ship, the Octavius.

And the Octavius was in bad condition. It was wedged into this thick sheet of ice. Its sails were tattered. It appeared to have been deserted and there wasn’t a sound coming from its decks. As the story goes, the crew of the Herald jumped on board the deck of the Octavius and what they found was terrifying. They found the 28 crew members of the Octavius all dead, literally frozen in time. Included the captain of the Octavius sitting at his desk pen in hand with his journal open to the date November 11, 1762. In the captain’s quarters was the body of his child and the body of his wife wrapped in blankets huddled in the corner of the quarters. And then they found the fossilized corpses of all 25 other crew members who at some point after that fateful day of November 11, 1762, all froze to death. And then as the captain of the Herald studied the logbook of the Octavius they realized that when its members were last living the Octavius had been navigating in Alaskan waters. But now here they were, all these years later, some 13 years later, 2,000 miles away off the coast of Greenland. In other words, for years this ship had been sailing through the frigid waters of the Arctic Ocean with not a single living soul on board. A dead captain, a dead crew, a ship full of cold, frozen, lifeless corpses still making its way through the water but completely adrift.

We’re resuming our study of the book of Revelation tonight and we are going to be in Revelation 2:1-7 as we study “The Adrift Church”. Remember the past 3 Sunday nights we have been in Revelation 1 and we have worked through the prologue to this book.
We’ve worked through the Apostle John’s greetings to the seven churches. We’ve worked this section of doxology, words of worship and praise offered up to the Risen Lord where the Apostle John has given us several different statements of truth. These all come from Revelation 1, that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is “the faithful witness,” “the firstborn of the dead,” “the ruler of the kings of the earth,” the One “who loves us and released us from our sins by His blood,” the One who is “coming with the clouds,” and the One who is “the Alpha and the Omega,” the One “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”

And then last Sunday night we worked our way through this vivid and full-color vision that the apostle John had on Patmos of the ascended and glorified Christ. This is that vision that he experienced of the exalted Christ while imprisoned on the isle. And that vision he had was the Lord as He exists today, “clothed in a robe that goes down to his feet,” a “golden sash” across His chest, hair that’s “white like white wool,” “eyes like a flame of fire,” feet “like burnished bronze,” a voice “like the sound of many waters.” Out of His mouth was coming that sharp two-edged sword, the broad sword. And then His face John reported was shining like the sun in its power. And encountering Jesus in this manner, not in the way Jesus is portrayed in modern day storybook Bibles, but in the manner in which He actually exists today, it provoked a real reaction in John, did it not? It sure did. Revelation 1:17, John reports that when he saw Jesus in that state, “I saw Him,” he says, and “I fell at His feet like a dead man.” And we would, too, if we were in that situation.

And then two verses later in verse 19, Jesus Himself says this to John, “Therefore write the things which you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which will take place after these things.” As I’ve mentioned a couple of times already, that I believe is the outline of the book of Revelation. First you have “the things which you have seen,” meaning what Jesus revealed to John in Revelation 1 in that glorious vision. Then you have “the things which are,” that covers the letters of Revelation 2 and 3 which we’ll start tonight. And then you have “the things which will take place after these things,” Revelation 4 onward and what this book of Revelation teaches about the events and circumstances which are yet to take place but will take place in the future.

So tonight we are officially turning the page on part one of the book of Revelation, “the things which you have seen.” And we are moving into the second part, part two of the book, “the things which are,” Revelation 2. This is that church at Ephesus. This is the first of the seven churches that are addressed by Jesus through John on that actual postal route that ran through Asia Minor, modern day Turkey. This is the church at Ephesus. The church which was like the ship Octavius, adrift. Revelation 2:1-7, “To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: This is what the One who holds the seven stars in His right hand, the One who walks among the seven golden lampstands, says: ‘I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot bear with those who are evil, and you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false; and you have perseverance and have endured for My name’s sake, you also have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first. But if not, I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place, unless you repent. Yet this you do have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will grant to eat of the tree of life which is in the Paradise of God.’”

Now again where we left off last Sunday evening, was the Apostle John’s awe-inducing vision of the One who wrote this letter to the church at Ephesus. And that’s a helpful reminder as we launch into these studies of these seven letters to these seven churches over the next several weeks. It’s important to be reminded that the Jesus who speaks to His church in Revelation 2 and 3, the Jesus who is preeminent over His church today, is majestic and glorious and in fact, He’s terrifying. And not only that, it’s important to remember to balance that thought of Him being terrifying, that He loves the church. He loves the church so much that we are told in Acts 20:28 that He “purchased [the church] with his own blood.” He loves the church so much that He continues to build it, even though the gates of hell seek to prevail against it as we read in Matthew 16:18. And as we saw last Sunday evening, He loves the church so much that He continually stands in her midst, tending to her by means of faithful shepherds who feed her His Word, who care for her, who meet her needs and earnestly desire her purity and holiness. And as we are going to see this evening, Jesus loves the church so much that He is willing not only to commend the church for doing good, but to correct the church when she goes astray, and command the church to live faithfully for Him.

And the church He sets His sights on first, as He said what He said to John, which John captured in the book that we now know as Revelation, was the church at Ephesus. And what do we know about this area, this region of Ephesus? Well, geographically speaking we know it was a coastal city, sitting on the Aegean Sea, a crucial port city that connected the Eastern and Western halves of the Roman Empire. It was a big city, over 250,000 people lived there at the time and culturally speaking it was a social melting pot. There were people from all over parts of the then-known world who migrated and lived in Ephesus.

Religiously speaking, Ephesus had a very vibrant spiritual life. But as we know even today just calling something spiritual or religious isn’t necessarily a good thing. It was an offensive form of religion and an offensive form of spirituality that pervaded the church at Ephesus. See Ephesus was this hotbed of emperor worship at the time. And the Ephesian landscape if you were there at this time, you would have seen these shrines dedicated to the worship of various Roman emperors. Ephesus was also the home of cult worship. Specifically, it was the hub of worship of Artemis (also known as Diana) who was superstitiously believed at the time to be the goddess of fertility. In fact, her temple, the temple dedicated to Artemis is one of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World. And as beautiful as the temple was externally, what happened inside that place was foul and disgusting. Prostitution, orgies, and other things I can’t say or mention in proper company.

All this to say, Ephesus was this community that was ripe for the Gospel. And it was Paul who through his associates Aquila and Priscilla, who first brought the gospel to Ephesus, around 52 A.D. And then after the gospel reached Ephesus, this church was immensely blessed with all sorts of gifted teachers and ministers of God’s Word who ministered there, in addition to Paul, who of course, wrote a letter to the Ephesians. Aquila and Priscilla ministered there. Apollos, a man who is described as being eloquent and mighty in the Scriptures, ministered there. Timothy, Paul’s protégé, ministered there. Tychicus ministered there. And last, but not least, the Apostle John himself ministered at Ephesus. In fact, as we read the church history we see that John likely ministered at Ephesus for a quarter century, leading up to his imprisonment that lead to him being exiled to Patmos. The point is this church at Ephesus had a rich spiritual heritage and it was uniquely positioned with its rich spiritual heritage to witness to the very dark, depraved culture in which it found itself.

So with that as background let’s head to our text again, starting in verse 1 where we read, “To the angel of the church in Ephesus write.” As I mentioned last Sunday night and I will repeat in future messages that word “angel” in our English Bibles is simply a transliteration of the Greek word “angelo,” which standing by itself, doesn’t have any kind of hint of wings or harps or arrows being shot into the hearts of the romantic at Valentine’s Day. That’s not the meaning of the word there. The word simply means messenger. And considering that word “angelo” or messenger in the context of Jesus addressing His churches here, I take that word “angel,” “angelo,” to be a reference to the messengers in these churches. Earthly messengers in these churches. And who would those earthly messengers be? Well, it would be the men who were charged to lead those churches, to shepherd those churches, to pastor those churches. It was the pastors of these churches as Hebrews 13:17 puts it, who would one day give an account for how they shepherded the flock of God. It was the pastors of those churches as James 3:1 notes, who would one day give an account for each word they spoke to those flocks of God. And it was the pastors of those churches who would be expected to do something about the conditions that Jesus found wanting or lacking in these churches. So I think a fair and contextually-appropriate reading of the first few words of verse 1 here would be “To the [pastor] of the church in Ephesus write.”

And then look at what comes next. Still in verse 1, it says, “This is what the One who holds the seven stars in His right hand, the One who walks among the seven golden lampstands, says.” Now the “One” referred to there is the Lord of the church, Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ, the text says, “holds the seven stars in his right hand.” We know from our study last week, looking up the page at verse 20 of chapter 1, that “the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches,” which I take to be the pastors of those seven churches. So what Jesus is saying here to the church at Ephesus is that He holds the leaders of these churches, the stars, the angels, the messengers, the pastors in “His right hand.” Meaning they are in this place of security and protection as they preach His Word, as they shepherd His people, as they protect His church.

And the Lord next says that He “walks among the seven golden lampstands.” Again, a reference to His churches. And the idea here is that He is continually present in His churches. He’s transcendent, yet emanate. And He’s continually evaluating His churches. And as we’re about to see His evaluation of the church at Ephesus is threefold. First, He’s going to commend the church for its orthodoxy and its diligence in service. Second, He’s going to criticize the church for abandoning its first love, being that adrift church. And then third, He’s going to challenge the church to repent and remember from where they had fallen.

Let’s start with what He says in terms of commendation. As we are about to see, He commends the church in Ephesus both for what it does, what it’s doing, and for what it knows. Look at verse 2, He says, “I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance.” Now, that word for “know” there is significant. There are essentially two different Greek verbs that our Lord could have chosen to borrow from there in describing what they knew or what He knew of them. One of those verbs is the Greek verb “ginosko”. For you who speak Spanish you hear the verb “canosko,” it’s the same root. “Ginosko” speaks to imperfect knowledge of something that is progressively being acquired, like I have imperfect knowledge of how a gas-powered engine works. I have imperfect knowledge of the rules of ice hockey. What in the world is icing? I have imperfect knowledge of how to turn a wrench. I have imperfect knowledge of Irish history, Keynesian economics and astrophysics. Now, theoretically if I were a completely different person with a completely different mind, I could learn those things and I would be able to build on my already imperfect knowledge. That’s the ginosko type of knowledge.

The other Greek verb for knowing something or knowledge is “oida.” And that reflects full, complete, total comprehensive knowledge of a subject. Total mastery of a topic with no further room for growth or knowledge. And that’s the verb Christ uses to refer to the church at Ephesus, “oida”. Meaning He isn’t growing in His grasp of the Ephesian church and its circumstances. He’s not expanding in his information base about what was happening there at Ephesus. He’s not developing in His understanding of this church. Rather He already has absolute knowledge of this church and the situation it finds itself in. And that makes total sense, perfect sense, considering as we just saw and we saw last time, He is ever-present in their midst. In fact, look up the page at verses 12 and 13 of Revelation 1, and John’s vision. John says, “Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me. And having turned I saw seven golden lampstands; and in the middle of the lampstands I saw one like a son of man.” He is present. He is in the midst of His churches.

Now back to verse 2 of chapter 2, Christ says to this church at Ephesus, He says, “I know your deeds and your toil and your perseverance.” Let’s start with that first one, “deeds”. Christ here is commending the church, the Ephesian church, because it was a church that was marked by its godly labors and its service. To paraphrase here, Christ is saying you are doing the right types of things. You are being fruitful. You are being dutiful in the tasks that are set before you in the church. “I know your deeds.”

Next, He says He knows the “toil” of the church in Ephesus. And that word for “toil” is “kopon” and it means to toil, to work to the point of perspiration. To labor to the point of exhaustion. Our modern expression would be to work one’s fingers to the bone. The Ephesians, in other words, were laboring diligently in their service to the Lord. They were toiling in their service for Christ to the point of exhaustion. They were not a lazy church. They were not an indifferent church. This was not the church that was marked by the problem of the ‘pew potato’. No, they got in the game. They weren’t sideline-sitters. They weren’t spectators. This would have been the church that would have vacuumed furiously after a men’s breakfast without being asked to do so. This would be the church that like clockwork would get the decorations out for Easter and VBS and Christmas, like to the minute. This would have been the church that would have attended and served at every event on the church calendar and would have been in the church building whenever the doors were open. They understood Ephesians 2:10 that they were “created in Christ Jesus for good works.” And they were happy to be expended for Christ’s sake.

Last in terms of accommodation, we see that Jesus commends this church not only for their deeds, not only for their toil, but for their “perseverance”. And that word for perseverance is a familiar one to many of you. It’s the Greek word “hupomone” which means to remain under, to bear up under. Earlier in its history the Ephesian church had been loaded down with all sorts of difficulties and trials and negative circumstances. You know Acts 19, I won’t turn you there right now, but Acts 19 highlights some of the difficulties that Ephesus was up against in its earliest days. Acts 19:9 refers to these interactions that Paul has with these disbelieving Jews who had become hardened on account of the Way, the Christians. Paul’s interactions with the sons of Sceva are mentioned in Acts 19 in that those folks were trying to trade on the name of the Lord. It’s also in Acts 19 that we see Paul’s interactions with this mob of craftsmen who were aroused by this man named Demetrius, the silversmith, who suddenly saw profits go down in his idol-making business as soon as the gospel got to Ephesian shores. Well, in the decades that followed, the church at Ephesus was facing additional pressures to cave and to compromise. Specifically, in the area of sound doctrine, as the church was attacked by false teachers and false teaching and they were bearing up under the weight of it all. They were persevering, “hupomone”.

And the perseverance of those in Ephesus is further described in verse 3, let your eyes go down there where it says, “and you have perseverance and have endured for My name’s sake, you also have not grown weary.” In other words, those who made up this church at Ephesus, they were keeping their hands to the plow. They weren’t taking days off in their service to Christ. They were not throttling back. They weren’t giving up. Ephesus was a church as it’s said in Philippians 3:14, who “pressed on toward the goal of the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Ephesus was a church which as it’s said in Hebrews 12:1-2, ran “with endurance the race set before [them], fixing [their] eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith.”

And note their motivation, the motivation for their deeds and their perseverance and their toil. Look at verse 3. They were persevering and enduring, you see it there, “for My name’s sake.” The early church at Ephesus, they toiled in their work of the gospel, all for the sake of the name of the Lord of the church, Jesus Christ. They weren’t doing what they were doing in the church for themselves. They were doing what they were doing in the church for the Savior. And now their selfless, Christ-exalting, Christ- honoring labors are being commended by the Lord Himself.

That really should be an encouragement for us living in the Church Age now. To know that the exalted and glorified Christ, the One who sits at the right hand of God the Father, with His white hair like white wool, with His feet like burnished bronze, with His eyes like a flames of fire, with the sharp two-edged sword coming out of His mouth, He’s there and He sees and He knows it all. He knows, “oida,” all of it. He knows how many hospital visits you’ve gone on. He knows how many children you’ve ministered to and young hearts you have poured into. He knows how many theology books you’ve read. He knows how many (some of you) theological books you have written. He knows how many books of the Bible you’ve taught through. He knows how many souls you’ve won. He knows how many souls you’ve prayed for and how many prayers you’ve lifted up in the evening watches, on the night watches. He knows it all and He sees it all. So trust in the fact, and rest in the fact, that if you are a follower of Christ this evening, like the church at Ephesus, your day of commendation is coming and trust in the fact, and rest in the fact, that if you labor for the Lord like the Ephesians were laboring for the Lord, if you are “steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord” as it says in 1 Corinthians 15:58, your labor, same word, “kopos,” toil, is not in vain. It will not be in vain.

Back to our text as we’re about to see, the Lord of the church, Jesus Christ, not only commends the church at Ephesus for their works, He’s going to commend them now for their commitment to sound doctrine and their commitment to spiritual discernment. Look at the next part of verse 2 (we skipped over i), where Jesus says this, that He knows that “you cannot bear with those who are evil, and you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false.” So the church at Ephesus, in other words, was not only a hard-working church, it was not only a diligent church, it was not only a church that toiled, it was a church that had a right sense of sound doctrine. It was a church that was fully orthodox in its beliefs. This was a church, as Paul would say in the letter to Ephesians in Ephesians 4:14, that was not being “tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming.” Rather, this was a church that was made up of individuals who had an unwavering commitment to the truth. This was a church that recognized the corrupting influence of sin when it enters the church. This was a church that recognized as Galatians 5:9 says, that “a little leaven leavens the whole lump.” This was a church that recognized the difference between light and darkness and recognized that the two should not mix. And this was a church which could not as we see here in verse 2, “bear with those who are evil.”

And in the city of Ephesus, there were plenty of opportunities for evil men to creep into the church. And that’s because in this important port city, think of like modern day Seattle or Philadelphia or Miami, there were people constantly coming and going from all walks of life. And in a city like this, with this large transient population, there were all sorts of interesting characters passing through Ephesus at this time. That included this group of pretenders, verse 2, who were masquerading as “apostles,” as they tried to inject themselves into the life in the church there at Ephesus. And from what we can gather, these self-appointed apostles were antinomian in their theology. Meaning actually just as Johanna testified to about the old movement she was in before she actually got saved, that they were saying a person could call themselves a Christian, and say they had been converted, but after their so-called conversion, they could go on living just they way they lived before their so-called conversion. That’s antinomianism. It’s exact opposite of what we heard this evening. We heard from individuals who after their profession of faith, started living like they are actually saved. Well, these false teachers at Ephesus were saying that a person could call themselves a Christian, and then after that profession just keep living like the world. They were the inventors of the idea of carnal Christianity, a plague on the modern day church for centuries since.

Anyway the sound believers here at Ephesus, they weren’t falling for it. They weren’t falling for the ploy of “carnal Christianity” that was being peddled by these so-called apostles. And why weren’t they falling for it? Well, remember they had been well-taught. Remember that linage of teachers who had come through Ephesus. Paul, and Timothy, and Priscilla and Aquila, and Apollos, and John Himself! And not only had this church been well-taught, but this church had been decades before forewarned that this very thing would happen and that false teachers like this would arise. In fact, go with me over to Acts 20. I have eluded to it earlier but we are going to see in Acts 20, Paul in his departing address to the Ephesian elders, same city, what would happen to them in the future. Look at Acts 20:28. This is Paul as he prepares to say farewell to these overseers in Ephesus. He say, “Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.” And look at this, he says, “I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw the disciples after them. Therefore be watchful,”

So Paul there was telling the Ephesian elders decades before the Lord would address the church in our passage in Revelation 2, that a future day would come where there would be false teachers who sought to infiltrate their flock. And now some 30 years later those false teachers had arrived in Ephesus. But now this well-taught, well-trained, well-versed Ephesian church was ready for them. Look what Jesus says of them in verse 2 again, Revelation 2:2, that they had “put to the test those who call themselves apostles. And not only that, it says, they had “found them to be false.” In other words, the church at Ephesus had penetrated that disguise of those who sought to deceive them. They had exposed these false teachers that were calling themselves apostles, as being the liars that they actually were.

Now if we drop down to verse 6 for just a moment, we’re going to see another example of just how spiritually discerning the church at Ephesus was. Verse 6, he says “Yet this,” these are still the words of Christ, “Yet this you do have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.” So we have Christ now commending the church at Ephesus not only for exposing these so called apostles in verse 2, but for calling out the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which He says I also hate. Now who were the Nicolaitans? And why did Christ hate their works? Well, they were a group like the so-called apostles of verse 2, who were trying to introduce into the early church a libertine form, a ‘devil-may-care’ form, of Christianity. We’re going to get into them in a lot more detail when we get to Pergamum in a couple of weeks. But you can look over the page at Revelation 2:15 where Christ says to that church, “so you also have some who in the same way hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans.”

I’ll leave that there for now. These were just another group of libertine, antinomian, ‘live- how-you-please-even-if-it-dishonors-the-name-of-Christ’ kind of people. So their response. The point is at Ephesus was encouraging. And they were able to weed out these false apostles in verse 2, they hated the deeds of the Nicolaitans which Christ also hated. It’s good to hate the things that Christ hates.

Well, they were sound, they were a sound church, Ephesus was, doctrinally speaking. They were a hard working church. They were a discerning church but as we turn to verse 4, we see that beneath the surface this church had a very, very significant flaw. And one which Jesus with those searching eyes exposes here in verse 4. He says, “But I have this against you, that you have left your first love.” So now we move from Christ’s commendation of this church to His criticism of this church. The fatal flaw that dogged the Ephesian church, notwithstanding its doctrinal purity and its doctrinal fidelity, is that this was a church which had “lost [its] first love.” They had abandoned the love they had at first. Get this. Nearly four decades had passed since this church was flowering and blooming under Paul’s leadership, and now we get to mid-90s A.D. under John’s leadership and this once flowering, once blooming body of believers is now cooled off. The love they once had for the Lord had cooled. Their love for Christ in Ephesus had waned. Their penchant for sound teaching, their commitment to orthodoxy, their zeal for excluding frauds and impostors had left no room for love in that church. It doesn’t appear that it was a lack of faith in Christ, instead their love for the Lord had simply grown cold. No longer a lampstand that was burning brightly for Jesus, this church’s best days were now behind it. Like the Octavius, the ship I mentioned at the outset, this church was totally adrift, full of frozen, lifeless souls.

But how? How does something like that happen? And what does it mean that the Ephesian church had “lost its first love”? Well, a clue I think is found in Matthew 22:36 where Jesus gives those very simple 2 part commands: that we love the Lord our God with all your heart, soul, and mind,” and number 2 it’s like unto it, we love our neighbor as our self. For the Ephesians, there apparently had been a “’cooling off’ in both respects. First there had been this cooling off in their love for the Lord. Sure, they were working hard physically. They could stack chairs with the best of them. Sure they could debate doctrine. They were sharp theologically. They were equally able, putting it into today’s context, to scrub toilets and argue the finer theological points. But their affections for God had chilled. Their spiritual discernment had degenerated into this place of being calloused. Their joyful works of service at the beginning, had devolved into just dry duty, just something I do.

It wasn’t just our love for God though that had waned, so had their love for one another. As their personal love for God had cooled there was also this corresponding cooling off of their love for fellow believers. Surely they knew the words of Jesus in John 13:35. “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” Surely they knew those words. But those words had become just words to them at this point. By this point this was, spiritually speaking, a valley of dry bones, a ghost ship. And it’s because they had forsaken their first love. Sure, they were toiling and they were serving and they were sweating and they were doing and they were busy and they were studying and they were correcting and they were rebuking. But they were no longer loving God or one another. And that’s a dangerous and potentially devastating combination.

If I can be very frank with you, one of the greatest dangers facing any Bible-teaching church, including ours, is the risk that we become like the church at Ephesus. A church that is focused on service and busyness and work. A church that is focused on spiritual discernment and theological knowledge. But a church which has lost its first love. A church that is now adrift. See, Jesus is neither impressed nor pleased with you individually or us as a church corporately, if we’ve got all of our arguments for dispensationalism down, but the last time we shared the gospel was before the internet was invented. Jesus is neither impressed with or pleased with us as a church or us individually, if we’ve loaded down our schedules with programs and activities and studies -- but the husbands in our church aren’t loving their wives as Christ loved the church, and wives in the church aren’t submitting joyfully to their husbands and to God’s design for them in prioritizing their home -- and parents, and fathers specifically, aren’t prioritizing the necessity of instructing and disciplining our children according to God’s commands. Jesus is neither impressed with or pleased with us individually or us as a church if we will talk with anyone with a pulse about who the Nephilim were or who the two witnesses of Revelation 11 were, but we’re not talking with God regularly. Not communing with Him, dependently, through prayer.

And because the church, including the church at Ephesus, but also our church, is made up of the sum composite of its members, I have to ask individually, I have to ask our church together corporately -- have you abandoned your first love? Has your love for Jesus Christ run cold? Are you adrift? And how would you know if you were?

Well, there’s no one-size-fits-all test for everybody. I do have some pointers for you though. Here’s one. You no longer desire to spend time with God, specifically, in His Word. Bible reading has become a chore for you now. It’s non-existent, even. If you are being honest, you’d rather watch YouTube videos that make you laugh, or television shows that make you think, or read news reports that make you feel smart and informed.

Second, your times of private prayer have dried up. You don’t feel like talking to God. You don’t know what to say to God, so you don’t say anything at all. You don’t give thanks to Him for what He provides. You don’t cry out to Him when you’re desperate. You’ve given your Maker the silent treatment.

Third, your times of corporate worship have dried up. They are listless and wanting. You are here on Sunday but you are just mouthing the words. You read the lyrics on the screen, but you’re not thinking about them. The sermons that are preached aren’t connecting with you. They’re not hitting. They don’t do anything for you anymore. Now mind you, you don’t pray or prepare yourself for Sunday worship, but you expect God to show up anyway.

Fourth, you do find yourself craving the things of the world far more than you do the things of God. And it shows. It shows in your screentime report. It shows in your bank balance. It shows in your browsing history. Each one of them tattles on your soul. Each one of them reveals what actually has a hold of your heart.

Fifth, you find yourself increasingly justifying your disobedience. Pridefully measuring yourself horizontally against other sinners, lazily leaning on your profession of faith at 7, or 17, or 47, instead of humbly measuring yourself against God’s holy and righteous standards.

Sixth, you find yourself becoming more harsh, judgmental, critical of, angry toward others in the body of Christ, those who you will spend eternity with by the way. And all because they gave you a look that you didn’t appreciate, or they poked their nose in your business, or they showed you some sort of what you perceive to be disrespect, or they were given a ministry post that you thought you should have, or they were given credit for what you think actually should have been yours.

If any or many of those describe you, you may be just like those who made up the Ephesian church, as Jesus addressed them here in Revelation 2. Theologically, you’re straight as an arrow. Practically, you are laboring diligently for the Lord. But honestly, you have lost your first love. You are adrift.

So what if that describes you? What if your love has run cold? What if you have abandoned your first love? What if, like the Octavian, you are adrift? What are you supposed to do? Well, to get the answer to that question we turn to the next words in the letter to the church here, which are found in verse 5, where Christ gives His first commands here. He says, “Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first. But if not, I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place, unless you repent.”

So we’ve seen Christ commend the church for its work and its service and what it knew theologically. We’ve seen Him criticize the church for having lost its first love. Now He gives these twin commands, remember and repent. If anyone here this evening has abandoned your first love, you have your marching orders here from Christ which is to remember and repent. What does it mean to “remember?” It means to remember what God, through Christ, accomplished for you in the first place. It means remembering that you weren’t born a Christian and you weren’t born a good person. No, you like me, you were born a depraved, wicked, hopeless, dead sinner who was dead in your trespasses and sins. We all were. You need to remember that, though you could never earn it and though you certainly didn’t deserve it, God saw fit to rescue your soul from eternal torment and damnation. It’s Titus 3:4, “But when the kindness and affection of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, not by works which we did in righteousness, but according to His mercy, through the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that having been justified by His grace, we would become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”

If you have cooled off in your love for Jesus Christ, what a wonderful passage to read, reflect on, write on your mirror, memorize, meditate on, running back to those truths continually. Remember that. That idea of remembering though not only means remembering what He has saved us from, but it means remembering those early days of our salvation when we still had that first love. And those days after we realize we were no longer these spiritual orphans, but we were now saints of God. No longer dead sinners but alive in Christ. And in those early days of our walk with the Lord, Bible reading wasn’t the problem was it? There were no droughts back then. Prayer wasn’t a task, it was a joy. We were so grateful to have had this new relationship with Jesus Christ, that it impacted our relationships with everyone around us. We would tell anyone who would listen to us about Jesus. No, the spiritual apathy came later. The spiritual chill came later. The drift away from our first love came later.

Well if your love has grown cold, if you have abandoned the love you had at first, if you are adrift, you are called here to remember. You need to remember what Christ did for you, and reflect on it regularly. You need to remember that sense of first love you had for Jesus at the beginning. That child-like faith that you once had. Remember.

The other command is repent. What does that mean, to “repent and do the deeds you did at first,” verse 5? Repent. You know. It means to make a 180 from that way of living and functioning that you’re in now. It means to radically reorient your life with God’s help, to now live in a manner that is honoring and pleasing to the Lord. For the Ephesian church this meant it needed to break its cycle of cold, mechanical service to the Lord and re-establish its old habits of loving devotion and service to the Savior. If your love for Christ has cooled, your call is not just to feel guilty and not just to feel bad, but to run to the One who has saved you. To cry out to your Savior, Jesus Christ. To call upon the Mediator between you and God the Father. To confess your coldness to Him and ask for Him to bring back that sense of first love. The call is to repent of not loving the Lord the way He deserves. To turn away from partial halfway devotion to Him.

If you’re not willing to do that and again we are the sum of individual parts, if we as a church are not willing to do that, if that’s a problem for us, then we have a problem. Look at the end of verse 5, where He says, “But if not,” meaning if you will not remember, you will not repent, “I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place, unless you repent.” See, Jesus has never just played around with His church. As it relates to His Bride, He does not mince words. And so He says here, that if the church at Ephesus would not repent, He would come and remove its lampstand from its place. Meaning if they refuse to repent, they would cease to exist. Even if they knew their Bibles. Even if they had this amazing 40 year post-Paul-legacy. It didn’t matter. If this lampstand chose to be loveless, it had the real risk of having its wick snuffed out. If they refused to turn away from their adrift ways, they were at risk of running into the rocks. A stern warning given to a church that otherwise had so much going for it.

And how did the church at Ephesus respond here to this warning at the end of verse 5? Where He says I’m coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place unless you repent. Well, the Bible doesn’t tell us how this church replied to that call. But church history does. In fact, you read some of the early church history, the early fathers of early church history, you’ll see that the church at Ephesus actually flourished in the decades following Jesus’s writing through John to the church at Ephesus.

So apparently there was this brief period of a rekindled love for Christ in this church. But we also know that Christ did eventually remove their lampstand. In other words, whatever repentance they experienced early on wasn’t lasting. It wasn’t real. And how we know that is that there is no church in Ephesus today. The church at Ephesus now sits in the Muslim dominated country of Turkey. It’s a mere artifact. A sad relic from a bygone era. This once thriving church, this once promising church long ago had its lampstand removed, which is a sad ending for the Ephesian church and a sober warning for all churches including ours, that we must be not only doctrinally pure and theologically accurate and diligent in service, but devoted in love to God and one another.

We’ll end this time this evening by looking at the final verse of this letter to the church, verse 7, where He says, (these are the words of Jesus still), “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” Now note that is a plural word, “churches,” not the singular “church” and that is underscoring something really important here which is that Christ’s words here are not only to that church in Ephesus captured in time, but they’re applicable to all believers in all churches all throughout church history.

Then there’s this second sentence, verse 7, “To him who overcomes, I will grant to eat of the tree of life which is in the Paradise of God.” That verb “overcomes” there is the Greek verb from which we get our word “Nike,” like the running shoe company. It means conqueror, overcomer. And who is him who overcomes? Well, the answer to that question is given in 1 John 5:5, which says, “Who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” So the overcomer, the conqueror, is not some sort of second-level or super-spiritual Christian. Rather, the overcomer is the one who simply “believes that Jesus is the Son of God.” He’s a Christian. She’s a Christian. That’s the overcomer. It ties into Romans 8:37 where Paul says, that we who are in Christ “overwhelmingly conquer,” same verb, “through Him who loved us.”

And to true Christians, the Lord gives this promise at the end of verse 7. He says, “To him who overcomes, I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the Paradise of God.” We see the tree of life, of course, mentioned in the opening verses of Genesis, we’ll see the tree of life eventually in the closing verses of Revelation and by referring to the tree of life here, Jesus is promising eternal life to all who overcome, who conquer, who persevere. He’s saying if you believe in Me, if you follow Me, if you heed my commandments, if you persevere to the end, you will be rescued from this perishing world and you’ll receive a home with Me for eternity. What a hope that is. What a promise we have.

Well, that will get us through Christ’s letter to the church at Ephesus, “The Adrift Church.” My prayer since getting here to Indian Hills has been and will be that we are always mindful of churches like ours to have that tendency to be made up of people who know their Bible and know their doctrine, and know their theology but allow that to drift in the areas of love for God and one another. Let’s not allow ourselves to become that kind of church. Let’s not allow ourselves to use the words of Alexander Strauch who was here about a year ago. To be that church who is full of people whose “theology is as clear as ice, but twice as cold.” Let’s not be that church. Let’s instead be committed to being that church which is intentional about marrying the beautiful truths that we hold to from Scripture, with this lasting and abiding love for Jesus Christ, lasting love for our brothers and sisters in Christ, and a desperate love for those lost people who we are begging to know God through Christ.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank You for this time together in Your Word, and specifically these words from Christ to the church at Ephesus, years and years ago, but which we know are words to us as well. Help us God. Help us to remain focused on the truth of Your Word. Help us to remain focused and committed to sound doctrine. Help us to be clear theologically. Help us to be unwavering in this darkening world for the truth of the Scripture. At the same time God, help us from ourselves. Help us to not drift. Help us to remain diligent in our love for You. Help us to remain diligent in our love for one another. Help us remain diligent in our love for the lost. There is no reason that we can’t be both. And indeed as this Revelation, this letter to the church at Ephesus reveals, You insist that we both. So God through prayer, through study of the Word, through encouragement of one another, through times from the pulpit where hard truths need to be proclaimed, God, I pray that You will help us to walk in that right balance of knowing You and knowing the truth of the Word, but not waning in our love for You and for one another. God help us. We need Your help to do this. Help us to be a faithful church. In Jesus name, amen.