Let's look to God's Word, Revelation chapter 2, and the majority text renderings on page 18. You can follow along in whatever Bibles that you have in your hands. Revelation 2 verses 1 through 7. To the messenger of the church in Ephesus write, these things says he who holds the seven stars on his right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands. I know your works, yes, the labor and your endurance and that you cannot stand those who are evil. And you have tested those who claim to be apostles and are not and found them to be liars. And you have borne up and endured on account of my name and not grown weary. Nevertheless, I have against you that you have left your first love. So think about from where you have drifted and repent and do the first works or else I will come at you swiftly and remove your lampstand out of its place unless you do repent. But you do have this, that you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches. To the one who overcomes, I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of my God. Father, we thank you. We thank you so much for your word that you have given to us and your faithfulness to quicken that word to our hearts, your faithfulness to prune our lives. And we pray that you would continue to do your pruning work in our lives and enable us to bring forth fruit to your glory. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. You may be seated. I heard of a couple on vacation in Florida who had been floating on the ocean in an inflatable mattress. It was fairly calm out there. But the husband got tired of it and he went back in. The woman, the wife, wanted to catch a few more rays. So she stayed out and just relaxed on this mattress and lost track of time because of the lapping of the waves. It kind of put her to sleep and by the time she realized What was going on, it was almost too late. She had gotten into a current that had taken her far away from land, and she tried to paddle back, was just too exhausted, could not do it. Now, thankfully, her husband had noticed her get out, the lifeguards had been contacted, and they went out to rescue her. But the whole situation was created by careless drifting. Hebrews 2 verse 1 warns Christians, We must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away. Drifting is kind of an odd thing. It's not like outright rebellion that you notice right off the bat. It happens so gradually that Christians often don't even notice that it has been happening until one day they wake up so cold to the Lord and so indifferent to His word that they are shocked at how far they have drifted. And like that woman, they may seem healthy, they may seem like they're having fun, they may be faithful members of the church, but inwardly they have drifted. And that was the situation with at least some or many of the church at Ephesus. They were in grave spiritual danger and did not even recognize it. The Lord says in verses four through five, nevertheless I have against you that you have left your first love. So think about from where you have drifted and repent and do the first works or else I will come at you swiftly and remove your lampstand out of its place unless you do repent. They had lost their first love. First love is an expression that refers to the kind of devotion to each other that happens during courtship and, you know, the early stages of marriage where people love hanging out together, love talking with each other, love serving each other. They just cannot spend enough time together. And in the same way, Acts tells us that the church of Ephesus really did start off with incredible love and devotion to the Lord. In Acts 19, we see that they had been rescued from the clutches of Satan, and the value of the books, the occult books that had been burned was 50,000 pieces of silver. I mean, it was quite a lot of stuff. They had completely abandoned their past. They didn't value those books at all anymore, and they devoted themselves to the Lord, And their love for the Lord was manifested in their love for each other. In Acts 20, verses 37-38, it says about their love for Paul, and he was leaving them to go plant some other churches, but it says, Then they all wept freely, and fell on Paul's neck, and kissed him, sorrowing most of all for the words which he spoke, that they would see his face no more. Their love for Paul was obvious and their love for each other was obvious to Paul because he says in Ephesians 1 15 that they have a love for all the saints. They were characterized by love. You can't read through the book of Ephesians without realizing this is a healthy church. This is a wonderful church and that's what makes it so disheartening that within a decade they had drifted away from the Lord. If Ephesians was written in 58 AD and Revelation was written somewhere between 64 and 66 AD, probably 66 AD, that means that they had drifted from their first love within a decade, within a decade. And that's what makes some people think, you know, that's just not, that's not possible. That's too short of a time to go from such fervent love as was displayed in the book of Acts to losing their first love in Revelation. But think about your own life. I think we often can drift within a year or two, forget about a decade, within a year or two, we can find our hearts growing a little bit cold to the Lord. Even this past week, as I was studying on this, I was convicted in my spirit about my drift from the Lord. As I evaluated, well, if you just were to draw a circle on a wall of what would be relatively safe area for a Christian to be in, I have not drifted to the dangerous edge of that circle by any means, but I am certainly not as close to the center of where my love for the Lord used to be back in the 70s through the 90s. And it's good to recognize when you are not where you should be that there has been some drift because if you recognize it soon, like that husband, you can paddle back to the center of where you need to be. But it's much better than recognizing it when you've drifted outside the circle and you're in the currents where the waves are starting to kick up and it's getting nasty. The central issue that needed correction in Ephesus was a love that had drifted so far away from the Lord that it had already drifted outside the circle into the danger zone of being completely removed. their lampstand was ready to be removed. And praise God, the husband of the church initiates the actions needed to restore spiritual soundness. He desires a restored relationship, so he is the first one to make a move. That's what grace is. Verse 1 says, To the messenger of the church in Ephesus write, these things says he who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks in the middle of the seven golden lampstand. He has noticed the spark that has gone out of the church's relationship with him, and as a good husband he initiates by seeking to fan those flames, but he does it through his officers. Last week we saw that the officers of the church are likened to those stars that are on Christ's hand. They're not supposed to minister on their own. They're only supposed to minister Christ's grace by His authority, through His Word. But in terms of the application here, if Christ's hand is noticing the drift that is going on, the officers who are on that hand should notice the drift that is going on amongst the people. They don't always do so. They don't always, it's not always the case. But don't be offended when your elders visit you and they ask you, how is your walk with the Lord going? You might get tired of Gary and Rodney and me asking you, how are your devotions going? How's your prayer life going? And you roll your eyes because you know it's not growing that great. Why do you have to keep asking that? But it's because we love you. We don't want you drifting from the Lord. So if you're asked, you know, how is your joy in the Lord doing? Is your heart cold to the Lord? Be honest. and let the officers be a part of the process of helping you to get back. It is pretty normal for people to drift if they have not been paying attention to where their inflatable raft is at. In fact, I think we elders ought to assume that you are drifting if you cannot tell us with a straight face that you are self-consciously resisting the drift. I think we should assume you're drifting. If you're not able to tell us how you're paddling and where you're paddling, we had assumed there has been some drift in your life that's been going on. Now here's the strange thing about this whole issue of drifting. A lot of times other people don't notice it. If you are simply an outsider hearing Christ's dismay at the church's loss of love, your response might be, wait a shake, what are you talking about? Ephesus' light is going to be extinguished? This is a great church. This is a wonderful church. This is the ideal church that we would love to join. What are you talking about being extinguished? And I think it's a great question to ask because it was a great church. And I'm gonna list some of the ways in which God says it was great. It was a serving church, and you can see that in the phrase, I know your works. There were a lot of things that they had done. And he praises them for that. In fact, I think that's part of the fanning of the flames of love. He's appreciating what is good about them. The bad that he sees does not blind the Lord Jesus Christ to the good things that he sees in his spouse. And so he does mention these good things. in terms of their walk with Him. But you can have good works and not have a loving relationship with God. Secondly, it was a sacrificing church. He lets them know that He has noticed their hard labors. Apparently there was no lack of volunteers to set up and to take down and to, you know, bring food to the covered dish meals and to engage in all of the different ministries of the church. They were very much involved in sacrificing themselves and laboring for the church. They worked hard and Jesus appreciates that. He likes that. But he wished that he had his bride's heart. When I was reading this, I was thinking of the Fiddler on the Roof musical where Tevye asks his wife, Golda, but do you love me? And Golda responds, do I love you? For 25 years, I've washed your clothes, cooked your meals, cleaned your house, given you children, milked the cow. After 25 years, why talk about love right now? And after some conversation and song, Tevye persists. He says, but my father and my mother said we'd learn to love each other, and now I'm asking Golda, do you love me? And Golda responds, I'm your wife. Tevye, I know, but do you love me? Golda, do I love him? For twenty-five years I've lived with Him, fought Him, starved with Him. Twenty-five years my bed is His. If that's not love, what is?" But you know, while there is a sense in which that is true, that love is involved in all of the wonderful things that Gold had did for Tevye and that the church of Ephesus did for the Lord Jesus Christ, You can continue to do those things and be faithful and be loyal and be hardworking and still grow cold in your love. Consider the next phrase. The third good thing about this church was that it was a steadfast church. Verse two speaks of your endurance. That's a good thing. Verse three says, and you have borne up and endured on account of my name and not grown weary. Isn't that love? I mean, after all, they're doing this for Christ's sake, for His name. But Jesus said, you have left your first love, or as some translate it, you have lost your first love. And He didn't say you've lost all love. But you've lost your first love. Christ wants that first love from His church. And it is possible to have that first love endure forever. It's possible to have that first love throughout your entire marriage. It's possible to have that first love throughout your entire walk as a Christian with the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, can people do some of these things and not even be saved? I think that they can. as illustrated by Golda and Tevye. I've seen people in liberal churches who have not missed a Sunday, not very many people like this, but I've seen awards given out. They've not missed a Sunday in 40 years and yet they're not even saved. I've seen cult members who are steadfast and endure a great deal. In fact some Mormons and some Jehovah's Witnesses that I know I would think would put church members to shame by the degree of steadfast ministry that they engage in. Now I'm not saying it's a bad thing. It's a wonderful thing. It's a good thing to be steadfast and loyal and serving and all of those things. But it can be present without first love. Do you allow the good things in your ministry to make you blind to the fact that you have a problem? And the problem is you've left your first love. One of the things I appreciate about the church of Ephesus is that it was a church with a clear antithesis. They understood the difference between right and wrong and they did not compromise. And that's great. Jesus praises them in verse two when he says, and that you cannot stand those who are evil. The Greek grammar is quite clear that this, not being able to stand these antinomians, that that's a virtue. They're not being, You know, nowadays, intolerance is just considered to be non-virtue. But here, it's a virtue. You cannot stand those who are evil. In fact, they were passionately against the so-called ministry of the local cult, the Nicolaitans. Verse 6 says, but you do have this, that you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. Hate can be a family value. There are certain things we should hate. He praises them for that kind of clear-cut antithesis. This was no postmodern church that put up with anything. The early church father Irenaeus tells us that the founder of this cult was none other than Nicholas of Antioch. There are some people who think, boy, could that really be the case? But that's the only theory that we have. Nicholas of Antioch was one of the original seven deacons of the church of Acts, Acts chapter 6. He apostatized according to Irenaeus, claimed to be an apostle and taught false doctrine and antinomianism. Now antinomianism is the belief that you can be a Christian and you don't have to follow God's law. God's law is really irrelevant to the Christian life. And the Ephesians being good theonomists that they were, were outraged over that. Now let's appreciate what they did do well. Jesus praises his bride for her good qualities and one of the good qualities that he admired in Ephesus was her hatred for the antinomianism of the Nicolaitans and that she could not stand heretics. And so this means that Ephesus was a lot better than the modern easygoing church. After all, The Nicolaitans were not nearly as bad of antinomians as many of the antinomians in the evangelical church today. And let me explain what I mean by that. They at least felt guilty over sin, and some of them did try to resist it to some degree. One of the church fathers, Victorinus, said that they taught that it's okay to eat meat offered to idols so long as you exercise the meat. Exercise means cast the devil out of the meat. Okay, now you can eat it. And they said, it's okay to, well, it's not okay. They said, if you commit fornication with another person, you're unclean for eight days, but after that, you have peace, you have shalom. But at least they felt guilty for eight days. Nowadays, antinomians, you know, they sin and confess their sins and then they sin immediately again and confess and sin and confess. They keep on sinning. And actually, a lot of the antinomians, they don't even feel guilty in the least about sinning. Their view of justification is that we're perfect and it really doesn't matter how we live. In fact, we've had a member of this church, no longer a member here, who believed that you never have to confess your sins. This person thought it was wrong for us to have weekly confession of our sins. And I said, what are you talking about? There's confession all the way through the scriptures. And this person said, no, when you became saved, God forgave you of your sins, past, present, and future, and there are no more sins. You're disbelieving your justification if you now confess your sins again. I said, wait a minute, wait a minute here. What's going on there is that in justification, you are transferred from judge to father. You no longer have to face God as a judge, but now that you've been adopted into the father's family, you need to now live as family members. Yeah, you won't be kicked out. But is father going to discipline you if you rebel against him? Of course he is. You're going to get spankings and you need to ask forgiveness of the father. That's different than asking for forgiveness of the judge. But no, you can never confess your sins. You never ask forgiveness. That's one form of antinomianism. And the Thesians were rightly outraged against that. They knew the difference between evil and righteousness, right and wrong, true doctrine and false doctrine, and they walked a straight line. In some sense, they were like modern Reformed people who love to pick a fight on doctrine and who are long on being correct and very short on loving the Lord their God with all their heart, all their soul, all their strength, and loving their neighbor as themselves. And it shouldn't be that way. This issue of love cannot be trivialized. 1 Corinthians 13 says that even if you have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and have all faith, I mean that's pretty cool to have all of those things and yet you lack love. It amounts to nothing. It profits you nothing. So do not trivialize this issue of love. Now, since one of the marks of a true church has always been the presence of church discipline, I should mention that the church of Ephesus was straight on discipline as well. Paul had warned them in Acts chapter 20 that savage wolves and false teachers would come into the church to try to destroy the faith, and they needed to watch out, and they took heed to that warning. Now let me explain why they were disciplined at the lampstand level, not at the lamp level. You see the lampstand was the presbytery of all of the local churches in each city. And the lamp was each local congregation filled with the Spirit pouring forth God's light. Why were these disciplined at the presbytery level? Well, it's a jurisdictional issue. Who ordains pastors and who ordains apostles? It's not the local church. It's the presbytery. Who ordained Timothy, for example? It says that there was the laying on of hands of the presbytery. Okay, so I won't get into all of the different scriptures, but since the apostles and pastors were subject to discipline at the presbytery level, in this case the presbytery of Ephesus, which was composed of many local churches, remember, they investigated And false apostles like Nicholas and verse two says, and you have tested those who claim to be apostles and are not and found them to be liars. Now the word tested has connotations of a court trial. They were examined, investigated, tried and treated as false apostles. Their credentials were yanked, so to speak. And the whole church then was warned not to take in these false apostles. So you can see on many levels, Ephesus was a good church. It was an ideal church. an outstanding church, but its love had grown cold. Verse 4 says, Nevertheless, I have against you that you have left your first love. Doing the right things, with the right ministry, and the right methods, and even in terms of church discipline, with the right mechanics, without love, is like having a furnace that has the fan still blowing but the flame has gone out, and all it's blowing is cold air. Okay, does this letter to Ephesus describe you? That's the question I want you to think about. Were you once passionate about the Lord, but now you're just barely slogging on? Did you once have devotions that set your heart on fire? Now, man, it's just a struggle to even read a little verse or two and pray for a minute or two, and you skip devotions more often than you have time alone with the Lord. When was the last time you were so struck with the awesomeness of God you wanted to fall on your knees and praise and worship Him? When was the last time you were so excited about the Lord you wanted to share your faith with others? By the way, don't despair if this describes you, okay? I'm not here to beat up on you. I just want you to recognize the problem so that you can take the solution. It is normal, it is natural to find yourself drifting if you're not consciously working against it. Like the drifting lady in her inflatable mattress, we can think everything's fine with us. We don't even notice that we're drifting. The Puritans, man, they wrote all kinds of things that can cause us to drift. They talked about things like skipping devotions because of our busyness. And then we start to get out of the habit of being alone with the Lord. We don't even notice that we haven't had devotions in a week or two. Maybe we initially ignored the promptings of the Holy Spirit over some sin. We say, well, it's not that big of a deal. And over time, He's not convicting us anymore. And we notice He's not convicting us over any sin. We have drifted. We've drifted away. Maybe in years past, you have shrunk in horror from an image that came up on your computer screen But over time, you got used to it, and you justified it, and you said, you know, everybody sees those kinds of things, and after all, God is a God of grace, and it doesn't bother you anymore. For some, the drift may start with hardships that have made you discouraged, and you have prayed your heart out to the Lord, and it seems like the Lord has not answered your prayers, and you begin to get to the place where you wonder if God works at all in your life, and you're almost to the place where your faith has waned to the point of almost non-existence. Or your scenario may be completely different than anything I have described here this morning, but you know you're not where you should be. You know your heart has drifted from the Lord. So just recognizing that you have drifted is a good first step. Now I want to give you hope that your first love can be restored no matter what your situation. My first love has drifted many times in my life. Sometimes I catch it just a few feet from where it should be, and I quickly paddle back. There's other times where it has drifted so far that I feel just as dry and dusty in my walk with God as David felt in Psalm 42 or in Psalm 63, and he's crying out. He said, Lord, I feel like a dry and thirsty deer in a dry and parched land. Where are you? I long for you. And the Lord's brought me to tears as I've realized how dangerously I have drifted outside or near to the edge of that circle of where it is safe. But the sooner you engage in the steps for restoring your first love, the sooner you can paddle back to where the lifeguards are. This passage gives us seven things we can do to get our passion back to the Lord. First of all, think about where you used to be and what has happened since then. He says in verse 5, so think about from where you have drifted. We usually only notice that the furnace has gone out when it gets cold, right? It's like, what's going on here? That's all of a sudden cold. We hadn't noticed that the furnace had gone out. And it reminds us, we like the warmth that the furnace brings to us. It's a good thing to remember we like warmth and we're not experiencing it like we should be. Now, obviously, if you've never put your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, you don't even have a furnace. And so the first thing that you need to do is say, Lord, please save me. I put my trust in Jesus Christ alone for my salvation. He'll build you a new house and put a brand new furnace and you will have first love for him. But if you're a true believer and you've had a furnace, And it's grown cold. Think about what you're missing. Think of how blessed you were before you drifted. Think of the joy, the satisfaction, the comfort you had when you were walking in God's presence. Miss it. Desire it. Secondly, once you've identified the things that have made you drift, John calls you next to repent, to put those things aside. By the way, repentance is not simply saying, I'm sorry, and then you go on with life. No, it's confessing to the people you've sinned against, confessing to God, obviously, first of all, and then it is turning. Inherent in that word is a turning away from sin. So it's a turning of your mind, it's a turning of your actions, and actually it's a turning of your emotions as well. Third, you need to fan the flames of love. And the way that John encourages you to do this is by engaging once again in the first works. What does he mean by that? Well, in marriage seminars, coaches remind husbands and wives that the fire cannot be reignited in their marriage unless they're willing to engage in hard work. and specifically the first works. And one of the jobs they give to the couple is to do the kind of considerate and loving deeds that they used to do when they were courting, when they were first married. They're encouraged to write love notes, go out for a walk in the park, massage the wife's feet, go out for a romantic dinner, cuddle. Talk to each other on the phone. The first works are the works that were done when your love was hot. Now, you might think, well, my love isn't hot, and it would be very hypocritical for me to engage in first works if my love is not hot. Well, that's ridiculous. You've just realized you're not hot. You're way out there on an inflatable raft, and you're going to say, oh, well, I'm out here. It'd be hypocritical to row back to center. That's ridiculous. Of course, you're going to paddle back. And if you can't paddle back, you cry out to the lifeguards to help you. Let me give you a tip. This is a weird, weird thing about emotions. You cannot energize your emotions directly. You energize your emotions through the back door by deeds. As you start doing loving deeds, your love starts returning. And the same is true in the spiritual realm. You might think, I will shout for joy when I feel joyful. No, you got it completely backwards. David shouted for joy in Psalms where he had everything in life going against him. He felt terrible. He felt dry and dusty. But he's insisting on being joyful, okay? Even though his emotions are not joyful, he's commanding his body to do what he knows in his mind he should do. His mind is in charge here, and he's commanding his lazy body to get on with it, okay? So the mind is first. The will follows where it is told to follow, and it forces the reluctant body and the reluctant emotions to serve the interests of the mind and spirit. And fascinatingly, when you start shouting praise to God in your study, And when you start crying out to God that He is so worthy of your love and far more than you could possibly give to Him, and when you start thanking Him, maybe even writing love notes to Him, you find that trickle of the emotion of love coming back into your heart and of joy and of thankfulness coming back. And before you know it, the level of spiritual emotion is growing. So Jesus knows what He's talking about when He says, I want you to engage in the first works, and then the first love will begin to return. And I'm not sure if my parents told me this or if it was somebody else, but it's an illustration that I remember as long as I can remember, going back to my young childhood. And that's the illustration of a steam engine train. And they said, your mind and your spirit are the engine of that train. And the will is the coal car that's right behind it, where you've got these guys madly shoveling the coal into the furnace, and the caboose are the emotions. So he said, when you've got your mind committed to thinking what it should be thinking, and telling your will, get with it, shovel in those first works, those first deeds, and the will's doing it, Will the caboose follow along? Well, of course it will. Cabooses always follow along, right? And that's the way it is with emotions. Now, I'll hasten to say that the caboose is not the only part of love. The whole train is love. The whole train of the mind, the will, and the emotions is love. It's agape love. It's a self-sacrificial love that runs the train even when it is tired, even when it doesn't feel like it. That's true love. And it is a blessing that the caboose of emotions tags along. but it tags along because of the first deeds, the shoveling of that coal. The first deeds are the stoking of the fire into the engine of the train, and a healthy love has mind, will, and emotions that are engaged. So, fan the flames of love by doing the first works of your Christianity. What do I mean by that? When you're feeling particularly dry, turn on the CD and start listening to worship music. And you don't feel like entering in with the music. Why can't I be joyful like that person who's singing, Lord? So you just say, I will be joyful. And you sing along. Even though you don't feel like it, you sing along with the worship music. Or it might be writing God a love note. Or it might be changing out your devotional readings from something that's highly dusty and academic into something that's a little bit lighter. This is something that Kathy was reading to me and reminding me. We went through this book a number of years ago, The Pleasures of God by John Piper. This is his, as far as I'm concerned, this is by far his best book, especially the first half of this book. It just sets my heart on fire. I read half a page and I'm worshiping God. So if you are feeling that you have drifted from the Lord, either buy this book or get the MP3, the What do they call them? CDs, whatever. Get those and listen to it. You can do it either way. So whether you're a reader or non-reader, this is a great book that can stir up your love. It might mean giving a thank-offering to the Lord. In the Old Testament, thank-offerings were where a person was so grateful to the Lord for his salvation, he just gave something because to the church. to the temple. And he would say, Lord, I'm giving you this thousand dollars just because I love you. I love you so much. Please accept it. And you know what? That sort of, that giving of that gift to the Lord was sort of like when you gave gifts to each other when you were courting and in your early marriage. It was fun to do that, right? It's a thank offering. And as you do that, it's an expression of your heart and your heart kind of follows along. Okay? Your first works might be to sing louder in church, to raise your hands, to dance, to fall on your knees, to share an insight from your devotions with your wife, or do something creative. One of the things at that worship seminar yesterday that Keith Gormley was talking about is the central concept of worship is to bow. So he says, why do we not bow in worship? And he talked about different ways that they bow. They kneel, just like we do in the confession time. But there are other ways we can bow. In a song, you may not be able to kneel. But he said, this is a bowing of your head. This is a bowing of your body. You know, Abraham bowed how many times before that one person to show his gratitude, his dependence upon the favors of that greater person that he was coming to. But let your whole body, soul, and spirit be involved in trying to return to the first works. And as you do that, the flicker of love in your heart will keep growing. So don't get frustrated that you don't have the first love and say, Lord, fix me. God's not going to just snap His fingers and say, okay, you're fixed. You're going to have a raging fire in your heart of love. No, forget it. He's not going to honor laziness. He says, do the first works. I think we husbands, we older husbands, and I was really convicted about this in my studies of this this past week. I mean, it's just, it's my analogy. This is mainly between the church and God, but that's to be the picture of our marriage, right? And I was really convicted that us old fogies need to do a little bit more of the first works with our wives, right? And just begin to fan that flame, that passion that we used to have for each other. Now, Kathy and I have got a great, great relationship. I am just so blessed by her. But you never stop improving, right? You never stop growing in these things. Just think of creative ways, how can I bless the other party? And that's what we're doing with the Lord, saying, Lord, how can I bless you better? Is there some creative way in which I can express my love to you? Okay, fourth, and I'm really, doesn't matter, we're just gonna keep going. Realize the repercussions of failing to change. He says in verse five, or else I will come at you swiftly and remove your lampstand out of its place unless you do repent. Did that happen to Ephesus? Unfortunately, yes, it did. A passionless Christianity cannot sustain itself generation after generation. There are repercussions, not just in your own life, there are repercussions for the next generation and the third generation. Now, let me give you a quick geography lesson that illustrates this so well. Ephesus used to be located at the mouth of the Kastor River as it emptied into the Mediterranean. And even in the first century, the harbor was beginning to silt up. Eventually, the silt completely stopped up the harbor. And Vic Reisner says in his commentary, today, the ruins of Ephesus is eight miles from the sea. The old harbor is now a grassy, windswept plain. Thus the town left the sea just as the church left Christ. Today there is no church in Ephesus, only a mosque. And Reasoner correctly surmises we will either have revival or ruin. Now our drifting from the Lord just doesn't seem dangerous. Just like that silt going into the harbor doesn't seem dangerous. Nobody seems to notice it. But you keep allowing that silt to come and eventually your life closes up completely. And the best remedy is to wake up, to change metaphors here, on our inflatable raft and gain a fear of the horrors of drifting away from the Lord. Now, the book of Hebrews is a motivational book. It uses positive motivations. It uses negative motivations. Let me share with you some of the negative motivations that warn us not to drift. Chapter 2 says, we will eventually find judgment. Chapter 3 says when we harden our hearts, we can end up being left by God to wander in the wilderness, just like that first generation of Israelites wandered in the wilderness aimlessly. Chapter 4 says that when we fail to diligently press into our inheritance, we can fall like the wilderness generation fell. Chapter 5 ends by saying that when we become lazy listeners, dull of hearing, eventually we can lose all spiritual sensitivity. We don't even hear the Spirit's voice working in our lives. Chapter 6 warns of the real danger of completely falling away. Chapter 10 warns that if we forsake the assembling of ourselves, we fail to stir each other up to love and good works, we can eventually grow so insensitive that we completely leave the faith. He goes on to say that he's confident of better things concerning them. Yes, things that accompany salvation, that a true believer will not abandon the Lord that way. But he's indicating, how do you know whether you're a true believer? How do you know? It's by whether God's grace is preserving you and you are persevering. So these are things we need to take to heart. So realizing the repercussions is helpful for avoiding the fate that happened to that wonderful, theonomic church of Ephesus, of which we now only have the ruins. So don't be like Ephesus. Fifth thing that we can do is to remind ourselves what we do have in common with God already. You know, just as husbands and wives can take each other for granted, it's easy for us to do that with the Lord. Now, one of the things that God says about them is, I share something in common with you, Ephesus. You hate the works of the Nicolaitans. I hate the works of the Nicolaitans. And one of the things that was encouraging to me on that is it's not as if their emotions were defective. Their emotions were very much engaged. They're passionately against this evil. They're passionately against those other things. And if they could be passionately against some things, they could be passionately for the Lord as well. So He calls them to love the things He loves, to hate the things that He hates. Sixth, get back into the Scriptures. Scripture is the fuel for the train of our Christian walk. And if you're starving yourself of the Scriptures, you're going to grow colder. If you're not stoking coal into the steam engine, your train is going to eventually stop. So Jesus tells the church, he who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Now, he who has an ear implies there's some people that don't have ears. What's he talking about there? Well, if you're regenerate, you've automatically been given a spiritual ear. But just because you have a spiritual ear does not mean you're using it. He says, okay, those of you who are regenerate, who have spiritual ears, you need to be using them. And if you don't use them, you're going to lose your spiritual sensitivity. So he says, you need to listen up. You need to see the Bible as being powerful, living, sharper than any two-edged sword, able to peer into your soul and expose your soul to the Lord. And He is present in your life as you're reading those scriptures. You need to see the scriptures as being Not just a sword, but a healing balm, and a hammer, and life-giving seed, and that God always accompanies it with power. But expect, come with faith when you're reading the Scriptures, with expectation that God will meet you. And you can get back into the Scriptures morning and evening. You can get back into the Scriptures by memorizing one verse a week. That's not a big goal. One verse a week, meditating on those Scriptures. But realize that immersion in the scriptures will produce tremendous results if we approach it by faith. I'm just going to give you a few scriptures. The Shema Israel is one of the most important passages of the Pentateuch. Deuteronomy 6, 4 through 9, it says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our Lord, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. So that's what Ephesus was lacking, right? And these words, which I command you today, shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, shall talk of them when you sit in the house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand. They shall be as frontless between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. He's talking about immersion in Scripture, and what is the result? Fantastic results. You keep reading and you say, the Lord will prosper you and everything, even your finances. Every area of your life you're gonna be prospered, and then he immediately warns them, hey, when you are prospered, you're gonna be tempted to think you did this all on your own, and that God did not prosper you on this, and you're gonna have this tendency to drift. And he said, do not allow that to happen. When I prosper you, do not allow yourself to drift. Joshua 1.8, This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. 1 Timothy 4.15, Meditate on these things. Give yourself entirely to them, that your progress may be evident to all. Now, I've already jumped to the last point, haven't I? I kind of jumped ahead of myself. These passengers are saying, it is totally worth it. But there is one final step that we see for restoring lost love, and that is to fight against inertia or anything else that hinders. Verse 7 says, to the one who overcomes. Now that phrase indicates it is a battle to not drift. Like the husband in the illustration that I started with, he had to paddle to get back to center. Overcoming implies resistance. And Satan, the world, and the... And the flesh will do everything that they can to keep you from having a full and joyful and meaningful and loving relationship with God. But fight against it. Without fighting, you will automatically drift. The whole Christian life is a fight. Be an overcomer. I've already answered the final question, is it worth it? And the passages I read say that God will prosper us in all that we do if we will return to first love. But verse 7 is just another way of saying the same thing. To the one who overcomes, I will grant to eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of my God. So you go back to paradise, what happened? Adam and Eve were banished from the garden and were banished. There was an angel standing guard so that they could not go back to the tree of life. Tree of life was their communion meal. So most importantly, they were banished from communion with God. So symbolically, what he is saying here is that we have been, now they were restored to provisional communion, not to the tree of life. to provisional communion through the sacrifice of animals. But he says in the new covenant we have been restored to a closer relationship to God than any old covenant saint could have. We can eat from the tree of life. Later he's going to say we can eat from the hidden manna. This is incredible. He says, it is worth it. If you will restore that first love, God will manifest Himself to you. In fact, I'm going to read that passage that Rodney preached on. Was it last week or the week before? John 14. It is a passage that makes my heart cry out to God. Lord, I want this. I want You to manifest Yourself to me. I want my love to grow to You. John 14, 15 through 23. But you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you a little while longer, and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live also. At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you." He who has my commandments and keeps them that is he who loves me and he who loves me will be loved by my father and I will love him and Manifest myself to him Judas not Iscariot said to him Lord. How is it you will manifest yourself to us and not to the world? Jesus answered and said to him if anyone loves me he will keep my word and my father will love him and We will come to him and make our home with him may each one of us have the richness the richness of that kind of Union with God the Father God the Son God the Holy Spirit hearts passionate for him Knowing that he's passionate for us Lord Jesus may this be true Father God take our hearts and take our hearts we bow before you and we say we're not worthy of the least of your mercies and yet here you offer so much you offer to manifest yourself to us to make your home with us father son and holy spirit blows us away that you would give us such a gracious provision thank you for loving us forgive us when we have taken that love for granted forgive us for having wandered from first love Father, help us to not just be concerned about being right and serving right and having everything pulled together right as a church, Father, and not have the fire of the furnace lit. Father, please, set our hearts on fire. As we read the Scriptures, may our hearts burn, burn with love for you, even as the disciples on the road to Emmaus had their hearts burning within them. father take us take our hearts to you our hearts we offer we realize it's so easy to drift it's so easy to leave this first love but we long for it father and we want to engage in the first works the rest of our lives so that we can experience this first love the rest of our lives may it be so Lord Jesus it's in his name we pray