The Loveless Church (Ephesus)
Notes
Transcript
Bookmarks & Needs:
Bookmarks & Needs:
B: Rev 2:1-7
N: Laser pointer
Welcome
Welcome
Good morning, and regardless of whether you’re in the room or online, welcome to Family Worship with the church body of Eastern Hills! Thanks praise band and choir for leading us in musical praise and worship this morning, and for blessing the fellowship with your gifts. I hope that most of you had a blessed time learning in small groups during Bible study earlier this morning. If you’re not plugged in to a Sunday morning Bible study group, please visit the Welcome station in the foyer after service, so we can get you connected to one.
If you’re visiting with the church family of Eastern Hills for the first time this morning, we want you to know how glad we are that you’re with us today. I’d like to ask that you text the word WELCOME to 505-339-2004, and then follow the link you get back, which will take you to our digital communication card. We’d just like to be able to drop you a card to say thanks for being here. If you’d rather fill out a physical card, you can do that using the cards in the back of the pew in front of you. You can then drop those in the offering plate at the close of service. Either way—digital or physical—I’d like to invite you to come down after service and meet me here at the front, so I can personally greet you and give you a gift to say thanks for being with Eastern Hills today.
Announcements
Announcements
Mother’s Day Offering total: $3,862.
Business meeting tonight, with several really important things. Grab a copy of the packet in the foyer. Pizza potluck before at 4:30. Bring your favorite pizza to share, and enjoy a great time of fellowship.
EHCA and APS ending the school year this week. EHCA 8th Grade Graduation is tomorrow night here in the sanctuary at 7 pm if you’d like to come.
Opening
Opening
This morning, we begin our next series, which will focus on a verse-by-verse look at chapters 2 and 3 of the book of Revelation. In these two chapters, we find seven messages written to seven particular churches of the end of the first century, recorded by John the apostle (the same John who penned 1 John, which we just finished a few weeks ago). John was writing from exile on the island of Patmos in about 90 AD, having received this revelatory vision from God the Father about Jesus Christ the Son through the work of the Holy Spirit. You can see all of this in chapter 1 of this book.
The book of Revelation is, at its base, a letter: it is a letter that was written originally to seven churches of Asia Minor, as we see in Revelation 1:11:
11 saying, “Write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.”
The letter of Revelation was sent to these seven churches in a logical fashion, following the order of their names as we see in 1:11 and in chapters 2 and 3. Just so you can see what it looks like, I’ve made a map to help us get the picture:
MAP
Note that Ephesus was the most traveled port in the vicinity of Patmos, and so was the logical first place to have the message delivered. The carrier of this letter would have then just traveled up the coast to Smyrna, then to Pergamum, taken the major road southeast to Thyatira, followed by Sardis, continuing on that same road to Philadelphia and Laodicea. Just so you know, this map (other than the arrow) is from the CSB Study Bibles that we’ve given out at Pastor’s Study. If you’d like one, let me know. We have 20 or so left.
Anyway, so this prompts a question: If this was written to these seven churches, why is our series called “Seven Words to the Church Today?” It’s because these seven churches and the issues that they faced are representative of all Christian churches. Not every church will be able to identify with the situation and issues of every one of the seven, but certainly with at least one of them at a time. Not only that, but I believe that we will all face some of the issues of these churches individually from time to time as well. So these seven messages are therefore seven messages to the church of Christ today, and in many ways, the church of Christ at Eastern Hills in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the beginning of the 21st century, and to each of us as believers. It is from this perspective that we will seek to apply these seven messages, prayerfully being willing to examine our own context, our own practice, our own pursuit, both corporately and individually, as we consider the messages to these seven representative churches.
We begin with the letter to the first church in the list: Ephesus. Let’s stand as we are able and read the message to this church, found in Revelation 2:1-7:
1 “Write to the angel of the church in Ephesus: Thus says the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand and who walks among the seven golden lampstands: 2 I know your works, your labor, and your endurance, and that you cannot tolerate evil people. You have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and you have found them to be liars. 3 I know that you have persevered and endured hardships for the sake of my name, and you have not grown weary. 4 But I have this against you: You have abandoned the love you had at first. 5 Remember then how far you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. Otherwise, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. 6 Yet you do have this: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. 7 “Let anyone who has ears to hear listen to what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.
PRAYER (Paragon Church in Rio Rancho: Matt Sellers SP, Bruce Gale FMP: wisdom for leadership as they face space issues, continued focus on the Gospel)
At the mouth of the Cayster River where it emptied into the Aegean Sea sat Ephesus: one of the five largest cities in the Roman Empire at the time, and the largest city in the province of Asia Minor. Unfortunately, the Cayster eventually silted in the Ephesian harbor, which now is a fertile plain, so the ancient ruins of Ephesus are about three miles from the modern coast.
At the time of the writing of Revelation, Ephesus likely boasted 250,000 people, and was home to one of the seven wonders of the ancient world: the Artemision, temple to the Greek goddess Artemis (aka Roman goddess Diana). The biblical record of Ephesus is a rich one: According to Acts 18, the church at Ephesus had been founded by Paul, Priscilla, and Aquila as Paul returned home from his second missionary journey. Priscilla and Aquila had remained behind and were eventually joined by Apollos. On Paul’s third missionary journey, he returned to Ephesus and spent a considerable amount of time there: about three years, during which time he preached the Gospel to people from all over the province who visited this important city, and was a part of the riot recorded in Acts 19, which took place at this massive (about 25,000 people) amphitheater. Several years after his departure from Ephesus and while Paul was in prison, he wrote to the church there, and we have that letter as the book of Ephesians in our Bibles (we happen to be studying that book at Pastor’s Study on Sunday nights). Sometime after that letter was written, Paul’s “son in the faith” Timothy would pastor the church in Ephesus, and he would receive the two epistles that Paul wrote to him while he served there. John ultimately ministered in Ephesus late in his life, likely writing his three epistles from there before he was sent to Patmos. John is believed to have been buried in Ephesus, and in the 6th century the Basilica of St. John was built over his supposed burial site.
Before we dive into our look at the Lord’s message to this first church in the list, I need to explain our outline, which will be very similar for every sermon in this series. Each of these messages basically holds to a particular template or structure, which is set up in this first message to the church in Ephesus. The basic structure looks like this:
Christ: Jesus is the One speaking to John the message for the churches. At the beginning of each letter, He identifies Himself in a way relating to other Scripture, usually Revelation 1. His way of identifying Himself has meaning to the particular church He is speaking to at the moment. The message first and foremost had to make sense to the church receiving it in the original context.
Commendation: With the exception of one of the seven churches, each is given a commendation about what is right about that church.
Condemnation: With the exception of two of the seven churches, each is given a condemnation regarding what is wrong with that church.
Cure: In the cases of those churches who receive a condemnation, they are also each given a cure for the problem or problems that they have, along with a warning about what will happen if they do not apply the cure.
Challenge: Each church is, and in fact ALL churches are challenged to hear the message, and promised a reward if they “conquer.”
And so we begin our look at the messages to the seven churches of Revelation, and what those words say to the church of today:
1: Christ (v. 1)
1: Christ (v. 1)
Again, in the message to each church, the Lord uses imagery from other Scripture to identify Himself as the Author of what is being written.
1 “Write to the angel of the church in Ephesus: Thus says the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand and who walks among the seven golden lampstands:
Jesus says that He is the One who holds the seven starts in His right hand and who walks among the seven golden lampstands. Without chapter 1, this identification doesn’t have a lot of meaning for us. Right before this, in verses 12 and 16 of what we call chapter 1, we read this in John’s vision:
12 Then I turned to see whose voice it was that spoke to me. When I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, 13 and among the lampstands was one like the Son of Man, dressed in a robe and with a golden sash wrapped around his chest.
16 He had seven stars in his right hand; a sharp double-edged sword came from his mouth, and his face was shining like the sun at full strength.
And in at the end of that chapter, we find the explanation of this symbol:
20 The mystery of the seven stars you saw in my right hand and of the seven golden lampstands is this: The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.
Before we keep going, I need to make a side note. One thing I don’t plan on doing during this series is to get bogged down in the question about the “angel of the church in wherever” during each sermon. Theologically, this question has far from a settled answer: if you read five different commentaries on this issue, you’ll get five different answers. I’m just going to address it once this morning, and then gloss over it for the rest of the sermons in this series. I personally believe that each letter is addressed to the head elder, or pastor, of each church. The word here is the Greek angelos, which literally means “messenger.”
So for me, it’s logical that the message would be written to the one person in the church who had been tasked with primary leadership, because the messages are about the state of the churches they are addressed to. If you hold to the idea that there are particular spiritual being angels for these churches, I’m completely fine with that as well, because throughout the whole rest of Revelation, every time the word angelos comes up, it’s in reference to a spiritual being. I fully believe in the existence of angels and their role in carrying out the plan of God as they are instructed to. I just don’t hold to them being the recipients in the case of these messages because I can’t get my head around why Jesus would send an angel to speak to John (Rev. 1:1), who then wrote down a physical message to a spiritual angel that was supposed to be carried by a physical person and shared with the physical church. Could it be that way? Sure. Jesus is God: He can do whatever He wants.
Have them put Revelation 2:1 back up.
However, my interpretation does a little bit color this morning’s message, which is why I decided to go ahead and address it. The identity that Jesus gives Himself is that He is the One who holds the seven stars in His right hand, and who walks among the golden lampstands. In my view, this means that Jesus is clearly saying that He is in charge of the churches, that the pastors only have authority because of Him and while in His hand, and that He knows exactly what is going on in every church.
This would have had a great deal of meaning for the church at Ephesus, because the Ephesians generally took great pride in the fact that their city was the most important city in the province. It was possible that the church there, which was the only church in the area which was actually founded through a known visit by an actual apostle, could have seen itself as the most important church as well, because it was the “mother church” of Asia Minor, so to speak. We see in Acts 19 that it was from Ephesus that all of the other churches in the province were planted:
10 This went on for two years, so that all the residents of Asia, both Jews and Greeks, heard the word of the Lord.
They may have seen themselves as more important, more powerful than they really were. But Jesus holds the stars in His right hand: the hand of power and might. The pastor of the church wasn’t the one in charge. Jesus was. And Jesus, the One who walked among the lampstands, knew the truth about each church, even if they didn’t know it themselves. That was what was vital for this church.
So what is our application of this verse? It’s two-fold. The first application is a great reminder to me personally—and it calls me to deep humility. I’m not in charge here. Jesus is. And if I’m ever out of step with what Jesus is doing here, then I need to be corrected. My sight is limited. Jesus’ sight is perfectly clear. The only power that I have in my position is the power that comes from being in Jesus’ right hand.
The second application is for all of us. The Lord who knew everything about what was going on in the church at Ephesus is the same Lord that knows everything about what is going on in every heart in every church in every city in every country in the world right now, including right here at Eastern Hills. So where do we see ourselves in the rest of the message to the church at Ephesus? We move on to the commendation:
2: Commendation (v. 2-3, 6)
2: Commendation (v. 2-3, 6)
As I said earlier, each church is given a commendation by the Lord: a statement of understanding about the good things happening in that church. The commendation for Ephesus is contained in verses 2-3:
2 I know your works, your labor, and your endurance, and that you cannot tolerate evil people. You have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and you have found them to be liars. 3 I know that you have persevered and endured hardships for the sake of my name, and you have not grown weary.
Jesus opens the commendation by stating that He “knows...” There is nothing about the experience and life of the church at Ephesus that Jesus, our Lord and Savior, the Son of God, doesn’t know. The One who walks among the lampstands knows all about the churches.
And in these verses, there is an interesting wordplay in the Greek that our English translations don’t allow us to see. Words are paired here for emphasis and contrast:
The church at Ephesus really seemed to be doing what it was supposed to be doing, according to these verses. They were working hard. They had been laboring and had not grown weary (pair of the same root word). They had endurance to persevere (same word). They could not tolerate (literally, “bear with”) evil people, but could easily bear with the hardships they had to face because of the name of Jesus (tolerate and bear with… same word).
These are good things. This church was passionate about their orthodoxy. They were highly concerned for their purity in the church at large (not tolerating evil people) and in leadership (tested those who called themselves apostles). Even though they lived in a city where both pagan worship of Artemis was a cornerstone of the city’s life and economy, even though Ephesus was becoming a center of emperor worship at this time, the church in Ephesus was going to persevere and endure whatever hardship came their way. They were not going to give up their identity.
The last time that Paul saw people from the church in Ephesus, he was on his way back to Jerusalem, where he would be arrested and imprisoned. He was landing at Miletus, which is a little ways south of Ephesus, and he asked them if they’d come visit him on his way. They did, and Paul warned them that difficult times would be coming, both from outside the church and inside the church:
28 Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has appointed you as overseers, to shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood. 29 I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. 30 Men will rise up even from your own number and distort the truth to lure the disciples into following them.
The Ephesian church had taken this warning to heart and had worked to guard their fellowship from harmful teaching, seemingly taking John’s earlier teaching regarding testing the spirits to heart:
1 Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see if they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 This is how you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 but every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming; even now it is already in the world.
And then, and I’m not sure why it’s separated from verses 2-3, but Ephesus is given an additional commendation in verse 6:
6 Yet you do have this: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
We’ll really talk about the Nicolaitans when we read the letter to the church at Pergamum. We actually don’t have all that much information about them. For now, we will just say that they were a group who had strayed away from biblical teaching, perhaps much like those that John talked about in 1 John.
The church is commended for hating their false practices. Note that they hate the practice of the Nicolaitans, not the people who had wrong beliefs. They hated the sin and loved the sinner.
It really seems as if the church at Ephesus had a lot going for it.
The question for our application here is: Could this commendation be given to Eastern Hills? Are we passionate about and protective of our doctrine and faith? Do we test the things that we hear against the truth, and then act on what we discover? And maybe a step deeper than that: do we do these things individually in our own lives? Are we willing to protect our purity, to work faithfully, to persevere and endure in difficult times, and not give up?
My prayer is that it could be said of us. We certainly aren’t perfect, and we have a way to go in some instances, but I would hope that we are on this kind of trajectory: one where we hold tightly to the truth, both individually and corporately. In this way, we should desire to live out Paul’s instructions at the end of 1 Corinthians 15:
58 Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the Lord’s work, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.
This is what we are to strive for in both our doctrine and our practice. However, having the right thinking and the right outward practice isn’t enough, as we see in the condemnation to the Ephesian church:
3: Condemnation (v. 4)
3: Condemnation (v. 4)
The condemnation that Jesus gives the church seems to come out of nowhere, given the very positive commendation that we’ve just read. Jesus says that He has one thing against the Ephesians:
4 But I have this against you: You have abandoned the love you had at first.
Even with all that the church at Ephesus was doing right, they had “abandoned” something necessary and important. The question that we need to address is: What is this “love they had at first” that they have abandoned?
It’s funny, but whenever I read this passage, I always get the chorus of the song “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” by The Righteous Brothers in my head. And now, if you know the song, it’s in your head as well. But is this what Jesus is condemning them for? Not having the same emotional feelings about Him that they had before? No.
The Ephesians were still passionate about the name of Jesus. We just saw this in their commendation. Verse 3 said that they had “persevered and endured hardships for the sake of my name.” That doesn’t sound like they had just kind of stopped caring about Jesus.
But in a way, they had fallen away from loving Jesus well. Remember that in the Great Commandment, Jesus summarized all of the Law and the Prophets into one command in two parts:
37 He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the greatest and most important command. 39 The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.
We must remember that God’s kind of love, the love referenced here in verse 4, agape love, isn’t an emotional feeling. It’s a decision that we make. And Jesus connected loving other people to loving God. John did the same thing in his first epistle. We cannot adequately love God if we inadequately love people.
How did this lovelessness occur? Well, we need to remember that this church had been around for about 40 years at this point. They were certainly a second-generation church, maybe even a third-generation church. And being in the very pagan context that they found themselves in prompted them to be REALLY diligent in their theology and purity. The second generation had likely not experienced the enthusiasm and passion that the first generation had in the beginning, basically fulfilling what Jesus said in Matthew 24:12:
12 Because lawlessness will multiply, the love of many will grow cold.
The church in Ephesus had stopped loving each other and reaching out to the world in love. They had lost the luster and the wonder of the love that drove them in the early life of the church, and while they were still passionate about the name of Jesus, they were failing to love Him the way they were supposed to.
Unfortunately, if we unhitch our orthodoxy (right thinking) from orthopraxy (right doing), it’s not long before we start to love being right instead of being righteous, because we start to love sound theology more than we love God or one another. But the problem is that theology that doesn’t love God or others isn’t sound theology anymore.
Consider what Paul wrote to the church at Thessalonica, a church that he had only had the opportunity to spend a few scant weeks with when he planted the church there. Look at the contrast:
3 We recall, in the presence of our God and Father, your work produced by faith, your labor motivated by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Their faith produced their work, their love motivated their labors, and their hope in Jesus inspired their endurance. What we see in the church at Ephesus is that their pride in their work and labor and endurance were actually destroying their faith, love, and hope in the Gospel.
For us, this is perhaps one of the most insidious sins that we can experience. I know. I’ve been there. We want to honor God, so we want to learn and grow in our understanding. But soon, nearly imperceptibly, our knowing about God starts to become the ends themselves, instead of the means of actually knowing God more. And our pride is inflated, much like Paul said in 1 Corinthians 8:
1 Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that “we all have knowledge.” Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. 2 If anyone thinks he knows anything, he does not yet know it as he ought to know it. 3 But if anyone loves God, he is known by him.
We decide that if other people in the church don’t think as deeply as we think, or act as spiritual as we act, or talk as theologically as we talk, then they’re just second-rate Christians—they don’t actually “get it” like we get it. And in that moment, we have ceased to love them. And if we’ve ceased to love them, then we’ve ceased to love God correctly. We’ve proven that we don’t actually know what we ought to know. I once heard of a preacher who referred to this type of person as one whose theology is “clear as ice, and just as cold.” (I don’t know the name of the preacher)
Beloved brothers and sisters, if our mode of participation in the church is to sit back in judgment on it instead of actively engaging in it, that’s sinful pride and arrogance, not spiritual superiority.
If we think that the church isn’t “doing this right,” or that the church should be “doing that, but isn’t,” and we’re unwilling to humbly engage in being a part of needed change, we’re not super-spiritual—we’re selfish church consumers.
If we look at others and think that things like fellowship or serving—sacrificially pouring ourselves out for the benefit of our brothers or sisters in Christ—are somehow beneath us or a waste of our time, then we aren’t being like Jesus at all—we’re being just like the world.
All of our thinking ABOUT God might be spot on, but our living out the application of that that thinking isn’t even close. And when that happens, our love has grown cold.
This is what the church at Ephesus had become.
But the hope for them is that Jesus doesn’t just tell them the problem: He also presents the cure.
4: Cure (v. 5)
4: Cure (v. 5)
The “cure” verses in each of the messages that contains a cure also warns of what will happen if the cure is not applied. For the church at Ephesus, the cure is a quick list of three imperatives, or commands:
5 Remember then how far you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. Otherwise, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.
This use of the word “remember” isn’t just to simply recall something to mind. It’s recalling something to mind and then using that recollection to take appropriate action in response. It’s not just nostalgia. As an example, Paul used the same word in the same way:
10 They asked only that we would remember the poor, which I had made every effort to do.
By asking Paul to “remember” the poor, the Jerusalem Council wasn’t asking Paul to “think reflectively” about the poor, but to recall them to mind and take action to help them (which Paul had “made every effort to do”).
So the first aspect of the cure for the church at Ephesus was to remember where they used to be in their loving relationship with one another, and thus with God. They had fallen from that height of their early love. And as they remembered who they had been, they were to make adjustments in order to be that again. And the first adjustment:
Repent. Repentance is reversing course. It’s seeing you’re going the wrong way and taking the necessary corrective steps to go the right way. The Dictionary of Bible Languages defines it as “to change one’s life, based on complete change of attitude and thought concerning sin and righteousness.” And as a result of their repentance, they were to:
Do what you did at first. Love each other again, and thus love God well. Jesus had made the connection between the two exceedingly clear:
35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Now, the warning for the church at Ephesus for if they don’t accept the cure sounds too harsh, especially if we interpret it wrongly. Jesus says that if the church doesn’t remember, repent, and do what they did at first, then He will “come to [them] and remove [their] lampstand from its place,” adding another call to repent for impact.
Jesus wasn’t saying that they would lose their salvation. He was saying that He would have them cease to be a church. Remember that the lampstands aren’t salvation: they are the churches themselves. If the church at Ephesus was unwilling to make the necessary adjustments, then they would no longer be a church family at all. If we look at this honestly, though, if they were to refuse to love others and thus refuse to love God, they aren’t really a church anymore, anyway. They’re a club that does Bible study.
Eastern Hills, we must be willing to evaluate how we are failing to love the way that we have been called to. We are to love one another well, and we are to love others well, and so love God well.
In his book, Autopsy of a Deceased Church, Thom Rainer evaluated several churches that had closed their doors, and found that most of the reasons could be summed up by the fact that they had ceased to put others above themselves within the church, and had stopped caring to tell people about the love of Jesus outside the church. In these churches, nearly everyone was more concerned with their own pet wants than what was best for the church family, and nearly no one shared the Gospel. In the story of one church, Thom went and worked with them for three weeks. At the end of his consulting time, he identified their problems and offered difficult solutions. The church refused to make the necessary changes. They closed their doors in a matter of weeks.
Now, this isn’t us, so have no fear. I’m excited about what God is doing in the life of Eastern Hills right now. I believe that Eastern Hills is healthy, and getting healthier. But we can’t sit back and become forgetful. We must continue to love God and love others. We must engage in more actively and intentionally sharing the Gospel. We must be a light in our neighborhoods and workplaces. We must constantly remember, repent, and do.
The last part of the message to the churches is the challenge:
5: Challenge
5: Challenge
Very quickly, I want to wrap up this message by considering the challenge. I won’t address the formula for the endings to the messages this morning. I’ll save that for next week. Verse 7 contains the challenge to the Ephesians:
7 “Let anyone who has ears to hear listen to what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.
Basically, Jesus calls “anyone” who will to listen to what the Spirit says to the churches. The Ephesian message isn’t just for Ephesus. It’s for the other six churches, and representatively, it’s for every church of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And every challenge says, “to the one who conquers.” This is the one who overcomes their difficulties and receives victory. The one who overcomes will remember, repent, and change course. However, we are only able to obtain the victory that Jesus calls us to through surrender to Him, because remember: He is in charge. He holds the seven stars. He walks among the lampstands and knows the entirety of the situation of the church and our hearts.
It is only Jesus who has overcome sin and shame through His sacrifice on the cross to save us from the wrath of God against sin. It is Jesus who conquered death by rising from the grave so that we could live forever with Him if we believe in Him, trusting Him for our salvation. If you’ve never trusted Jesus for your salvation, surrender to Him in faith, believing in what He has done to save you.
John ends by saying that the one who conquers will experience a reversal of the Fall.
9 The Lord God caused to grow out of the ground every tree pleasing in appearance and good for food, including the tree of life in the middle of the garden, as well as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
22 The Lord God said, “Since the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, he must not reach out, take from the tree of life, eat, and live forever.”
It’s not that God didn’t want mankind to live forever. He didn’t want us to live forever with our sin. That’s why He removed us from the Garden. But there will be a day when we will experience the fully restored paradise of God, and because of the sinless sacrifice of Jesus in our place on a different tree called the cross, we will have our sin and shame washed away, and be able to eat from the tree of life. What a day to look forward to, church!
Closing
Closing
So the bottom line from the message to the church at Ephesus is this: we cannot be a loveless church. Our calling is to love God, to love one another, and to love others because Jesus has loved us.
Examine your heart this morning: has your love grown cold? Do we see people as precious souls for whom Jesus died, or just as obstacles in the way? Do we see the church as our family, people we are willing to make sacrifices in order to bless, people we are willing to see as more important than ourselves, or are they supposed to cater to our needs instead?
If this is our perspective, we’re well on the way to being loveless people, and that will lead to being a loveless church. We must remember what Christ has done for us, and the love that we are to have for Him, and repent.
If you’ve never trusted Christ for your salvation, I call you today to trust in Jesus.
Invitation
PRAYER
Closing Remarks
Closing Remarks
Bible reading (Num 14)
No Pastor’s Study because of Business Meeting
Prayer Meeting
Instructions for guests
Benediction
Benediction
9 Let us not get tired of doing good, for we will reap at the proper time if we don’t give up.