Postcards from Patmos: Dear Ephesus

Transcript

JRS 4
7/17/2022
Postcards from Patmos: Dear Ephesus
Revelation 2:1-7
Jesse Randolph


Well, I don't know if you've noticed but the idea of falling out of love is all around us. We see falling out of love in sports. On draft night young, professional athletes will publicly declare how much they love the city of the team that drafted them only to demand a trade four years later. High school athletes will make a commitment to play for a certain college or university only to take a sweeter offer down the road. College athletes will proudly don the regalia of the school that they've committed to as a Redshirt only to eventually to enter the transfer portal on their way to greener pastures. College football fans will swear their allegiance to their hometown team but after one more 3-9 season they'll finally say, I can't take it anymore.

We see falling out of love not only in sports, we see falling out of love in politics. Every four years the latest sure-thing politician crests in popularity only to find himself kicked to the curb in the next electoral cycle amidst cries of, “kick the bum out.” And we see falling out of love in Hollywood. Nicolas Cage and Martin Scorsese were each married five times; Billy Bob Thornton has been married six times; Richard Pryor was married seven times; Mickey Rooney and Larry King were married eight times; Lana Turner and Elizabeth Taylor had eight husbands; Zsa Zsa Gabor had nine.

We see falling out of love not only in sports and politics and Hollywood, we see it these days in nonsensical quotes that are pasted all over the internet and social media. We see things said like, falling in love is awfully simple but falling out of love is simply awful. Or this, falling out of love is like losing weight, it's a lot easier putting it on than taking it off. Or this one, fall in love with someone but don't fall out of love with yourself.

Sadly the idea of falling out of love is not restricted to worldly people and to worldly affairs. The idea of falling out of love, tragically, has crept into the church. We see it when people apostasize, or to use the more modern phrasing, fall away. We see it when people begin to show those otherwise indiscernible first steps of spiritual drift. We see it corporately when people church hop based on their felt needs. Which church offers the best programs for my kids? Which church provides me with the most interest to advance my own personal interests or my own business opportunities? Which church has the best sound system? Which church has the coolest pastor with the best hair and the skinniest jeans?

And tragically we see it in so-called Christian marriages, this idea of falling out of love, when men and women who claim the name of Jesus Christ decide that they have had enough. And so after an extended period of dishonoring God during their marriage they put the exclamation point on their lack of love for the Lord by dissolving their marriage, inevitably relying upon some lame and unbiblical excuse. Like we simply drifted apart. Or we just weren't compatible. Or God knows my heart. See, falling out of love is not just a worldly concept that leads to silly quotes and startling statistics. Falling out of love, specifically losing one's love for the Lord Jesus Christ can and does happen in the church and when it does happen it can and does have tragic consequences.

Turn with me if you would in your Bibles to Revelation 2. We're finally out of Revelation 1 after a few weeks up here. We're into Revelation 2 and we're going to encounter Jesus' letter to the first of the seven churches that He would ultimately address, that being the church at Ephesus, a church which had lost its first love. We're going to read the whole letter first and then we'll unpack it verse by verse. Revelation 2:1, God's Word reads: “To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: The One who holds the seven stars in His right hand, the One who walks among the seven golden lampstands says this: ‘I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot tolerate evil men, 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, and 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; or else 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.”

This morning we are diving into sermon #4 in this ten-part preaching series titled, “Postcards to Patmos.” And as you've heard from up here, the title of this series derives from these seven short letters or postcards which Jesus, some sixty years after His resurrection, some sixty years after His ascension, directed the Apostle John to deliver to these seven specific churches in Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey. This was sometime in the mid-90s A.D. And as we're going to see and in each of the remaining sermons in this series, in these postcards which we see in Revelation 2 and 3, Jesus gives His candid evaluation of the churches—at Ephesus and Smyrna and Pergamum; at Thyatira and Sardis and Philadelphia and Laodicea. But these postcards are not only addressed to these seven churches in these seven cities. They are addressed to churches today in New York and Los Angeles, in Lincoln and Omaha, in Des Moines and Kansas City, in Crete and Seward and Raymond and Waverly and all the other cities I tried to memorize last week. In fact, these letters are addressed to all churches all over the world throughout the centuries. In last Sunday's message we saw, that was an exposition of Revelation 1:9-20, and there we encountered the Apostle John's awe-inducing vision of the author of these postcards, the risen and glorified Christ. There we saw Jesus as He exists today, sitting at the right hand of the Father in glory. He is no longer the cuddly, cooing baby in the manger in Bethlehem; He is no longer meek and mild; He is no longer lowly in form or in state. Rather the Jesus who speaks to His church, to His churches in Revelation 2 and 3, the Jesus who rules and reigns and governs His church today is Christ. We saw the preeminent One, Christ the glorious One and Christ the revered One.

So as we work our way through, not just today's postcard but the six after this, and as we go about our lives as Christians, please don't ever lose sight of the fact that this is Jesus as He exists today in all of His majesty and in all of His glory. I also don't want you to lose sight of this, that Jesus loves this church. Jesus loves The Church, but Jesus loves this church, Indian Hills Community Church, more than all of us put together. Jesus loves the church so much that He died for it. Acts 20:28 says, He bought the church with His own blood. Jesus loves the church so much that He continues to build it, even though the gates of hell seem to prevail against it. Jesus loves the church so much that He continually stands in her midst, as we saw last time. Tending to her by means of faithful shepherds, feeding her with His Word, caring for her, meeting her needs and earnestly desiring her purity and her holiness. And as we're going to see this morning, Jesus loves the church so much that He is willing not only to commend her for when she does good but to correct her when she goes astray, and to command her to live faithfully for Him. The title of this sermon this morning is “Dear Ephesus,” and it is titled that because the first of these seven postcards delivered to the Apostle John on the Isle of Patmos was addressed to the church at Ephesus.

What do we know about Ephesus? I'm going to commend you to go find Pastor Gil's messages on this text from about 5 or 6 years ago, I think he preached three sermons on the text that I'm going to try to get into one this morning. But there is so much rich content on the background of Ephesus that he lays out there. Well, what do we know about Ephesus? Geographically speaking we know that Ephesus was a coastal city, a city on the Gulf of the Aegean Sea. It was a crucial port city that connected the western and eastern halves of the Roman Empire. Ephesus was no small port city though, it was no one-dock village. Rather, it was a major metropolis with well over a quarter million people living here at this time. It was a city that was having a major impact on commerce in this part of the world at that time. It was not only this major commercial center. Culturally it was a social melting pot. People from all parts of the then-known world were settling in on Ephesus. It would be like west Lincoln multiplied many, many, many times over.

Religiously speaking Ephesus had a very vibrant spiritual life. It was a very, you could say, religious city. But as we know just saying that something or just saying that someone is religious or spiritual is not always a good thing. In fact most of the religious and spiritual activity that existed in Ephesus at this time was offensive to the God of the Bible. See, Ephesus was a hotbed of emperor worship. The Ephesian landscape was littered with shrines and altars that were devoted to the worship of Roman emperors. Ephesus was also home of rank cult worship, it was a hub of worship of Artemis, Diana, who was superstitiously believed to be the goddess of fertility. In fact her temple in Ephesus is considered to be one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. But as beautiful as that temple would have been on the outside, all sorts of awful and disgusting practices were happening on the inside. We're talking prostitution and orgies and other forms of debauchery that I shouldn't mention in this company.

All this to say Ephesus was a community that was ripe for the Gospel. And it was Paul actually, by way of his associates Aquila and Priscilla who first brought the Gospel to Ephesus right around the year 52 A.D. And after the Gospel reached Ephesus the Ephesian church was immensely blessed with Bible teachers extraordinaire who visited and ministered there. In addition to Paul who, of course as we know, wrote the letter to the Ephesians, Aquila and Priscilla ministered in this city. As did Apollos and Acts 18:24 refers to Apollos as an eloquent man mighty in the Scriptures. As did Timothy, Paul's protégé. As did Tychicus. And last but certainly not least, the Apostle John himself ministered there. Church history records that John ministered in Ephesus for almost a quarter of a century, somewhere around the year 69 A.D. all the way to right around 95 A.D. when he was finally banished and exiled to the Isle of Patmos. The point I am trying to make is that the church at Ephesus was one with a rich spiritual heritage. Sound familiar? The church at Ephesus was uniquely positioned to witness and minister to the dark culture and increasingly darkening culture surrounding it.

So with all of that as background let's head back to our text, Revelation 2:1, “To the angel of the church in Ephesus write.” As I mentioned last time the word angel in our English Bibles is simply a transliteration of the Greek word “angelo.” And stripped down, that word itself need not conjure up images of chubby-cheeked, winged creatures, it need not conjure up images of cupid or cherubim or seraphim. Instead the word simply means “messenger.” Putting this word, angelo or messenger, in the context of Jesus addressing His churches there, I take this word angel as we see it in English to be a reference to the primary earthly messengers in each of these seven individual churches.

And who would have these earthly messengers have been? Well, it would have been the men who were charged to lead these churches, to shepherd these churches, to pastor these 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 these churches as James 3:1 notes, who would one day give an account for every word they uttered or declared in front of those flocks. It was the pastors of these churches who would be expected to be able to do something about any of the conditions that Jesus found displeasing. So I think a fair and contextually appropriate rendering of these first words of Revelation 2:1 would be to the pastor or messenger of the church in Ephesus.

And then look at what comes next. It say, “The One who holds the seven stars in His right hand, the One who walks among the seven golden lampstands, says this.” The One here, referred to here is the Lord of the church, Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ, the text says, holds these seven stars in His right hand. We know from Revelation 1:20, we saw this last week, that the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, which again I take to be the messengers or even pastors of these churches. So what Jesus is saying to the church in Ephesus here is that He holds the leaders of these churches, these angels, these stars, these messengers, these 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 then the Lord says, He “walks among the seven golden lampstands.” And that's again a reference to His churches. What is being said here is Jesus is continually present in and continually evaluating his churches.

And as we are about to see here for the church at Ephesus, the evaluation He gives of this church, being in their midst, is threefold. First He commends them for their orthodoxy and their diligence; second, He criticizes the church for abandoning their first love; and third, He challenges the church to repent and return to the original high ground from which they had fallen.

Let's start with Christ's words of commendation. As we are about to see, Jesus is going to commend this church in Ephesus both for what it does and for what it knows. If you are a notetaker here this morning, simple three-point outline. This heading would be “Christ's Commendation.” Look at verse 2. He says, “I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance.” The word for “know” here is significant. See, there are basically two verbs that could be used here to indicate that someone knows something. One would be “ginosko.” If you are a Spanish speaker you would recognize “knosko,” like I know is the verb in Spanish. But ginosko speaks of imperfect knowledge that is progressively acquired. I'll say it again. Ginosko is imperfect knowledge that is progressively acquired, like I have imperfect knowledge of all the streets here in Lincoln. I'm making my way around, Van Dorn I think runs east and west, I don't yet know the difference between the Nebraska Highway and the Cornhusker Highway, Normal (Avenue) is nothing normal as I figure out that street. I have imperfect knowledge being progressively acquired. I have imperfect knowledge of Husker football. I have imperfect knowledge, telling the truth now, of the family trees of each of the members here at Indian Hills and how they all relate to each other. I also would have imperfect knowledge, meaning zero knowledge of astrophysics. But if I were a different person with a different type of brain, theoretically I could progressively acquire knowledge in this field. That's the idea of ginosko—imperfect knowledge being progressively acquired.

The other Greek verb for knowing something is “oida.” You can just write down o-i-d-a, oida. And that reflects full, complete, comprehensive knowledge of a subject. Total mastery of a topic with no further room for growth or for knowledge. That's the word, oida, that Christ uses here as He talks about the Ephesian church. Christ isn't growing in His grasp of His knowledge of the Ephesian church, He isn't acquiring more information about the Ephesian church, He isn't developing in His understanding of the Ephesian church. Rather, He already has absolute knowledge of this church and the situation it finds itself in. And that makes perfect sense, considering as we saw last time that He is ever present in their midst as their omniscient Creator.

And what is it that He knows? He says in verse 2, “I know your deeds.” Christ here is commending the Ephesian church because it is a church that is marked by godly laborers and service. To paraphrase what Christ is saying here is, you have done the right sorts of things, you have been fruitful, you have been dutiful in completing the tasks that are set before you. “I know your deeds.” Next He says He knows the toil of the church at Ephesus. Now the word toil here, kopon, connotes working to the point of perspiration. It means to labor to the point of exhaustion. It carries the idea of weariness resulting from hard work. A modern English way of saying this would be working your fingers to the bone. The Ephesians in their labor and their service to the Lord were toiling in their service to Christ to the point of exhaustion. They weren't lazy, they weren't indifferent, they weren't mailing it in, this wasn't a church that was full of sideline sitters or spectators. Rather, this was a church that was full of laborers. They understood, as Ephesians 2:10 puts it, that they were “created in Christ Jesus for good works.” And so they were happy to be expended for Christ's sake.

So He knows their deeds, He knows their toil, next it says, He knows their perseverance. That word for perseverance is “hupomone,” which literally means, “to remain under,” or you could even say to bear up under pressure.” And earlier in its history we know from Scripture that the Ephesian church had been loaded down with various difficulties and trials and negative circumstances. If we were to look at Acts 19 we'd see that the Ephesian church was being bore down upon in its earliest days. We see this in Paul's interaction with disbelieving Jews in Acts 19:9 where it says that that group of early Jews “were becoming hardened and disobedient, speaking evil of the Way.” We also see this in Paul's interactions with the sons of Sceva who were attempting to trade on the name of our Lord. That's in Acts 19:13-16. We also see this in Paul's interactions with a mob of craftsmen who were aroused by Demetrius, the silversmith, when they saw their cottage industry of crafting idols that were dedicated to Artemis suddenly taking a nosedive. Well, in the decades that followed, the Ephesian church apparently was now facing additional pressures to cave and to compromise. But according to this text they were bearing up under the weight of it all, they were persevering.

And that thought is developed further in verse 3 where Jesus says, “And you have perseverance and have endured for My name's sake, and have not grown weary.” In other words they were keeping their hands to the plow. There were no days off in terms of service to Christ. They were not giving up. Ephesus was a church, as Philippians 3:14 puts it, that was “press(ing) on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Ephesus was a church as Hebrews 12:1-2 states, that with endurance was running the race that was set before them, fixing their eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of their faith.” And note the motivation for their deeds, for their toil and their perseverance. It's right there in verse 3, “You have perseverance, and have endured for My name's sake.” They were toiling in the work of the Gospel for the sake of the name of the Lord. They weren't doing this for self, they were doing this for their Savior. And now this Ephesian church's selfless, Christ-honoring labors were being commended by the Lord Himself.

Is this an encouragement to you? I hope it is. I hope it encourages you, to know as this Ephesian church could know, that the exalted, glorified Christ ( though He now sits at the right hand of the Father) He knows how many meals you have prepared, He knows how many lessons you've taught, He knows how many Gospel tracts you have distributed, He knows how many visitors you have greeted, He knows how many hours you have logged in, He knows how many prayers you have prayed, He knows how many sermons you have listened to and He knows how many sermons you have preached. He knows it all and He sees it all. Know that if you are a follower of Christ here this morning, your day of commendation is coming. Know that that day is coming in which, if you labor for the Lord as this Ephesian church was laboring for Him, you will hear those words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Know that as 1 Corinthians 15:58 says, you'll get this commendation if you are “steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor,” toil, “kopos,” “is not in vain in the Lord.”

As we are about to see, though, Christ not only commends the Ephesian church for its works, for its deeds. He also commends this church for its commitment to sound doctrine, its commitment to spiritual discernment. Take a look at the second half of verse 2, which I jumped over just now. He says, “and that.” So He knows their deeds, their toil and their perseverance, and then it says “and that you cannot tolerate evil men, and you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false.” See, the church at Ephesus was not only a hardworking church, it was a church that had a sense of right doctrine, it was orthodox in its beliefs. This was a church, as Paul would put it 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 of deceitful scheming.” Rather this church had an unwavering commitment to the truth. This church recognized the corrupting influence that sin has when it is introduced to the church. This church recognized, as Galatians 5:9 puts it, 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 shall not mix. And this was a church, as the text tells us, that could not tolerate evil men.

And in the city of Ephesus there were plenty of opportunities for evil to creep into this church. Because in this important port city all sorts of people were coming and going. As is true in any large city with a transient population, there were many interesting characters passing through week by week. This included a group of itinerant frauds who were apparently masquerading as apostles, as they tried to inject themselves into the community of faith here in Ephesus. Now from what we can gather through study, these self-styled apostles were antinomian in their theology, meaning these false teachers were saying, that you could call yourself a Christian but still live however you want to. But the Ephesian church, they weren't falling for it, they weren't falling for so-called carnal Christianity that was being promoted by these so-called apostles. And why? Well, because they had been well taught. Well taught by Paul and Timothy and Priscilla and Aquila and Apollos and by John himself.

Not only was the Ephesian church well taught, though they had long ago been forewarned that such false teachers would arise in this very church. In fact, flip with me over to Acts 20 where we see a warning given many generations before, many decades before to the Ephesian church. Look at Acts 20, starting in verse 28, Acts 20:28. This is Paul addressing the Ephesian elders before he prepares to depart them. It's his farewell address many decades prior. And it says this, he says this, “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. 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 away the disciples after them. Therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one of you with tears.”

Paul here was telling the Ephesian elders, (we can flip back to Revelation 2) decades before the Lord addresses the church in Revelation 2 that a future day would come when there would be false teachers who would attempt to infiltrate their flock. And now some thirty years later those false teachers had arrived. And this well taught, well trained, well versed Ephesian church, as we see in Revelation 2:2 here, had tested those, it says, “who call themselves apostles and are not, and you found them to be false.” In other words, these discerning Ephesians had penetrated the disguise of those who sought to deceive them and exposed them as the liars that they truly were.

We see the Ephesian church's spiritual discernment further expressed if you drop down to Revelation 2:6. We're kind of leaping ahead, we'll work our way back to the rest of it in a second. But look at Revelation 2:6 to see more of this spiritual discernment here in Ephesus. He says, “Yet this you do have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans which I also hate.” So in addition for commending this church for exposing the evil of the so-called apostles in verse 2, Christ here in verse 6 is commending the church because they hated the deeds of the Nicolaitans. Which it says Christ also hates.

Who were the Nicolaitans? And why did Christ hate their works? Well, they were a group like the false apostles mentioned in verse 2, who were attempting to introduce a libertine, devil-may-care sort of attitude into this early church. We're going to study this group in two weeks actually, as we study the postcard to Pergamum, but for now what you need to know about the Nicolaitans is that they were a group that was practicing idolatry, practicing immorality, and they were doing all of this under the banner of spiritual liberty. They were a group, as the early church father, Irenaus, said, who lived lives of unrestrained indulgence. The Nicolaitans, according to another early church father, Clement of Alexandria, were people who abandoned themselves to pleasure like goats. The Ephesian church, this discerning church, rejected the teachings of the Nicolaitans. And not only that, it says they hated their aberrant teachings. And they hated the Nicolaitans' false teachings because as the text said, Christ Himself hated those teachings.

There is a simple and straightforward lesson for us this morning as we engage with this text, and it is this. There is no place in the Word of God where we will find God condoning, dismissing, or permitting sin of any sort. There is no place in Scripture where we see God treating sin lightly. There is no place in the Bible where God gives His people license to indulge in their basest desires under the banner of so-called faith. See, there is no such thing as a carnal Christian. There is no such thing as a fornicating Christian. There is no such thing as a sleeping-with-his-girlfriend Christian. There is no such thing as a sleeping-with-her-boyfriend Christian. There is no such thing as an adulterous Christian or a homosexual Christian, or a drunkard Christian, or a lying Christian, or a thieving Christian, or a covetous Christian, or a reviling Christian.

It is an offense to the Gospel when anyone caves to the cries of the culture by attempting to qualify or redefine their so-called Christian faith by the very sin for which Christ died. Sin is always lawlessness. Sin is always a gross offense to a holy God. When Christ offered Himself up on the cross, He did not do so in order that His followers would run back into the world and toward worldliness. Living however they please. Engaging in spiritual harlotry. Instead Christ died a sacrificial, atoning death to save us, to redeem us, and to make us new. The call in our life now is to walk worthy, not to wallow in the filth from which He saved us.

The Ephesians' response both to these false apostles in verse 2 and to the Nicolaitans in verse 6 was encouraging. Ephesus was a sound church doctrinally speaking, Ephesus was a discerning church. But as we see as we turn to verse 4, we see that beneath the surface the church at Ephesus was hiding a significant flaw. Look at what it says. Verse 4, “But I have this against you, that you have left your first love.” If you are still paying attention, if you are taking notes, heading #2 is “Christ's Criticism.” The fatal flaw that dogged the Ephesian church, notwithstanding their doctrinal purity and their doctrinal fidelity, was that they had left their first love. They had abandoned the love they had at first. They had, you could say, fallen out of love. See, nearly four decades had passed between the early days of this church under the leadership of Paul's ministry and the time that they would have received this letter from Christ through John in the mid-90s A.D. And over those four decades this church's passion for Christ apparently had cooled. The church's familiarity with sound teaching, this church's commitment to orthodoxy, this church's zeal for excluding frauds and imposters, this church's penchant for hunting heretics had left no room for love in the church. This was not an issue of lack of faith in Christ, nor was it an issue of submitting to Christ's lordship. Rather their love for the Lord had simply grown cold.

But how? What does it mean that this Ephesian church had left its first love? Well, a clue would be found in Matthew 22:36-39. You know the passages. Those passages where Jesus gives His followers those two primary love-based commandments that all Christians are called to carry out. That you are to love the Lord your God will all your heart and with all your mind and all your soul and all your strength. And “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” In Ephesus apparently there was a cooling off in both respects. First and foremost, there was a cooling off in their love for the Lord, for God. Sure, they were working hard physically. Sure, they were well-versed theologically. They were, in today's context, equally able to meticulously vacuum the worship center and debate doctrine. But their affections for God had chilled. Their spiritual discernment had degenerated to a place of calloused piety. Their joyful works of service had devolved into dry duties.

One of my favorite old hymns is “Come Thou Fount.” And in that third stanza it says,
O to grace, how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be!
Let thy goodness, like a fetter
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander -- Lord, I feel it--
Prone to leave the God I love.
That's what is going on here at the church at Ephesus. They had wandering hearts. They had drifting hearts. They were prone to leave, in the words of the hymn, the God they loved. But that same hymn then contines,
Here's my heart, Lord -- take and seal it,
Seal it for They courts above.

Those would have been fit words for the Ephesians. They needed to have their hearts rekindled and set ablaze and sealed for the Lord's courts above. It wasn't just love for God though, that had waned in this Ephesian church. So had their love for one another. As their personal love for the Lord had cooled, the church at Ephesus was experiencing this corresponding lack of love among believers. They likely knew the words of Jesus in John 13:34 where He says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.” But Jesus' words had become just words to them. They had in a real sense tuned the Lord out. The Ephesian church had forsaken its first love. Yes, they were toiling and serving and sweating. Yes, they were studying and correcting and rebuking. But they were no longer loving God or loving one another. And that's a potentially dangerous if not devastating mix.

I want you to hear this, church, and I want you to know I say this in love. If you are able to pin the tail on the covenant theologian -- but you haven't shared the Gospel in decades, that's a problem. If you are able to rattle off five errors associated with progressive dispensationalism -- yet you are no longer loving your wife as Christ loved the church and living with her in an understanding way, that's a problem. If you are able to talk to a lot of other people about your theological hobby horses -- but you aren't talking to God regularly, communing with Him dependently through prayer as you read His Word, that's a problem. One of the greatest dangers facing any Bible-teaching churches, including ours, and I might even say especially ours, is that it runs the risk of becoming like the Ephesian church. A church that is focused on busyness and service and work. A church that is focused on spiritual discernment and theological knowledge. But a church that has lost its first love.

The question I am about to ask I can't ask of Indian Hills Community Church, the institution. Because our church like any church is comprised of its people. So I need to turn the question on you. Have you left your first love? Have you abandoned your first love? Has your love for Jesus Christ your Savior run cold? There is no one-size-fits-all diagnostic that applies to every Christian, I grant that. But there are certain traits that are common to Christians who have abandoned their first love. As I lay these out for you I'd like you to honestly assess which one or which ones of these might describe you?

I have eight of them. Save some space on your paper. 1) You no longer have a strong desire to spend time with God, specifically in His Word. His words have become just words to you. 2) Your times of private prayer and worship have withered, perhaps even to the point of being nonexistent. You feel like you are hitting a wall, or in His case you are hitting a ceiling. 3) Your times of corporate worship when you gather with God's people have dried up. On Sunday mornings you are merely mouthing the words that are put up on the screens. You are doodling or daydreaming or dozing when the sermon is being preached. 4) You find yourself craving the things of the world more than you do the things of God. It is shown in your weekly screen-time report. It's shown by your bank account. It's shown by your browsing history. 5) You talk more about the things of the world than you do the things of God. Sports scores more than sanctification. Hobbies more than holiness. Weather more than weightier eternal matters. 6) You find yourself increasingly justifying your disobedience. By pridefully measuring yourself horizontally against other sinners. Rather than humbly measuring yourself against a holy God and His righteous standards. 7) You find yourself becoming more harsh, more judgmental, more critical, more angry toward others, even those in the body of Christ. 8) You find yourself becoming more greedy or selfish with your time, your talent, and your treasure.

If any or many of those describe you, you/we may just be like the people who made up the Ephesian church. Theologically you are straight as an arrow. Practically you are laboring diligently for the Lord. But honestly you have lost your first love. So what? So what if that describes you? What if your love has grown cold? What if you have abandoned the love you had at first? What are you to do?

Well, to get the answer to that question we turn to the next words of Christ here in His postcard to Ephesus in verse 5. Revelation 2:5 says, “Therefore, remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place -- unless you repent.”

If you are a note-taker, that's our third point this morning, “Christ's Command.” We've seen Jesus commend the church at Ephesus for their spirit of service and their commitment to sound doctrine. We've seen Jesus criticize the church for having left their first love. Now in verse 5 He issues His first command in this postcard, “remember…” “remember from where you have fallen.” And then He says, “and repent and do the deeds you did at first” If you have abandoned your first love. If you are feeling a sense of conviction here this morning. You have here your charge. Your call to remember. Remember and repent.

Let's start with “remember.” What does that mean? Well, there are at least two aspects to this term. First it means to remember what God through Christ has accomplished for you. It means remembering that you weren't born a Christian, you weren't born a good person, even if you were born into Indian Hills Community Church. No, you were born, as I was born, depraved and wicked and dead in your trespasses and sins. And it means remembering, that though you could never earn it, and though you and I certainly didn't deserve it, God saw fit to rescue your soul and mine from eternal damnation and torment. I hope that's not old news or becoming old news to any of us here this morning. Titus 3:4-7, “But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” If you've experienced any sort of cooling off of your love and devotion to Christ, that would be an amazing section of Scripture to memorize. And not only to memorize but to meditate upon it as those truths from God's Word are running through your mind constantly day by day as kindling for your soul.

I've mentioned that there are at least two aspects of remembering, the first is remembering what God through Christ has accomplished for you. The second is simply remembering those days where your affections for Christ burned more passionately. You remember those days, I remember those days. Right? Those first days of being a Christian. Soon after you had moved from becoming a spiritual orphan to an adopted son. Soon after you realized you were no longer a dead sinner, but now a saint in Christ. Soon after you realized that you were no longer an enemy of God but now a child of God. Your heart felt full. You were grateful. You were thankful. You felt free. And what did you do in those early days? You began burning all those bridges that led back to the world from which you came. You started throwing out the things that you didn't want to look at anymore. You started pouring down the drain the things you didn't want to drink anymore. You started canceling the subscriptions to the things you didn't want to see anymore. You started ditching all the bad influences in your life that you didn't want to be around anymore. And you started reading God's Word.You were fervent in prayer. You started reading good Christian books. And spending more time with Christian friends. You had joy inexpressible. You would have said like Asaph in Psalm 73:25, “Whom have I in heaven but You?” If your love has grown cold, if you have abandoned the love you had at first, you need to remember those days. You need to reclaim that sense of love for Jesus Christ, that childlike faith that you once had.

And what about repentance? It's a twofold command, remember and repent. To repent means to make a clean break with your present manner of life. To radically reorient your life with God's help. Because you are a Spirit-indwelt follower of Christ if you have believed in Him for salvation. And doing so 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 and mechanical and dry service to the Lord and instead reestablish its old habits of loving devotion and service that they had since forsaken. If your love for Christ has cooled, my call on you on the authority of God's Word is not merely to feel guilty. To not stand behind the fig leaf of good intentions. Instead run. Run to the One who has saved you. Cry out to your Savior, Jesus Christ. Call upon the mediator between you and God the Father and confess your coldness to Him. Ask Him for His grace to warm you up. Repent of not loving the Lord as He deserves, turn away from your partial or halfway devotion to Him. If you are not willing to do that, if we as a church are not willing to do that, we have a problem.

Look at the end of verse 5, “or else.” “Or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place -- unless you repent.” See, Christ isn't messing around when it comes to His church. As it relates to His bride, He doesn't mince words. And so He says here that if the church does not, will not repent, He will come and remove their lampstand from its place. Put another way, if they refuse to repent they would cease to exist. Even if they had a comfortable facility. Even if they had an otherwise rich legacy. Even if they had an army of gifted teachers. Even if they had a new, younger pastor. This loveless lampstand faced a real risk of having its wick snuffed out. This was a stern warning given to a church that had otherwise had so much going for it.

And how did the church at Ephesus respond to Christ's warning here? The Bible itself does not teach us, but church history does. According to the writings of some of the early church fathers, the church at Ephesus initially flourished in the decades that followed John's writing of the book of Revelation, meaning there was apparently some sort of rekindling of their first love. But eventually Christ did remove their lampstand, meaning whatever repentance they had first experienced it wasn't real. We know this because there is no church in Ephesus today. This church doesn't exist. This church that was known as the church at Ephesus now sits in rubble, a mere artifact, under the shadow of the red and black and green flag, the crescent and star of the false Muslim religion. This once thriving and promising lampstand that had so much going for it because of its doctrinal fidelity and spiritual service long ago had its lampstand removed. It's a sad ending for the Ephesian church. And it's a sober warning to all churches that we must not only be doctrinally pure, not only diligent in service, but devoted in our love for God and for one another.

We'll end our time this morning with the final verse of this postcard, verse 7 where it says, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” Note the plural word “churches” is being used here, not the singular word “church.” And that underscores something that we've already noted. Which is that Christ's words in this postcard and in other postcards were not merely to inform or warn the church at Ephesus But all believers in all churches everywhere throughout church history.

And then there is 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.” The word “overcomes” here is the Greek verb “nikao,” n-i-k-a-o is the transliteration, nikao. And it can also be translated “conquers” as we see it in the ESV translation. It's the word from which Nike, the shoe brand, gets its name. And who is “him who overcomes?” Well, the answer to that question is actually found in 1 John 5:5 where it is phrased in the form of a question. 1 John 5:5, “Who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” The overcomer, the conqueror, is not some form of second level or super spiritual Christian. Rather, the overcomer is simply he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. The conqueror is a Christian and we Christians, as Romans 8:37 says, “overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.”

And to true Christians the Lord gives this promise at the end of verse 7, “I will grant to eat of the tree of life which is in the Paradise of God.” We see the tree of life mentioned, of course, in the opening verses of Genesis, then we see the tree of life mentioned in the closing verses of Revelation. By referring to the tree of life here, what Jesus is doing is promising heaven to those who overcome, to those who conquer. Jesus here is saying that 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 receive a home with Me for eternity.

And I just have to say, if you are here this morning and you have not trusted in Jesus Christ for salvation, this postcard reference is an apt illustration to speak directly to you. You know postcards and letters can get misaddressed. Right? You can receive a postcard and think its for you but it's actually for someone else. If you are here this morning and you are not a Christian, you haven't given your life to Christ, if you haven't trusted in His name, if you haven't believed in your heart that the Lord raised Him from the dead, if you haven't turned everything over to Him in repentance and faith, don't think that this postcard is written to you. You are here this morning and it is misaddressed. You don't need to be a cleaned up version of a sinner. Rather what you need to do if you have not trusted in Jesus Christ is to trust Him, to bow your knee to Him, and say, “I am a wretch, I'm a sinner. I acknowledge my sin before you, a holy God. And I recognize that my works cannot get me to that holy God. Rather, I must trust in a finished and perfect work of Jesus Christ on the cross. Then we can start having a conversation about how this postcard applies to you. But short of that, friend, you have no hope. You must be reconciled to God through Christ by trusting in His name. If you are here today and you're a little confused about that, or wrestling with that, I'd love to chat with you in the south lobby after the service is over.

Well, as we place this postcard to the church at Ephesus back over life in the body of Christ here at Indian Hills, I come back to the same question I asked at the beginning of this series a few weeks ago. And it's a question I promise you I will ask many times over. Until we get to the end of this series. And it is this. How are we doing? How are we doing? Are we a church that is full of diligent servants? I have no doubt that we are. Are we a church that is marked by its commitment to sound doctrine? Again, I have no doubt that we are. But again, this section of Scripture teaches us that these are not the only things that are important to the Savior. He expects so much more of us. As we've seen today, He expects us to be a church that is marked by love, a love toward God and a love toward one another. Are we that church right now? Are we that church that is being set up to be that church in five years, and fifteen years and fifty-three more years? Join me in praying that Christ would make us, His people, all that He wants us to be. Diligent as ever. Discerning as ever. But without losing sight of the importance of being devoted in our love for Him and for one another.

Let's pray. Our great God we thank You for Your Word. We thank You for the truth it contains. Iits timelessness, its perfection, its application and even this morning its conviction. God, I pray that You would continue to do Your work through the Word at Indian Hills for many, many decades and generations to come unless the Lord comes to get us first. I pray that teachers and preachers and leaders and pastors and shepherds and elders would be unwavering in their commitment to sound doctrine, to purity of doctrine, to truth. I pray that the whole body would be unwavering in their devotion to service and deploying the gifts that you have given them to serve this body of believers. But I also pray that You would guard this body from drifting in their first love for You, Lord Jesus. Help us to be mindful. To always be attuned to making sure that we rekindle that first love that we had for you, our Father. But also to demonstrate that love to our fellow brothers and sisters in the Lord. And to demonstrate that love by sharing the Gospel with the lost. May we be a church that is found faithful, a church that is commended on the last day, and ultimately for Your glory. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.