All Head, No Heart

As I was kind of studying this passage this week, this was like a rough week for me.

So we've had a head cold kind of go through our family.

All uh six of us have had it of some sort.

I was uh in in bed ridden for a couple of days, and uh it was hard for me to kind of work through this, but I I got my studying done early in the week, and then I had a couple days literally just to meditate, because like I didn't feel like getting up and writing or doing anything like that.

And so I was thinking about this passage, and what came coming to mind is the third stanza or verse of this hymn called Come Thou Fount.

It says this O to grace, how great a debtor! Daily I'm constrained to be.

Let thy goodness like a fetter bind my wandering heart to thee.

Prone to wonder, Lord, I feel it.

Prone to leave the God I love.

Here's my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.

You see, this song so eloquently captures the despair that we all feel and experience to be true in many ways.

We are prone to lose joy-filled, passionate, zealous love.

We're prone to that.

We have a natural propensity toward it.

Think about just common things in your life that when you first had them, when you first possessed or acquired them, you have this deep, passionate love for, but quickly saw it flee.

Maybe it's something like a hobby.

I know for me, one of the most pain points of mine and my wife's marriage is how many hobbies I have had as a grown man.

And what happens is this is I get this great passion for this hobby.

I have this zeal and love for this hobby.

And so what do I do?

I research it like crazy.

And then obviously I've got to buy everything so that I can do the hobby.

And then I start leaving the house and doing my hobby, right?

Whatever it is, it kind of takes me away from my family or because they don't usually like the same things that I like to do.

But then quickly, somehow, that hobby fades.

That love, that passion that I have, it kind of uh dwindles, right?

And so then I try to uh clasp onto something else.

And what do I have to do?

I have to sell all that stuff from my last hobby so that I can buy all the stuff from my new hobby, and then I have to research it some more, and so forth and so forth.

What about our careers?

How many of you entered into the career that you're in now with zeal and passion and love?

And now you're wondering, why did I ever make this choice for my life?

This is so brutal, it's so uh grudging that I have to get up and do this every day.

It's not what I thought it was gonna be.

What about just stuff like I don't know, kitchen appliances or other things that we buy in our home because we're like, this is gonna make me happy?

How many, how many like momentarily happy pursuit purchases have you made in your life?

Clothes, shoes, stuff, and then all of a sudden you're like, I don't even like this anymore.

Why did I ever even buy this shirt?

Why did I ever buy these shoes?

I hate the way this looks on me.

I don't like it anymore.

It doesn't do what I thought it was going to do, satisfy.

And that's just stuff.

What about the relationships you have?

What about your marriage?

How many of you can remember your wedding day?

Heyo.

You remember that love, that joy, that, that, that complete like otherness that you experienced, like you weren't even in your own body.

And then, like, what happens?

Do you look at your spouse with that same passion and zeal?

Do you gaze into their eyes and start to tear up the same way you did on that day?

What about your children?

Do you remember the day they were born?

Do you remember the love that you had for them when they were born?

Like, like nothing was ever going to take that from you, and now you like most of the day you just want to punch them in the mouth?

Right?

Just like, why?

Why did I have you?

That happens to us.

What about friends?

What about friends that you were so in love with, and you couldn't wait to invite them over for dinner to your house, and you couldn't wait to celebrate big occasions with them, and you couldn't wait to share news and information on the phone with them as soon as you received it, and now you don't even talk to one another.

What about your church?

But now think about Jesus.

And ask yourself this question: Are you as joy-filled, passionately, zealously, in love with him as you were before?

That's what we're going to try and work through today.

As we navigate this letter that Jesus has for the church at Ephesus.

You see, this is really important because Jesus is literally sharing with us what he wants from his church.

Think about the magnitude and weight that that holds.

We don't have to guess, we don't have to speculate.

And often when we think about, is our church doing what we're called to do?

Are we a healthy church?

Are we doing what's expected of us?

Our minds don't go to, well, what has Jesus revealed that he wants from his church?

Our minds go to metrics because we can measure those things, like budgets and how many people are showing up on Sunday morning, how many people do we have in our small groups or other things of that nature?

Maybe we go to, well, do people think we're cool?

Are we on social media?

Are we doing the right things there?

Do people actually get excited when they come and be a part of this?

We enter into that rat race of trying to make this Sunday better than last Sunday.

We often don't go to, well, what has Jesus said that he actually wants from his church?

And the weighty language that Jesus uses in these letters that he has the Apostle John pin, it should really cause us to wake up and consider what it is that Jesus desires from his church.

So let's navigate through this letter to the church at Ephesus.

As we look at verse one, what we're going to see emphatically is this This is Jesus' church.

He's making that point known from the very beginning.

This is Jesus' church.

You see, in every letter, all seven of them, what we see in the beginning is that Jesus reveals a part of himself, a part of his character, a part of his personhood that he had John reflect on and reveal out of chapter one.

So John goes through this whole laundry list of who Jesus is, this one, this voice like a trumpet that he heard actually speaking to him and saying, Write this down of which I'm going to show you.

And then he takes a chunk of that at the beginning of every letter to try and establish an aspect of himself to this church.

And the very first thing that he says to the church at Ephesus is the one who's writing to you is the one who holds the seven stars, which are the messengers, the angels of who's supposed to give this report, and who walks among the seven lampstains.

Those seven lampstains each resemble one of the seven churches that Jesus is writing to.

So he's stating from the very beginning, This is my church.

Here Jesus is reminding the church in Ephesus that it is him who is the authority in the church.

And he intimately knows the message that the church needs to hear.

His walking among the seven lampstands makes us aware of the intimacy Jesus has with his church.

See, we can often slip into a mindset that Jesus is distant from us, right?

He's outside of our experience and doesn't know us in our state.

We kind of have this Santa Claus conception of Jesus, right?

We all know the little song.

So that song really doesn't mean anything.

And a lot of us don't have a conscious reality of Jesus' presence with us intimately on a day-to-day basis.

Now we might have the right Sunday school answers.

Is Jesus with you?

Yes.

Is Jesus omnipresent?

Yes.

Is Jesus know the things you do in secret?

Yes.

Let me ask you though, how many times has that consciously informed and shaped the very things that you do on a day-to-day basis?

Or is Jesus just another Santa Claus to you?

Right?

We have a jingle and we have a Sunday school answer, but we don't have any actual reality on the way that it impacts the way that we live.

And Jesus is saying here, Ephesus, I know you intimately because I walk among you.

Jesus is present with his people.

Verses 2 to 3, we see that Jesus intimately knows our works.

Jesus intimately knows our works.

What he does here is great because he starts off with nine affirmations or commendations of what the church of Ephesus has done and who they are.

Nine positive things Jesus says about them.

He says that he knows your works.

He begins to make the church in Ephesus aware of his intimacy by affirming these works, their toil, their patient endurance, how they cannot bear those who are evil, tested themselves, who called themselves apostles and are not.

You see, he commends their labor, their discernment, their theology, their faithfulness.

He commends all of those things.

In all of those things, Jesus lets them know I see you.

I see you in the way that you've endured, I see in the way that you've executed discernment.

I see you that you've uh worked to proclaim faithful theology.

I see you, and it is good.

In their trials and sufferings, they have endured and been found faithful.

Now, one of the things that we have to work to understand is that as Jesus is affirming these things and commending some of these things among the church in Ephesus, some of it's ambiguous, right?

We see things like work and toil.

Well, what is that?

Now we could look at the historical uh information that we have at the Church of Ephesus that they were under a lot of trials and tribulations.

They were in a port city, and it was a metropolis area for really a lot of that section of Asia that they found themselves in.

And there was a lot of idol worship and happening.

Actually, we find in Acts 19 that they had made so many converts of Christianity that those who sold little silver idols in the marketplace were going bankrupt.

They were running them out of business because no one was buying their stuff anymore.

And so they have felt persecution, trials, and tribulations.

And we could start to speculate about what Jesus is talking about, but really he's a little bit ambiguous on some of these things.

Things like toil, works, patient endurance.

But he does bring clarity to one specific aspect.

You see, he brings clarity that their ability to actually endure through false teachers.

That's the point that we find clarity in his commending of the church at Ephesus.

Possibly the greatest attack that Ephesus ever experienced, and I would argue the greatest attack on the church still today is false teachers and false teaching.

There is no greater threat to the church than false teachers and false teaching.

And you could try to look through anything that the church could face.

The church could face uh political oppression, the church could face plague, or uh the church could face uh any type of persecution for our faith.

That we we could face, we could face a number of different things.

But I would argue that false teaching is the greatest threat to the church.

Because every trial and trouble that the church could ever face is either overcome by faithful teaching or made shipwreck through false teaching.

If we look at the church today, this is still today one of the biggest threats to the church.

We're looking at America at a time where we're seeing Christianity decline at rapid paces in America.

Why is that?

I would argue and submit that because over the last 200 years we've allowed and made way for false teachers to take the pulpit.

And when life came at these Christians, when life came at these people, which the storms of our life will come, their life was made shipwrecked because they had no foundation of which to overcome and fight against what they saw in their life.

False teaching is the greatest enemy, faithful teaching is the greatest weapon.

We're not seeing a decline in Christianity because it's no longer relevant.

We're not seeing a decline in Christianity because of the social attack, because of the political scene, or because of the cultural unrest.

We're not seeing a decline in Christianity because they took God out of schools.

What do you do about nations that never had God in them, yet they're thriving in Christianity?

You see, we've so politicized and culturalized Christianity, that's the problem.

We've made it one and synonymous with American identity.

We had no weight, no substance, no faithful biblical preaching.

It just turned into life coaching and TED talks.

When the world can have the same message that you can have in the pulpit, you have no message at all.

No message of hope, no message to combat against what the world is throwing at you.

You see, the Ephesians withstood and persevered through false teachers and through false teaching.

And Paul told them that this would come.

Paul, who didn't write this letter but wrote letter to the Ephesians, wrote letter to the pastors of Ephesus and uh pastor there himself as well.

He told them that this was gonna happen.

If we look in Acts chapter 20, 29 and 30, we see Paul addressing the elders at Ephesus before he's being sent away to Rome to be executed for his faith.

Acts 20 · chapter mention

He says this I know that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock, and from among your own cells will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away disciples, the disciples after them.

See, what Paul was saying was, Among you leaders, even from among you elders, who some of you I have appointed by my own hand, wolves will rise up, and what will they do?

What will be their attack on their church?

What will be the way that they try to uh to kill them?

Through false teaching, through drawing away disciples after themselves, speaking twisted things.

Paul warned the church at Ephesus this was going to happen.

And what we're seeing in Jesus writing to them through the Apostle John in this revelation letter is that they had endured through it.

You see, in every regard, as we look at the church in Ephesus in here, they were the model church in every way.

They were active and busy in service, they were patient and suffering, they were orthodox and faithful in their theology.

I mean, really, what more could have been asked from this church?

They had patiently endured, they had overcome trials and tribulations, they were toiling in their work and labor among the city.

I mean, for goodness sake, they must put a whole market out of business because they were making so many converts from false idol worship.

What more could have been asked?

I would have been happy to be a part of that church, to be pastor and shepherd and lead that church.

But then it turns at verse 4.

Jesus comes forward with the one thing that he has against them.

And we see this that Jesus admonishes faithful works done absent of love.

Jesus admonishes faithful works done absent of love.

You see, the Ephesian church has lost its first love.

It's grown cold from the flame of passion that it had at first.

And Jesus expected and foretold this in his ministry.

You see, when we look at Matthew chapter 24, Jesus actually prophesies or foretells that this is what's going to happen.

Matthew 24 · chapter mention

When we look at that verse, Matthew 24, 11 through 12, it says, And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray.

And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.

Now listen to what Jesus says there.

False prophets and false teachers will arise and do what?

Lead many astray.

What's the implication of that?

What's the fruit of that?

These false taught, these false teachers rising and leading me astray.

It's that wickedness and immorality will fill the earth.

Lawlessness will be increased.

And then what's gonna happen?

The love of many will grow cold.

Let me ask you this real quick.

We have false prophets and false teachers increasing in the church today.

So many people are supporting blindly anti-biblical movements, agendas, platforms.

And what do we see as a result of that?

Do we see where the church has bent and bowed the knee at false teaching and false idols?

That there has been morality flooding our land because of it?

That we have seen goodness and peace spread because of it?

Because preachers have lost their backbone and no longer stand for what the word of God declares clearly and emphatically.

We see immorality reign.

And let me ask you something.

What's that doing to your heart?

Let's just call it for what it is.

When you see BLM, when you see protests, when you see rioters, when you see looters, when you see all these things happening in our political election, when you see everything that's going on in the agendas of what's being rolled out on your Netflix platform or what's being through your social media feed or the LGBTQ movement that is going to read story time with your children in their schools to teach them that this is good and actually in some places encourage them to practice and explore their curiosity.

What's that doing to your heart?

Is that making your love grow cold?

You see, Jesus' words are true for Ephesus as it is for us today.

Well we have false teachers and we have false prophets, immorality increases, and the love in our hearts grows cold.

Man, it's amazing that Jesus' words are for then, for now, and forevermore.

You see, it's this very thing that Jesus told them would happen is happening at the Church of Ephesus.

But this is what's crazy about Jesus is he doesn't allow that to justify their state.

He says, this is gonna happen.

This is gonna be the conditions that will dictate a coldness of heart in your life.

However, he will not allow their loveless state to be justified.

Though he recognizes that the circumstances that created it are true and real, he's unwilling to allow those same circumstances to justify it.

So, yes, the church in Ephesus has lost its first love.

Yes, Jesus said this would happen because false teachers and immorality would increase.

He said that it would happen, but it's the very thing that he calls them to repentance over.

That's what for us as the Christian church, there might be true circumstances that create or dictate a posture in our lives, but it does not justify that posture unless it lines up in submission to the word of God of which he's called us to.

We might grow cold in our love, but we are not permitted to stay there justifiably just because of the immorality that we see in our world.

Jesus says, What?

Repent.

Repent.

An interesting thing that we also see in the midst of Jesus' commands to strive after and desire the love that they had at first resides a space still for hatred.

Look at that.

Jesus actually says, This one thing that I have against you, that you lost the love that you had at first.

And then if we go down to verse 6, he says, Yet this you have.

So he admonishes them, but then he encourages them one last time.

How does he encourage them?

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

In the scope of Jesus' love, that he's calling the Ephesian church to be repentful toward, he still has space for hatred.

Hatred for what?

Immorality bred from false teaching.

Jesus hates false teaching, which gives way to immorality.

He hates it.

You can't sugarcoat this.

You can't try to spin it.

You can't try to PR this thing.

You can't say, well, I know what Jesus said, but what he really meant, this isn't our president.

This is Jesus.

We don't have to try and PR his tweets.

Jesus said, This is what I hate.

And I commend you because you hate it also.

Here Jesus hates the work of the Nicolaitans.

Well, who are they?

Well, historically, we really don't know.

They could be a group of disciples that were pulled away by one of the first deacons in the church that was established in Acts chapter 6.

Acts 6 · chapter mention

That's speculative.

That's our best historical guess, but we don't really have much clout to be able to hang our hat on that reality.

We're going to be more familiarized with the teaching of the Nicolaitans, which actually bred immorality, in the letter that Jesus has to Pergamum.

And we're going to see that this teaching that bred immorality affected multiple churches, of which Jesus writes these letters to.

You see, their name literally means destroyer of the people, which is the exact fruit their teaching produced.

However, let us consider that to hate what is evil is not equal to loving Jesus and people.

Let me say that again.

To hate what is evil does not equal loving Jesus and his people.

The church historically has been too well known for what we hate.

We hate this, we hate that.

We hate these movies, we hate these type of clothes, we hate this type of music, we hate this type of politician, we hate, we hate, we hate.

We're against all these things.

That's how we make ourselves known, and we've misconstrued that proclamation of hate or disagreement or judgment to equal a love for Jesus and his people.

But it doesn't.

It just makes us callous, bitter, and cold.

You see, we have to hold these two things in tension, that we should have a blazing, white hot love for God and for our neighbor while equally holding in the opposite hand a hatred for what God hates.

You see, these two things are not uh uh fighting with one another, they're actually harmonious with one another to define and assert what actual true love is.

We'll get to that in just a moment.

You see, if the Ephesians failed to repent, Jesus would remove their lamp.

Fundamentally, this is what Jesus is saying.

A church without love will be a church without light.

You see, we're called to be a city on a hill, a light for the nations.

That's what we're called to be, is the church.

And Jesus says, if you don't have love, you won't have light because I'm gonna come in and physically remove it.

We can't be what God has called us to be if we don't have love.

Verse 7, we should heed the words of the Spirit so we may have life eternal.

At the closing of each of these letters in Revelation, what happens is that Jesus says, He who has an ear, let him hear.

You see, even though he was writing to specific churches, these letters were collected within the letter of Revelation itself.

And it was expected that these would be read to several churches on its journey throughout the people of God.

And so Jesus, even though he's writing specifically to Ephesus, he makes a call to anyone who hears these words, these commands, this warning and caution to listen to what the Spirit is saying so that we may have life eternal.

What's our main idea this morning?

It's this that love must drive our works.

Love must drive our works.

You see, this is JV level Christianity, right?

This is baby milk stuff.

This is the starting line of the Christian faith.

But we so easily allow it to slip away from us.

Think about it.

Love God and love your neighbor.

How are you doing on that?

You see, there's no work or deed that it's not to be shaped, informed, and motivated by this first and foremost.

Not obligation, but love.

Our pursuit to know deeper and more robust theology, our pursuit to serve in the kids' ministry, our pursuit to be a part of a local church in general, our pursuit to go and feed the homeless and poor, our pursuit to be present in our culture has to be driven and motivated, shaped and informed by the command to love God and love your neighbor.

If we do these two things, we fulfill the whole law and counsel of God.

Think about that.

Those two things.

But how much of our Christian life, how much of our life in general is informed, shaped, and motivated consciously by that endeavor?

To love God and to love our neighbor?

Or how much of our life is informed and motivated to love ourselves first.

Then if I've got time, if I've got margins on the outside, if I've got extra resources, I'll do those other two.

Or we misconstrued doing things for God and loving God.

Those aren't the same thing.

That's exactly what Jesus says in his letter to the Ephesians.

Everything you've done for me is not the same thing as you loving me.

Repent, or I'm going to remove your lampstand.

You see, love defines the Christian and love defines the church.

But we don't believe this.

We constantly fall short in actually believing and shaping and forming our lives around this reality.

We do this in two primary ways.

Number one is we allow an unholy love to drive us.

We allow an unholy love to drive us.

Some of us are just compassionate people, right?

Wear your heart on your sleeve.

You're the one tearing up at Hallmark Christmas time, right?

You're just can't take it anymore.

And that's not me.

I'm not that person.

I don't have a lot of compassion and empathy working to build that in myself as I think it's a vital tool.

However, off the cuff, you're not going to get it from me.

Like if my kids, my daughters know if they're running for a sad show to get empathy, to get what they don't come to dad because he just doesn't play that game.

Some of us are really compassionate.

We love really messy and recklessly.

We wear our hearts on our sleeves.

We're compassionate.

But we have to understand what love truly is.

We have to allow even that personality type or even that propensity to be formed by what God defines love as being.

We have to submit our emotions to God's revelation.

Love is not truly love unless it is submitted to the way God defines love to be.

You see, we want to dictate what love is, we want to dictate what love should look like.

And this is what's mind-blowing is that Jesus' love actually still has a place for hatred.

And here's why I would submit that's true.

Because if we truly loved God and neighbor, we would hate and revile anything that keeps God from receiving the love he deserves, and from our neighbor entering into the love of God, he extends through his mercy.

Think about this.

Let me break this down.

There is stuff in this world that keeps us from God.

It's called sin.

God has defined what that sin is and what keeps us from him.

God hates sin.

He cannot have any relationship with sin.

Sin cannot be in his presence because sin ultimately keeps us from himself.

God hates that stuff.

You know what God loves?

And so he did something about that sin.

He sent his son Jesus to absorb that sin in himself on the cross, crushed by the Father, so that we didn't have to be.

And he paid the price of the debt that our sin owed so that we could be made right with God.

Jesus didn't come just to teach us how to be nice.

Jesus didn't come just to show us or model for us how to be nice.

He didn't just come say, hey, look, everybody, I'm super nice.

I'm gonna teach you how to be nice too.

And if you do these five easy steps, you can have a right relationship with God.

We've so dumbed down the preaching of the pulpit to three, four, five, whatever easy steps to have whatever you really want on the other side, which oftentimes isn't God, it's just what God can give you.

No, what Jesus had to do was not teach you how to be nice.

Jesus had to crucify your wickedness on the tree.

And so the only being in all of creation is the one who was uncreated from the beginning, and he's the one that deserves all of our love and affection.

He's the only one who deserves love.

We only get love because he is a merciful God to us and allows us to partake of such beauty.

You see, we don't deserve love.

God deserves love, and we should hate anything and revile anything that keeps him from receiving it.

But also because in his mercy God loves them, we should hate and revile anything that keeps them from receiving that merciful love he desires to extend to them through his son Jesus.

Unholy love is a love that is self-informed and defined instead of being biblically informed and defined.

Our intrinsic understanding of love will always put at the center of it self-happiness by any means.

That's how we know love.

As human beings, as fallen people, in the process of redemption and sanctification, being made new.

If we understand our intrinsic reality of love, it will always dictate the happiness of self by any means.

We allow unholy love to drive us when we dismiss the things Jesus hates, and we actually affirm them in the life of others for their presumed happiness.

Think about the way that we've done that in the church.

Think about the way that we have said, you know what?

If you want to act that way, if you want to believe those things, and if you want to do that whatever, but that makes you happy, do it.

Because you know what?

Jesus is nice enough.

He'll accept it and he'll deal with it.

Basically, that's what we write.

Jesus is that dad who really doesn't like what's going on with his children, but he's a pushover, and so he should just sit there on the couch and deal with it.

We're happy.

That's kind of how we deal with him.

That's kind of how we deal with him in the life of others.

If that's really what you want, then you should do it because that'll make you happy, and God will just have to deal with it.

In fact, if he was love, if he was kind, if he was merciful, wouldn't he?

But that's unholy love.

God has clearly established what he hates, God has clearly established what keeps us from him, God has clearly established what will reconcile us back to himself.

And we have to be unwaveringly for those things.

Biblical love pushes us to find happiness and fulfillment in the only one whom those endeavors can be eternally sustained in.

Where are we gonna find happiness?

Where are we gonna find joy?

It's not in doing whatever you want to do.

We kind of proved that from the very beginning.

It's not in marrying that person that will never disappoint you, because they don't exist.

It's not in having those children who will always unwaveringly love you without any conditions, that doesn't exist.

It won't be in that job that will always satisfy and keep you interested, involved, and intrigued.

That doesn't exist.

So what where how when can happiness, fulfillment actually be understood and achieved?

And we put it in Jesus.

He's the only one who can eternally sustain those endeavors.

You want joy, he's the source.

You want peace, he's the source.

You want happiness, he's the source.

You want love, he's the source.

Anything and everything you're looking for, he is the truest, purest, eternal source for.

Some of us though, we don't allow an unholy love to drive us, we allow a loveless performance to drive us.

We allow a loveless performance to drive us.

We have robust theology, on point, orthodox.

We are faithful to the local church.

We're members, we serve in five different places, we give 12%, not just 10.

We serve in our community.

I'm at the food bank, I'm out there doing everything that I can to clean up the streets and help people who need it.

We check all the boxes of work and service.

But let me ask you something.

What good is theology if it only puffs up ourselves?

If it never builds up others or brings people into a loving relationship with Jesus?

What good is faithfulness to the local church or serving our community if it's more self-serving than selfless, driven by a passion to love others rather than to pat ourselves on the back?

What good is loveless performance when it has no ability to cause Jesus to love you more?

Let me say that again.

What good is loveless performance when it has no ability to cause Jesus to love you more?

This thing called Christianity, it's not worth it.

It's not worth it.

If you're coming here, if you're participating, giving, serving, if you're reading your Bible, if you're being nice to other people, it's not worth it if the end goal is you do these things in such an obligatory fashion to make Jesus love you more.

Because he can't.

You can't merit his affection, you can't earn his affection, you cannot labor and toil for his affection.

He has demonstrated fully and cosmically how much he loves you when he hung on that tree, when he was buried and resurrected from the grave, when he was seated at the right hand of his father, when he made you alive, when he caused you not to desire sin anymore, when he made you a royal priest, a holy nation caused by his name, when he adopted you in, when you were once an enemy and now a friend, brother and sister, co-heirs with all the glories and riches of heaven.

When he did that, he showed you how much he loves you.

Stop trying to earn his affection with loveless obligation performance?

In this letter, Jesus helps us to see that obligatory obedience alone is insufficient.

Does your passion to know and cherish Jesus more drive you to theology?

Does your desire to see people come to love Jesus drive you to study?

Does your zeal for the church cause you to be present and to serve?

Does love drive you?

Or does obligation?

Begin to picture what would change about your life, your Christianity, your walk with Jesus if love was consuming and driving you.

And so we find ourselves in this state, much like the Ephesians, where we have lost our first love.

And I'm going to submit that for us, this is going to be a perpetual calling back to.

I love the reformers.

They have this anthem, simple reformanda, means always reforming because they realize the reality of the lyrics of Come Thou Fount, prone to wander.

Lord, I feel it.

And what do we have to do?

Simple reformanda, always reform.

We have to come back to the gospel.

Praise God we're enabled by the Spirit, empowered by the Spirit to be convicted of sin.

Thank God we have the inerrant truth and revelation of Jesus found in his word.

Thank God we've been sourced and equipped to be able to come back, reform, be back on track, and to see that love kindled within us.

But how do we do it?

This might be oversimplification, but it's the Bible.

We love because Jesus first loved us.

We love because Jesus first loved us.

1 John 4.19 says that we love because he first loved us.

It's really that simple yet that confounding.

The love that Jesus has demonstrated for us in his death, burial, and resurrection should empower and drive us to fulfill the greatest works that he has called us to.

Love God and love your neighbor.

These works are fully and inseparably bound to love.

We love who?

God and neighbor.

Why?

Because he first loved us.

How?

By laying everything down in his incarnation, his propitiation, and his resurrection, he emphatically put on display an unwavering love for God and neighbor.

Think about that.

Jesus himself fulfilled the law for us on our behalf because we weren't able to.

What was that law?

Love God, love neighbor.

Have you ever thought about it that simply?

That Jesus fulfilled the law by doing those two things perfectly because we never could have.

Sinless, perfect, in full obedience to the Father.

And how did he love his neighbor?

Those who reviled him, hated him, sought to destroy him and murder him to accomplish that end task by freely and willingly being hung on the cross.

This love, one that does not hold itself in any regard, should be cultivated for God and emulated for neighbor.

Imagine the deep, blazing hot, zealous love that drove Jesus to climb Calvary.

Hebrews 12, 2 says this, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

What drove Jesus up Calvary?

Love did.

How was that joyful?

His best friends betrayed him, lied to his face, saying, I would never do that.

And then they do it in public.

His beard ripped out, punched, spit on, whatever you can imagine, shamed, mocked.

What joy could be found in such circumstance?

Because his joy was never dictated by his circumstance.

His joy was always dictated by loving his father and relentlessly loving his neighbor.

You see, the gospel is what ignites love in our hearts.

When we meditate on the gospel, we foster a love-filled desire to lay down our lives for God and for neighbor.

It is this meditating on the gospel, preaching on the gospel.

The greater and more majestic we see Jesus by constantly reflecting on what he has accomplished for us in his finished work causes ourselves to be seen so much smaller and smaller.

It's as if the uh uh uh John the Baptist had declared, he must increase, I must decrease.

Well, how do you do that?

Think, ponder, reflect, contemplate more and more on the beauty of the gospel.

John Stada, very influential theologian, pastor, author, says this the cross is the blazing fire at which the flame of our love is kindled, but we have to get near enough for it, sparks to fall on us.

What's gonna rekindle that love that was lost, that's grown cold, that callousness?

It's the gospel.

We have to get near it enough for its sparks to fall on us.

That means that we have to be intimate with it constantly, daily.

And so, what do we do about this?

Well, you gotta love Jesus.

Jesus, when he aligns with alliteration and points, right, makes it so easy for us.

But Jesus gives us actually in this letter three things to do.

When he's talking about the church at Ephesus, and he's saying, This one thing that I have against you, that you lost your first love, he actually lays out right after that three things that they are to do.

Number one, remember from where we have fallen.

Remember from where we have fallen.

Man, do something for me.

Recollect on the beauty of Jesus' pursuit for you.

If you're in this room, you're saved, you're a Christian, you love Jesus, think about when you didn't.

Think about what your life was like when you didn't love Jesus.

And think about the way he chased you down through the darkest of night.

And by his grace, he carried your dead limp body to the table of his mercy and graces and riches and made you alive and caused you to eat and drink with him.

Man, Jesus loves you.

He chased you down.

He sought after you.

Recollect on that pursuit.

Be wooed by the ways that Jesus has shown you how much he loves you.

I know for me and my wife, sometimes that night we'll be uh laying down for bed, and sometimes we'll just start recounting the day.

And it makes us really fall in love with one another if it was like a good day, right?

Sometimes we'll recount things from our past.

Sometimes me and my wife will look through photos of our life together, and that's this like process of wooing one another.

We just start falling back in love with one another as we recount those things.

Think of all the great ways that Jesus has been good to you.

I mean, the list we could not exhaust it.

I mean, just sitting in this room, the fact that we had a child to dedicate for this family, what a great and beautiful gift from God.

The fact that we have breath in our lungs, the fact that we have uh all these riches and goodness of what God has given us.

Think of the fact that he loved you enough to save you, to rescue you from your sin and from the despair of hell.

Think about, reflect on, be wooed by the way that God has healed you in your life.

When he prayed and he answered, when he intervened to protect you.

Daily recount the gravity of the gospel to yourself that love's flame might never dim.

Number two, repent from what robs your affections.

Repent from what robs your affections.

What is robbing your affections for Jesus right now?

What is it that's stealing your attention?

Think about the amount of time we have in a day.

Think about the amount of minutes.

We have a hundred, let's just think about hours.

We have 168 hours in a week.

We all know that if you come here about an hour and 30-ish minutes, it is given toward Jesus, hopefully, right?

So that's an hour and 30 out of the 168.

So we have 166 and a half more hours that we get to fill with stuff.

Now, a third of that's sleeping, so that's off the table, right?

Unless you can control your dreams if you can come talk to me afterward on how you do that.

Uh but then we have so then we have another two-thirds that we get to actually deal with consciously what we do.

I mean, what's stealing your attention?

What kind of task, what kind of busyness, what kind of distraction is stealing your attention?

What empty idol are you hoping will satisfy?

What thing are you thinking is going to make you happy or give you joy or give you peace that is unable to ever do?

What sin is quenching the spirit in your life?

We can all think about sin in our lives, sin in our hearts that maybe God has been dealing with us for a long time.

And we keep thinking that if we just put it under the rug and sweep it under there and don't let it express itself outwardly, then you know maybe he'll even forget about it.

We can kind of move on beyond this.

But what we're doing is we're fooling ourselves.

All sin brings destruction.

Sin quenches the spirit in our life.

And we can fool ourselves like we've maybe uh uh been able to push it down so far that God's not even that bothered by it any longer.

But we're just fooling ourselves.

It's us thinking that, well, if I eat this, even though I know it's unhealthy for me, I'll be okay.

And then you keep doing that day in and day out.

What sin is quenching the spirit in your life?

What is robbing your affections for Jesus?

But then ask this: what's robbing your affections for others?

Comparisonism?

I mean, this is such a horrible thing about our culture.

We compare ourselves with one another so much.

And then we find ourselves on platforms that really only exist to create comparisonism with one another.

I know even in our home, we struggled this year alone with the decision to put our kids in-person school because we saw so many other families homeschooling.

We saw so many other families doing different things, and we asked ourselves, are we bad parents?

Are we not really Christians?

We see what they're doing.

Should we be doing that?

What are people going to think when we don't homeschool our kids and we put them in person in classes?

That has been a part of our conversation thought process because we're so prone to compare ourselves, and it just robs our affections for other people because we're assuming these people are thinking things that they have never told us they're actually thinking.

What about falsely connected interactions?

Right?

Your social media feed.

Let me ask you this: as you've gone through your social media feed, Facebook, over the last month, can you name one person that you have grown more affectionate toward because you've seen what they've posted?

Can you name one person?

Or can you name more people who you've lost affection for?

Because maybe their quote-unquote idiocracy has been amplified on a platform that exists to make everybody feel like they have a voice that needs to be heard about everything ever happening in the world.

I know that my social feed has actually robbed my affections for other people.

I can't think of one person that I've looked at of what they posted and said, my affection was grown for you because of that.

Maybe one.

Who I struggle to see in their humanity, who I struggle to have any affections for that I once did.

What about casting stones from far too great a distance, bitterness, unforgiveness over petty things that happen to you?

What about self-focused, me-centered therapeutic remedy?

Some of the top trending things on social media today is self-help, self-therapy.

Those are some of the biggest trending things.

And why?

We have such a culture of anxiety and depression that we have to use whatever resources that we even have to try and combat those two things in our life that we barely have extra left over to pour into anyone else.

Now, I'm pro-counseling, I'm pro psychology, I'm pro getting help.

But when we elevate it to such a thing that our primary focus is our self-helped therapeutic remedy and not finding that there might be great healing, remedy, joy, and peace by forgetting about ourselves and pouring ourselves into others, we've missed what the Bible clearly teaches us.

Show me anywhere in the scriptures where it's really going to talk about all the boundaries that you have to set.

If anything, the Bible wrecks boundaries.

Boundaries are gone.

Everything you have is everyone else's.

You exist to try and build up, serve, encourage, strengthen other people.

Their weight is your weight, their joy is your joy, their burden is your burden, their whatever is yours now, too.

Show me where boundaries exist in the concept of the kingdom of heaven.

But we're so self-focused, we're so me-centered on this therapeutic remedy.

Maybe there's freedom and healing and completely forgetting about ourselves.

But here's the fact of the matter.

As I start to close, is that we will satisfy ourselves.

Hear this.

We will satisfy ourselves with what we are convinced is the most pleasurable.

Now think about that.

We will satisfy ourselves with what we are convinced is the most pleasurable.

So throughout your day, throughout your week, what is that?

Is it Jesus?

Is it your neighbor?

What are you convinced is the most pleasurable?

Because that's what you're going to go after to try and bring satisfaction to your everyday life.

Lastly, Jesus calls them to resume.

Resume in good works fueled by love for God and neighbor.

It's not that we should stop the works that we have been doing.

Jesus never says that.

On the contrary, we need to actually do them even more.

But they must be driven by love.

A deep, blazing hot, zealous love that works and labors for God and neighbor.

It's not that we should stop working.

We should work more, but let it be driven by love.

Let's pray.