Revelation 2:1-7, Enduring in the Love of Jesus
Notes
Transcript
Just before Jesus went to the cross, He gave some final instructions to His disciples. Among them He warns that until He returns, we should expect the world to live in conflict. He says, don’t be led astray. There will be many false Messiahs. There will be wars and rumors of wars. The planet itself will cease producing food and will shake under the pressure of human conflicts. But He says,
All these are but the beginning of the birth pains.
All the trouble in the world is not the signal that the end has come. Conflict, malice, greed are all normal in this world. The world will also bring tribulation, hatred, and persecution to all true followers of Jesus, the true Messiah.
“Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake.
And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray.
And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.
The trouble we have in this world batters your heart. When we first begin following Jesus, we are so consumed by God’s love for us, that He would send His Son, who would willingly die for my sins, we become tender toward God and others. The Holy Spirit reveals the many sins God has forgiven us, and the infinite love of Jesus. This gives us a compassion for others and a humility that helps us love others who suffer in their own slavery to sin. My awareness of God’s love for me gives me love for my brothers and sisters in the faith.
When you see people fall away from the faith, betray one another, get led astray by false prophets - when you see people increase in lawlessness, the Bible’s word for the sin of living without God’s law - the temptation is for your love to grow cold. We lose our compassion the more people we see willingly turn back to their sin. We guard our hearts from being betrayed one more time. We become judgmental of those who get led astray. And our love grows cold.
But if love is the law of the Christian, the first, the only law from which all other commandments derive, then if we lose our love, we have become lawless ourselves. And when churches are known only for what we hate, we have lost our gospel witness to the world. This is the message of Jesus’ letter to the church in Ephesus.
We are starting a new series we are calling “Following Christ Our Head”. Jesus is the head of the church. He is our leader, our shepherd, our redeemer. In every way, we are His. We should be following Him wherever He leads. So this will be a check-up. Are we following Jesus as our head? God forbid we begin to follow anyone else.
The first diagnostic in the check-up is to take the temperature of our love.
“To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: ‘The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands.
This is Jesus. Do you love Him? He holds the seven stars, which are the angels that minister to the church, in his right hand. He is Lord, Master, Sovereign over the heavenly host of angels. He walks among the seven golden lampstands, which are the churches themselves. The eternal Son of God walks among us. He is in our midst. Does that make your heart glad? He is firmly seated on His throne for sure. But He is the shepherd ruler. He does not Lord over us. He walks with us. He guides us. He tends to our needs with compassion. He lifts up the fallen. He encourages the downhearted. He shows us how to walk. He loves us. Do you love Him? What is the temperature of your love? Has that love grown cold?
How would you measure your love for Jesus? You could measure it by how closely you live by His teachings. Your love for Jesus produces a love for the truth. (Jesus is the Truth.) When we look at the church at Ephesus, they passed this test.
“ ‘I know your works, your toil 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.
Ephesus was the second most important city in the Roman Empire. It was Rome’s gateway to the east. It had a long history of leadership in Asia Minor. At some point thousands of years ago, a meteor struck this city. The people living there developed the story that it was the goddess Artemis falling from heaven to dwell with them. They built her a temple. The worship of the great and mighty Artemis, twin of Apollo, or as the Romans called her, Diana, was the center of city life. Archaeology has discovered remnants of her temple that include symbols like the “tree of life”. This was a promise, that if you worship Artemis, she will provide you prosperity, health, and eternal life. Artemis was a big deal in Ephesus. You could not overestimate how central the worship of Artemis was to the city of Ephesus.
To become a follower of Jesus in Ephesus was to turn your back on the very essence of what it meant to be a citizen of Ephesus. It cost you to be a Christian there. Business connections and influence, relationships with neighbors, acceptance in all the social circles that gave you life and livelihood were jeopardized. So you had to know what you were getting into. The Ephesian Christians were keen on teaching orthodoxy, pure doctrine. Tell people the truth. They were good at it. They had the gift of discernment that comes from being immersed in the teachings of Jesus and going back to the Bible to discern the truth.
They could test anyone claiming to be an apostle and tell pretty quickly if they had truly been sent by Jesus. They hated any kind of compromise or corruption to the faith. There were groups like the Nicolaitans, who wanted to go along to get along, and syncretize their Christian faith with the pagan practices of the day.
Yet this you have: you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
The Ephesian Christians hated that. They wouldn’t tolerate that. This is commendable. Hate sin, hate compromise, Jesus hates it. But the reasons Jesus hates those things might be different than our reasons if we’re not careful. If you are known for telling everyone the truth and hating everyone’s sin, and you have no love, to paraphrase 1 Corinthians 13, you are
1 Corinthians 13:1–3 (ESV)
a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
This is what Jesus addresses in the Ephesian church.
But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.
Some translations say, “your first love”. Either is fine. Your first love should be God. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and strength. But our love for God is measured by our love for people created in His image. Jesus linked love for God with love for your neighbor.
Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
1 John 4:20–21 (ESV)
If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.
And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
That love can grow cold the longer we are battered by those who deny the truth, argue against our faith, and diminish Christ by telling us He is our truth and they have a different truth. They ruin their lives and the lives of others with their unwillingness to accept the truth of Jesus. Our love for the lost can grow cold. We have all at one time spoken the truth in anger, judgment, and pride, with no compassion at all.
There are even people within the church who receive the teachings of Jesus but don’t want to be changed by them. They want to live as the world lives, go along to get along. And after enough of those, our first love for God’s people can grow cold. We bring them back to the Bible and they say things like someone said to a friend of mine this week, “You always make it about the Bible. But I think God is leading me in a different direction.” And that drives us crazy. And the temperature of our love goes down. And we go from arguing to rejecting rather than gently instructing them in hope that God will grant them repentance, leading to their knowledge of the truth.
And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth,
So, in a church like ours, that teaches the Bible and maintains orthodoxy, pure doctrine, because we know Jesus can’t be known apart from the truth of God’s revealed word, we double down on Bible teaching, doctrinal purity. And the temptation is to love our doctrine more than we love people. Christians and whole churches in the evangelical movement have become known only for what they are against than who they love. They believe they must defend the faith against the world, and their love grows cold. But Jesus did not give us a defensive faith. It is the faith that storms the gates of hell to rescue the perishing.
And for any of us, it can be hard to come into Sunday service and sing love songs to God when we are harboring anger or bitterness or resentment or judgment against someone else in the room.
Jesus’ message to the Ephesian Christians is,
I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary.
in the same way you patiently endure and bear up for my name’s sake and have not grown weary in your discernment of truth, apply all of that to your love for others. That’s how you can love me best.
And then He gives them three medications to increase the temperature of their love.
Remember.
He says,
Revelation 2:5 (ESV)
Remember therefore from where you have fallen;
Go back in your mind to that early Christian you were who was broken over your own sin and consumed with God’s love for you that He would send His Son to die for your sins. Let your heart feel that reality again. Call it back into your life. When we respond to God’s love for us with an open heart, love for Him and love for everyone created in His image, that is the height of Christian experience.
Revelation 2:5 (ESV)
Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent,
2. Repent.
Humility is good medicine. For a Christian who loves doctrine and operates at a graduate level of biblical fluency to confess that they have forgotten what they learned in kindergarten requires a leveling of pride and self searching. But if you discover that in yourself, just repent. Turn around and go back. There is another way to learn love again.
You’ll know that repentance is real when you obey Jesus’ third medication.
3. Do the works you did at first.
Revelation 2:5 (ESV)
Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first.
It is commendable to love truth and hate evil. Don’t stop doing that. Jesus loves truth and hates evil. But doing that without love for those who reject the truth and commit sin makes your faith worthless. So go back to your commitment to love at all costs. To share what you have with others. To give your time to the immature believer who needs to learn from a gently instructor. To bear with your lost neighbor who might possibly know Christ only through your loving acts of service done in Jesus’ name.
And for our church, we are known as the Bible-teaching church, marked by pure doctrine. If someone walks in here and gets a cold reception, or none at all, we are in danger of losing our gospel witness and our place among the churches of Jesus Christ.
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.
So,
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.’
How do we conquer the temptation to protect ourselves by abandoning love? As always, we look to Jesus. His death on the cross and His resurrection have opened the door to paradise. The path following Christ is abundant life on the path of eternal life. Jesus promises what Artemis could never deliver. The tree of life is for those who walk with Jesus on the way of the cross. He loves the lost enemies of God and has demonstrated that by giving His life for us.
Communion
