Continue on in the book of Revelation, and we'll start to look now at chapter two, where we find the first of the letters to the seven churches. Now in one sense, Judy's already leaving. Now in one sense, the entire book of Revelation is a letter to the seven churches that are listed here in chapters two and three. The intention of Jesus Christ in giving this revelation is that it would be circulated throughout those congregations, throughout those churches, that it would be read and that it would be discussed and passed from church to church and copied and passed even beyond those churches. But specifically, it was targeted at those seven historical congregations in Asia Minor back in the first century. And so included in the broad letter of the Book of Revelation are these seven addresses, these seven sub letters that are addressed specifically to each one of those congregations. Each one of the congregations there is dealing with very similar issues in some ways and dealing with those issues in very different ways in other ways. So they're all struggling with persecution and temptation. They're struggling with the fact that false teachers are plaguing them and going through all of the trials and temptations that the early church went through many of which are the same trials and temptations that we go through in our day and age. Not all of those churches dealt with those trials in the same way. Some of them were more successful in being faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ and some of them were not as successful. Some of them folded underneath the pressure and caved in to the false teaching or gave in to the immorality or yielded to that temptation one way or the other. And so Jesus has both commendations and condemnations for these churches. There are two churches that don't receive any condemnations. They only receive a good report from Jesus, to the credit, of course, of God in their midst. And then there's one church that doesn't have anything good to say about it at all, as we'll see as we go along. But let's read verses 1 through 7 of chapter 2 tonight, the address or the letter to the church in Ephesus. says the to the angel of the church in Ephesus write the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and who walks among the seven golden lampstands. 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 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, but I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love 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 work of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. All right. So as we start to get into these letters to the seven churches, there's a little bit of background that we need to talk about in terms of how to understand these letters. Some commentators see these letters as representing seven consecutive ages in church history with the Ephesian age being the age of the earliest church history and then working on through church history so that the seven letters provide sort of a historical road map. of the history of the church, and you can plot the various struggles and things that the church has gone through by looking at the themes that are laid out in these seven letters. For example, it is believed that the Ephesian age was between 33 and 200 A.D. as the apostolic age died out and the church became more religious. and self-sufficient, and then the Smyrna age between 200 and 325 when Christians were being persecuted a lot, the Pergamos age between 325 and 500 when paganism started to encroach upon the church and have an influence on the teaching of the church. And then the Thyatiran Age would have been the dark ages between 500 and 1000 AD, when paganism was responsible for the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church, the corruption of the papacy, where people who disagreed with the Pope or the teachings of the Pope were being persecuted and put to death. Then the Sardis age between 1000 and 1500 when there was this increasing desire within the church to bring about reform, of course, coming to a head in the 1500s with Martin Luther and John Calvin and the reformers who sought to purify the church. Then the Philadelphia age, it's thought to be the age of evangelical Christianity between 1500 and 1900 when the gospel was spreading, when the great awakenings were taking place. And now finally, we are in the middle, it is thought of the Laodicean age, from 1900 until now, marked by the changes in enlightenment thinking, rationalism, liberalism, humanism, declines in doctrinal purity, lukewarmness in the church, those kinds of characteristics. So what do you think about that? What do you think about using these letters as sort of a historical roadmap? Very well said. Yeah, that's right, exactly. The interesting thing is, is if you were living in the 1500s, the millenarists then would have thought that you were right there at the end also. And here we are 450 years later. Absolutely. Sure, sure. Yeah, Chris. Yeah, I think it lends itself a little too easily to setting dates. Yeah, it comes from that same sort of impulse. And the fact is, and I think history bears this out fairly consistently, that every single age of the church has seen the characteristics that are listed in these letters to these seven churches that are apparent in the seven churches. Every single age has suffered in the same sorts of ways, so that the letters will be relevant in every single age. If you follow it as if it's a historical roadmap, then the letter to the church in Ephesus isn't really as relevant to us anymore because that's a bygone age. In fact, the only one that we ought to really be studying is the letter to the Laodicean church because that's the age that we're apparently living in. I think that history shows very clearly that all of the things that the churches were struggling with that are listed in these seven letters are things that the church has struggled with all throughout its history and continues to and will continue to struggle with until the day that Christ returns so that we have a lot to learn in every age. Christians have a lot to learn from all seven of these letters. in terms of things to be careful of, things to pursue, how to be faithful, all of those kinds of things. So it is important for us to realize and recognize that, I think, as we read the letters so that we can find their relevance and significance to us and properly interpret them. It's also important to recognize and remember that these seven churches that are written to were actual historical congregations. that were going through very terrible seasons of persecution. They were struggling with false teaching. They were tempted to allow the teaching of the false teachers to affect and to change what they taught as churches and what they believed the Bible to teach. They were struggling with all of those kinds of things as we are today. So the things that Christ praises them for and the things that Christ has against them, the things that he condemns them for, are really important for us to understand because they apply to us. They apply to 21st century Christians as much as they apply to 1st century Christians and likewise the same Christ who is portrayed in this vision of remember the letters are a part of a vision where Christ is standing amongst the seven lampstands which are the seven churches in the Spirit of God in the midst of the seven churches. That same Christ who is present among his churches 2000 years ago is present among his church now. And so that bears our recognition and our remembrance so that we can not only rightly understand the letters but rightly apply them to our own situation now and put our confidence in Christ who is still with us now. In fact he has said in Matthew 28 that he will be with us even until the end of the age. So as we go through, try to remember those things. Remember that the vision of Christ that we looked at last week that comes before these seven letters is a vision where He is described by way of various physical characteristics. And we're not, remember, to think of Him as actually having a physical sword protruding out of His mouth or having eyes that are on fire or hair that is actually white or feet that are made of brass. Those physical descriptions are symbolic of some aspect of Christ's character. Do you remember what they were? What did we learn about the person of Jesus Christ by way of those symbolic references that we looked at last week? And how does that affect our reading of these seven letters? Right, right, right. Which is? which is the Word of God, right? Right, exactly. So we have references like that throughout the Scriptures. Isaiah talks in the same way about the Word of God being like a sharp sword that accomplishes its purposes. And the fact that it's coming out of His mouth teaches us that when Christ speaks, there's tangible effects to that speech. It's not just theory. It's not just philosophy. There's power behind His Word, power to create, a power to sustain life, a power to sanctify for himself. What about his hair being white? His divinity, as he's equated with the Ancient of Days. Okay, exactly. And what else? Yeah, purity, right? Whiteness indicates purity, holiness, the fact that he's undefiled. What about his feet being, looking like they're bronze or brazen feet, polished bronze? Okay, so indicating the beauty and beauty in scripture is always linked to holiness. It's not the same thing that again, as we talked about romanticism this morning and transcendental thought this morning. Beauty becomes more subjectively defined. Beauty in scripture isn't subjective. Beauty in scripture is linked to truth and righteousness and holiness and purity. Those are the things that are actually beautiful in the universe and the feet of Christ indicating that they are reflections, the bronze that would be reflective of light and of an image reflecting the holiness of God, reflecting the glory of God. Oftentimes polished bronze was used in the architecture, for instance, of the temple or the tabernacle, the brazen altar, the sea of brass, the pillars of bronze that flanked the entrance into the temple, all indications of God's holiness and visual reminders of God's holiness. Yeah? Maybe there's a connotation there as well. The permanence of God's holiness, the permanence of God's character and glory. And what about his eyes being on fire? What might that indicate? All seeing and judgment put those two together, right? That the wicked people of this world who would defame Christ's name and who would persecute the church and who would rebel against God's purposes and do violence and act wickedly will not go unnoticed. Their wickedness will not go unnoticed. Christ sees it all and he sees it all with eyes that are ablaze with justice. And so his judgment will be swift and it will be sure and that brings great comfort. to these Christians who are being persecuted in the first century, that your plight is not unnoticed. God is not asleep. As Peter says, the judgment of the unjust is not asleep with God. God is awake in judgment against his enemies, and he will both exercise great patience but also execute sure justice as he sees fit to. Again, we have a picture of a God who's omnipotent. He's holy. He's glorious. He's omniscient in that he sees all things. He's standing in the midst of these seven lampstands, which indicates his omnipresence. All of that is intended to encourage and bolster up the confidence of these seven churches that Christ is with them, that the Holy Spirit is with them. Remember, that's what lampstands indicate, as we traced it all the way back to Zechariah's prophecy in Zechariah chapter four and the the picture of the lampstand being fed by the perpetual source of oil from those two olive trees that grew up alongside of it and flanked it on either side. And the meaning of that vision was stated by God himself to Zechariah that this is to indicate to you that it is not by might not by power but by my spirit says the Lord that you will persevere and that you will endure. God is the one who supplies what the church needs to be the light of the world, in other words. And he supplies it in the person of his Holy Spirit and the power of his Holy Spirit and the work of the Holy Spirit in our midst. And so, as we think on that, we are encouraged and strengthened to be able to do the work that God has called us to do. So remember, as Jesus again is addressing these seven churches, he is addressing us as well. He commands obedience and he commands purity. He condemns our disobedience, but he also promises to strengthen us for the obedience that he commands by supplying his Holy Spirit to us, calls us to be faithful and to trust him. A little bit of background about Ephesus as we look at this letter. The church in the city of Ephesus was founded in the early 50s in the first century, and the city there is famous for the temple that was dedicated to the goddess Diana or Artemis, the goddess of fertility. And as you can imagine, a city where there was a temple dedicated to a goddess of fertility might be a city in which there was not only a lot of idolatry, but a lot of immorality, right? and that was certainly the case in Ephesus. What's that? Okay, Santa Cruz might be a modern day equivalent in America. We may not have a literal actual temple built, but certainly there's a lot of idolatry and immorality going on. UCSC is the great, okay, okay. It's a banana slug in our day. In Acts chapter 19, we read that Paul spent about two years in the city of Ephesus and his stay there came to an end when a group of worshippers of Diana, a group of the temple faithful in Ephesus, got tired of all of the citizens of the city of Ephesus converting to Christianity by the gospel that Paul was preaching. It was bad for business. You see, what they used to do was, of course, take advantage of these people and their religious and the proclivities that they had towards religion, and they would sell little trinkets that would enable the people to come and present the little trinket to gain access to the temple in order to participate in this false worship and this idolatry, and it was a racket. They made a lot of money doing this. There was a tree that had some kind of mythological significance near the foundation stones where that temple was built, and they would carve little trinkets out of the stump of that tree and sell them to the people in order for them to gain access into that temple, which is very interesting because at the end of this letter, Jesus says that to the one who conquers, I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God, juxtaposing truth with error there and true access into the true city with the false access that this counterfeit system of religion has sought to offer. The people got tired of the Ephesian citizens coming to faith in Christ, and so they started a riot. And it tells us in Acts 19, Luke tells us that they were shouting, great is Diana of the Ephesians, as they were dragging Paul by the heels out of the city and seeking to kill him, and so he fled the city. And we know that this temple was popular all around. Ephesus, rather, was a popular city largely because of this temple, people would come from all around to see it, and there were many devotees and visitors that were attracted. There also was a library in Ephesus that was a well-renowned library, one of the greatest libraries in the region at the time. So the city held a lot of financial clout. The temple in the city, in fact, held a lot of financial clout. And there was a lot of control that the people who ran the temple had over the local banking interests. And so if there was, we could say this with one commentator, if there was any city in which the church needed spiritual discernment, it was the city of Ephesus. Because of all of the idolatry, all of the immorality, all of the influence and sway and clout that the idolatrous people in Ephesus held over your financial business even. So the church needed to have a lot of spiritual discernment and as we're going to see Christ commends them for that very thing. They have a lot of discernment. They've stood faithfully against false teaching and against the idolatry and the immorality. But Christ also has a rebuke for them as well. So let's look first at the commendation. He says, to the angel of the church in Ephesus write, the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and who walks among the seven golden lampstands, I know your works and your toil and your patient endurance. Now stop there for a minute. Every one of these letters begins with this statement to the angel of the church in the particular city, in this case, Ephesus. The word angelos in the Greek means a messenger and is often, of course, used to refer to heavenly messengers, heavenly beings, angels, supernatural beings. and also to fallen angels, those angels who fell with Satan and were consigned to judgment and perdition. Who is being written to here? Who is being addressed when the letter is written to the angel of a particular church? Okay. Perhaps. That's another possibility. The pastor. Right. The messenger. The one who is going to take this message and carry it to the congregation. There's some evidence for that. What was. Did you have. Okay. Either of those are possibilities. And I, to be honest with you, I'm not real sure which of them is the better possibility. If these are supernatural angels, that seems to be the consensus of the people who study and do commentary on this book. Most of them lean towards the fact that or the position that there are angels that have been appointed over each of the churches and that John is, that the letters are somehow to be entrusted to the churches by way of these angelic ministers. Some, though, do believe that the word there is to be interpreted simply messengers in a generic way, as it is other places in the New Testament, and that the idea is that these letters would find their way into the hands of the pastors and the elders, the teachers of the church, for the exhortation of the churches. Well, there's two different ways of understanding that word. The word is used in reference either to supernatural spiritual beings or to physical beings who are messengers. The word just means a messenger. Right. They're going to receive a piece of parchment with writing on it that they're going to read. Yes, yes, it was a vision, a letter that was to be circulated through those seven churches. So. So we're not real sure which of those there are good arguments on either side for saying that it's a spiritual beings or for saying that it's the human physical pastors or shepherds of those churches whichever the case. It is clearly Christ's intent that this letter get into the hands of these seven churches and that they be admonished for the things that they're doing wrong and that they be encouraged for the things that they are doing right. So he says first of all in terms of the things they are doing right. I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance and how you cannot bear with those or tolerate those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not and found them to be false. I know that you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my namesake and that you have not grown weary. And then he says down in verse six also, yet you have this for you, that you hate the work of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. So what's the substance of the good news here? What's the substance of the commendation that Christ gives to the church in Ephesus? Endurance, perseverance, discernment. Yes, exactly. Becoming complacent in that, perhaps. Well, not complacent in doing it, but complacent in other things because of it. Yeah, a lot of times we see churches in this day and age that become lax in these kinds of areas that the Ephesian church seems to have been strong in. They become lax in doctrinal purity. They become lax in discipline. If there's immorality in the church they tolerate immorality. They allow immorality. They don't deal with it in the way that Christ has taught us to deal with it in Matthew Chapter 18 or Paul would teach us to deal with it in First Corinthians 5 Galatians 6 for example. When there's sin in the camp the sin has to be dealt with and hopefully as you go through the process of dealing with the immorality and the sin the violation of God's law and will hopefully you bring about restoration or the Lord by his grace brings about restoration in the heart of that person that there's repentance. and restoration to pure fellowship. If not if the sin continues and the brother continues to refuse to listen as you go through those various steps of discipline. Christ is very clear in Matthew 18 Paul is very very clear in first Corinthians 5 that the person is to be put out of the church that the sin is not to be allowed to continue. It is not to be harbored. in the church. It's not to be allowed to fester in the church. And that was the situation in Ephesus. They weren't allowing sin to go unchecked in the church and to fester in the church. They were dealing with it. They were being faithful to do it. It says that they would not tolerate wicked men. Probably the wicked men that are being spoken of here are men who were in the church and who were being influenced to believe that even though they were Christians and placed their hope and their faith in Jesus Christ and the true gospel, that they could go out in the city and engage in the idolatry and the immorality attendant with the worship of Diana or Artemis there, and that that wouldn't compromise their status and their standing as Christians, that they had freedom in Christ to engage in the immorality of the world. Well, maybe and maybe there was two different kinds of people that are being addressed here. Maybe there were these people who thought that they could get away with immorality while still calling themselves Christians. And that wasn't tolerated. And then also there were people, as John is saying, who came in and said, we're apostles. We're we're the ones who are sent out. That's what the Greek word means. The ones who are sent out specifically and directly from Jesus Christ. And we have gospel truth. We have revelation for you. We have scripture for you. to be able to live your lives by and to be able to govern your churches by. And what the church in Ephesus did was to put those people to the test to see if they really were apostles to see if they stood up and measured up. How would you do that. How would you put them to the test. And that means that what has to be true of you. If you're going to do that, you have to be familiar enough with the truth that has been revealed. Right. You have to be discerning enough, which is why that word that was suggested was a good word to describe their situation here that they're commended for. You have to be discerning enough in terms of your grasp of the truth of Scripture to be able to recognize that somebody is coming in the name of the Lord and presenting something that is not consistent with Scripture, that doesn't line up with the truth of Scripture. And if that person is doing that and claiming to be an apostle, clearly they're not an apostle. If they're bringing something that is not consistent with God's word, they cannot be said to be sent from God himself. And so they would put these people to the test. And when they found that the people were not actually apostles, what did they do? Yeah, they found them to be false and they put them out. They wouldn't allow them to have a say in the church. They wouldn't allow them to have influence over the people of the church. And so they were the protectors of the church. They were good shepherds in this sense. When the wolves came, remember that Jesus compares false teachers, false prophets to wolves who dress up like sheep and try to come into the church and deceive people into thinking that they are true teachers of the church and true representatives of Christ, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves seeking to devour whom they may. That's what these false apostles were. They put themselves off to be Christians. They tried to look like Christians to the undiscerning so that the undiscerning would be led astray. And, in fact, they were ravenous wolves seeking to devour people. And the shepherds here, the elders here, the pastors of the church here were, in fact, faithful, faithful shepherds, and they protected the flock in this way. So they're well acquainted with truth. They're well acquainted with righteousness and they use truth and righteousness faithfully in the defense of the gospel, in the defense of the church, in the defense of the reputation of Christ. Verse six says, you hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. Does anybody know anything about the Nicolaitans? Yeah, not many people do. They're referenced in the Bible in two places, once here and once further down in the letter to Pergamum. And those are the only two places in Scripture where we have a reference to these people. And historically, even, there aren't many references to this group known as the Nicolaitans or what they were all about, what they taught, what they did. But we can glean a little something from Scripture in terms of what they did. because of the way that they're referenced here. For instance, look over in verse 14 of chapter 2 in the letter to the church in Pergamum. The Ephesians didn't tolerate the Nicolaitans. They hated the works of the Nicolaitans, which Christ also hated. But listen in contrast to the letters that's written to Pergamum. He says, I have a few things against you. You have some there who hold the teachings of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel so that they might eat food sacrifice to idols and practice sexual immorality. So also you have some who hold to the teachings of the Nicolaitans, therefore repent. So in Ephesus, the deeds of the Nicolaitans were not tolerated. They were hated. Whereas in Pergamum, they were tolerated. And there were people in the church who were influenced by this teaching. And that teaching is compared to the teaching of Balaam or the practices are compared to the practices of Balaam. What did Balaam do? What do we know about Balaam that would help us to understand the connection there? And so the Nicolaitans, if they're being compared to Balaam, we could say the same thing about them, that they're seeking to lure the people of God away by tempting them. specifically to engage in pagan practices, tempting them to engage in pagan idolatry and combine that idolatry with their own worship or that immorality with their own worship. And I think it's safe to say that whatever is true about the Nicolaitans, we can understand that that's what they were trying to do. They were encouraging the Christians in these cities and perhaps other cities, saying that it was permissible for them to participate in the occultic activities that were associated with the idolatry in those cities and the false worship of those cities, and even to participate in the immorality that was going on in those temples with temple prostitutes and things of that nature. It was a form of what we call syncretism. where we blend godless facets and aspects of the culture along with the worldview of Christianity and where we come up with some sort of other thing. We try to say the teaching of the Bible, the worldview of Scripture, the outline that the Scripture gives us for what church ought to be and how worship ought to function isn't sufficient in any given culture. And what needs to happen is that we need to combine it with some aspect or some facet of that culture in order to be relevant, or in order to fit into the culture, or in order to experience whatever God would have us to experience in that culture. That kind of syncretism is destructive to the church. And Jesus says in the letter to the Church of Ethicis here that He hates it. He hates it. They didn't allow that. The elders of the church would not allow the Nicolaitans to come and say, In order to have an impact, maybe, on the people who are in that temple and worshiping that false god, you need to go and do as they're doing. Or maybe they're saying, you have freedom in Christ to be able to go and do what they're doing and not have to worry about it, not have your conscience bothered about it. And Christians who were less discerning were falling into the trap of that false teaching and that false influence. It wasn't tolerated in Ephesus, it was tolerated in Pergamum, but Christ hates that syncretism. And we ought to hate it, too. And the church in Ephesus is commended for hating it. What Christ loves, even as we saw this morning, is purity. Purity. The word purity, as you know, maybe it's become too vaguely used today, but in its technical meaning, the word purity means something that is not mixed, something that is not defiled, either doctrinally or morally or intellectually or practically. God hates impurity. He hates the mixing of good with evil. What he loves is for his word to be undefiled, for his word to be pure and cut straight, and for the life of the Christian and the practice of the Christian, the practice of the church and the life of the church to be unmixed also. So there's all kinds of applications for that, aren't there, in terms of in terms of the church in the 21st century. We can't just look at this and say, well, there's no literal altar or temple to Diana in Santa Cruz. And so we don't have to worry about there are no temple prostitutes in Santa Cruz. And so we don't have to worry about that kind of idolatry or that kind of syncretism, that kind of blending. What kind of blending do we have to worry about? Right. Right. Exactly. Yes. In those areas. Absolutely. How we worship. Absolutely. And the blending of. taking aspects of the culture that are bad, that are not rooted in the truth of Scripture and blending them in with the truth of Scripture to try to find a happy medium. We've seen it in the blending of psychology with the Bible this day and age where there are things that psychology teaches us that are absolutely antithetical to what the Bible teaches us about the nature of man and the nature of God and the nature of what is right and wrong. You get those foundation stones, right? If you don't believe that man is intrinsically evil, as Romans 3 teaches us, if you believe that man is intrinsically good, then you're gonna come to understand man's behavior in a very different light, aren't you? And prescribe very different solutions to that behavior, aren't you? It's another form of blending, yeah. There's this whole notion of tolerance. Well, Jesus was kind and loving, which he should be, Therefore, we should allow homosexuality. We should approve of it. After all, they're God's children too, and God loves them just the way they are. We can't be lukewarm Christians. We can't be impure Christians and we cannot allow or tolerate impurities in Christ's church. And the church in Ephesus didn't do that. They're highly commended in areas that are of great significance. And the reason is because they value truth above all else. They defend the truth faithfully. They deal with the perversions of the truth that are surrounding them at all times. They deal with moral behavior that is inconsistent with the truth. They love the truth so much. that they get Christ's stamp of approval on their ministry in this sense, in the sense that they are able to defend against false teaching and immorality. I think it would be easy to say that we should be a church that aspires to such a thing, to gain Christ's stamp of approval for our faithful stand on the truth of God's Word, our lack of compromise. Yeah? So how does that fit in with the morning sermon? How do you speak the truth in love? Well, you have to speak it without being self-righteous and judgmental. Yeah, I mean, here's where the church in Ephesus gets into trouble, actually. That's a perfect lead-in here, where they're commended for standing for the truth, but they're condemned for something else. Why don't we just follow it out here, Judy, and then as we go along and see what it is that they're in trouble with Christ for, I think the answer to your question will come out. Their faithfulness to the truth isn't the end of the story. In other words, Christ has something against them as well. And I think that it is a danger that we need to be very aware of and very mindful of because it is a danger that every truth loving church has to be careful to avoid and is prone to and is susceptible to. In my mind, Satan has all kinds of different tricks up his sleeve and all kinds of different strategies for undermining the church and the effectiveness of Christians and the effectiveness of churches. One of them is to undermine their doctrinal purity. and thereby their moral purity, which always follows next. And if he can't do that, he's going to undermine something else. If a church says, like the Ephesian church did, we will not allow our doctrine to be undermined, we will stand firm on what we teach, then we have to be very, very careful because Satan's very, very sneaky and he's going to come at us from a different angle. And we can't consider the battle to have been won simply because we have a robust doctrinal statement and simply because we have refuted false teaching. Look at what Jesus says. Yet this I hold against you. Let me read it from my version. This I have against you, verse 4, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. What does your version say? Left your first love. Lost your first love, maybe, right? The word abandoned is really the best word. Left is an adequate word, but the sense is abandoned. Not just strayed away from, not just forgotten about, they've abandoned it. It's a more morally charged word than left. I have this against you that you have abandoned your versions, probably many of them say your first love. And this translation, the English standard translation renders it this way, the love that you had at first. And I think that gets at the sense of what Jesus is talking about here better. Not the one that you loved first, but the love that you had at first is what Jesus is saying that they have lost. So what does he mean here? And notice that this is very serious business. All right? This love that they've lost, whatever it is, and we'll come to see what it is in a second, isn't something that's of minor significance. This isn't a tertiary issue for Christ. This is a major, major issue. He says, remember, verse 5, therefore, from where you have fallen, they've fallen from a great height and they need to repent and do the works that they did at first. If not, he says, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent. What does that mean? What would happen if Christ was to remove the lampstand? Yeah. This may not be to the point, but there's an anecdote about John Newton. I think maybe an East or someone made a comment one time on great saints and poor sinners. And Newton came back that it was a very poor saint that did not know that he was a great sinner. And I think doctrinally, of course, these people would have known it. But personally, does it really grab them? Right. Has it defined them? Yeah. Has it? Is it everything that we've been talking about in Galatians and Philippians? Yeah. And is that gratitude proving itself, manifesting itself, displaying itself in the transformation of their lives and their love for one another? That's the love that they've lost. Yeah. In terms of the lampstands? Okay. Right. I think there's a little difference in terms of what he's describing here and what we would all probably relate to that experience in terms of the experience of the individual Christian. Individual Christians, I believe, we have the great hope and the great assurance that is given to us throughout the scriptures, that once we have been born again and saved and regenerated by God's grace, that no one can snatch us out of his hand and that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, that we cannot lose the Holy Spirit in that sense. We do turn our backs on him all the time, don't we? And we do so to the flesh, as we saw in Galatians, sometimes and not unto the spirit, don't we? And we do walk according to the flesh and not according to the spirit. And when we do those things, God's not going to condemn us to hell anymore. And he is going to sanctify us beyond that because he who began the good work in us always sees it through to completion. But when we go through those times in our life of stubbornness, self-reliance, fleshly living, the experience is exactly what you've described there. That the Word of God seems far from us, the truth of God and its wisdom and its power in our lives seems far from us because we have turned our backs on it. And therefore repentance restores that. to us. But Jesus is even talking about something not in terms of an individual but in terms of the church in Ephesus as an organization almost that's going to happen to them that they're in danger of if they don't repent of losing the love that they had at first. Basically, the church will cease to exist or the church will cease to experience the blessing of Christ on its existence and on its mission. Remember that the lampstands are a reference to the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit's presence with God's people, empowering them and aiding them and enabling them to be the light unto the world that they are called to be. And what Jesus is saying is if you don't repent of your lack of love here, then that's going to be pulled. The lampstand's going to be pulled. Your status as a church is going to be dissolved, and the Holy Spirit is not going to be empowering you to be a light unto the darkness anymore, even though they've got their theology all right. We're talking about the love of Christ? We're talking about the specific blessing of Christ on their ministry and the empowerment of Christ and the Holy Spirit upon their ministry to make it effective is going to be withdrawn. Yeah, that our association with Christ can't just be theoretical, can't just be academic. Abiding in Christ, the word speaks of longevity. Don't just visit Christ several times during your day. Don't just wait to pray. Don't just wait to to express your need of Christ through faith and through reading of scripture when your life gets really tough and when things are bad and you are at the end of your rope. Abiding in Christ means constantly living in light of the reality that Christ lives in you. That you have been crucified with Christ and your life now is not your own. Christ is being raised in you. Constantly living by faith in the reality of what it means to be a Christian whose life is in union with the life of the risen person of Jesus Christ. It's when we turn our back on that union and try to do things on our own strength and according to our own wills and our own way and our own flesh that then we run into trouble. Well, I'm sure that there are more than one in the congregation. I don't think it's clear at all that every single person is faithless in this. I think the address is to the church as a whole. Yeah, they don't lose their salvation. They don't lose the indwelling Holy Spirit. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Right off the top of my head, there may be. No, not very often, at least, but I think it is here, surely. Right, exactly. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Similar similar to that, at least that there's a there's a danger that's involved here. And again, the danger of the withdrawal of the blessing of Christ in the Holy Spirit and making that ministry and emphasis effective for the purposes of Christ's kingdom, that danger isn't anchored to false teaching. isn't anchored to a failure in doctrinal purity. They've got that down. They've got that right. They do that well. It's anchored to what Jesus says is the loss of the first love. Some people have taught that losing the first love there is a reference to losing their love for Christ, where Christ would be the first one that they loved, truly, right? And so the loss of the first love is a loss of Christ. What would be the symptoms, though, of losing love for Christ as a church? Right. The very things that they're commended for would be symptomatic if they truly had lost love for Christ. A lack of prayer, they would become cold hearted, and lack of devotion to God's word and truth, an increase of immorality and licentiousness in the church. Those aren't the problems here. It's unlikely that the first love that they've lost is a love for the person of Jesus Christ. Well, I knew you were going to ask that. It could be true in many cases, but maybe not axiomatic. It could be. It could be. But I think even Christian Phariseeism, wouldn't Christ look at that with those piercing eyes of fire and identify it as a false teaching of some kind? It seems like he could do the same thing he does here under that circumstance. You lost that love of Christ in him, but you're doing all the things just like the Pharisees did. Maybe possibly that could happen. I think the way it reads is more natural. And I think also the way that it's phrased, even in the Greek, in terms of losing the first love, the sense of it is more that you've lost the love. The love is the subject. You've lost the love that you had at the beginning, not the first love. And there's some unstated subject to what that first love is. What you've lost is the quality of love that you had when you were first constituted as a church and when you were first introduced to the true gospel. So the loss of the first love is a reference to the disease that is responsible for what was going on in Ephesus that was this doctrinal infighting and bitterness, judgmental attitudes within the congregation. They've lost the love that they had at first and the love which flowed from the truth and the love that flowed through one another. And so their struggles over sound doctrine see that they've had to fight against the Nicolaitans. They've had to fight against false apostles. They've had to fight against the worshipers of Diana and Artemis. They're surrounded and they've had to fight these battles and they've been good at that. But the result has been that this poisonous atmosphere has been introduced into the church where they've lost their love for each other. They've become paranoid of one another. They've become suspicious of one another. They've begun to major on the minors. So in their rigorous defense of the gospel, they've become overly critical and judgmental, and they've started to nitpick at each other's doctrine because they've gotten into the mode of being rigorous doctrinal defenders, and they can't get out of that mode when there's nothing to defend against. Have you ever seen that happen? Somebody gets wired up and wound up to go blazing away with their guns at all kinds of false teaching. And then the firing pin gets stuck. And when the false teachers aren't there and there's just brothers and sisters in the Lord, they're still blasting away. Or when there's minor issues of disagreement that don't merit that kind of attack, that kind of defense, that kind of engagement, they're still blasting away with the 50 calibers. They're not. They're not distinguishing between major and minor issues, between things of essence and things of indifference. There was a hand somewhere. Yeah. you know, a period that in many senses mirrors what you're talking about, that we're really fighting over everything. And this is the one that says I'm being adamant about what is essential, having liberty and what is not, and in everything, having charity. And that goes back to that love. Yeah, exactly. I think Philip Melanchthon made a comment to that effect even back in the 16th century. And I think, yeah, Probably right, all the way back to Augustine. But yeah, in the essentials, we need to have purity. In the non-essentials, the things that we will disagree about, do you baptize infants or not? That's an important question. It's not unimportant, it's just non-essential in the same way as do Jesus actually bodily raise from the dead or not? Those are different levels of disagreement that we can have. On the one, I think if somebody comes into the church and says, Jesus didn't bodily raise from the dead, then we need to treat that as heresy and remove it from the church. On the other, we don't. We don't come across, come at every single issue in the same way. As we're going through the book of Revelation, there are some people in this room who are pre-millennial, some who may be post-millennial, they're not here tonight, but there are some, and some who are all millennial. And even amongst the premillennialists, there may be pre-tribulationists and pre-, post-, mid-tribulationalists and all of the other varieties and brands of belief that are represented in the church. And we don't address those doctrinal issues in the same way that we address the more essential doctrinal issues. But that's what was going on in Ephesus, is they were really good at defending doctrine and protecting right doctrine, but they were so good at it that when a minor issue came along, they defended against it and they attacked it in the same way that they would attack an outright heresy or outright idolatry. And that's what Jesus is upset with them for. I think that statement is a little different than the classic slippery slope argument, which is a fallacy logically. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. If we let a little bit of heresy into the church, If we say, if we turn our backs and say, well, that's heresy, but he's a really nice guy and he tithes a lot, so we're going to ignore it and he's just one guy, right? Then that's a step towards allowing greater and greater introductions of heresy into the church. That's not the same thing, though, as saying that if we hate to use the phrase, but if we agree to disagree, on a doctrine of lesser significance like the proper recipients of baptism or the outworking of the events of the end times or any one of those non-essential issues, that that's putting our feet on a slippery slope that is going to lead to heresy. Because we all believe something about those non-essential doctrines. We're not saying, let's compromise the doctrine, let's give up the doctrine. We're just saying, It is a doctrine that is not worth dividing over and splitting unity over. Right. And that's OK in that case, right? Yeah. So that's what's going on here in Ephesus is because of their lack of love. What has happened is in their defense of gospel truth they have become prideful and they have become fleshly and they've become self-reliant and self-righteous in that defense of the truth and that self-righteousness that unloving attitude that judgmental overly critical attitude has come to dominate and define the way in which They stand for truth and protect against false teaching. So it says that they have stopped doing what they used to. They've stopped being gracious. They've stopped being patient. They've stopped being forbearing non-judgmental Christians and they need to repent of that. So how do we answer Judy's question. How do we take a stand for what's truth and for what has to be stood for. How do we make sure that we do not dilute or pollute doctrine but do that in a way that is loving. work. you to learn to talk the talk, but you've got to learn to walk the walk. And I think this probably pertains more to the Church of Thyatira, where Jesus is mentioned as having feet of brass, shiny brass. Well, those boys know that there's two ways, a right way and a wrong way, even if they're not Christians. if they're going to pretend or talk, and they will soon learn that because it's what the psychiatrists and the evaluators want to hear. They'll soon learn to say what will get them out of there, you know, and make them appear to be fit to be released. But it's not always as easy to be moral I think the point here in Ephesus is that both matter. It does matter what we say in terms of the truth, but it certainly matters how we say it because these people were speaking the truth, but they weren't speaking it in love and they were in danger of having their lampstand removed. Exactly. Exactly. Right. Exactly. Yeah. In the letter to Ephesians, of Ephesians there in chapter four, there's a lot of talk, isn't there, about the way that they speak and how to do that. Right. That's how we can speak the gospel truth. That repentant, humble attitude. Exactly. When we come at it from a fleshly or from a man-centered point of view and leave Christ out of the loop, if you will, that's when we get under trust. And they probably didn't let anyone correct them or say anything about it. Yeah, it started to fester and get worse and worse. if it were directed at the letter, the admonitions directed, say, at the leadership of the church as having some special responsibility in this matter, you can easily see that they might not tolerate heresy if you stand up and say it. Or they might not tolerate over-immorality. But do they really know their sheep? And that kind of thing bites today. They're not knowledgeable. In other words, because of that, they're not knowledgeable of whether or not the gospel that is being so well defended in the church is having its impact on people's lives. Well, it's hard to know the impact on people when you have 5,000 people. That's true. That's true. You never know half the people. Yeah. Yeah, and sometimes the leadership themselves are guilty of this very thing, right? Where there is a defense of the truth in a heartless, sort of unloving, critical, judgmental way. And Wendy and I have always said, as we've gone to the several churches that we've been involved with throughout school and seminary and various places in life, that it always seems like the attitude, almost even the personality of the leadership of the church becomes the personality and the attitude of the church. And so leaders have a higher calling here and a stronger responsibility and a greater accountability here to make sure that this kind of thing isn't going on in their own hearts and that that isn't becoming the means by which that becomes justified and excused in the lives of the people of the church and where we see it. Yeah I think we do. We have to confront it and deal with it and shepherd people and nurture people in their growth in the grace of God and the gospel in such a way that it is producing in them the love and the affection as we saw even this morning in Philippians of Jesus Christ because that's See that's the answer is that when I'm doing anything from my flesh it can be the best thing in the world to be doing outwardly and objectively speaking. But if I'm doing it from my flesh it's not being done well and it's going to be done in a way that's dishonoring to God and for reasons that are dishonoring to God. When I seek to. allow Christ to be formed in me, when I get a hold of what that means to die to self and to be crucified and to, by faith, see Christ being raised in me, when I allow the gospel to have its influence and its impact in the shaping of my life, then my desires change, my attitudes change, my heart changes, the way I relate to people changes. I start to become convicted about the way I relate to people and the way that I do things. And that's what needs to be happening in the church, is that the gospel can't just be an academic assault of false academic teachings. It has to be something that pervades us, every part of us, as Chris was even praying earlier. That our worship to God has to involve the whole person. Our minds, our intellects, our wills, our emotions, everything has to be formed by Christ and sanctified by Christ. Yeah? my own walk with the Lord and the years and everything. When I was a brand new Christian, you know, I was just so in love with Christ. And so just every tree, you know, just spoke of Him and you just want to talk to everybody about it and you're like just, you know, just running over with love for Him and for the brethren, you know. And that's how a lot of people interpret this, that it's the love for Christ that has diminished here. But again, I think that the way that the grammar is structured is such that it's the love itself, not love for Christ, but love love in the way that the ministry is being done, love in the way that the truth is being defended. Right. Right. The way that the church is conducting its ministry. Right. The atmosphere that is within the church as it is known for being a stalwart of gospel truth. At the same time it is known as being an overly critical overly judgmental unloving place. And Christ condemns them for that. Now certainly you know the other thing is something that we need to deal with. Right. If we're becoming complacent and apathetic in our love for Christ certainly there's There's plenty in scripture to address that too, but here I think it's the other thing that's being addressed in terms of the church itself and the congregation itself. Exactly. Who are you and where have you come from? Have you read Turretin? And so you see, I mean, what I'm suggesting is that the kinds of churches, this is going to be Satan's ploy. to either undermine a church in terms of its doctrinal foundations and its effectiveness in standing for the truth and in all the ways that are affected by that or if a church is blessed by God with the strength to be able to endure in those ways. Satan is very cunning and very crafty and oftentimes churches that are very sound doctrinally are very unloving places to be. And then the flip-flop happens where it is believed that the way to become a more loving church is to stop worrying about doctrine so much and to stop taking a stand on doctrine so much. And that's not the answer either, is it? It's both. It's not one or the other. It has to be both. Purity in doctrine, purity in truth, but also a truth that is producing the love of Christ within us. You know it's not your zeal for Christ at the beginning of your Christian life. It's the love for one another in the church that is supposed to be as we saw in Philippians this morning abounding more and more through knowledge. Right. So it can't be that in order to get that love back we put doctrine down because it abounds through knowledge and discernment. But it has to be abounding. When an outsider, when a visitor, when a new Christian comes in, they understand two things immediately and up front. These people take the Word of God very seriously and they stand for it, but they do it in love. They do it in a way that knows where to draw the lines between essentials and non-essentials, knows where to knows how to deal with those things in their respective spheres. But in all things they are charitable people. They are loving people. They're not condescending. They don't look down their noses. There's no I'm a Paul and I'm a Paul of the Paulist kind of attitudes in the church. They seek unity with one another and that kind of an atmosphere. So I have a hard time because I take it more individually. Maybe I've always been behind everybody else. But I've always, my vision of being Christian was you start out with not much love, and then you learn. So I was, you know, I have a hard time grasping this for me personally. I think what Christ is saying here, honestly, is that the lack of love is to be attributed to something that needs to be repented of. The lack of love indicates the presence of pride or some other fleshly quality that would be interfering with love. I would have a hard time saying that love is something that simply grows. And where it's not, it's just because of naivety. Love is something that is essential to the nature of God. And the reason that we aren't loving people, if we're not loving people, is because the love of God has not transformed our lives at that level and our hearts at that level. And as that happens, then it will be manifest in our lives and in the life of our church. No, no, not at all. It's a part of the process of sanctification, but it is a sanctification issue, not just a learning issue. Let's let Chris have his question, and then we'll be done here. Would you say that in relation to what Judy said, you know, our veal and our passion when we first become Christians, would you characterize that by saying it's the difference between infatuation and deep-rooted love? Well, possibly. Maybe I wouldn't want to use the word infatuation, but perhaps the word novelty, that a lot of times a new Christian experiences this incredible rush of emotion over the newness of this incredible stuff that he's just learned and being united to Christ and this new power of the Holy Spirit and this new gospel, this new worldview. All of that is brand new and incredibly beautiful. The newness I think the novelty I think does wear off after a time and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing but I don't I wouldn't equate novelty with zeal. A lot of times that novelty produces a lot of zeal right up front and the zeal needs to continue throughout the Christian's life as we plug ourselves daily into the gospel and pray that it doesn't become stale and old. but it may never feel the same as it did those first days, weeks, months, when you were first converted and regenerated and born again. But you, I mean, I think you're, yeah, it feels better. I think your analogy is right when you plug it into what John just said. I think that's true that, you know, when Wendy and I were first dating, there's this giddy sort of woo, but when you're married, you know, that's kind of gone now, but it's replaced with something much deeper and much more substantial and much more real. Yeah, Chuck. that into a context of work. When I worked in the field as an electrician, you had the young pup that had all the energy in the world, and he would run it around 90 miles an hour and look like he was doing a million things. And he had the old timer who'd been there for 30 years, and it looked like he was just sort of putting along, doing nothing. And the older guy, he puts his hat on, gets in his car, drives home, and has a nice evening with his family. Economy of force. OK. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that that that latter experience doesn't indicate a lack of love for Christ. If you don't feel the same as you did when you first got started any more than than any one of us who has been married for a while. We don't feel the same way as we did when we were first dating or engaged or first married. It doesn't mean you don't love your spouse. In fact, it probably does mean that you love your spouse more than you did then. my soul. It did an emotional thing to me, just being in the group and hearing that. That was what I thought was the first love of Jesus. That man is sincere. He really, you know, stands Okay, well let's wrap up for tonight since we're significantly over time now. I really think that the first letter here to the church in Ephesus is very appropriate for our church in specific because we are a church that values truth and has worked hard for a lot of years to be rigorous in our defense of truth, our pursuit of truth and doctrine. But the danger for us is and will continue to be that we will lose the love for one another and for our community and for those around us. that we need to have if in fact Christ is the one who is being formed in us and Christ's love is coming from us and through us. So we need to be prayerful at all times that God protect us against that and increase that love in us and not remove our lamp stand. So let's close in prayer and then we'll sing a final hymn together. Father we do pray that tonight. We thank you for your word in which these things are made clear to us and in which we see Christ himself Proclaiming to this church in Ephesus that even though they did it right in terms of their teaching and their doctrine That their hearts had become cold and critical of one another judgmental and unloving towards one another and we pray that you would protect us against that and protect every Christian in every church and who values Your truth so much and sees it for what it is and believes that it is more significant than anything else on this earth, Father. May we not use our defense of the truth and our success by Your grace of our defense of the truth as an excuse to be complacent in our love for one another. As an excuse and a rationalization, Father, to get away with allowing our flesh to determine our attitudes towards one another. Father, may we become people like your son was. May we become people like you would have us to be by your grace, as your grace and as your love and your patience, your kindness, your tenderness. Father, your affection that we talked about this morning even begins to flow through us and redefine who we are and how we relate to one another. We pray that in that that your church here and your church around the world would become effective as ministering the gospel and ministering it in a way that is effective for the salvation of souls. Father, may we be known as this kind of people to your glory. We pray in Jesus Christ's name. Amen. So let's stand together in closing tonight and sing number 111.