First Love!

The first love, second week in the series, first love, and we're going to read Revelations chapter two, verse number one, starting in verse number one.

Give you a moment to get there.

Our first love, Revelations chapter two, verse number one.

To the angel of the church in Ephesus right, the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands, I know your works, your toil, and your patience, and 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 are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary.

But I have this against you that you have abandoned the love you had at first.

Remember therefore from where you have fallen, 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 Nicolacians, 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 of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.

Father, we thank you for your holy, precious, almighty, powerful word.

That Lord, your word never changes, but every jot and every tittle will be fulfilled.

And Lord, your word is quick and sharper than a two-edged sword.

And I ask you, Lord, that your word would go forth and accomplish every desire and work that you desire it to do, for you said it would, and we know it will.

And we give you all the praise and all the glory, and on our ears to hear, our mouths to speak, our hearts to comprehend, and that you might be glorified fully, completely, and totally in all of it.

We pray in Jesus' name.

And everybody said, Amen.

You know, a church, and I know usually we think of a church as a building, but it's not really.

The church is the people that come in the building or the structure or wherever they meet, right?

And it can be doctrinally right, and should be, it can be morally straight, it can be busy, and it can still be drifting.

Because Jesus doesn't just call us to serve in the sense of he don't want just our service, right?

He wants our hearts.

Because when he has our hearts, we'll want to serve.

When he has our hearts, we'll want to witness.

When he has our hearts, we don't obey out of obligation, but we obey because we love him.

And it's a total different dynamic.

I want you to think about the marriage covenant and marriage relationship.

A couple can share a house, they can both put money toward the mortgage, they can both, you know, provide for food.

Amen.

They can have the same schedule and taking care of all the kids and meeting and all that good stuff, right?

They can do all that, but not have the heart of each other.

Everything functions, the house ain't burning down, but they're not walking in love for each other.

Let me tell you something.

Functionality does not ever substitute with a heart that is devoted to the Lord.

He said, He said that he doesn't want just sacrifices, he wants obedience.

And if we only obey a man to be seen or to feel like we are worthy of something, then our motivation is wrong.

We must obey because we love him.

He said, If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

So I want to look at verses two and three again.

He said, I know your works, your toll, and your patient, 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 are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary.

Amen.

Ephesus had the resume.

They had works, they had labor, they had patience, they had you know good doctrine.

But let me tell you something, endurance is important, and endurance that don't quit is even more important.

But if it's all done apart from being in love with him and being doing it for in love to him, then we have missed the mark.

We've missed it.

You can have all the historicity of everything right, but not have life.

Now, I don't know how many of you, and I'm not going to go into a historical account of it, but how many of you've ever heard of the Azusa Street Revival?

Brother Seymour.

I mean, let me tell you.

Powerful.

Right?

Powerful.

We really, and a lot of the others, and you can trace our roots back to, you know, there's the Great Awakening, the Second Great Awakening, there's all kinds of revival fires that we can trace back.

And a lot of the churches that are around today trace back to these great moves of God.

Amen.

But let me tell you, where is the devotion to God?

Where is the power and presence of his spirit that they had then?

Because we just sung a song that God doesn't change.

Sin is still sin.

We still needed a savior.

God still saves folks.

So where is the revival of fires?

Because let me tell you something.

We can have all the outward croppings of the revival.

We can put a flame in a logo.

We can we can say uh let's have uh the fire of the spirit, we can do all that, but if the fire don't fall, what are we getting?

What are we accomplishing?

You say, what's that got to do with first love?

Well, when you're first in love, amen.

You remember that in a natural sense, that you wanted to be with that person.

You wanted to spend time with them.

You didn't care what it was as long as you were doing it with them.

And I'm so blessed because I still enjoy that same way with my wife today.

We really do.

I don't care what we do as long as we're together.

I feel naked when she ain't with me.

Not literally.

You'll understand one day.

Amen.

But when you have that first love, it's a joy.

And even when I need to do things for her that I really don't want to do, I still do it because why?

I love her.

There's gonna be times that God wants us to do things that we don't really want to do.

Let's be honest.

Our flesh, anyway, don't want to do.

But we love him, and so we do it anyway.

Amen.

Somewhere along the way, we got to think that people should always want, uh, you know, have, oh yeah, no problem, that they have no reservation about anything God tells them to do.

Well, that ain't biblical, because all the time in the Bible, there was people that said, God, you know, when God told them to do something, what or you know, not to say that we should question him, but we wonder what's going on.

And then, yeah, they'll submit, they'll do it, but they're far from perfect just like us.

Amen.

But they love God, and so even though they may have failed, they got back up and they followed him anyway.

And so we don't, God is not looking for somebody who's perfect, he's looking for somebody who's available.

That's right.

I know some people do this anyway, and they shouldn't do it, but one of the first things, if you're single, that you need to look for is another single person.

Not a married person, but a single person, right?

Amen.

First thing you need to find is that they need to be single.

Amen.

And according to the word of God and all that God has taught us, most definitely, let me assert this plainly and poignantly, they need to be of the opposite sex.

Single, opposite sex.

Some of you say, Well, why are you saying that?

Well, we need to today.

Okay.

You don't do it out of the order of first single and obviously the opposite sex.

Amen.

You've got to do those things, amen.

But when you find somebody and you love them, amen, and you enjoy being with them, you're not wanting to be away from them.

You want to be closer to them, and that's where marriage comes in.

You love them so much that you want to become one with them in body and spirit, and so you get married.

It's not a chore, it's a joy.

And from that marriage, not always, but usually the fruit of that love is produced, and that's what children.

If we love the Lord like we're supposed to, we should want to be with him.

We should want to spend time with him.

We should want to do things for him and with him.

And I know he's everywhere, but you know what I mean?

That we serve for him, we do the different things that we that are being done because we love him.

And from the fruit of that love, amen, we share the gospel, we tell people about them, and God brings the increase.

But it is important that we get it that if we truly love him, there's going to be the evidence of it.

Look at Acts 19:8.

Acts 19:8

And he entered the synagogue and for three months spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God.

But when some became stubborn and continued in unbelief, speaking evil of the way before the congregation, he withdrew from them and took the disciples with him, reasoning daily in the hall of Tyranius.

This continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.

And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them, and the evil spirits came out of them.

Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, I adjure you by the name by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.

Seven sons of Skeva seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Skeva were doing this.

But the high but the evil spirit answered them, Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?

And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them, and overpowered them so that they fled out of thy house naked and wounded.

And this became known to all the residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks, and fear fell upon them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled.

And many of those who were now believers came confessing and divulging their practices.

And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all, and they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver, so that the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.

When we are putting Christ as our first love, and listen, I I know we all mean well, and this ain't a criticizing, it's just where I believe there needs to be clarity.

There is nothing greater than having a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Okay?

Some people say, well, you get saved, that's just to start.

Well, getting saved is the beginning of your walk, but it don't get shorter, it gets deeper.

And when you walk with the Lord, everything comes after that.

It's when you walk with the Lord, amen, that you can seek the baptism of the Spirit.

When you walk with the Lord, you can seek Him to use you in the gifts.

When you walk with the Lord, there's everything opens up.

It's all because of Him.

Amen.

It's all because of Jesus.

He's not a backseat to anybody.

He's the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

Revelations 2.4, he talks about where they have abandoned their first love.

Not lost, but abandoned.

Think about that.

Love isn't misplaced like keys or a wallet.

It happens a little bit at a time.

A decision here and a decision there.

You say, what's that got to do with anything?

It's got everything to do with it.

Because what happens is we step this way and that way, and before we know it, we have stepped away from the Lord.

And the Lord wants us to step toward him, not away from him.

You see, Ephesus, amen, they had all the pedigree.

Amen.

They had all the pedigree.

Amen.

But God wants us not just to have a pedigree, he wants us to have the power.

Paul said, I didn't come to you in crafty words or in persuasive words.

He said, but I came with you what?

In the demonstration and the power of God.

What the world needs is to see that God is alive.

Not that I know he's alive.

He ain't got to prove it, but they need to see the signs of his presence.

You say, well, people can't get saved because of a sign.

Jesus did them all the time.

Did them all the time in the Bible.

And he would say, the kingdom of God is at hand.

Here's a sign to show you who I am.

God still does things.

God still does signs and wonders.

God still does heal and save.

Amen.

But he does it as we seek his face and as we put him first.

And he's not a second fiddle, but he is the main course.

He is the reason for it all.

I remember I was pastoring in Brantley Assembly of God years ago.

And the church was right beside the church.

And I walked out there and I was out there praying one time.

And it was like the Lord showed me, you know, and I can't hardly describe it, but it's like I could see Jesus like sitting down at the end of the pew, the end pews, and sitting down at the end of the pew.

And I said, I miss you, Jesus.

And hey, I was pastoring, I was praying, I was doing all that, but I just didn't feel close.

Sitting down there, his head was down.

And he said, I miss you too.

See, you can be busy, you can be doing the work of the kingdom, but not spending time with the king of the kingdom like he wants you to.

When you love Jesus, I feel the Holy Spirit.

When you love Jesus, you want to be with him.

You want to spend time with him, you want to know him, and you want to do what he tells you.

Jeremiah 2.2.

Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem.

Thus says the Lord, I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the wilderness in a land not sown.

I remember the devotion of your youth.

Do you remember when you first got saved?

Are you just as excited now as you were then?

And I don't want to hear the argument, well, you get you grow up.

If you grow up to the point that you're not excited about Jesus, something's wrong.

If I'm not saying that you don't have a better understanding, but he still, as the old saying used to go, he still should light your fire in the sense that you're excited.

You want to be with him, you want to work for him, you want to do things for him.

Amen.

You should always want to.

And he says, look, he says, I remember the devotion of your youth.

Do you remember when you loved him, when you would go to revivals, when you would sing, when you would invite people to church, when you would do whatever, anything that anybody needed, amen.

Because you just love Jesus.

If that ain't true today, you need to pray.

You need to pray.

We gotta remember.

This is what Jesus is telling us.

We gotta remember, we gotta repent, and we gotta perform the deeds you did at first.

That's what he tells us.

Revelation 2.

He tells us to remember, he tells us to repent.

That means turn completely back around and perform the deeds we did at first.

Remember, turn, remember, repent, and redo your deeds.

You see, it's it's hard sometimes because if we look back, we'll listen to the enemy that says, Yeah, remember when you believed for this, remember you believed for that, and it didn't happen, and we let that cloud our love.

When God's love for us while we were still sinners wasn't because we deserved it or that we were worthy, it was simply because he loved us, and yet we want to put conditions on his love based on if he answers them the way we ask him to.

If we are doing that, that's wrong.

We love him, the Bible says.

We should love him.

Why?

Because he first loved me.

No other condition is there except the qualifier as he first loved me, so I love him.

Not because he saved me and did everything like I wanted him to, answered the prayers, opened the doors, fixed the situation because that's why I love you.

No, that's why you praise him.

When he does things like that, but you also praise him if he don't do things like that.

So you're talking on both sides?

No.

What it means is I love him because of who he is and what he's done for me, amen, in the sense of saving me, in the sense of dying for me and taking my place, amen.

But I praise him when he answers, and I praise him when he don't, because when he doesn't answer, he's still answering.

He is saying no, or not now.

My love cannot be based on the result of a prayer, but on the promise of his word, and that is, I will never leave you, I will never forsake you, but I will go with you.

What?

To the very end.

He says, I am with you because I love you.

And God expects us the same.

Expects us to walk with him because we love him.

Now, if we look in verse four, and I'm I'm closing, but I don't want to look at verse four again.

But I have this against you that you have abandoned the love you had at first.

Some versions put left.

I like.

But anyway, that left there is epicus.

I may have said it wrong, that's the Greek.

And it's the same verb used elsewhere for forsaking or leaving something behind.

It is an action taken, not an accident suffered.

And that's critical.

That means that it was a willful decision, not like whoops, I didn't mean to, but I left you.

You know, people say they forgot their kid.

No, they abandon them.

When we turn from Christ, it ain't that we just whoopsie, we abandon him.

It was an intentional decision.

And when we do that, we have left the one that loves us most.

Pastor, I just I love God.

Okay, praise God.

Do you love him like he tells us to?

Well, what do you mean?

What does he mean?

What do you mean?

Like he tells us to.

Well, he says that we shall love him with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind.

Do you love him perfectly in every way, completely and totally like that in all seasons of your life, all day, every day of the week?

No.

How do you know?

Because you're still here.

Where you get that from?

Well, he's been known to take up people when they just walk real close to him.

Amen.

Enoch walked with God.

And what?

God took him.

Amen.

So we still here.

I want to encourage you to say, God, I want to love you like you love me.

And I want to love others the way you love me.

And I want your first love to be my first love.

Amen.

All the time.

I want you to be the focus of my love before anybody and everybody else.

Let me tell you something.

What's going to happen?

And I'm hurrying here.

What's going to happen when you put God as first love?

Everything changes.

Everything changes.

Everything changes.

I used the analogy before and I'll use it again.

You know, you can't say you know Jesus and nothing changes.

It would be like me walking up here at uh 1110 or, you know, just wanting to start service, and maybe I was running behind.

And I get up here and I apologize as I apologize, but on the way up here, uh I parked and I went down to to uh get some uh garbage out of the grass that was flew into the the grass area down there.

And when I did, I stepped out in the road and a semi-truck ran over me um going 65 miles per hour, and so that's why I'm late.

Um apologize.

Every one of you would look at me and go, liar.

Right?

You would.

You'd say he's a liar.

Why?

Because there's no way you can look like you look, walk, talk, not have no blood nowhere, even be alive.

If a if a Mac truck, if a semi-18-wheeler hits you going 65 miles per hour, you're dead.

They'd be a lot of things changed about me.

Well, we can believe that with all we got, but yet we can say that we love God and He's our first love, and yet our life don't show it.

Our actions don't show it.

You say, Well, I'm you beating me down.

No, it ain't a beat down, it's a come up.

Amen.

We need to come to him.

We need to say, Lord, I need you.

You're the most important one in my life.

I need you.

It's so easy.

But the enemy will fight you.

It's so easy in that all you gotta do is turn to Jesus.

Be honest.

Lord, I'm not been loving you like I should.

I'm not been putting you in the place that I should.

He already knows it.

He loves you, he stopped loving you.

But do you have him as your first love?

Let's stand.

Hallelujah.

Hallelujah.

Everhead bowed.