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- I want to begin this morning
message with a question that I think is appropriate for Father's Day.
- Do you remember what it was like when you first fell in love?
- It's a question that hangs over
Jesus message for the church of Ephesus.
- As we begin thinking about Ephesus,
we start to wonder: What was Ephesus
like?
- Ephesus was the capital of the
Roman province of Asia, a bustling center of trade & commerce & was
well known for its temple dedicated to Artemis (Diana), which was one of the
seven wonders of the ancient world & a popular tourist attraction.
- Some 30+ years before the writing
of Revelation, on his third missionary journey, the apostle Paul spent 2 1/2
years there preaching & teaching, publicly & privately.
- Finally, however, the silversmiths
started a riot because so many were becoming Christians that they could no
longer profit from selling silver replicas of the idol of Artemis.
- Previously the city depended on the
tourists who worshiped Artemis & the sale of idols for much of this
prosperity.
- Artemis was a fertility goddess &
there was an active sex cult associated with her which promoted all kinds of
sexual immorality.
- Later, Paul appointed Timothy as
chief elder, & wrote the church of Ephesus a letter during his detention in
Rome as well as two letters to Timothy.
- History also records that the
apostle John served as chief elder after Timothy & remained in the city to
his final days. His constant word to the Ephesian Christians, even when he had
to be carried out to speak, was simply: "Little children, love one
another."
- The apostle John was utterly
convinced of the power of love, as he wrote in first John:
- "This is how we know what love
is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. & we ought to lay down our
lives for our brothers." (1 John 3:16, NIV)
- That brings me to our passage &
the questions we need to ask about it.
- Why was Christ pleased that the Ephesian church did not give up?
- The Lord Jesus knew their toil &
patient endurance; He knew how they could not tolerate false teaching; he saw
how they tested false apostles; he saw that they endured for Christ's sake &
not their own; he also knew of their intolerance for the teaching of the
Nicolaitans, which translated means, destroyer of the people.
- These false teachers compromised their
faith to enjoy the sexually immoral practices of the cult of Artemis.
- The Ephesians were busy with good works & willingly suffering for
Christ. Also to
their credit, they knew evil & false
teaching when they saw it & refused to put up with it.
- How can we spot false teaching?
- When it promotes controversy & division rather than
reaching others for the sake of God's kingdom in Christ.
- When the motive is for the teachers to make names for themselves.
- When the truth of what the Scriptures teach is contradicted.
- What one thing did Christ say the toil & patient endurance of the
Ephesian church lacked?
- The church of Ephesus lacked love. They cared more for right-thinking & right
believing than they cared for the Greatest Commandments.
- According to John's gospel, which
was written in Ephesus, the Lord Jesus said, "By this all will know that
you are my disciples if you have love for one another." (John 13:35)
- Later, John also wrote to them,
"This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.
& we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers." 1st John 3:16
- Again, to his dying day, John kept
reminding the Ephesians, "Little children, love one another."
- But even with all these reminders,
they forgot.
- How easy it is to forget love.
- How easy it is to lose sight of
what is most important.
- The apostle Paul tells us the fruit
of the Holy Spirit is love.
- Love is the evidence of the
presence of the Holy Spirit.
- Love is the energy which drives the
church.
- Love is the energy of renewal in
the church.
- Love also fuels the church's
vision.
- Without love, Paul wrote, I am
nothing.
- Without love, all our toil &
labor, all our patient endurance will amount to nothing.
- What did Christ say was the solution to the Ephesians' lack of love?
- The Lord Jesus told them to do two
things:
- First, Remember: "remember from where you have fallen."
- He called them to check the past &
remember.
- At one time, the apostle Paul had
commended them for their love in his letter to them.
- 30+ years in the past, Ephesus was
a loving church, glowing brightly with the love of Christ.
- But now God had called on them to
remember, remember the way it once was when they first loved the Lord.
- In calling the church of Ephesus to
remember from where they had fallen, the Lord Jesus was not giving them
permission to embrace a nostalgic longing for the good old days because in the
mind of our Lord the best days are yet to come.
- Checking the memory of how it used
to be is not an invitation to dwell in the past, but to recall the spiritual
high points in the life of the church to cause the church to evaluate where she
stands in the present.
- We also need to remember our
spiritual high points that remind us what we stand for, who we are in Christ &
where we have been.
- The only way to keep from
forgetting our first love is to practice remembering & the best practice is
rediscovering love every day.
- The second thing the Lord Jesus told the church of Ephesus they needed
to do was: Repent.
- "Repent
& do the works you did at first," he said.
- Repentance involves a change of
mind which includes a change of action.
- The Ephesian church needed to
repent & return to its first love because a church without love is going
the opposite direction God wants it to go.
- A church without love is traveling
down the road away from God.
- Repent, he said, & do the
things you did at first.
- This is why I think this is such a
crucial instruction for us on Father's Day & why I asked the question I did
at the beginning: Do you remember what
it was like when you first fell in love?
- Fathers &
husbands those things you used to do to show your wife & your children that
you loved them, & have stopped doing, remember, repent & do those
things again. (The same goes for mothers and wives)
- Church, says the Lord Jesus, those
things you used to do to show me, your great God, how much you loved me &
have stopped doing, remember, repent & do those things again.
- When you are in love, you do
certain things & they keep the fire of love burning strong & bright.
- Repentance, fixing & renewing
love means doing the same kinds of things you did when you first fell in love.
- It doesn't always mean the exact
same things, but it does mean doing similar kinds of things.
- Renewing love is a process of
discovery & rediscovery.
- Renewing love means risking trying
new things or doing old things in new ways, but always remembering where you've
been, who you are in Christ & where you are going.
- The Lord Jesus, by instructing his
church to repent, did not & does not want his church to have an emotional
experience.
- He's not selling a feel good high.
- He is also not interested in the
church waiting until she feels bad about her lack of love.
- He wants the church to get back to
keeping the Greatest Commandments & the new commandment in the spirit they
were given, a spirit of love & grace.
- In short, the renewal of love in the church requires one thing: hearts willing to
obey the call to repentance.
- The Spirit of God calls the church
to be renewed & the choice is left to us.
- We have to remember the forgiveness
we have received & the serious nature of sin to keep the joy of forgiveness
in our hearts.
- What would happen to the Ephesian church if they did not repent &
obey Christ?
- The Lord said, "If not, I will
come to you & remove your lampstand from its place, unless you
repent."
- In chapter 1, the Lord Jesus said that
"the lampstands are the churches."
- These lampstands also represent
true Judaism, as the menorahs, the lampstands of the Temple, are light for the
priests, so the church is a source of light for its community.
-To remove a lampstand from its place
is to remove the church as a source of light to the community.
- The consequence of disobedience &
unrepentance for the Ephesians is: they will cease to exist as a church.
- The lesson is that no church is
permanent. Each church is only as secure as her continued loving devotion to
Jesus Christ
- Ephesus obeyed Christ's warnings &
was glowing with love in the early 100s A.D., but by the Middle Ages Christian
witness had all but ceased to exist.
- One report tells of a traveler who
visited the area meeting only three Christians who had little knowledge of
either Paul or John.
- The church cannot have light
without love.
- Like Ephesus, we need to obey
Christ's warning before it is too late.
- We need to make love our top
priority because our light shines most brightly when we love Christ
passionately.
- Why was Ephesus being warned that their lampstand will be removed if
they did not repent?
- The Lord Jesus was, in part,
talking about natural consequences.
- The church shines the love of
Christ as long as the church is energized by love. Without love, she cannot
shine.
- A lampstand which does not shine is
as useless as a fruit tree which doesn't bear good fruit.
- The church's purpose is to love the
world like God loves the world, sacrificially & graciously.
- Jesus was saying that a lightless lampstand is only fit for
removal.
- Why is the tree of life relevant?
- The tree of life was in the
original Garden of God & humanity was prevented by God from eating its
fruit.
- This tree represents eternal life, & what is eternal
life?
- The Lord Jesus has already answered
that question. "And this is eternal life that they know you, the only true
God & Jesus Christ whom you have sent." (John 17:3)
- To know God is to know love. God's
reward for love is more love, eternal love in his eternal presence, in heaven.
- Our light shines most brightly when
we love Christ passionately.
- The One the church needs to love
most is her Lord, Jesus Christ.
- He is the energy behind our love.
As the apostle John wrote: "We love because he first loved us" (1st
John 4:19) & "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down
his life for us & we ought to lay down our lives for our
brothers."(1st John 3:16)
- Love is a fire that needs regular
attention. Without continued fuel, the flames die & love grows cold.
- How can we rekindle the flames of our love for Christ?
- We must continually look to our Lord Jesus:
- keeping the meaning of his suffering, death, & resurrection before
us;
- learning to follow the example he set of self sacrificial witness;
- & living in the light of the promise of eternal life by walking in
love
- We must remember from where we have fallen; repent & do the things
we did at first.
- As he promised, "to the one
who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life in paradise of God."
- Our light shines most brightly when we love Christ passionately.
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