Ephesus - The Hardworking, Loveless Church - Revelation: The Apocalypse

You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

Jesus is saying to John and to his people, don't give in.

Don't give up.

You're more than a conqueror.

Listen to these words.

Be encouraged by these words.

I see your labor.

I see your patience.

I see these works of righteousness.

I noticed you.

Today, Pastor Steve continues his series on the book of Revelation.

At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.

For more information on the road, visit theroad.org.

We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

We're in the book of Revelation, you guys.

And if you're a part of The Road, you know we're in chapter two.

And we're looking at the seven churches.

And so I've shared with you before the fact that in Revelation, there are kind of three parts.

There is a future aspect, but then there's also a present aspect.

And this is the present.

This is the present seven churches.

And we're looking at this postal route.

So basically the order in which we're going to start with Ephesus tonight is the postal route at that time where mail was distributed.

And each church situation is a commendation and a criticism for churches of all time.

I mean, quite frankly, the seven churches are a picture of all churches of all time.

So you're going to see something of the road, something of past churches you've been a part of, something of your own life.

At the end of each one, there's going to be a challenge to be an overcomer.

I believe it's one of those themes that I've rarely seen.

I don't know that I've ever even seen it in any of the commentaries in the book of Revelation that I get when I read Revelation.

Maybe it's just because I need to overcome so much and I'm so messed up.

But I believe that the book of Revelation is about being an overcomer through the power and the majesty and the beauty of the unveiling, the apocalypse of Jesus Christ.

And so we're going to see that here.

And so, you know, we did our roadmap today.

So we had a group there that had never been through our roadmap, which is our vision and values and velocity of the road and what we believe in.

And I was sharing with that group, and I'll share this with you guys tonight, that when you enter someone's house, you pick up the values.

Values are usually undefined, undisclosed, you don't know what it is until you make a mistake.

And then you know what the values are.

You ever been in someone's home and they like, they want to give you a cup of coffee and you've got your coffee and you don't know where to sit.

You don't know where you're supposed to sit.

And there's probably a chair somewhere in their living room where you're not supposed to sit.

And then if you sit in any, so you're looking to see, I'm always looking for newspapers, books, magazines.

That's the guy's chair.

Don't sit there.

And if it's a guy like me, there's some kind of a lever on the sides where the feet go up, kind of thing.

Don't sit in those.

You know, and you don't know their values until you sit in that chair.

And then suddenly the entire atmosphere becomes bitter and angry, you know, from someone at least.

Or you've got your cup of coffee and you're like, and you're looking for coasters.

Oh, you do not want to put a cup without a coaster in many women's living rooms.

But you're but there are not any around, you know, so you don't know what to do.

So that's what I mean.

Well, churches are the same way.

And so you walk into a church and there's a feeling about it.

There's a heart to a church.

You can't put your finger on it.

It's like the wiring in the ceiling.

Okay, you see the lights, but you don't know why you feel uh welcomed or you feel love or you feel this kind of strictness about everything, kind of a strictness.

And I just love, for example, what Barb Gilson and my wife Liz did this week with that lobby.

Wasn't that warm when you came in with all the antiques or fake antiques?

Some are real antiques, some are fake antiques.

If you go to American Warehouse, you get a really good deal, but it's all fake, okay?

Which is cool because it's cheap.

And here at the road, we like to do things on the cheap if we can, unless we can't.

But in this case we could, and so we did.

Um, but isn't that nice?

And what Liz and Barb wanted to do was create kind of a pull into the lobby where you felt like you can relax there and you could feel love and you and you don't want to leave.

And that's what our goal is.

So there's a heart to a church, and that's what you're gonna get for the next seven weeks.

We're gonna look at these churches.

And the first one is the church at Ephesus.

And I've decided to call it the hard-working loveless church.

The hardworking loveless church.

And that'll that'll mean more as we unpack it today.

To the angel of the church of Ephesus, right?

These things says he who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands.

So the last time, two weeks ago, before Easter, I shared what the stars are and the lampstands, but but he speaks here, he's prostrate before the Lord.

John is prostrate, probably in a cave on the island of Patmos, out in the Aegean Sea, the Lord appears to him in this massive, powerful vision.

And mark this, it's kind of interesting that in all the books of the Bible, 65 books of the Bible, only this one, Jesus kind of wrote it.

Because it's verbatim what Jesus is saying to John, and then John is writing it down.

It's the only book of the Bible like that, where it's you could argue, you could argue that the book of Revelation was written by Jesus, because it is almost a dictation here.

I mean, he's saying what he sees in some cases, but in other cases, he's actually hearing Christ speak to him, and he speaks, first of all, of an angel of the church.

Angelos, translated here, angel can mean angel, but is often used of human beings, messengers, pastors, and disciples of Christ.

Matthew 11, 10, Mark 1, 2, Luke 7, 24, Luke 7, 27, Luke 9, 52, James 2, 24.

All refer to humans as angelos, as angels.

I believe he's speaking to the pastors.

And the reason I believe that is because angels don't need to get mail.

And so it's coming to the pastors.

There's going to be seven angelos, seven pastors.

John the Baptist was called an angelus, a messenger.

In Luke chapter 9, Jesus' disciples are sent out as messengers.

Luke 9 · chapter mention

In the book of Acts, the word is used for messengers.

So I believe the letters are written to pastors, to pastors and leaders.

And you know what's so comforting about this passage is that it talks about these angels and it speaks of the seven stars in the right hand of God.

God's got me in his right hand.

That's a big hand.

That's a great hand.

God's got you in his right hand.

He's got you covered.

He's there for you, he's with you, he loves you.

It's interesting that in the whole book of Revelation, and especially in chapters two and three on the seven churches, there's never a mention of the choir, of the church, or of the worship team, or the children's ministry, or the youth ministry, or the men's ministry.

It's speaking of the heart of the church.

You see what Jesus is most concerned about in any church is the heart of that church and the importance of the values of that church.

And he's going to talk about Ephesus.

And Ephesus was not the capital at that time.

Pergamum was, but it was the most prominent city in Asia Minor.

It was a city of between a quarter and a half a million people.

It had a listen to this, it had a library of 200,000 volumes.

200,000 volumes.

There was a university or a gymnasium, a gymnasium dedicated to the Emperor Domitian.

The temple of Artemis or Diana was one of the seven wonders of the world.

They say that when you came into the Ephesian harbor, up on the mountain was this massive temple to Artemis.

It was the banking center of that part of the world.

It was full of idolatry and prostitution.

Paul and Timothy have been pastors there, and John was a pastor there before he was sent to Patmos.

It's a powerful and maybe the most influential church.

We believe that's why it's the first one mentioned in the book of Revelation.

Ephesus means desire.

The word Ephesus means desire.

And we're going to see that there's a lot of good things about the church in Ephesus.

Look at verse 2.

I know your works.

Let's just stop there for a moment.

God knows your works.

Don't miss this.

God notices you.

He knows your works.

He knows your heart.

He knows your failures.

He knows if you're backsliding and you're moving into areas you shouldn't be moving in.

God knows.

He knows.

And so right out of the chute, he's saying, look, I notice these things.

I think I think if Jesus were here, he would say, I know you and I like you.

He said, Well, you know, you say I love you.

Yeah, of course he's supposed to love you.

Theologically he has to love you because he created you.

But I think Jesus likes you.

I think he likes you.

I think he wants a relationship with each of us.

I know your works.

I know your labor.

This word labor has the idea of utter exhaustion.

The church in Ephesus is hard working, they're exhausted, they're serving, they're laborers.

I know your patience.

Again, the word means patience under pressure.

There is this pressure, and this is coming from Domitian, men and women.

Domitian is the first emperor, believe it or not, the first emperor of Rome who enforced emperor worship.

Nero was an egomaniac, but he never enforced emperor worship.

Domitian is the first one that enforces worship to him as if he's a god.

Domitian called himself Zeus, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

Now that's going to be important as we move into chapters four and five about what Jesus and how Jesus is going to identify himself in the apocalypse, in the vision, the unveiling.

No other emperor before him called himself the king of kings and the lord of lords.

The Greek god Zeus was given, if you remember, Mount Olympus in Greece, Domitian's university was 20 times larger than Mount Olympus.

Everyone was commanded to worship Domitian or be killed starting in 86 AD.

So somewhere now, about eight or ten years have passed, as Revelation is written, there's been tremendous persecution.

Why is that important?

I think that's important because don't complain so much.

I mean the reality is, is this kind of this kind of work of Domitian, of emperor worship, was required three times a day, and if you didn't worship, the women and the females in the household were sold into prostitution and slavery at the temples of that time.

Domitian noted that the eastern gods wore a diadem or a crown with their divine name on it, and wore a signet ring with their divine name on it.

And he started this practice, and we have um we have architectural and archaeological findings of rings and a signet of King of Kings and Lord of Lords with a picture of Domitian on it.

Some believe that the mark of the beast, speaking of the forehead and the hand, came from this.

So what do you do?

What does a pastor do under those kinds of conditions of persecution?

And if you don't bow down, and if you get caught not bowing down in worship, that your family members would be sold into prostitution and slavery.

Listen to this.

The entire flotilla of the Roman Navy, the Praetorian Guard, marched into Ephesus with a cart carrying a 35-foot statue of Domitian, 24 priests around the cart as they came in, singing, Worthy are you, Lord and God, to receive glory and honor.

That's the condition in Ephesus when the scroll of Revelation reaches them, and many believe that when they saw the beast, which we're going to come to being cast into the sea, the people took courage that that was a picture of Domitian.

And Jesus is saying to John and to his people, don't give in.

Don't give up.

You're more than a conqueror.

Listen to these words, be encouraged by these words.

I see your labor.

I see your patience.

I see these works of righteousness.

I notice you.

In 96 AD, Domitian had a vision.

Tomorrow is all he heard in the vision.

He heard tomorrow, tomorrow, he woke up screaming.

At noon the next day in Ephesus, an Ephesian philosopher had a vision and started shouting in the streets blood, blood, I see his blood.

The emperor has been killed.

And on that very hour, he was assassinated.

And the Roman Senate declared Domitian as damned.

And every temple and statue where his name had been was erased.

That's the context, men and women, of the book of Revelation.

So how do you deal with pressure?

I was so kicked when I'm sitting on this slope in Winter Park because I tweak my knee.

Lots of pressure.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

I mean, so many of us we're just we're just weaklings.

But this is the context of the book of Revelation.

You cannot bear those who are evil.

He commends them for those who have come into the church to divide the church.

Do you know there's divisive people?

There's divisive.

Anybody been in any churches where there's divisive people?

Find me any church that votes on its decisions, and I'll show you there's a lot more.

Four R's.

I don't know if they're in your app notes or not, but I'm gonna give you four R's.

Repent, restore, remove, reconcile.

Let me say them again.

Repent, restore, remove, and reconcile.

It's all how you apply this in a church setting.

Here's the way I believe you're supposed to apply these, is that if a sinner repents, you restore.

Like that.

If they repent of wrongdoing, you restore.

Now there may be a restoration process, but you restore them.

But you remove a person who causes division.

Proverbs 6.19, the Lord hates one who sows discord among brothers.

So if there are people who are in their homes or in the context of groups and they're speaking discord about the church, the Lord hates that.

Do you know the Lord hates some things?

That's one of the things he actually hates.

You're actually in a position of being opposed by God Almighty.

It's really scary stuff.

You reconcile with those whom you have a personal grievance with by going to them.

But we bungle the whole thing in the church and we remove the sinner, we restore the person who causes divisions, and we never reconcile with those we have grievances with.

And so here we are at our roadmap today, and we talked about a covenant of harmony.

And I asked everybody in the group, how many of you have ever had anything like this in a church?

No hands went up.

We talk about Matthew 18 and Matthew chapter 5, and Louis de Gornos did an awesome job in lecturing on what we believe is a covenant of harmony.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

And at the road, we have people sign it.

Basically, if you're becoming a part of the road, you're signing, we will work stuff out between each other.

We will follow actually what the Bible talks about.

What a novel concept that the Christian church would actually follow the Bible.

And so the covenant of harmony is there, and we talk about it.

I remember back about a year, year and a half ago when we were doing the covenant of harmony and everything, this man, this guy just came against me.

And he said, Man, that's just so legalistic.

And I said, Oh, really?

Can you find anything in this that's not biblical?

And of course, whenever you do that and you're on good ground, you don't ever see them again.

So I never did.

But healthy churches deal with division, they deal with differences because we're all made up of sinners and we're all kind of divisive in our own way.

But as we learn to walk and value unity because God loves it so much, there's a beauty to that.

And so and so what this is the beauty of the Ephesus church.

They were trying to do this, they're not putting up with evil people, they're healthy.

You know that your cancer cells, everybody has cancer cells, and they've they've been doing all these studies about who gets cancer and who doesn't get cancer.

And there's a lot of debate about that.

What kind of triggers cancer?

And why do others not get cancer?

And they talk about it's really related to your immune system.

And so churches have to have immune systems because cancers are gonna come, but how do you drive out of cancer by being healthy as Church in your immune system.

I believe that means doctrinally, theologically, but also relationally and having relationships with others and loving them.

You have tested those who say they're apostles and are not, and you found them to be liars.

In Acts 20, Paul gathers the elders at Ephesus together at Miletus, and this is what he says.

If I was gonna die tonight, if this was my last day on the earth, this would be a good word.

I think I would say this to any church.

For I know this, that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.

Also, from among yourselves, men will rise up, speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after themselves.

So here he has six.

See, this would have been some sixty, fifty to sixty years before Paul says to the to the elders at Ephesus, savage wolves are coming in.

Now, do you think that the savage wolves he's speaking of would have been noticed when they came in?

I don't think so.

I don't think you notice them.

They come in and they devour the flock.

And so he's saying, look, there's these groups, and we know historically that we might call them the Judaizers.

The Judaizers, especially in the book of Galatians, you see about the Judaizers.

But there were these groups of supposed apostles and prophets going around saying that they were on the same level as the Lamb's 12.

Capital A apostles.

And we have them today.

Apostle so and so, prophet so-and-so.

Church, be careful with that.

Be careful with the titles, be careful with self-proclaimed apostles.

There's not apostles today, there's apostolic gifting, there's prophetic gifting, but not apostles.

And so he's saying, I'm commending you that you notice that these guys who call themselves apostles are not.

Let me give you what I think are the qualities of a true apostle, and it's only the Lamb's 12.

And what you guys understand when I say the Lamb's 12, what I mean is the 12 that were with Jesus, minus Judas, Paul came in.

Okay, so Paul was part of the Lamb's 12.

Number one, they had governmental authority.

The original apostles, capital A apostles, had governmental authority.

Number two, they wrote scripture.

The apostles wrote scripture.

Number three, their names are written in the foundation stones of the holy city of Jerusalem that we're all going to see in the coming of Christ.

Number four, they had the signs of an apostle.

Miracles and signs and wonders followed them.

And then fifthly, they had seen, not visualized, they had literally seen the resurrected Christ.

And if you remember, even the apostle Paul on the road to Damascus had a vision.

He saw the resurrected Christ.

So men like Calvin and Luther and Zwingli in the Reformation period had apostolic gifting, but they never proclaimed themselves to be apostles.

And great missionaries like Jay Hudson Taylor and William Carey and guys like that had an apostolic gifting, but they weren't apostles.

So he commends them, and I want to commend us that be careful with that kind of stuff.

It gets really dicey.

Verse 3.

And you've persevered and you have patience and have labored for my name's sake and have not become weary.

So these are this is just really a hardworking church.

They don't quit, they don't stop.

I'll say that's who we are.

The road is a hardworking church.

I'm looking around right now, and most of you in this room are serving in some capacity.

I mean, you're working, you're doing stuff.

You know, last week I didn't even say anything.

I meant to, and I forgot.

But you I guess a group of you guys went out there.

Is that right, Ryan, that y'all put up the tables, set up the tables for that pancake breakfast for Chapel Hills Church.

And we didn't want Bobby to stay up waiting.

Um, and so and so we said, look, we'll take care of it.

Well, that's just the way that's what we do.

And so you guys are a hard-working group.

Nevertheless, now he gets into the criticism, and this is really important.

Nevertheless, I have this against you that you've left your first love.

You've left your romance for me.

You've left your passion for me.

You're not in love with me anymore.

You know what I love?

I tell Anna, I tell others in my family, sometimes do pictures, they'll do pictures for the website and stuff.

I say, I so they'll be in the back to take the pictures.

And I love when they get the photos, but like everybody's hands in the air.

It's just awesome.

And you guys know worship's not always hands in the air.

Worship can be just as meaningful right here.

But I like those times when all the, you know, everybody's hands are in there.

You guys are focused because you love the Lord.

Well, this is a church where no hands are in the air.

You know, it's it's like a lot of churches that I grew up in.

Um, but they're missing something.

And uh it's it's a house, but it's not a home.

Some of you grew up in a house, but it wasn't a home.

Right?

I mean, some of you grew up in a house, it wasn't a home.

Some of you had a home, but you didn't have a house.

You know, some of you grew up and you were in a you grew up in an apartment, or you grew up, you know, in a really difficult situation.

Maybe it was a little more on the poverty-stricken side of it and stuff, and it was, you know, it was a house, but it was also home because there was a lot of love there.

It's interesting that Paul, in writing about relationships to the church at Ephesus, mentions love in the book of Ephesians 20 times.

This was a loving church at one time.

And in just some 50 years, he says, you don't have any love anymore.

You've lost your love.

And so, isn't it interesting?

I wrote my book, The Godwild Marriage, on Ephesians, basically Ephesians 5, because it's the best manual in the entire Bible on marriage.

33 verses, the best 33 verses on marriage in the entire Bible.

We're really starting at 18, so it's less than that.

So 18 to 33, it's about men loving their wives as Christ loved the church.

It's about a mutual yielding to one another in love with each other.

That was the church at Ephesus at that time.

This was a loving church.

Any church that begins to lose its love loses its heart.

And so, Jesus, when being asked that question, and we used it for our antiphonal reading tonight, what's the greatest commandment?

What commandment sums it all up?

Love the Lord your God.

Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.

Everything summed up in just those two commands.

Because when you love that way, you don't covet.

When you love that way, you don't steal.

When you love that way, you don't kill.

When you love that way, you don't take stuff from other people.

When you love that way, you start to have intimacy with the Lord and with others in your life.

And you get on, you know, the love diet.

I mean, I don't know how many diets there are, but if you go on the internet and you put in diets, I mean, you'll be there for hours checking them all out.

There's also a love diet.

You know what the love diet is?

It's that young man or that young lady that falls in love.

And suddenly they're just dressing a little bit nicer.

They go and get their hair done.

And they're going to restaurants they never went to before.

They're going out of their way across town to see someone, and it makes you gag.

I mean, quite frankly.

You know, it's just weird.

But you all have done it, and if you haven't, it's probably in your future.

But it's called the love diet.

And so you fall in love, you get married, you do your honeymoon.

First year, really pretty romantic and everything.

Second year, kind of sort of romantic.

Third year, baby comes.

Fifth year, another baby comes, and then it's babysitters.

Finances are now getting a little bit tighter.

Who's gonna work?

Who's not gonna work?

And then they grow, and you've got soccer games and baseball games, and you're running all over the city, and you come to Pastor Steve, and you say, Why don't you do your services on Saturday night?

Because we've got all our games then.

And so do we.

So I know the guy, I know what it's like.

I hear it all the time.

And somewhere along the way, the love becomes routine, and we lose our passion for each other, right?

And we sort of start to grow apart.

And we have to work hard, we have to work hard to come back together.

And I love verse 5 because I think verse 5 captures how we get our love back, how we get our love back for the Lord.

Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen, repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent.

I see three things here.

First of all, remember.

Remember, constantly remember the love you had for the Lord.

You remember those early days when you first got saved and you were a mess and you were bugging everybody about the Lord, and you're talking about Jesus, and you were excited about Jesus, and everybody just wanted to shut you down because all you talked about was how you, I mean, you had it all, these young believers have it all figured out.

I'm so glad that hasn't happened to us yet.

We've tried to not create an environment where they want to run from us when they get saved, you know.

Um, but but for some of us, many of you in this room, that was your story.

You first came to the Lord, you're excited about the Lord, you're passionate about the Lord.

You can't not tell everybody about the Lord.

He says, remember that.

Remember that zeal.

Remember that passion, remember that faith, how you trusted.

Remember the miracles, all these cool things.

You know, you're praying about something and you're in the room with the guys at the dorm.

I remember this, and a couple said, I remember one time we were doing a crusade.

I was a gymnast at Georgia, and so it was a bunch of us athletes have been asked to go to this small town called Madison, Georgia to speak to this big youth rally.

And part of the youth rally was gonna be outside the next day, and it is raining.

Um cats and junkyard dogs.

I mean, it's just it's just pouring out there.

And we got together, and it was a baseball player, and there was a couple football players, and there was me, and I don't remember, there was like four four or five of us that were gonna speak.

And we're praying in our room and we're crying out to God, and the rain stopped.

Now you think it never rains here, so you don't even know what I'm talking about.

But in Georgia, it rains a lot, okay?

And when it's raining, it doesn't just stop, but it just stopped, and the next day it was sunny and beautiful.

And I'll bet you if we were to interview those guys today, they all remember that story, and we were just fired up.

It's like, God answered our prayer, he's a miracle working out.

I remember we shared that like to this group of about a thousand kids, and they all went, wow, ah, and you think, man, that like the resurrection body of Jesus is showing up that night.

And it was just we added, we pray, you know, the rain stopped and all that.

And so you remember that?

You guys, if you don't remember that, then that's not good.

Um, but I hope that you remember there were times where God showed up when you prayed and when you sought him.

He says, remember back.

Don't forget that.

He can do that again.

You can do that again, and then he says, repent.

And what it means to repent is change your mind.

That's what repentance means.

It means change your way of thinking.

You're going right, go left.

You know, you're going that way, go this way.

Change, go back, repent.

If you notice stuff in your life that's not right, if the shoe fits, wear it.

Um, if if there's stuff that God's put in your life and you're just going through the motions, repent.

Stop it.

It's a drag on everybody.

It's a drag on you, and it's a drag on your family, and it's a terrible witness to your kids.

You guys realize Christianity has no grandchildren.

Christianity has no grandchildren.

Every child has to make a decision for Christ for them.

Just because they grew up in a Christian home doesn't mean you're gonna pop out a Christian kid.

And so if you're kind of dragging along and your Christian faith is like this, or you're talking bad all the time or negative about people all the time, you are so infecting your kids with cancer.

And they go, I don't know why my kids just don't like Sunday school.

I don't know why my kids don't like church, I don't know why my kids don't like the youth group.

It's because of you.

It is.

I feel no responsibility at all to disciple your kids.

All we do at the road is we create an environment and a motivation where they can come, and it's a proverbial, you know, story.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

What makes a kid drink is the motivation and the love and the passion of the parents.

It really is.

And so, and so he's saying, repent.

Start with you.

Get fired up.

How do I do that?

Get up in the morning and worship.

Start praying with your spouse if you're married.

Ask God for zeal.

I'm sure Jesus is up in heaven going, I keeps asking for zeal.

What's his problem?

Doesn't he know after the third year of walking with me is just business as usual?

I'm speaking to, I'm looking in the mirror, gang.

So this is like, don't take this like, oh, I'm like some super saint.

I'm not, I mean, I have to do this too.

I'm having to do that right now.

So we cry out to God, we repent, and then he says, do the first works.

Do the first go back and do what you did before.

He's saying to the Ephesians, look, get back to it.

Get back to PBJ, prayer Bible journal, go back to the basics.

That's why I've got this young men's D group.

All the guys are, I don't know what you guys are, but you're like 25 to 28 or something like that, I think.

And we meet at Denny's or we meet by my fire, and we're going through Growing in Christ, this little nav booklet, because it's the basics, but it gets, but it takes us into lots of deep stuff.

And I do it that way because that's the foundations we've got to lay.

Get in a D group.

Get in a discipleship group.

And if you're not in one, then when we end the service tonight, run up to someone you really like and say, Can I be in your D group?

And if they don't have one, then tell them, Pastor Steve said you should start one.

Or, listen, or listen, this is so sad, I will come and remove your lampstand, he says.

I will come to you and remove your lampstand.

In other words, if we lose our witness as a church, we will lose our church.

If we lose our witness as an individual, we will lose the anointing of the Lord.

I don't think we can lose our salvation, but you will lose that anointing and that passion and the visions and the dreams won't happen anymore.

And the revelation from Scripture, it won't happen anymore.

It'll just become routine.

And as it becomes routine, you just become like everybody else.

1 Corinthians 3.

What does it say?

Like mere men.

In other words, there's nothing different in our lives.

There's no power, there's no forgiveness, and there's no joy in our lives.

And that could happen in this church.

This can happen in any church.

I would say it happens in most churches.

Most churches are only good for one generation.

And then they lose their way.

And the stats all show that.

Your typical church is kind of like this.

And then boom, drops off.

Our city is full of churches that once were great, once were bustling with people.

I could name five churches, three to five churches I could name, because I did, I worked with the Chamber of Commerce and I worked with one of my classes at Fuller when I was in graduate school to study the city of Colorado Springs and the church systems and the church growth of the city in 1992 and 93 before I came in 1994.

So I kind of knew what I was getting into.

And virtually all but one of those churches are pretty much just devastated.

And they were the leading four or five churches in the city at the time.

That's typical in any city.

And so if we don't keep going back to the old ways and repenting of these current ways and then renewing ourselves in the present ways, we'll follow the same route.

Verse 6.

But this you have that you hate, it's like he wants to end on a good note.

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

First time in the New Testament, Jesus says he hates something.

Who are they?

Some say that there was a bishop named Nicole who promoted immorality.

The key is the word Nicolaitans, made up of two words, Nikko or Niko, is where we get the word Nike or victorious, rule over, and laetans, meaning laity.

This idea of a dominating over the laity.

So you see this in churches.

We see it all the time where it's kind of like the shepherding movement.

Anybody familiar with the shepherding movement?

The shepherding movement was really strong out of Florida with a guy named Don Bation and others in the, what would you say, Linda?

Was that like in the 70s and 80s?

80s, yeah.

And it was this idea that, you know, I'm your pastor, you come to me for everything.

I set up kind of a system where you have to submit to what I say, even to the point of who you marry and who you date.

Um, it was it was pretty weird.

An overemphasis on submission.

And from what we can see from our context in in Revelation, it appears that probably those who are calling themselves apostles and prophets were also part of the Nicolaitans.

So they were ruling over the laity.

Guess what, gang?

God hates anyone who gets in the way of his sheep because he's the chief shepherd.

And that's an important word for all pastors.

That's an important word for me.

I am not the chief shepherd.

I'm an under-shepherd of the chief shepherd.

But if I drift off and do my own thing and I'm not listening to the Lord, God will remove me.

Because He wants to be the leader and He wants to be the guide and the shepherd of His church.

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

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

Interesting, it takes us all the way back to Genesis.

Remember, I talked about in the introduction that Revelation has many parallels to the book of Revelation.

Revelation has a has this context of the book of Genesis, of the completion of the book of Genesis, and he's taking us back now to the tree of life in the book of Genesis.

Listen, don't miss this.

The purpose of man is not primarily the glory of God.

The purpose of man is not primarily to serve God.

The purpose of man is to have fellowship with God and have a relationship with Him.

A love relationship with Him.

That's what you were created for.

And He's taking us back and He's saying the Tree of life.

Eat from the tree of life.

Eat from me.

Know me.

Intimacy with me.

That's our purpose.

Men and women, that's the only way to overcome.

Some of you are going through financial struggles.

Some of you are going through marital struggles.

Some of you are going through cancer.

Some of you are struggling with bitterness.

Some of you are going through memories of shame in the past.

And the only way to be an overcomer is intimacy with Christ, to know that you're beloved.

You are beloved, every one of you.

And to the extent that you experience intimacy with Christ is the extent to which we can become an overcomer.

We don't become an overcomer by PMA, you know, having a positive mental attitude.

We don't become an overcomer by going back to school and getting new skills.

All that's important.

Believe me, it's really important.

Some of it's very, very biblical.

But the way we overcome is to eat from the tree of life in the paradise of God, which is intimacy with Jesus and knowing his love.

That's what we learn from the church at Ephesus.

We can work hard, but it means nothing if it's loveless.

Let's be a loving church.

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