September 23, 2001

Revelation 2:1-7

A Tale of Two Churches

1. Introduction

1. Illustration – Jack Kelley, foreign affairs editor for USA Today and nominated for a Pulitzer prize, tells this story: We were in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, in East Africa, during a famine. It was so bad we walked into one village and everybody was dead. There is a stench of death that gets into your hair, gets onto your skin, gets onto your clothes, and you can't wash it off. We saw this little boy. You could tell he had worms and was malnourished; his stomach was protruding. When a child is extremely malnourished, the hair turns a reddish color, and the skin becomes crinkled as though he's 100 years old. Our photographer had a grapefruit, which he gave to the boy. The boy was so weak he didn't have the strength to hold the grapefruit, so we cut it in half and gave it to him. He picked it up, looked at us as if to say thanks, and began to walk back towards his village. We walked behind him in a way that he couldn't see us. When he entered the village, there on the ground was a little boy who I thought was dead. His eyes were completely glazed over. It turned out that this was his younger brother. The older brother kneeled down next to his younger brother, bit off a piece of the grapefruit, and chewed it. Then he opened up his younger brother's mouth, put the grapefruit in, and worked his brother's jaw up and down. We learned that the older brother had been doing that for the younger brother for two weeks. A couple days later the older brother died of malnutrition, and the younger brother lived. I remember driving home that night thinking, I wonder if this is what Jesus meant when he said, "There is no greater love than to lay down our life for somebody else."
2. Context – You know, brotherly love is powerful, and can drive us to do incredible things. But, as the church in Ephesus found out, brotherly love isn’t enough in God’s sight. What Jesus has to tell us in Revelation 2:1-7 sheds a whole new light on what love is all about.

1. Scripture Passage

1. Revelation 2:1-7 – From The Message – Write this to Ephesus, to the Angel of the church. The One with Seven Stars in his right-fist grip, striding through the golden seven-lights’ circle, speaks: "I see what you’ve done, your hard, hard work, your refusal to quit. I know you can’t stomach evil, that you weed out apostolic pretenders. I know your persistence, your courage in my cause, that you never wear out. But you have walked away from your first love – why? What’s going on with you, anyway? Do you have any idea how far you’ve fallen? A Lucifer fall! Turn back! Recover your dear early love. No time to waste, for I’m well on my way to removing your light from the golden circle. You do have this to your credit: You hate the Nicolaitan business. I hate it, too. Are your ears awake? Listen. Listen to the Wind Words, the Spirit blowing through the churches. I’m about to call each conqueror to dinner. I’m spreading a banquet of Tree-of-Life fruit, a supper plucked from God’s orchard."
2. How often do we find ourselves like the Ephesian church – we start out on something strong, fade somewhat in the middle, but by the time we near the end we’re clearly running out of gas. Like us, the Ephesians didn’t do everything bad – they had their good points. But how you finish is just as important as how you start, and that concept is what we’re going to be talking about today.

1. A Strong Start

1. The Ephesian church got off to a strong start in their love. Paul commends them in the first chapter and again in the last verse of his letter to the Ephesians. In Ephesians 1:15-16, Paul writes, For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, ¹⁶ I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. And in Ephesians 6:24, he concludes, Grace to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with an undying love. They loved Christ and each other wholeheartedly. So what went wrong?
2. Let’s look at what they were doing right first. The Ephesian church was a lot like ours. Their deeds were good, they worked hard for the sake of the gospel, and they persevered in spite of great hardships. They couldn’t tolerate anyone who was wicked in their church and also found and rooted out false apostles. They hadn’t grown weary in doing the work of the church. In other words, the Ephesian church had done a good job of reaching out while remaining doctrinally pure. A lot like us.
3. Ephesus was a difficult place to be a Christian. It was the world’s hotbed for the worship of Artemis, also known as Diana, the Roman goddess of fertility. The Artemis temple in Ephesus was one of the "Seven Wonders of the World." There were hundreds of eunuch priests, virgin priestesses, and religious prostitutes serving at the temple. Worship rituals were quite erotic. A tough place to be a Christian. You know, the Lebanon area is a tough place to be a Christian. As many of you know, it is one of the drug capitals of the state and also abounds in Satan worship. And we’re no different than most of our country in that sexual sin runs rampant. Very similar to Ephesus in the time Revelation was written.
4. The church in Ephesus had persisted in reaching out while remaining doctrinally pure in the middle of very difficult circumstances. Sodaville Evangelical Church has persisted in reaching out while remaining doctrinally pure in the midst of some very difficult circumstances. Jesus commended the Ephesian church for their faithfulness. And I’m quite sure that He commends us for our faithfulness, too.
5. Illustration – Larry Davies, in Turning Points: A Church, the Messiah ... Wait! Why?, writes, Every Sunday for nearly three years Walter had a routine. Just before 10:00 a.m. he would open the doors to Epworth and prepare the church for worship. If the weather was cold, he would build a fire in the old wood stove. If it was hot, he would open all the windows and distribute the hand fans with a picture of Jesus on one side and an ad for a local funeral home on the other. Next, Walter would open the Bible located on top of the wooden pulpit and read the selected Scripture for that week. Then it would be time for prayer. Often there were folks in the community included on Walter's list. The latest national and world news would be mentioned. But always, Walter ended every prayer with a plea for God to remember and bless his beloved church. Every Sunday, Walter had a routine, but what makes this story so unique is that with very few exceptions, Walter began and ended the Sunday morning worship service ... alone. Alone? Why? Many years ago, Epworth church was built on land donated by a neighboring farmer, but if for any reason they stopped meeting regularly, if Walter stopped opening the church doors every Sunday, the property would revert to the original owners ... Epworth church would cease to exist. So what is the big deal? If Walter is the only one bothering to attend, let him go somewhere else or stay at home. Why not face the inevitable and allow Epworth to quietly disappear? What harm would it do? For Walter, it was a big deal. God had a divine purpose for his life and for the church he loved. But for now, Walter must be patient, be faithful ... and wait. Wait for what? ... One Sunday morning a young family, new to the area, visited Epworth and after meeting Walter joined him in worship. They found something unique about this little church nestled among the trees and the old man who faithfully opened her doors. On the following Sunday they came back and within a few weeks the children were bringing friends. At year's end a minister was hired. Today, Epworth is a small family church situated between several farms and hidden among the trees. Every summer they offer vacation Bible school for the neighborhood and each Christmas is celebrated with a pageant performed by the children. Many of the original family have died and some of the children have moved away, but the miracle of Epworth has never been forgotten. On the first Sunday of August, people come from across the United States to visit the church of their youth and relive the miracle of the old man who refused to let his beloved church die. The worship service is followed by a picnic on the church grounds. While the children are playing and the adults are eating, you may notice a family wandering over to the nearby cemetery. If you listen carefully, you'll hear a parent telling her child, "Let me tell you a story about Walter...." Faithfulness in following Christ and in doing the right things is very important.

1. First Love

1. The Ephesian church was doing the right stuff in many different ways. They were commended for it. But then Jesus calls them to the carpet for a very real problem – one that was a serious threat to the life of their church. They had walked away, left, forsook their first love. What exactly does that mean?
2. First love for Christ is a concept that I’ve thought about a lot, but I’m not convinced that I’ve ever really understood it until now. In a theological sense maybe I have, but on an emotional level it’s a hard thing to grasp. Matthew Henry writes that the church in Ephesus had not left and forsaken the object of it, but lost the fervent degree of it that at first appeared. John Walvoord, in The Revelation of Jesus Christ, writes, The church at Ephesus was now in its second generation of Christians, those who had come into the church in the thirty years since Paul had ministered in their midst. Though they continued to labor faithfully as those who had preceded them, the love of God which characterized the first generation was missing. This cooling of the heart which had overtaken them in relationship to God was a dangerous forerunner of spiritual apathy which later was to erase all Christian testimony in this important center of Christian influence. Thus it has ever been in the history of the church: first a cooling of spiritual love, then the love of God replaced by a love for the things of the world, with resulting compromise and spiritual corruption. This followed by a corruption of the faith and loss of effective spiritual testimony. Both Henry and Walvoord are right. The church hadn’t compromised with the culture as the Nicolaitans had. The Nicolaitans promoted a perversion of the concept of our freedom in Christ that mixed pagan sacrifices and sexual freedom with Christianity. In other words, they said that Christians had the freedom to do whatever they think is right. The Ephesian church didn’t buy into that lie and apparently did whatever they could to combat it.
3. But Jesus still said that the church was in serious trouble. They had been Christians long enough to become merely comfortable in their Christianity. They were still doing the right things, but because they were supposed to, not out of love for God. The Israelites fell away from God and were eventually kicked out of the Promised Land for the same reason. Doing the right things isn’t enough. They have to be done out of love for Jesus. The Ephesian church never did get it right. Sometime after a Christian council was held in Ephesus in 431 AD the church disappeared from the city, never to return.
4. It hurts me a lot to have to say this, and I only do so because my love of Christ compels me to, but right here we as a church have the same problem. We do the right things. We keep our doctrine pure. We reach out to others. We fight against compromising with our culture. Sometimes we even do these things for the right reasons, but very often we do them for the wrong reason. We’ll complain and nit-pick when things don’t match our personal preferences. We’ll argue about the way things are done and not pay any attention to why things are done. I’m not pointing any fingers because I’m guilty of the same things too. There is no such thing as a perfect Sunday School, or a perfect service, or a perfect church! There is no such thing as perfection this side of heaven! This breaks my heart! We as a church have forsaken our first love, our fervent and passionate love for Christ that ignores the little, insignificant, nit-picky things and seeks Him wholeheartedly instead. This is a great church with great people! Why do we settle for second best? Why? Why have we as a group settled for doing church instead of loving Christ? There is nothing wrong with programs as long as the "why" of them is love for Christ. Response has to come from relationship. That’s where we as a group fall short.

V. How Do We Regain Our First Love?

1. The best news of this passage is that Jesus outlines the cure for lost love. He tells the Ephesian church three things that they need to do to regain their first love. Had the Ephesians done them, there is no telling what powerful continuing impact on the present country of Turkey they could be having! So too with us. If we do them, there is no telling what powerful continuing impact we can have on the Lebanon area! So let’s figure out what they are and how we can do them.
2. In verse five in the NIV, Jesus issues specific commands: Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. Walvoord writes, To correct any departure from God the first step is to go back to the place of departure. In other words, remember the ardor, the sense of passionate desire to know Christ and love Him completely that we had when we first realized we have a relationship with the living God. We need to regain that sense of wonder that Christ loves us, and an overwhelming love of Him has to consume us. Remember those times in your life when you loved Jesus so much you could hardly stand it. That’s what we as individuals and as a church have to recapture. We need to remember the heights from which we’ve fallen.
3. Second, we have to repent of the sin of walking away from our first love for Christ. The Greek for repent means to change your thinking, to think differently. In other words, when our attitudes toward Christ changed, our first love was forsaken. There are many dangerous attitudes we can have toward Christ. One is to try to keep our "fire insurance" while still thinking we can live the way we want. Another is to think that we can handle all of life’s problems on our own so that Jesus becomes just a nice person to talk to and have around in case things get really bad. Perhaps the most dangerous is to draw a line in our lives, to tell Jesus "this far and no farther." All of them will make our love grow cold. We will still for the most part do the right things but not for the right reasons. These attitudes happen to us as a church as well. We pray for God’s help, but believe we can do things on our own until the world crashes down around us. We do things in His name without first asking God whether He wants us to do them at all. We tell Jesus, "This far and no farther," when He invades our comfort zone. It isn’t my intention now or ever to go into specifics on these things. We as a church need to sit down as figure out where these attitudes are present among us and repent of them. We as individuals need to figure out where these attitudes are present in our hearts and repent of them. We have to repent of walking away from our first love.
4. Third, Jesus commands the Ephesian church to do the things you did at first. The Greek puts it even more strongly: the first works do! As Walvoord writes, A true love for God is always manifested in the works which it produces. What are some of the things we do when we are passionate in our love for Christ? Well, we tend to spend more time in prayer and Bible reading. We give Him credit for all the good that happens in our lives. We are kinder and more loving and more considerate toward others. We are much more eager to share our faith with those around us. The list could go on. Do we do some of these things when we’ve lost our first love? Sure, but the difference is the passion and the wholehearted love and devotion for Christ. The attitude makes the difference. Jesus is telling us to do the things, but do them because we love Him passionately and wholeheartedly. Above all, do whatever it takes to regain our first love. That’s what He’s saying. The consequences of ignoring Him are simply too great to risk.
5. Illustration – A.W. Tozer, in The Pursuit of God, writes Come near to the holy men and women of the past, and you will soon feel the heat of their desire after God. They mourned for Him, they prayed and wrestled and sought for Him day and night, in season and out, and when they had found Him, the finding was all the sweeter for the long seeking. Moses used the fact that he knew God as an argument for knowing Him better. "Now therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, show me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight"; and from there he rose to make the daring request, "I beseech thee, show me thy glory." God was frankly pleased by this display of ardor, and the next day called Moses into the mount, and there in solemn procession made all His glory pass before him. If we want to avoid the fate of the Ephesian church, our desire for God has to burn hot. There is simply no other way.

VI. Conclusion

1. I’m going to be honest with you. I don’t like this message from God to our church. And I hate having to be the one to bring it. So I don’t really know the appropriate way for us to close this time, except to tell you that we need to spend some time in prayer, confession and repentance. The front of the sanctuary is open if you’d like to come up and kneel. Or you can pray in your seat.
2. The challenge is great. The risks are great. But the risks of ignoring the message Jesus has for us are even greater. Let’s spend some time praying, confessing and repenting over our lost first love. If you feel led to pray out loud for yourself or for the people of this congregation, go ahead. But pray hard!
3. Now let’s pray together.