"Discerning the Discerners" Revelation 2:1-7 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Revelation chapter 2, verse 1.

Revelation 2:1

This is the description of Jesus' visit to the church in Ephesus.

Jesus is the one who holds the lampstands in his hand.

Revelation 1 describes him as the one who has the keys of death in Hades in Revelation 1.18.

He died, he lives forevermore, and now he is speaking to his churches.

Revelation chapter 2, verse 1, to the angel of the church in Ephesus, right?

Revelation 2:1

The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands, which are the seven churches he's writing this series of letters to.

He begins to the Ephesians saying, I know your works, your toil, your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false.

I know you're enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary.

But I have this against you.

You have abandoned the love you had at first.

Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen, and repent, and do the works you did at first.

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

Yet this you have.

You hate the works of the Nicolaitians, which I also hate.

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches, to the one who conquers, I will grant to eat the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.

It was in a previous existence when I was an outreach pastor in California, that I subscribed to a magazine called Outreach Magazine.

And every month the magazine would come, and the magazine always ended with what they called their undercover visitor reports.

They would, I assume, pay or find, I don't know how they acquired this person, some random non-Christian to visit some big notable church and write a report about his visit to the church, and they would publish it at the closing pages of Outreach Magazine every month.

It was really interesting for me to read.

I think many people read it for like, oh, what do we do to our church to make it appeal to non-believers?

I read it as like pure like entertainment.

It had like categories.

Did they have clear signs?

Were you properly greeted?

Did they have visitor parking?

Did they have coffee for the visitors?

We have coffee for the visitors, by the way, in the atrium.

Were people friendly?

Uh was the music too loud?

Was the lighting appropriate?

Did you receive a phone call or an email or something within a few weeks of your visit?

Like this whole checklist, and they had a couple paragraphs of their assessment.

And uh, you know, the sermon was relatable, but it went on way too long.

Dot dot dot.

And uh it was like a Yelp review, but for churches.

I don't know how ultimately beneficial those kind of reviews are, but what you see in Revelation 2 and 3 is Jesus' review of seven churches.

Jesus shows up for worship on these seven churches.

Now, Jesus doesn't physically go to these seven churches.

We understand he's omniscient.

He can take them all in at once.

It doesn't require seven weeks.

You know, for you, you move to a new town, you want to visit churches, you gotta like chart it out.

And, you know, if you get the service times right, you can do two or three services on a Sunday, whoa, and spend two months dodging all over town.

Jesus hits all seven churches at once.

It's easier to visit a church when you're omniscient, you know.

It says in chapter one that this visit happens on the Lord's Day.

John sees Jesus on the Lord's Day, which means these churches were, of course, of course, gathered for worship.

Jesus now communicates what he sees to these churches through the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit is the one who inspires all of Scripture, and it says in verse 7, the Spirit is the one who is inspiring this, even though it's the words of Christ to his churches.

These seven churches are in descending order.

It starts with really the best church, the church at Ephesus, then it ends up, you know, the church has become more and more immoral as the seven churches go on.

Now, you could do a series in all seven churches, I've preached to them before, but because we've just finished Ephesians and last week we looked at Paul's farewell address to the Ephesians.

Uh Paul was one of their pastors and he says farewell to them.

We looked at that.

So I thought this week it would be helpful and appropriate for us to look at Jesus' farewell address to the Ephesian church.

He is going to visit his churches, he's going to have things to say about them.

He's going to commend some and he's going to condemn some.

He has positives and negatives.

This is a three and a half star review.

What is Jesus looking for when he goes to see a church?

You'll see two of those things this morning in his response to the church at Ephesus.

This is what Jesus looks for when Jesus visits a church.

First of all, you need to understand Ephesus.

I know we've preached the book of Ephesians.

We looked at Ephesus last week, but it is helpful to kind of set it in its context.

Ephesus was a massive Roman city.

It was a major Roman city.

It was a cultural capital.

It was the cultural hub of the Roman religion.

The Roman pantheon was, of course, worshipped all throughout the Roman Empire.

But Ephesus was a place where Roman, the worship of Roman gods, was more extreme.

It was noteworthy.

It was the place where the Temple of Artemis, or also called the Temple of Diana, was there in Ephesus.

It was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

And it was not alone.

There were many other such temples in Ephesus.

The Roman gods had temples built there.

This was the capital of the Roman pagan religion.

You know how different cities might get associated with different religions, like Jerusalem is associated with Judaism or Islam and Mecca or Rome and Catholicism kind of thing.

Ephesus is where the Roman pantheon was kind of birthed and radiated from.

So worshiping the Roman gods critical to the identity of the city of Ephesus.

This is where there was the Emperor Domitian who made Ephesus the capital of Roman worship.

So this is not just an outside part of their culture, just the very identity of what it meant to be an Ephesian meant someone who embraced the worship of the Roman gods.

This is where Paul planted a church.

If you remember, it was first Apollos who was preaching there in Ephesus, and Aquila and Priscilla took him aside and more accurately explained the word of God to him.

It seems like Apollos went on to be their first pastor.

He was replaced by Paul.

Paul ministered there for probably three years.

Paul was replaced by Silas, who ministered there for, I don't know, maybe a decade.

He was replaced by Timothy, who ministered there for another decade plus.

And he was replaced by John, who worshipped there and ministered there as their pastor until John was exiled to Patmos.

So this is a church that is about 50 years old.

In their 50 years, they had, if you count Apollos, they had five pastors: Apollos, Paul, Silas, Timothy, and John.

So this is kind of the A-team of pastors here.

This is not like some fresh out of seminary grad other than Apollos.

This was a legit church with mature pastors, mature elders.

1 and 2 Timothy, those books were written to the church in Ephesus.

I don't think it's a stretch to say the Ephesian church was the most mature New Testament church.

I also think that it was a very theologically minded church.

It's not a coincidence that Ephesians is the most, probably the most developed theology of salvation and soteriology in the New Testament.

Ephesians is kind of the Mount Everest of theology in the New Testament, and it was given to the Ephesian church.

First and 2 Timothy, of course, the pastoral epistles, they read very different than Titus.

Titus is a pastoral epistle written to people in Crete.

You know, they're slackers and losers, their own prophets called them that.

But Ephesus was a mature church.

They were very discerning, they understood right and wrong, good and evil, they understood theology.

And they're about 50 years old.

I harp on this for a second because I think the church in Ephesus matches in many ways Emmanuel Bible Church.

In a lot of different just little tidbits, you know, we're the same age.

Emmanuel Bible Church has been around 57 years or so, something like that.

We have uh, I think this is a very knowledgeable church, a very discerning church, a very biblically minded church.

It has developed leadership that didn't grow overnight.

You know, our elders are very mature and have been here a long time.

We have some of our founding members still here, a few.

Some of our elders and people in leadership of the church grew up in the church.

We have some grandkids of some of that first generation of believers that are in the church, and some of them even in leadership in the church.

And so this is a church that has the same kind of arc as Ephesians.

When Paul in Acts chapter 20 said farewell to the Ephesian church, he said, I'm not going to see your faces again.

Acts 20 · chapter mention

But he came back years later, and it's likely that it was their kids that had grown up and were now eldering the church.

And by the time Jesus visits the Ephesian church, the elders that Paul was talking to, you know, 50 years earlier, they're gone, probably.

It's a whole new generation.

Emmanuel, as I said, 57 years old, has had, I think, five pastors, five teaching pastors in its time.

So very similar, I think, to the Ephesian church in both strengths and weaknesses.

I think some of the things happening, the dynamics at play in the Ephesian church are not unique to Ephesus, but kind of parallel what would happen to a church that was planted and grew with that number of pastors for that number of decades and the kids growing up in the church and a culture that embraces sexual immorality.

I mean, so many parallels between Emmanuel Bible Church and the church in Ephesus.

And so that's why I think this letter will be helpful for us to look at, if only for this Sunday.

What Jesus is looking for in a church, first thing he's looking for is discernment.

He's speaking here to third generation believers.

It was their grandparents who founded the church, the new elders of the church now.

And then Jesus speaks to them about their discernment.

He says in verse 2, I know your works.

And he's using these terms that describe their labor.

He says, I know your works, your toil, your patient endurance, which is the word he uses twice here in verse 2, and then again in verse 3.

They are making efforts.

So they're not phoning it in.

These people who are leading the church in Ephesus in its 57th year or whatever, they're not just, you know, hey, we've done this before.

This is the way we've always done it, let's keep doing it.

No, they're doing actual work.

They're not just showing up for church, they're not playing church.

There's other churches that get these letters that you feel like they're phoning it in, you know, they're not really doing the work of the ministry.

Not the church in Ephesus.

These people, Jesus says, are doing actual gospel work.

They're working hard, they're working against the world, against society, they're laboring in the word.

In fact, the word that's used, your patient endurance in verse 2, it's used again in verse 3.

Uh a commentary I read describes it as a military term.

And it's a military term the Romans used for block-to-block combat.

So if a military regiment was trying to clear a square or put down a rebellion or go to war in like kind of an urban environment, they have a word, uh, Greek does, for moving block to block.

You dig in and you work patiently, taking territory back in close contact, that environment.

It's translated patient endurance, but that's what this commentary said, this word means.

And I think that's fitting because in Ephesians 6, you get Paul describing all the military terminology in the Ephesian church.

They would have their shields out, they would have their shoes on to dig in, they are pressing back against the worlds.

And that's what Jesus notices about this church.

He tells them, You guys are doing work.

You're doing the actual labor of the ministry.

Now, what does their work look like?

Well, he identifies the work in particular in the area of discernment.

In the area of discernment in verse 2, you're doing your work, you're toiling, you're enduring patiently, because you cannot bear with those who are evil.

You have tested those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false.

And so we've already established the Ephesian culture is very much an immoral culture, a sexually immoral culture.

Many of those Roman gods were worshipped in that way, and so the culture did not abide by biblical sexual ethics, that's for sure.

But it's interesting to me anyway that the main labor of discernment, the main labor of staying faithful isn't even in contrast to the culture, but in contrast to people that are trying to get into the church from the culture.

That's where the battle is at.

You've endured patiently, verse 3 says, bearing up, holding up for my name's sake.

You have not grown weary.

You know, the cultural wars don't go away.

You don't win them and you know retire into Christian utopia.

It's a fight all the time to stand for biblical truth and biblical ethics.

And that's what's happening here in Ephesus.

And Jesus tells them, I'm watching you guys do this, and you're not growing weary.

You're not growing tired in your fight, you're standing strong against opposition.

Well, that opposition is starting to come to church.

You see this in verse 6.

You hate the works of the Nicolaitians, which I also hate.

The Nicolaatians were also in Pergamum, the third church they write to, Revelation 2, 12 through 17.

The Nicolaatians were a group of so-called Christians that would infiltrate churches, and they would say that they believed in Jesus, they would claim the name of Christ.

They would say even that they were apostles, they'd call themselves Christians, some of them identified as leaders in the church, having an apostolic mandate from the Lord, but their heresy or their divergence from the truth was that they said you didn't need to repent from your sins to follow the Lord.

You could embrace the worldly sexual ethic and still be a Christian.

That's what they that was the Nicolaitian error.

You can see why that would be appealing in a place like Ephesus, where sexual immorality was so steeped in the culture.

I'm sure you've heard all the arguments.

You know, if if you make the church narrow in terms of sexual ethics, you eliminate most of the world.

It's unloving.

In fact, you should accept anybody in a church as they are.

You shouldn't tell them to repent in order to come to church.

You shouldn't say to change how they're living, to bring themselves into conformity with the gospel.

You know, as long as somebody says that they're interested in Jesus, that should be good enough for them to be in church.

So that's the Nicolacian error.

And the church in Ephesus didn't tolerate it.

They didn't tolerate it, which is in contrast in chapter 2 with the Church of Pergamum, which did tolerate it.

The Church of Pergamum didn't have John as a pastor, didn't have Paul as a pastor, didn't have Silas, didn't have Timothy.

They didn't know how to respond to this.

They didn't get the you know, the letter of the Ephesians didn't seem to make it to them.

There's no book in your Bible called to the Church of Pergamum.

So they have these, they run into these Nicolations, they don't know what to say.

You got somebody who rolls in and says, I'm a Christian, but I think that repentance is a work.

This is how the argument goes.

I think repentance is a work, and you're not saved by works, and so for you to tell me to repent is to add works to the gospel, and so I reject that.

I'm saved by grace and faith, and so I reject the idea that I should turn from my sexually immoral ways.

I can be a Christian and live how I want to, thank you very much.

And the Church of Pergamon said, We don't know what to do with this.

The church in Ephesus said, get out.

The church in Ephesus went to war, it says, against them.

They took the battle to them.

They stood in verse 2 against that evil.

They tested them and saw that they were false.

That teaching has not gone away, by the way.

It's still prevalent in a lot of evangelicalism in America, in our own day.

The idea that repentance is a work, and so you should never tell somebody to repent of their sins if they want to follow Christ.

That's adding works to salvation.

And you can lead a sexually immoral life and be a Christian because all that matters is if you believe in Jesus.

And that is that is a tragic error that results in spiritual apostasy, people leaving the gospel, apostatizing from their faith, leaving their families.

It's a devastating and deadly error.

Now, repentance is the doorway in that sense to the gospel.

I want to be very clear about how repentance relates to the gospel because I know there's people here that may be confused on this issue.

You are not saved by works.

You don't repent and demonstrate your repentance over a period of time in order to become a Christian.

Repentance is an internal, instantaneous act where you take assessment of your own life, you see that you're living in sin, you see the glory of Christ, and you want to turn from the way you're living in order to follow Christ.

You're on the wide road to destruction, you want to go on the narrow road of the gospel, and so you leave the wide road to walk on the narrow road.

That's repentance.

It doesn't mean you merit salvation because of your works.

You don't earn salvation by repenting.

Repentance is the mechanism by which you enter salvation, though.

It's faith and repentance are two sides of the same coin.

You can say it that way.

This is an analogy that helped me.

You're holding your sin and somebody throws you the gospel like a football.

You want to catch the gospel.

You need to let go of your sin in order to catch.

It would be ridiculous to say that, well, hey, that's saying you're saved by works.

No, you're letting go of your sin.

You're not giving money to the church.

You're not trying to be good for six months to show that you really, really deserve it.

It's not that.

It's your turning from sin.

So you're not earning your salvation by repenting, but you are demonstrating your love for Christ by turning away from things that Jesus hates.

If you have faith, you're going to want to repent from your sin.

If you don't want to repent from your sin, it is worth asking, do you even have faith?

There's all kinds of people, like the Nicolatians, who say, I believe in Jesus, I just don't want to leave my sin behind.

That's not the gospel.

Let me say it even another way.

Repentance is the door through which you enter the gospel.

Repentance and faith paired together.

Paul tells the Galatians, as you are saved, so you should live.

How did you encounter Christ?

Through repentance and faith.

How should you live your Christian life?

Through repentance and faith.

Repentance is an ongoing act as a believer.

You turn from your sin in order to follow Christ, but as you're being a Christian, you see new sins in your life.

You still, to use Jesus' words to Peter, you get your feet dirty as you're walking in the world.

You're always seeing new sins in your life, and so you're always repenting.

The Christian life is a life of repentance.

But it's also entered through repentance.

And so that's what Jesus is looking for when he goes to church.

Do they understand right from wrong, good from evil?

Look at what he says in verse 6.

I have, you have this in verse 6.

You hate the works of the Nicolaatians.

The church in Ephesus rejected the Nicolaitians so much so they hated their works.

And Jesus says, That's good.

I hate their works also.

And that rubs some of us the wrong way.

Oh, you should never say you hate that kind of sin.

I hate people who say hate.

But Jesus says, You hate their sexually immoral deeds?

So do I.

You and I are together on this.

And that was hard for the Ephesians to say, just have sympathy for the Ephesians.

Standing against what their city represents.

But they did.

They did.

And they stood against it.

And Jesus commends them for it.

Now they had to stand against it by condemning their leaders.

If you look back up at verse 2, you hate, uh, you can't bear those who are evil.

You test those who call themselves apostles and are not.

So the Nicolaitians were led by these so-called apostles.

I they have a lot of similarities with 2 Corinthians.

The Corinthians are being led away by this kind of same heresy that taught you could be sexually immoral and a Christian.

They pointed at their so called apostles that gave them authority to do that.

You have to judge those kind of people.

And here the language of testing.

Is used.

Look at the middle of verse 2.

You tested those.

You put them to the test.

Paul told them they'd have to do that.

Acts chapter 20, in his farewell address to the Ephesians, he said, Wolves are going to rise up among you, so be on guard.

Acts 20 · chapter mention

You're going to have to be ready to test people.

Just because you recognize them doesn't mean that what they say is true.

Even more difficult in Ephesus, you've got people rolling in, claiming that they're apostles, saying, Hey, we're here from the church in Jerusalem.

They said, to make the gospel more appealing to the Ephesian culture, you don't need to repent from your sin in order to follow Jesus.

And the Ephesians tested them.

Testing, that language of testing should remind you of Deuteronomy 13.

Deuteronomy 13, verses 1 through 5 gives you two tests for a so-called apostle.

Deuteronomy 13:1–5

Someone says they're a prophet, someone says, hey, the Lord told me this, or the Lord told me that.

You got two tests for them.

First, Deuteronomy 13, verses 1 through 5, does what they say come true?

Deuteronomy 13:1–5

So they say, hey, the Lord told me.

The Lord told me, think of all the apostles that said, the Lord told me President Trump is going to be installed by January 7th.

I had the word from the Lord.

You remember all these people, right?

Big name Christians on TV.

The Lord gave me this word.

Well, I'll tell you this.

If the Lord tells you something like that and it doesn't come true, you, my friends, are a false prophet.

And number two, number two, does what they say come true?

No, or come true is the first one.

Does what they say match the word of God?

They say, hey, the Lord said, I don't need to repent for my sin to follow Jesus.

Is that what the Bible says?

Because if what you're saying is different than what the Bible says, then you, my friend, are a false prophet.

So what do you do with false prophets?

Deuteronomy 13, you take him to the city gate and stone him to death.

In the Old Testament.

Not in the New Testament.

But you are to test them in the New Testament.

John, 1 John 4.

Don't believe every spirit.

Because many false teachers are in the world.

But test the spirits and hold on to what is true.

There's that language again.

There are false spirits, false teachers, false prophets in the world.

The Lord told me this, the Lord told me that.

But if it ain't in the word, it ain't fact, right?

You test them.

And those that fail the test, you recognize as false prophets.

Matthew 7, verse 15.

Matthew 7:15

Beware of false prophets, Jesus says.

Beware of them.

They come dressed like sheep.

They carry Bibles in the church.

Some of them have Bibles.

Now they just lie and say, it's on my phone, honest.

Inwardly, they're wolves, Jesus says.

So test them.

How do you test them?

Does what they say?

Come true.

Does it match the word?

Matthew 7, verse 16 gives you a third test.

Matthew 7:16

You'll know them by their fruit.

What does their life look like?

It's amazing how many of these people are leaving, are leading totally immoral lifestyles.

Immoral lifestyles financially, immoral lifestyles in their marriage, sexually immoral lifestyles.

They divorce their wives, they leave their families, but they still stay as an apostle or a prophet.

I heard this recently from a pastor in the same town.

Massive church in Florida.

They can't have a children's ministry because their pastor is a sex offender.

And the church is massive.

He said, in fact, a lot of families drop their kids off at his church so they can go to that guy's church.

His church has a children's ministry.

Isn't that incredible?

It's amazing.

I think most American cities, the largest church in that city is more in common with that.

If you grew up in Emmanuel Bible church, you think most churches are like Emmanuel, you know, relatively discerning evangelical Bible-teaching churches go there, sermon, sing about Jesus.

That's not true.

In just about every major American city, the largest church is probably some kind of off-the-rails, crazy, charismatic church led by an apostle, speaking in tongues, slaying people in the spirit, health, wealth, give your money, and you'll be rich.

And that's majority churches in our country, the big churches.

Jesus says, test them.

Look at the lives of their leaders.

Are they moral or not?

It's what they say in the Bible or not.

And it can rub us wrong.

Americans were like, I don't want to test people.

That seems so judgmental.

Judge not, you know.

Alright, you don't have to judge them.

Just be a fruit inspector, okay?

That's totally different.

Because a healthy tree is gonna have healthy fruit.

A sick tree is gonna have sick fruit.

So you want to be an Ephesian church?

You want to be an Ephesian church?

Be discerning.

Understand how repentance relates to the gospel.

Understand that just because somebody says the Lord said this or the Lord said that does not make it fact.

Understand that the Bible is the authority.

You want to be a Berean church?

Discern.

That's what Jesus looks for in the church.

That's what Paul prayed for in the church too.

Not just the Ephesian church, but to the Philippians.

Paul prayed, it's my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.

Paul prays that churches would grow in discernment.

Well, the first thing Jesus looks for in a church is discernment.

Paul prays for it, Jesus esteems it.

The second thing he's looking for in a church is love.

Love for the Lord.

Verse 4, I have this against you, that you've abandoned the love you had at first.

Now there's priority words in here.

He esteems their discernment, but contrast word, I hold this against you, against the discernment, the love that you had first, priority.

You have fallen from it in verse 5.

He's describing them.

They used to have this love.

That love has resulted in residual discernment.

The fact they used to love Jesus, that's the source of their current discernment.

However, their love has fallen off.

Their love has fallen off the wagon.

You know, if it's a train, they're chugging along in life, but the love car got decoupled.

And they keep trucking across the country and they look around and say, hey, where's love?

What happened to our love?

We used to love the Lord, but that went away.

And I say there's a priority here because that's what Jesus is identifying.

You still have your discernment, but you lost your first love.

You need to recover your first love in order to be restored.

And so there's this emphasis here.

He doesn't say you lost love, but it's okay you're discerning.

He says it's great you're discerning.

However, you lost love.

Find it.

You can say it this way: the love of Jesus is more important than discernment because true discernment flows out of love for Jesus.

True discernment flows out of love for Jesus.

Discernment and love aren't enemies.

I hope you don't hear me say that.

I'm not saying, you know, the more you grow, some people love a lot, but love is an enemy to discernment, or some people are discerning, but discerning is an enemy to love.

I'm not saying that.

But I am saying there's a tension.

People will often justify a lack of discernment because of love, or a lack of love because of discernment.

People will pit them against each other, but rightfully understood they're not against each other.

You're supposed to worship in spirit and truth, not spirit or truth.

There is a connection.

For you to know the truth, you have to have the spirit.

For you to rightly be discerning, you have to love Jesus.

There's a growth there.

Jesus says it this way, John 14, 15.

If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

And yet, Matthew 24, verse 12, the love of many will grow cold.

Matthew 24:12

So the love of Jesus has to produce discernment in your life.

When you love the Lord, discernment is the overflow of that.

But discernment can, I think, as I look at this rebuke to the Ephesians, I think discernment can pull you away from love.

And perhaps you've met people like this that are so they pride themselves on discernment to the point that their love seems to be waning.

You know, they they'll recognize a false teacher from a million miles away.

You know, some Bethel song comes on the radio and they smash the radio with a hammer.

But discernment is waning.

I mean, discernment is strong, but the love is waning.

And you perhaps know people like that.

The pride themselves in discernment.

You just wonder, is there actual love for the Lord there?

Um it probably started with love for the Lord.

That kind of discernment comes from a real love for the Lord.

You know, people don't hate false prophets for false prophets' sake.

They hate false prophets because the they have love for the Lord.

But over time, discernment is the muscle that gets exercised and not the love for the Lord.

Love for the Lord is priority, though.

It's priority.

Love for the Lord is the one unfakeable Christian virtue.

You know, you can be a false convert and get baptized, you can be a false convert and change your outward life.

You can be a false convert and go on a short-term mission trip, you can be a false convert and write a best-selling Christian book.

You cannot be a false convert and love Jesus Christ.

And so that's the alarm of Jesus here as he looks at the Ephesian church and says, Hey, you brought the discernment.

Who packed the love?

Where's that?

And you can picture the Ephesians looking around.

What?

I thought you loved the Lord.

No, no, you were supposed to love the Lord.

I loved him last week.

It's your turn.

So what do you do if you feel like your love for the Lord is growing cold?

And as I mentioned, I think there's a lot of parallels with the Ephesian Church and Emmanuel Bible Church.

Because I think we are a very discerning church.

But is it possible your love for the Lord has grown cold?

It's possible, man, you were on fire for the Lord 10, 20 years ago.

You were on fire for the Lord.

You remember the days when there were four services and this place was a zoo?

Man, Michael Easley, that guy could preach.

I really loved the Lord back then.

So good.

What if your love for the Lord grows cold?

What do you do?

What do you do?

Well, that's what I love verse 5, because verse 5 answers that.

Jesus tells this church what to do to recover their love.

First, he says, remember your love.

Remember the love you used to have.

So maybe your love for the Lord is waning.

Maybe you don't read the Bible like you used to.

Remember the time that you used to do it.

Remember when you used to get up in the morning and make yourself coffee and sit on your porch or sit on your couch.

Remember when you used to say no to things so that you'd have time in the Word?

And remember what that was like to read your Bible in the morning and to pray and then to start your day.

And how cool it was.

You'd find things during the day that were like directly connected to what you read that morning.

Do you remember that feeling?

You encounter someone, they asked you that question.

It was just like what you had read that morning.

Wasn't that really fun back then?

Or you learned something new about the Lord, and then somebody would ask you about it.

Or you'd have this evangelism counter.

You prayed for evangelism in the morning, then you ran into the craziest thing, you prayed that morning for evangelism opportunities, and you ran into somebody at the grocery store who asked you this question.

It was like answered prayer 20 years ago.

That was so cool, wasn't it?

Do you remember what that was like when you used to read your word like that?

That's the first step to recovering it.

Remember those times.

And the second step, Jesus goes, to remember it and then repent.

We're back to repentance again.

Remember the love you used to have and then repent of not having it.

You're putting off the sin of lovelessness and putting on the sin of the virtue of loving the Lord.

You're putting off sinful self-reliance and you're putting on relying on the Lord.

That's the exchange.

You enter the gospel through repentance and you keep on doing it.

The greatest command is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind.

That's the greatest command.

So it follows that the greatest sin would be a lack of love for the Lord.

Doesn't that make sense?

Which would imply the sin you should be most regularly repenting of would be a lack of love for the Lord.

And that's what Jesus tells the Ephesian church.

Remember the love you had, repent of not having it.

Lack of love for the Lord is a sin.

Repentance is not a one-time deal, but a lifestyle.

And sin number one is a lack of love.

And then thirdly, Jesus says, restore.

Go back to how you used to live.

Repent and then do the works you did at first.

Go back to that time where you love the Lord.

Go back to reading your word.

Go back to praying.

Go back to evangelism.

Go back to that life.

You can grasp it.

It's yours.

It's there.

Go get it.

This is Jesus' instruction for the loveless Christian.

And it's so simple, isn't it?

You want like a way more profound thing.

You want like 16 steps or something.

Jesus is just, look, remember love, repent from not loving, and then go back to loving.

Pretty straightforward.

It's so, I know this sounds hackneyed, but it's so Jesus-y, isn't it?

It's so clear and pastoral.

But then he tells them, you need to do this, because if you don't, look at the middle of verse 5, if you do not, I will recome and I will I will come and I will remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent.

There's repentance again.

He says, I'm going to come turn off the light.

Remember, the church is a city on a hill.

It's a light that is supposed to be seen, not hid under a bed.

If you have a light, you don't buy a new lamp and put it under your bed.

You prop it up so it can be, it can radiate, it can illuminate, people can see.

The church is supposed to be illuminating to the world.

So what happens if the church starts to look like the world?

What happens if the church starts to act like the world?

You say you don't need to repent.

Just live like you are in the world and come to church.

What happens to the light then?

I don't even take this as a threat.

I don't even, as I read this and study the end of verse 5 here, I don't picture Jesus saying, if you don't repent, I'm going to come turn off your light.

This is more causally.

If you keep looking like the world, your light is off.

You know the house is empty, the light's on for now.

Eventually it's just going to turn off.

And when the light gets turned off, the lampstand is gone.

Jesus is carrying.

Remember, the verse begins, verse 1.

Jesus has the stars in his hands.

Back in chapter 2, he has the lampstands in his hand.

He's moving among them.

He says, if you don't love the Lord, you're not even a church.

You're not even a church.

And the church in Ephesus is the best of these seven churches.

Remember, by the end of the seven churches, the last church locked Jesus out.

He can't even get in to turn off the light.

They locked him out.

Imagine that.

Church in Ephesus, though, Jesus says, Come back.

It's so recent.

Come back to the love you used to have.

And for those that come back to the Lord, he says, I bring you in.

I bring you in.

Verse 7.

Here's what the Spirit says to the seven churches the one who conquers, I will grant to eat the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.

This is a bracketing back with Genesis 2.

The Bible begins with the remember two trees: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which Adam and Eve were not supposed to eat, and the tree of life, which they had to eat to live forever.

They sinned, so they now love sin.

They eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and they love sin, so they're kicked out of the garden to keep them from eating from the tree of life and living together forever.

Revelation ends with the tree of life back in the garden and people can eat from it again.

That's the promise.

If you love the Lord, if you turn from your sin and you have your faith in Christ, if you believe that his death on the cross pays the penalty for your sin, you surrender your life to him, you have a love for Christ in your heart, you will eat from the tree of life, which means you have eternal life.

Eternal life is the knowledge and the love of Jesus Christ.

When you have that love resident in your heart, you eat from the tree of life, you will live forever.

And the Bible begins with that tree, it ends with that tree, Revelation 22.

The tree of life is back in paradise, back in the garden.

And people from the nations will eat of it and live forever.

Earlier, when I said, remember a time where you loved the Lord.

If you can't think of that time, if that sounded foreign to you, you think, you know, I don't remember a time where I was excited about the Word of God.

I don't remember a time where I was staying up late at night praying.

I don't remember praying in the night watches.

I don't remember getting up early to read my word.

I don't remember those experiences.

It might be worth asking yourself, have you ever had a love for the Lord?

I mean, that's the implication here with the Ephesian Church.

Your grandparents built this church.

Your dad's an elder at the church.

Have you ever loved the Lord?

And if you haven't, turn from your sin and embrace the free gift of life in the gospel.

Lord, we're grateful that you are a God who loves us and have called us to love you.

We love you because of what Christ did for us.

We love you because you first loved us and you showed us your love for us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

So, God, I pray that our love for you would grow.

I pray that in as your eyes go to and fro throughout Emmanuel Bible Church, you would find hearts that not only rightly discern truth and error, good and evil, right and wrong, but you find hearts that are filled with love for you.

We want to be discerning.

We want to be loving.

We don't deny there's a tension.

But we embrace that tension because that's where the gospel draws us.

So Lord, we want to be like the Ephesians and hate the works of the sexually immoral.

We want to be like that first generation of Ephesians that just was filled with love for you.

We give you thanks, God.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.