Dear Church Week 1: Inviting Truth and Love: Insights from the Ephesus Church | Revelations 2:1-3, 6

Hi, it's Pastor Jonathan and thanks for downloading the FBC El Dorado Sermon Podcast.

We hope today's message will challenge and help you take the next step as you follow Jesus.

If you're a long day at work, or maybe a long week at work, you sit at your kitchen table and you begin to rifle through all the mail that you've received.

The top of the stack of mail there's a credit card application.

You think to yourself trash, you throw it away.

And then next in that stack is a stack of like coupons for all these fast food restaurants that you never go to.

You think to yourself well, that's more trash.

And then below that you find one, two, three catalogs for furniture and clothing and electronics and you're like I don't need any of this stuff More trash.

Our lives are filled with junk mail, aren't they?

You can identify with what I just described because last year catch this, last year 62 billion pieces of junk mail were delivered to homes of Americans.

That's 52% of all of the mail delivered by the United States Postal Service.

But it also occurs when you check your email.

You know, instead of thinking trash, trash, trash, when you check your email you just click delete, delete, delete.

Right, this 56% of all emails delivered last year in the United States were junk email.

Junk mail whether it's physical or digital.

It's mail that we did not want, so we do not read.

It's mail that we discard without a second thought.

But not all mail is junk mail.

Of course some mail would be bills.

Make sure and pay those okay.

Other mail that you receive are appointment reminders.

Make sure and not don't be late.

But there's this fourth type of mail.

It's mail that when you open it and read it, it becomes one of your prized possessions.

All the way back in October of the year 1860, a little girl named Grace she was 11 years old wrote a letter to then presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln.

In that letter she had a suggestion for Abraham Dear Abraham, if you want to win the election, you need to grow a beard.

She explained in that letter that she thought if he would grow a beard she could convince her two brothers, who weren't voting for him at the time, to go ahead and vote for Abraham Lincoln.

In short order, young Grace received a reply.

Imagine that day when she opens and reads the letter of this man running for president and Abraham Lincoln actually tells her I think people are going to think I'm a little bit silly if, at this point in the presidential election, I decide to grow a beard.

But apparently he took young Grace's advice.

He in fact grew the beard.

But think about Grace, 11-year-old girl that nobody knows.

Yet the man who became her country's leader sent her a handwritten personal letter that no doubt became a treasured possession.

I've never written a letter to a president, nor have I received a letter from a president, but I do have some letters that are prized possessions.

In one of my email accounts I have an entire folder called Lauren and it's just like a collection of emails that Lauren sent to me between August of 2003 all the way to April of 2005.

Those were like the two years when I was living in North Carolina and she was living in Arkansas completing college.

I have every one of those emails.

One of them, in fact, is just her saying I've got a surprise for you, and it's like a ticket, like she planned a random trip to come see me in North Carolina.

There's no message, it's just the receipt for her flight that she was going to come and see me.

I read through some of those this week and they're really sappy.

We were, I was 22, 23 years old and she was, you know, 21 years old, but they're still a prized possession.

They were a letter from someone who loves me and someone who I love, and you've probably got a card or a letter that is a prized possession in your life as well A letter from a best friend who's moved away, a letter from your mom who recently passed away, a letter of acceptance from the school of your dreams, a card from your fiance who's now your spouse.

Junk mail so cluttered our life and over fills our trash cans that we forget the potency of a handwritten letter.

Letters show interest because they require such time and thought and effort to write.

Writing a letter, whether it's a letter of encouragement or a letter of correction, is an investment in the life of another person, and maybe that's why Jesus chooses to write us letters.

Jesus understands the power of a letter.

Too often our souls are like our kitchen counters.

Our souls are cluttered with junk mail.

Our souls are cluttered with the unwanted messages from pop culture that are calling us to conform.

Our souls are filled with these unsolicited letters from society that are hoping to sway us to live lives of compromise, not lives of faithfulness.

Lives of compromise that go against God's will and God's word for our life.

We think to ourselves that's just how the world works, that's how the sausage is made.

Everybody's doing it.

Why can't I?

Maybe the question at the beginning this morning is are you willing to throw away that junk mail, to stop reading it, to stop filing through it, so that your soul, and even this church, can be stirred by the words of some?

Let's call it Jesus' mail.

Yeah, each of us, we need desperately a word written to us directly from the pin of King Jesus because, listen, jesus is greater than any leader of any country.

He is Lord over all of creation.

We need a word from the pin of King Jesus because Jesus showed us what real love is.

He gave up his life for us.

So we've got to throw it away, we've got to turn it off, all the junk mail, and devote our attention to reading Jesus' mail.

So today we're beginning this series called Dear Church, and each week in this series we're going to open God's word to the final book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, where we will read one of the seven letters that Jesus himself wrote to one of the ancient churches in Asia Minor.

Those letters are found in Revelation, chapter two and chapter three.

And the number seven is really important because in Revelation and throughout the Bible, the number seven symbolizes completeness, wholeness.

Think about it seven days of creation.

On the seventh day the walls of Jericho fell.

On the seventh plunge into the river Jordan, the Leopard named Naaman.

He was healed.

Completeness, wholeness, the totality of something.

So there are seven specific historical churches, but also, because there are seven, we know this they represent those churches, represent the church on every continent and every generation.

Yes, these are ancient letters written to them, but they are also letters written for us.

They are letters we need to pay attention to.

If we don't want to what live lives of compromise, if we don't want to live lives that conform to the culture, we need to pay attention to the words of Jesus.

So today, in week one, we're going to read Jesus' letter to the church at Ephesus, to kind of understand Jesus' writing to them.

We're going to heed two commands.

We're going to follow two commands.

Command number one listen.

Command number two learn, listen and learn.

So listen carefully to Revelation, chapter two.

I'll start reading verses one through three and also read verse six at the beginning, to the angel of the church in Ephesus'.

Right, these are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lamp stands.

I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance.

I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false.

You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name and have not grown weary for six, and you have this in your favor.

You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.

Each piece of Jesus' mail found in Revelation, chapter two and three, begins the exact same way.

While John is the one who records these words, they are not his words.

Jesus is the one who is the author of these letters.

That means John is simply the secretary.

He is writing down what he is being told, and it's because these words are the very words of Jesus spoken to, then written down by the man named John, that we must listen.

Here's the reason we need to listen Jesus is all powerful.

Jesus is all powerful.

Jesus begins each of these letters with the exact same phrase.

He says these are the words of.

He uses that phrase these are the words of because that phrase mirrors how the Old Testament prophets would introduce an oracle from God.

A.

Thus says the Lord moment.

The expectation in the Old Testament, when God, the Father, spoke through a prophet to the people of God, was that they would listen and obey.

They would take to heart what God spoke to them.

They didn't always do it, but that was the expectation.

In the same way, when the Son of God speaks to John and says these are the words of, he has the expectation that his church will what?

Listen to what he is saying, take these words to heart.

They will pay attention and apply them to their lives.

They will listen to Jesus because he is all powerful.

Jesus is more powerful than all the voices that they would hear in their Roman culture.

Notice what Jesus then says.

Next he describes himself.

He says this that he is the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand.

He is the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand.

So if you go back to the first century, you go back to the Roman Empire.

It's a huge understatement to say this about the emperors of Rome.

They had huge egos.

The emperors of Rome believed themselves to be gods and so after they would die, they would get added.

Their name would get added to the pantheon of Roman gods, and so they would depict themselves as gods on the currency of the empire.

But then an emperor named Domenician took this a step further.

In the year 83 AD, the emperor Domenician has a 10-year-old son who dies unexpectedly, and so what he's decides to do is he commissions a new coin.

The front of the coin, you see, is the face of his wife, the emperor's wife.

Well, the back is his son, who is now passed away.

He deifies his son.

In the moment, the son of Domenician sits atop a globe and do you see what is there?

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven stars.

The emperor's son holds the seven stars in his hand.

He wants the people in Rome to believe his son is now one of the gods and he is all powerful.

But Jesus to his church in Ephesus says not so fast, my friends, the son of Domenician is not all powerful.

I, the only son of God, I am truly the one who holds the seven stars, who holds all of the power in my hands.

By telling the church to listen to him, by explaining to the church that he is the one who is all powerful, jesus, in essence, is asking the church this question.

He's asking the church of Ephesus and inelderate of this question who has your ear?

Who has your ear?

Who are you listening to?

Like the ancient world and the modern world, people who have really big egos in our culture.

What do they want you to believe about them?

They hold all the power, right.

Then life kind of starts and stops with them.

But Jesus asks his church who has your ear?

The one who claims to have power or the one who truly holds the power?

Maybe think of it this way who has your ear?

Like the political cycle has already begun, right.

Who holds your ear?

Do you like stop everything and like, with great attention, watch a town hall meeting with a politician?

Like you're just riveted?

Some say no, others of you.

I know the answer is yes, but it's been months since you just sat in silence and had that same level of focus, seeking the voice of Jesus.

Do you drop anything in your life when the notification comes upon your iPhone your favorite follow on Instagram or YouTube is posted new content.

So you drop everything that you're doing and you watch the content.

You share the content, you comment on the content like you love it.

You want everyone else to watch it, but you haven't prayed for more than 20 seconds, and even those 20 seconds, like you can't wait to say amen so you can keep scrolling through.

Do you let like the all powerful pull of the razorbacks in the fall, or your kids' extracurricular activities or the hunting seasons in Arkansas, that all powerful pull determine how you spend your time, how you build your schedule, but you can never find time to worship?

Who has your ear?

Is it the message of all of the junk mail that is calling you to conform and live a life of compromise, or is it Jesus mail?

And friends, hear me, if you remember only one thing from today's sermon, remember this In life listen to the voice of Jesus above any other voice that is speaking to you.

Learn to identify and hear His voice over all of the other voices and I promise, if you tune in and you try to pinpoint His voice in your life, he's going to speak.

You will hear Him speak to you and we know that's true because Jesus then says he says that he is walking among the seven lampstands.

Each of those lampstands it represents a church, one of the seven churches of Asia Minor, and I believe this that just as Jesus walked among those churches.

He walks in this church.

He walks up and down the pews, up and down the aisles, up the stairs into the balcony, through classrooms and hallways and fellowship hall areas.

He walks through your home as the church disperses out into our community.

Jesus is with us.

He is intimately present with his church, asking us to listen to him, asking us to tune into his voice.

He wants us to listen to him because he's got something to teach us.

He wants us to learn something really important.

Here's what Jesus wants us to learn Truth minus love equals death.

Truth plus love equals life.

Truth minus love equals death.

Truth plus love equals life.

Let's first talk about that word truth.

So Jesus commends the church at Ephesus for their commitment to the truth.

They had two challenges to the truth in Ephesus.

First, there are false apostles who had visited them.

An apostle would be someone who purports that they received a direct commission from the resurrected Jesus to go throughout the ancient world and to declare the gospel.

And since they didn't know these supposed apostles, when they came to Ephesus they were questioned by the church leadership and their message was found to be wanting.

It was found to be false.

But they're not only contend against false apostles.

They have to stand up against the Nicolatans.

In kind of summary, these are Christians in the first century who decided that it was easier to live a life of compromise, to go along with culture, than it was to live a life that was faithful to Jesus Christ.

Here's the thing.

Isn't that what the church in every generation faces?

To stand for the truth in such a way that we don't live lives of compromise?

And the truth above all other truths is the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

First Corinthians 15 summarizes it this way.

Paul says I pass on to you what was most important.

What was most important.

This is the truth above any other truth.

This is what you have to cling to.

This is what you build your life upon.

This is what your church has founded upon.

This is what you care about more than anything else.

It is most important and what has also been passed on to me Christ died for our sins.

Christ died for our sins.

That means Jesus was fully man.

He died a real death.

Christ died for our sins.

It means that Jesus was fully God.

His death, then, as someone who was fully man and fully God, was no ordinary death, because his death paid the debt of our sin.

He was buried, it goes on to say.

Jesus did not just appear to die.

Jesus really died.

He had to experience the fullness and the reality of death so that he could defeat death, so that he could defeat the devil, so that he could pronounce God's victory in the world.

He had to experience it all and he was raised from the dead on the third day.

Just as the Scripture said, jesus is alive.

The resurrection vindicates to the world that Jesus is Lord and King.

Hope has come.

This is the foundational truth upon which every church is founded and every disciple must act upon.

It's the truth of the gospel from which we must never deviate.

It's the gospel truth that, when fully embraced, leads us away from lives that could be compromised.

You know, the siren call of compromise still beckons in our world, doesn't it?

It's a compromise for God's children that wants to listen to these voices of culture that call us away from what God has told us is true, right and good.

A compromise that we see trying to redefine things like marriage and disregard biological gender and that discounts the sanctity of human life.

It's a compromise that tries to find ways to link our partisanship and the political process to the kingdom of God.

It's a compromise that allows our pursuit of economic wealth to promote things like exploitation and greed.

It's a compromise that allows our families enjoyment of things like youth sports and going to the lake to become an idol in our life.

I've tried to make everybody in the room kind of uncomfortable this morning.

You're so welcome.

Listen.

We all have areas of compromise in our heart and the only remedy for compromise is the one true gospel of Jesus Christ.

So that's the importance of truth.

Now we need to understand the irreplaceable role of love in all of this.

Verses four and five say yet I'll hold this against you.

You have forsaken the love you had at first.

Consider how far you have fallen.

Repent and do the things you did at first.

If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.

The love that Jesus is talking about specifically is the love that members of a church should show and express towards one another.

He had commanded his disciples with this new command love one another.

As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.

He doesn't say if you believe all the true things, they will know you are my disciples if you love one another, because the truth of the gospel overflows in love.

How we treat each other, how we look upon each other, how we embrace one another Apparently in the Ephesian church, years of battling for the truth had let them cold towards each other.

Maybe they were just worn out.

Maybe the fog of war left them with this thought that their brothers and sisters in Christ had become enemies, like they couldn't see them for being a part of their one family.

Whatever the reason, though, the church was failing to love, and the result was disastrous.

Because why?

Truth minus love equals death.

Jesus' words, not my words.

Truth minus love equals death.

Jesus says church of Ephesus, pay attention, you are on life support.

Church of Ephesus.

You got to get this corrected, because if you don't, the lampstand will be removed.

By that, it just means this God's judgment will fall on you and you'll stop being a church and you'll just become a club.

Okay, you'll stop being a church, you'll just be a club, like people who like to hang out with each other, put up with one another, but you won't be a lampstand that shines the light of Jesus Christ into the city of Ephesus or into the city of El Dorado.

So here's what I'm happy to report.

A lack of love is not the problem of this church.

You guys truly love each other.

It's one of the reasons I love being your pastor.

You care about each other, you watch out for one another, you support each other, you come beside each other and I think that is one reason why this congregation, when people join us for worship for the first time, they think this isn't what I expected, not stuffy and cold.

It's a room filled with love.

I can truly sense that you guys like each other, you love each other, you want to be together.

So over the fourth of July weekend you may know this two of our members, britt and Angela Stewart they're here this morning they lost their home to a fire and when I spoke to Britt in the aftermath of that event, one of the very first things he told me, first things out of his mouth, was something to the effect of I'm just blown away by the love of my church, blown away by it.

One of our members was said I've got plenty of room.

Y'all should move in for a little bit.

Other members just called and offered words of encouragement and prayer.

Other members like collected gift cards to support them so they could kind of buy some essentials that they had lost.

And that's just really one story, one story of the way I've seen people express and show love to each other.

Stories of you know people needing a car and they really couldn't afford it, but they needed it to get to their job or to get around town.

And people came together and, just like outside of a normal church, offering you didn't get a tax deduction, they just collected money and they went and bought somebody a car.

Stories of you know people unexpectedly losing a loved one and members just going and sitting with them and talking to them.

Members in our church who have to travel to Littoroc for doctor's appointments, for treatments.

They couldn't drive themselves, they just weren't up for it, they didn't feel well, the traffic was too much.

So friends in the church would take them on a regular basis, sometimes every single week, to doctor's appointments in Littoroc.

I could go on and on and on.

Except I just want to say praise God, hallelujah, that the love of Jesus Christ is present in this place.

Never take that for granted.

The love of Jesus is present.

And when truth, the truth of the gospel, is combined with love, what do we know is true?

It equals life.

It equals life.

Verse seven says this whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life which is in the paradise of God.

That's the tree of life that was first mentioned and we read about in the account of creation, found in Genesis.

It became a symbol of God's blessedness, the hope of eternal life that God offered to his people, all who ate of it, all who shared in it, listen.

The presence of truth in this church, our commitment to the one true gospel, the reality of love and the way that we care for one another, testifies to the fact that we have been born again, testifies to the fact that we have been given the gift of eternal life.

Without the gift of life, without being born again, we would trade truth in for lies.

Without Christ, we could not love the same way that we love right now.

There would be hate and there would be dissension.

But because there is truth and because there is love, we know that this is a place.

We are a group of people who cling to the hope of eternal life that we have in Jesus Christ, free of charge.

The best way to get rid of junk mail in your life is actually you can opt out of it.

Did you actually know this?

I learned this this week.

The Federal Trade Commission has published a 1-800 number that you can call and opt out of all sorts of junk mail that comes to your house 1-888-85 opt out.

I'll tell you that later if you forget.

But more than opting out of the junk mail that fills our mailboxes, we need to opt out of all that junk mail that clutters our soul, all those voices in pop culture that are calling us to conform, all those unwanted letters from society hoping to sway us to lives of comfort and of compromise.

We have to opt out of all the junk mail so we can opt in, receive and read and take to heart all of these pieces of Jesus mail.

So let's recommit ourselves, rededicate ourselves, open our ears to listen to the voice of Jesus and learn and take to heart that important lesson that truth plus love equals life.

Maybe the natural question to ask then is this have you received the gift of eternal life?

The truth of the gospel has been spoken.

The love of Christ is in this place.

Have you received the gift of eternal life?

Have you put your faith in Jesus Christ?

Let's stand together and pray.

Let's just close our eyes and bow our head right now, and we pray this to God and we just say Holy Spirit, move, jesus, speak.

We are listening.

Jesus, speak words of life in this place.

You are Lord over all creation.

We are listening.

Jesus, let your truth fill this place, the truth of your one gospel you died for our sins.

You were buried according to the scriptures.

You rose again on the third day, and that is a first importance.

Let that truth fill this place and let your love fall down on us from heaven, binding us together so that we can be your witness in the world.

Speak, jesus.

Holy Spirit, move.

I just pray and I ask God, if there's someone in this room who has yet to put their faith in you, jesus Christ, that today would be the day they come forward and say I'm a sinner, I need a savior.

I'm gonna trust in the death and the burial of Jesus Christ, his sin atoning death, to give me the hope of eternal life.

Jesus, we pray this in your name, amen.