Did you turn your Bible with me to the book of Revelation? Book of Revelation chapter 2. We're going to look this morning together at chapter 2 verses 1 through 7. So hear now the words of the only true and living God, the inspired and inerrant and infallible scripture. Again, Revelation chapter 2 verses 1 to 7. To the angel of the church in Ephesus write, the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands. Verse 2, I know your works, your toil, your patient endurance, how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and have found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary." Verse 4. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love that you had at first. Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen. Repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. Yet this you have. You hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. Verse 7, He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers, I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. May God add His blessing to the reading and hearing of His Holy Word. Amen. I get an evaluation once a year by the session of our church. I hope they will evaluate you too in your ministry, but I will tell you this, it is the most intimidating moments of my entire year for sure, no question about that. I often wonder if our entire church got an evaluation, how we would do, how we would perform. Nobody could evaluate the church though accurately as Christ evaluates his church and what we see in these seven letters in the book of Revelation is essentially Christ's evaluation of the seven churches of Asia Minor, the seven churches in what we would call today modern-day Turkey. I want to just set the context here a little bit. These seven letters are very interesting. There's a lot going on, a lot more than you may initially be aware of in these seven letters. For one thing, they They, as a whole, have a chiasmic structure, which is to say they have sort of an A-B-C-D-C-B-A structure in which the first and the seventh churches are in the worst position spiritually. They're in precarious danger. The second and the sixth churches are in the strongest position, relatively speaking. And then churches 3, 4, and 5 are middling, like probably the most of our churches. We have some good things that are commendable, other things that need rebuke. All of the churches, though, need the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Not only that, but within each one of the letters, you may not be aware of this, but they do take on somewhat of a covenantal structure. You're familiar, I hope, with the suzerainty treaty form. We see this in the law, in the Ten Commandments. We see this in the book of Deuteronomy, wherein a great king announces who he is and what he has done, followed by stipulations and requirements after that, followed then by promises and warnings of judgment for obedience and disobedience, respectively. Interesting, if you look at all seven of the letters, they do follow that form that each one start with a reference to the vision of the resurrected and ascended Christ that John has already given in chapter 1 verses 7 to 20. Each letter starts with something of Christ's glory that is particularly relevant and helpful for that individual church. They will then be graded by Christ's righteous standard and then promises and warnings will be held out respectively. So this morning we're going to look very simply at this letter to the church of Ephesus with particular reference to verse 4 which is the strongest word of rebuke that Christ has for this church. It's a rebuke concerning love. We're going to come to that in just a moment. Let me though set the table for us with a little bit of background about the Church of Ephesus. Of all of the seven churches in these letters, the Church of Ephesus is probably the one that you know the most because we have the most informational data about the Church of Ephesus. Of these seven churches, We know, for instance, that we have an entire letter to the church of the Ephesians in our New Testament canon, not so for Pergamum and Thyatira and the others of the churches. So we know a little bit about their setting and their background. Moreover, we know the founding of the church of Ephesus from the book of Acts. We see the apostle Paul. coming there towards the tail end of his second missionary journey. He spends three years, quite an inordinate amount of time there on his third missionary journey. In fact, probably one of the longer stays that the Apostle Paul has. While the Apostle Paul is there, he and his gospel preaching set off a veritable riot in the city of Ephesus as he challenges and destabilizes their cultural dependence upon idolatry. And so we see this, of course, And yet, listen to this. I just want to read you one line from Paul's letter to the church of the Ephesians. In Ephesians 1, verse 15, it says this, listen, for this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and your love for all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. Just pause there and acknowledge that Paul says to the Ephesians, you have a reputation. And it's a strong one, as Paul is writing, preceding this writing of the book of Revelation. Their reputation is strong. They are known, first of all, for their faithfulness to the Lord in the midst of a pagan context. And, Paul says, you are reputable for your love towards all the saints. Just tuck that away in your mind as we then go through this analysis, this grading of the resurrected and ascended Lord Jesus Christ as he looks at the church of Ephesus. So let's go through some of the things that Christ has to say to this particular church. I want you to notice here that this paragraph or so does have a number of commendations or compliments in which Christ compliments the church of Ephesus for their strengths. Now, this is a whole other sermon, but if you ever want to rebuke somebody, you give them a compliment sandwich. You know what that is? You say a couple of nice things at the top, you hit them in the middle, and then you come back to nice things. So it's like, I like your hair, I like your shirts, your breath stinks, but your shoes are great, right? So you kind of hit them with that in the middle. And Christ is going to do that to the Ephesians here, but it's gonna be a fairly rough strike when he comes to the rebuke in verse four. So let's talk first of all about what they're doing well. Three things at least here they're doing well. First of all, look at verse two. He says, I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not and found them to be false. Of all of the things that they're doing well, the Ephesian church is spotting out heresies adequately enough. They can recognize false teaching, and there's a lot of false teaching to go around. There's a lot of false teaching today. There was a lot of false teaching then. And that's why in the New Testament letters, one of the reminders that we see over and over again is that the churches be ever diligent to be able to identify and to rebuff false teachers as they encroach their way into the churches of Jesus Christ. And apparently, the Ephesian church here is doing very well with that. You're probably as concerned as I am. When we look at the state of the evangelical in the Reformed Church today, some of you are already aware of Ligonier's recent theology study. They do that every couple years, I suppose. The 3GT podcast recently did an episode about that, three guys theologizing, check that one out. But if you find a church that can identify heresy and call it out, join that church, that's a good church. You don't want a church that is doctrinally lax, and the Ephesian church was not. They were strong. They recognized error. Let's go on to the second commendation. Look at verse three. I know that you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary again. This is commendable. The Ephesian church, they are not quitters. They are persevering through the difficulties that they are experiencing, and there are many difficulties through which we must persevere. How many times has the church seen people join it only to quit shortly thereafter? How many people have gone into a ministry call only to quit when the going gets rough? How many people have volunteered even for a nursery ministry and they quit the first time they get a little bit of complaint, a little bit of kickback, a little bit of feedback that's negative? And yet the Ephesian church seems to have that sort of Holy Spirit moxie that we might call stick-to-itiveness. They're not quitters, praise God. Third, and this is the other side of the compliment sandwich here, look at verse six. Yet you have this, you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate, says Christ. Now, to be honest, we don't really know a lot about the Nicolaitans. It's possible, just conjecture there's some connection between them and Nicholas, the only other man so named in the Bible. In Acts chapter 6, there's a man named Nicholas. Jonathan Edwards, my study subject, he thinks there's a connection, so we'll go with that. But we don't really know. We know that they were gaining ground, though. We know that they didn't persist much after the end of the 1st century or into the 2nd century because they're so mysterious. We do know that they're in Pergamum, though, 75 miles away. So their influence, at least at the moment, is growing, and it seems to be, from what we can tell, some sort of syncretistic combination, some sort of witch's brew combination between Christianity and the cults or the false religions, probably mixed in with sexual immorality. We see that especially in the letter to Pergamum. And the Ephesian church hates their works. And Christ commends them for that. We are to love what Christ loves, and we are to hate what Christ hates. So three green checks for the Ephesians so far. Right? Good church. Spot out idolatry. They're not quitters. They're not buying the syncretistic false religion concoction that the other churches are being tempted by. And so you say, what's the matter with this church? It sounds perfectly normal. This is good, let's bring him into Napark if we can, right? Hold the phone, though. Because the rebuke is extremely harsh, and it comes in verse four. Listen again to the rebuke of Christ to the church of Ephesus. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love that you had at first. This is no minor critique here. This is major. This is spiritual disaster in the Church of Ephesus. This is Chernobyl. This is the Hindenburg on fire and crashing quickly. This is Titanic after it hit the iceberg and is beginning to sink. No church can survive as a New Testament, Christ-exalting, Bible-believing church if it doesn't have love. You remember what Paul said about love? Yeah? 1 Corinthians 13, the wedding passage? Actually, it's not a wedding passage. It's applicable to marriage, of course. It's a church passage. And what does Paul say in 1 Corinthians 13? He says, you can fathom all mysteries. You have not love, you are nothing. He says, your faith may be so strong, paraphrasing obviously, you can move mountains, with reference to Christ, talking about faith that moves mountains. He says, you can give away everything you have to the poor. Think about that. You take all of your possessions, and this holiday season, you just jam them into that Salvation Army red kettle by the side of the Target store. Jam them all in there. If you don't have love, what does Paul say? You've gained nothing. And then Paul takes it to the nth degree. He says, you can commend your body to the fire. You know what he's saying there? He's saying you can be a martyr. But if you have not love, you are nothing, you gain nothing, you have nothing. Ephesian church is failing here. You remember what John said about love? Same author, right? Book of Revelation. 1 John, I believe they're the same author. Maybe somebody disagrees with me about that, we can talk about that later. John says this in 1 John 3, verse 14, we know that we've passed out of death into life because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love, he abides in death. Ephesians are this close to abiding in death. You remember what Christ said about love? John 13, same writer, Gospel of John, quoting Jesus, "...a new commandment I give you, that you love one another, just as I have loved you, you are to love one another by this. All people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." In Ephesians, they used to have that reputation, and now it's dissolving before their eyes. So, what are the marks of the true church? You're going to learn them here, in seminary. And you're going to learn them as the preaching of the Word of God, the right administration of the sacraments, and the exercise of biblical discipline. Yes? Don't graduate if you don't know that. Francis Schaeffer says, missed one. Francis Schaeffer says, how can love not be regarded as a mark of the true church? Clearly is. Christ says in John 13, 35, they're gonna know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. That is the categorical marker of what true New Testament Christianity looks like. So I want you to be fierce theologians like the Ephesians were. Vibrant, intelligent, intellectual, acute, accurate theologians when you come out of seminary. But if your heart doesn't swell for the love of Christ and for the love of God and for the love of the church and for the love of the unreached world, you are nothing. And by the way, one of you says, oh wait, question, what kind of love were they lacking? Was it love for God? Was it love for Christ? Was it love for one another? Was it love for the unbelieving world? Which one was it? My answer to that? Do we need to start at the beginning? Because though you can distinguish these different forms of love, you cannot separate them. Don't you understand? Love for God is love for Christ. Love for Christ is love for the Church. Love for the church is love for the unreached world because there are elect out there that need to be gathered by the preaching of his word. Ephesians started strong in this category and now ESV translate this rather vigorously. They've abandoned the love that they had at first. Don't let that happen to you. Say, how does that happen? I don't know, but I don't want it to happen to me. I think that there's a connection between these three rings of doctrine and devotion and doxology, right? Those should be connected. So the doctrine that you're learning should fuel the devotion that you have in your heart, and the devotion that you have in your heart should be poured out in doxological praise, which also includes the lifestyle, evangelism, other such things. And yet something goes wrong. I can't exactly explain it, and I don't know where it goes wrong, but sometimes you'll get somebody who loves doctrine so much, and trust me, I love doctrine as much as you do, I promise. But sometimes that swelling of the head of doctrine results in the neglect of an equal and symmetrical swelling of the love of Christ and his people in the heart. I don't understand it, but I can just tell you that it does happen. It happened in Ephesus, and I've seen it happen before. Maybe, just a wild conjecture here, wild conjecture, maybe it has something to do with their antagonism with the Nicolaitans, dangerous cult. Christ says, you hate their works, good, so do I. But sometimes what happens is in our zeal to defeat arguments, maybe we verge into a zeal to defeat people as well. I do appreciate that Christ distinguishes the works of the Nicolaitans from the Nicolaitans themselves. Some of them probably need to hear the gospel again. Christ then leaves them with this exhortation, and we will leave it here as well. Look at verse five. Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen. Repent and do the works that you did at first. If not, I will come and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent." Now, I mentioned earlier that in each one of these letters, Christ gives one of his glorious attributes from the vision in chapter 1 to each church, each appropriate to their need. Here, the attribute of Christ is his presence as symbolized by him walking amongst the lampstands, which are no doubt the churches. John tells us that, it's not a hard symbol to figure out. And this is why this is such a severe warning to the Ephesians, that he's telling them here, unless you repent, your lampstand will be removed, which is the same thing as saying, not only will your gospel light diminish, but you will be removed from my presence." Friends, that is a severe warning to the Ephesian church. No matter what else happens to us as we study, as we pursue Christ, as we learn doctrine, do not let your heart be diminished in its love for God and for Christ and the people of the church. and the unreached people of this world that need him so desperately. Let's pray and ask the Father that he'll sustain us even now. Heavenly Father, Lord, we know that all that we are and all that we have is dependent entirely upon you and the work of your Holy Spirit in our lives. We pray, oh God, that you would not allow the love that we have to fade or to diminish in any way, but Father, rather that it would be increased so that we would be abounding and overflowing and this Christ-exalting, Holy Spirit-saturated love. This we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Let's stand as we sing Psalm 81B. do do do do do do