Revelation 2:1-7

We study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel, and I'm so excited to enter our third week now in the book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible.

66 books in a library.

We call the Word of God.

And this one in particular, fascinating book.

It really is three different kinds of literature, all wrapped up in one.

It's apocalyptic literature, it's prophetic literature, and it is a letter as well, multiple letters, even in the first in chapters two and three.

And we begin studying that first letter from chapter two today.

We're calling our study the hope of glory.

That's why we were created, isn't it?

To glorify God and enjoy him forever.

And so we're designed with that in mind.

Our souls flourish best when we're glorifying God, not only seeing it and observing it in the world around us, but experiencing it ourselves as he begins to glorify himself in changing us, transforming us into the image of his dear son Jesus Christ.

And so this is a great book, uh, wonderful, filled with hope, and the kind of hope that we need even in times such as we are living.

I want to post up on the screen for you the overall outline for the book.

Uh it contains really, it could be broken down into these seven vision narratives, if you will.

Vision one is chapters one through three and uh culminates with the letters to the seven churches.

Vision two, chapters four through eight, verse one, uh the vision of the seven seals.

Vision three, chapters eight, uh two through chapter 11, the visions of the seven trumpets.

Um, then we have vision four, which is chapters 12, 13, and 14, and describing the great battle against Satan.

Isaiah 12 · chapter mention

Vision five is chapters 15 and 16, the vision of the seven bowls, uh vision number six is chapters 17 through 19, downfall of Babylon, and vision seven, uh, those last three amazing chapters, 20, 21, and 22, where the uh uh the description of the new heavens and the new earth when Christ comes to set things right, everything right that is broken in this world.

Isaiah 15 · chapter mention Isaiah 17 · chapter mention

I'm so excited about the the way this book is forward-looking and so filled with hope of glory.

Today we'll look at chapter two, verses one through seven.

It's the letter to the church at Ephesus.

And as we begin to read the book of Revelation, the deeper we get into it, uh we immediately get the impression that we've entered a strange new world.

It overflows with symbols, with signs, with seals, uh, candlests, angels, beasts, serpents, dragons, fire, earthquake, uh, bowls of wrath, and it climaxes with that great vision of the new heavens and the new earth when all that's wrong will be finally set right.

Chapter one closed with John on his face in front of Jesus in wonder and worship.

And it just reminds me, that's really the intent of this when you when you study the whole book.

It's it's not to make you worry about the future, but it's meant to lead you to wonder and worship this one, this God who has loved us so much that he sent his son Jesus to die for us, to pay the price for our sins, to rise again from the grave, proving he was victorious over our last and greatest enemy, and uh whose promise to return one day and set things right, should fill us, just overflowing with wonder and worship, just like John falling at his feet, bowing before him.

Um, and as well, Christ already in chapter one, having revealed to John that he's moving among his churches, that he's right there in the middle of those lampstands, and he tells John, those lampstands they represent the churches.

Those stars that Jesus holds in his hands, those seven stars, represent the messengers or the angels that are going to be sent to these churches, uh, either angelic beings or perhaps the leadership of the church, or perhaps, as some commentators say, the personification of the general disposition or the spiritual disposition of those churches.

Um it could be any of the above.

I mean, that's just it's mind-blowing and eye-popping and heart thumping, and that's good.

Uh, again, driving us to fall at his feet in wonder and worship.

Let's read then the first letter of the seven letters, the letter of the church at Ephesus, which, by the way, important city back then.

And I'll put a map up on the screen in just a moment, but first let's read this letter to the angel of the church in Ephesus, right?

The one who holds the seven stars in his right hand, the one who walks among the seven golden lampstands, says this.

I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot endure evil men.

And you put to the test those who call themselves apostles and they are not, and you found them to be false.

You have perseverance and you've endured for my name's sake, and you've not grown weary.

But I have this against you that you have left your first love.

Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first, or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place unless you repent.

Yet this you do have that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitians, which I also hate.

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

To him who overcomes, I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.

So, man, really fascinating opening letter, isn't it?

Lots of images there, lots of questions, it kind of stirs up.

Let's begin with Ephesus.

Let's put the map up on the screen for you to be able to see.

So here we have uh sort of a uh the the in the shaded in the colored section, what you can see is the seven names of the seven different churches that are up there.

And they're basically uh an old Roman postal route they sit on that.

Ephesus being the one that uh John, if he were to sail from Patmos, which he did do, uh if he were to when he did, he he could have gone directly to Ephesus, which was a huge port city, and then on to Smyrna and Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, and Philadelphia, and Laodicea, kind of in the horseshoe horseshoe shape of the postal ancient Roman postal route and the trade route.

Very important Ephesus as a city because of its uh being a port city, uh so uh commercially important, um, religious, from a religious standpoint, massively important because it had the Temple of Artemis or the Temple of Diana, as it was variously called, depending on if you're using the Greek or the Roman name for this uh fictitious goddess.

Um and so it was a really significant uh city, think major metropolitan city, uh, and the apostle Paul, of course, given to uh whenever he would stop and preach the gospel on his missionary journeys, and in this particular case with Ephesus, it's on his return trip back toward uh Jerusalem and Antioch and all of that.

That on his return trip from his second missionary journey, he stops in Ephesus.

And then at the beginning of uh uh the next missionary, the third missionary journey, he goes directly there.

I mean, he's he's really interested in getting there and becomes quite close to the folks who are in Ephesus.

Um, and he ends up spending two and a half, three years there uh at one point in time.

So, really important city.

Let's look then also at the common pattern that we see in the seven letters to the seven churches.

All of them, just as this one did, uh, begin with the city name of the church, to the church at Ephesus, it says here.

So that's really the angel in the church at Ephesus, right?

And so John is being instructed by Jesus to write a letter.

That letter is gonna go to the messengers or the messenger of that church.

And again, whether that's an angelic being or representative uh sort of uh body of leadership and at the church or whatever.

Uh, either way, um, the idea is that this letter is gonna ultimately get to the church itself.

And it's so it begins with the city name.

Each of the letters begins with a reference to the Christ of chapter one.

Um, and so um a good reminder that it's this is the same Jesus that's talking here, and that Jesus is at the center of his church.

Uh, there's a commendation of the church.

I know this about you in most cases.

Uh, in most cases, there's an admonition or an accusation to the church.

I have this against you.

Uh as Eugene Peterson says, the fleas come with the dog.

So, you know, there we're we're churches are made up of individuals, individuals who are sinners whom God is redeeming.

And so, uh, man, if you uh the old saying is if you find a perfect church, don't join it because you'll ruin it.

Uh that's true.

We're all sinners.

Um, uh, the church is full of hypocrites.

That's true, it is, but so is the rest of the world, full of hypocrites.

You can't get away from hypocrites or hypocrisy.

So the admonition, though, is still specific.

It comes from Jesus, the exhortation to the church.

Here's what you should do.

The summons to hear and to heed.

He who has an ear is typically the way it's said.

If you have an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the church.

The motivating promise is uh to he who overcomes in this particular case, uh, he'll get to eat of the tree of life, which is really wonderful.

Um, so behind it all is this big idea that the church was God's idea, and that the church, uh, for all of its failures, faults, weaknesses, um, the church yet is and remains God's idea, God's people.

It's the context where God is worshipped, where God is praised, where God is prized, um, where we gather together to uh encourage one another, support one another, even though we don't do it perfectly, but we gather together to do that.

We don't gather together to look down our nose at one another, we don't gather together to condemn one another, we don't gather together to impress each other.

We're there to worship the Lord.

This is what the church ought to be.

Eugene Peterson says the gospel pulls us into community.

One of the immediate changes that the gospel makes is grammatical.

We instead of I, our instead of my, us instead of me.

And that is so true.

When we do the, when we when we recite the Lord's Prayer, the same thing is true.

It's very, it's all in the plural, our Father who are in heaven.

Forgive us, our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass, and on and on it goes.

And even the apostles creed, we believe in God the Father Almighty.

Everything's in the plural.

When you become a follower of Jesus, you belong to Jesus, but you also belong to everybody else who belongs to Jesus.

And that may be good news or bad news for some of you, but um, but it is really ultimately good news.

It's the context, the community of faith is the context wherein God has chosen to work out our salvation and relationships where we're giving and taking.

It's a really beautiful thing.

This letter to Ephesus can be broken down this way.

Here's this uh connection to chapter one, the Christ who has been revealed there.

He's the one who holds the seven stars and walks among the seven lampstands.

Again, Jesus is central.

There'd be no church without Christ.

Christ is now not just standing uh in the center of, but walking among his churches.

He's got personal, intimate, dynamic knowledge of his churches.

And so it's really, really beautiful.

He I wonder as he walks among his churches today, and he walks in and around Village Chapel, uh, Hillsborough Village and Village Chapel, East Nashville, and he walks in and among other churches that are sister churches, like Emmanuel Church, um, like like Christ Press, like Christ Community Church, like West End Community Church.

What is he seeing as he goes and moves among his churches?

Um, and what would he say to us even today?

I think this is so important.

There's the commendation in this uh letter as well.

Uh, Jesus says, I know your deeds, I know your works.

Three things really.

I know your works, I know your doctrinal purity.

That is, you've tested those who claim to be apostles, and some of them are not.

They're false teachers.

And that this was this was rife in their day and time, as it is now in our own day and time.

Uh, we need to learn how to discern, though.

And uh just like the Ephesians did.

They did it so well, evidently, that they're getting praise here from Jesus for the fact that they're doctrinally pure.

Um, they're also the third thing is that they're they're patiently enduring.

What are they enduring?

Well, there's a great deal of persecution during the time of Domitian when this letter was likely written.

And so they are enduring the kind of persecution for the sake of Jesus, for the name of Jesus, uh, that probably in our own day and time we have not, we have yet to experience, especially in the West.

It's going on in our world, make no mistake about it.

Um, the persecution of Christians around the world is a horrific thing and a scourge.

Um, and we need to support our brothers and sisters uh who are living under persecution.

But the church at Ephesus was doing, was, was suffering, but doing so, enduring it patiently, and uh and they were doing it uh all the while, discerning in a spiritual way the kind of teaching that was coming into their churches uh there in Ephesus.

Uh, and at the same time, they were very busy, probably doing good works in many ways.

Uh, reminds me, this this commendation that they're getting from Jesus reminds me of, you know, back when we were kids, we used to get report cards.

Um, and and I always, you know, I I don't I don't think that they still do that though, you know, when when kids are going through school anymore.

Um everybody's getting a trophy just for showing up.

But but I but I think the um uh back in my day, I remember they used to give me my report card, and the note uh that the teacher wanted to attach to my report card would be attached to it and with a piece of uh scotch tape and then be put in an envelope and it would then would be sealed.

And so I never knew what the teacher was gonna say, you know, and they would send that home with me, and I'd have to, you know, give it to my mom and then wait for whatever the fallout was gonna be, what what was gonna happen, you know?

And uh sometimes, you know, I just watched the the look on her face, you know, and just try to read, uh-oh, you know, because I was kind of a class clown, believe it or not, and uh and and and uh sort of a goof up uh and didn't quite pay attention all the time as much as I should have.

Um but Jesus here says, I know your works.

I I could give you a report card.

You guys are pretty good in your works.

Um and he walks among his people very much aware, so he's dynamically aware of their works.

And I like I say, they're probably uh really good at taking care of the poor, at taking care of their elderly or or their young or or living in such a way uh as to make sure their community um was was reflecting uh the love of God in some way.

And yet there still was something missing.

And so along comes the admonition that they had abandoned or forsaken or left, if you will, their first love.

They'd lost their heart for God.

See, we can get busy and be doing all the time for God, but have abandoned God and our love for God in a personal way.

We can have orthodoxy without intimacy.

Um we can be right, but be dead right.

Um we can have fortitude and formalism, like they did, but without any real loving faith toward Christ and toward uh toward our Lord.

Uh when I was in high school, um lived in the uh northern Virginia area, went to a uh church called Cherry Dale Baptist Church.

Loved loved that church, great church.

Youth Group used to sing that old song.

I some of you know it was uh written all the way back in uh 1855 by Frederick Whitfield, and um it was real simple, kind of a chorus.

It said, Oh, how I love Jesus!

Oh, how I love Jesus, how I love Jesus because he first loved me.

Yeah, I love that first verse.

It says, Uh, there's a name I love to hear, I love to sing its worth.

It sounds like music in my ear, the sweetest name on earth.

And then we typically do the double clap thing.

Oh, how I love Jesus, oh, how I love Jesus.

Oh, how I love Jesus because he first loved me.

Yeah, that was great fun to sing as a kid.

Um, and and to be reminded of that that same John who wrote Revelation in 1 John 4, 19, said, Here's what motivates us to love God.

It's because he first loved us.

I remember the same sentiment and the same awareness, perhaps I should say, it's not just a sentiment, it's not just an emotion, but the same awareness used to come across uh through another old song from uh contemporary Christian artists who's passed away, killed in an airplane crash, a guy named Keith Green.

Some of you are familiar with uh some of his songs.

But he had a song uh back uh back way back like in the in the in the 80s or 70s, whenever it was, that he was he was running around doing concerts and stuff like that.

And Kim and I were in the music business at one point, we opened for him twice.

And I remember this song he played that said, My eyes are dry, my faith is old, my heart is hard, my prayers are cold, and I know how I ought to be alive to you and dead to me.

And then he he pleadingly asked this question What can be done for an old heart like mine?

Please soften it up with oil and wine.

The oil is you, your spirit of love.

Please wash me anew in the wine of your blood.

It's a simple song, but a beautiful and a very powerful song.

And we sing revive us again.

How's that gonna happen?

Well, it's not by just, you know, like in youth group doing sort of you know, fun stuff.

Fun stuff is great.

I love fun stuff.

And we used to even do give me a Give me an E, E, give me an S, you know, Jesus, cheers, all that stuff.

But it only takes you so far, see.

And at some point, what we really need is the oil of this of the Spirit of God moving on our hearts, softening us, and the the wine of his blood washing us clean from our sin.

What can be done?

God can renew us.

And as Jesus prescribed that that begins to happen, he calls us to come home.

He calls us to come home to him.

And that begins by remember.

Use your mind, Jesus says.

Remember your first love.

And then he says, repent, engage your will.

See, repentance is a twofold turn.

The Greek word is metanoia, it means a change of mind and heart that results in a change of direction.

So I'm going this way toward my sin.

I have a change of mind and heart that turns me around.

And so repentance is a twofold turn, turning away from my sin and turning toward Christ again.

Remember how God set his love on you.

Remember what it was like when you first trusted Christ.

How you it just blew your mind wide open and your heart wide open.

And how all you could think about was him and the way he was filling your life with peace, hope, and joy.

Didn't mean he was setting all the circumstances right.

He didn't do it for the church at Ephesus.

He's not doing it for us right now.

And yet, in and through it all, we can remember how he loves us.

We can repent, turn away from thinking um about something else as our first love, like control, or like everything being perfect in our family with our kids, or with our marriage, uh, or with our work, uh, or with our 401k, whatever it might be.

We tend to put those things as our first love and think that our entire life depends on them.

And what Jesus is saying is remember your first love.

Return.

Return after you repent.

Return to him.

Come back home.

And then I would add, repeat.

It's like wash, rinse, repeat, wash, rinse, repeat.

Over and over.

It's a way of life for us, isn't it?

To remember his great love for us, to remember when we first came to Christ and loved him.

Consumed with the wonders of his love and mercy and grace.

Amazed on our faces before him in overflowing in wonder and worship because of who he is, not because of how we feel or or what our circumstances are.

Remember, repent, return.

Then comes the summons to hear and to heed.

He who has ears, let him hear.

And so all of us have, most of us anyway, have two ears, one on each side of our head.

I love this.

Some of us only use it to hold up our glasses.

Some of us only use our ears to uh hang our decorations on, like our earrings, okay?

But what the Lord wants us to do is get to the creation design purpose, and this is always the case.

He's always pushing us back to creation design, all right?

Creation design purpose for your ears?

Hearing, listening.

And so he's drawing us, calling us, summoning us once again to hear and to heed.

And the motivation uh is here as well.

To the one who overcomes, I will grant to eat of the tree of life.

And evidently that generation of Ephesians actually took John, uh, the message from Jesus through John to heart, because Ignatius of Antioch, early in the second century, wrote a letter to the church at Ephesus, and he really praised them uh for their love, their love of God and their love of the brethren.

And which is uh which is uh this letter talking about when Jesus says you've abandoned your first love.

I think it's probably both.

Um commentators vary, uh, but a lot of them think it's both.

It's both our love for God, which will result in our love for others as well.

See, if we love God, there's no room in our hearts for racism.

There's no room in our hearts for any kind of uh religious uh uh prejudice.

Uh there's no room in our hearts for any kind of elitism if we love God first, you see.

It changes the way we see others.

So, what can TVC learn from this letter to the church at Ephesus?

Well, I'll throw a few questions up on the screen that I figure it's good for us to ask ourselves.

And you, as someone who uh feeds at the trough, if you will, of this church, uh whether that's online, from afar, or even locally, or whether when we reconvene, you're able to be a part of our meetings and gatherings.

These questions are really good, and I've been asking myself these questions all week.

Here they are on the screen.

When it comes to repentance, what do we ultimately need to repent from?

What do I need to turn away from and turn toward Christ?

Anything that has caught my affections or captured or enchanted me or in some way fascinated me.

If it's first, then it needs to take its place behind Christ.

And it might be good things, you know, uh, like I say, but they aren't meant to be first things.

More on that in a minute.

But what does it mean to really love Jesus?

See, it's not just about the brake pedal, it's also about the gas pedal and the steering wheel and occasionally rolling down the window and sticking your head out the window and saying, Oh, how I love Jesus.

And people might think you're nuts and crazy in this world that's so fascinated and so enchanted and so much loves everything like money and pleasure and power, to the point of finding their entire identity in those things.

But Christians are different.

Uh, we're just crazy enough to find our identity in union with Christ.

Something that nobody can take away from us, nobody can take away from John, who's a prisoner on the island of Patmos, and he's reminding us to remember, to repent, and to return.

What is it we think the Bible would teach us about the way Jesus would respond?

I mean, some of us are sometimes afraid to go back to God with that same old sin or that same old temptation we fall into.

Well, the Bible teaches us over and over and over again how he, the Lord, responds to repentant sinners.

Arms wide open, just like on the cross.

Welcoming you, welcoming me, welcoming every prodigal to come home.

Come home.

He's made it possible, he's done everything necessary.

All you need to do is turn around.

And he bids you remember, repent, and return even today.

How do we hear and heed God best?

Well, it's the spiritual disciplines, isn't it?

It's the reading of God's word.

And the Holy Spirit uses the reading of God's word so that we might hear from God.

And he speaks to us, the Holy Spirit leads us into the truth.

Jesus taught his disciples in the Gospel of John, written by the same guy, by the way.

How do we hear from God?

We hear from God in prayer as well.

Coupled with the word of God or tethered by the word of God, our prayers aren't just us listening to ourselves tell God what we want God to do.

Our prayers become us listening for God to speak to us.

Um, waiting for Him with uh correction or direction in some ways, instruction, leading us, guiding us, uh, correcting us along the way.

And we need all of that, don't we?

We need to hear from him.

How can we stir up our affections and rekindle our love for Christ?

Well, I would say it's the same prescription that Jesus gives to John to give the church at Ephesus.

Um, and this is really easy uh for you to remember because the first word is remember.

Yeah, use your mind, remember, remember what God has done, remember your first love, remember that He loved you first.

Remember all of that, okay?

Repent, uh, engage your will, turn around.

Yeah, and then return, which means reset your course.

Set your sails for the celestial city, set your sails for Christ and set your sails to be in the center of his will at the foot of the cross.

And by the way, don't just go to the cross to get saved, go to the cross to get loved.

Because it's God's love in Christ that motivated Christ to go to the cross in the first place.

He loves sinners while we were yet sinners.

Christ died for us.

He died for me, he died for you while we were yet sinners.

And yes, that includes every time we continue to do that, continue to fall to some temptation, to be angry, to be frustrated, um, uh because we want to be in control and we aren't in control.

Uh to be, even when we're fearful, even when we find ourselves just covered in the mud of our own sin, he comes along with his grace, and it continues to be amazing when you just think about how beautiful he is, how majestic he is, how loving he is, and how his arms are wide open to receive us and to welcome us home.

Remember God's great love for you.

Don't just go through the motions, the rituals, and the routines.

Doing our duty is good up until the point when it becomes mechanical, when it becomes sort of a lifeless formalism, and that's what was going on at Ephesus.

They were right, but they were wooden.

And they were, you know, they were they were pure in their doctrine and everything like that, but no heart love for Jesus.

We don't want to have a faith that becomes lifeless like that.

We can do the right things, believe the right things, but still not have a love for Christ.

Our commitment cannot be merely to ritual and routine and duties.

Our commitment must be to Jesus Himself first.

So do the things and the works and the deeds and all that, but do them because he first loved you.

Okay?

Do them because you now love him.

As A.W.

Tozer once said, I want to deliberately encourage this mighty longing after God.

The lack of it has brought us to our present lowest state.

The stiff and wooden quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy desire.

Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth.

Acute desire must be present.

Or there will be no manifestation of Christ to his people.

He waits to be wanted.

Too bad that with many of us, he waits so long, so very long in vain.

Remember, God's initiating love for you.

Repent from the idol-making factory of having other first loves, thinking you're smarter than God, thinking you can control things and all that sort.

Just return to him as you are repenting.

Turn around and turn to him.

Put him first again.

And I love what C.S.

Lewis says about first things.

You can't get second things by putting them first.

You can get second things only by putting first things first.

And the first thing for us is supposed to be Jesus himself.

Not the ministry of this church, not the doing of religious things, not the belligerent running away from in rebellion of Jesus to pursue other things that we think will fulfill us.

No, but putting Christ first, then everything else takes its proper place.

We love because he first loved us.

So don't just remember how it felt to you when you first loved God, but remember how astonished and amazed you were to learn that God loved you first.

I'll close with this quote from Eugene Peterson, five smooth stones for pastoral work.

It'll be multiple slides because it's a little bit of a long one, but please pay attention.

When we first encounter God's saving love, it may well overwhelm us.

But over a period of years, it becomes a familiar part of the landscape, one religious item among many others.

The vocabulary of salvation becomes hackneyed, reduced to the level of Valentine card verse.

The mannerisms of the saved become predictable.

Whenever we are associated with greatness over a long period of time, there's a tendency in us to become stale.

What we first experienced in our faith, in our marriage, in our children, in our career in the landscape, as earth-shaking and soul-changing vision and adventure, we now take for granted.

We lose, in the language of the apocalypse, our first love.

We preserve its importance by assigning the event a date on the calendar or by describing it under a doctrinal head.

Orthodoxy is preserved even while intimacy is lost.

What's the solution?

It's the same that Jesus prescribed to the church at Ephesus.

It is, remember, repent and return.

Don't allow familiarity to breed indifference, brothers and sisters.

Prone to wander, prone to drift, pray.

Ask God to open your eyes to the things that have taken first place in your heart and turn away from those things and turn toward Christ.

Pray for personal revival.

Don't just pray, revive us.

Pray, revive me again.

Pray, revive us if you're married in your couple or if you have roommates and best friends.

Pray for revival among your kids and your co workers, your family, your friends.

Ask God to show you the best way to reset your core spiritually and then go back to Him.

Go home.

Come home to Him.

His arms are open wide.