The balance between love and doctrine

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Thank you for allowing me to come and preach the glorious Word of God to you tonight.

I don’t know about you, but we have had illness after illness pass through our family. I’ve got two kids that were sick today and hopefully it will get out of here.

I hope you enjoyed your Sunday and this message tonight is beneficial to us all.

INTRODUCTION:

I want to speak to you tonight from the book of Revelation. And I want us to see a general truth about the church as whole that is so pertinent to our day in time.

I did a study through this book with our Wednesday night group, and this is one of truths that you discover while preaching that grab you and never leave you.

What I want to do is look at two of those letters in the beginning of the book and hold them up side by side.

The first letter is to the church who loves Jesus less:

Revelation 2:2–3 “‘I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot tolerate evil men, and you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false; and you have perseverance and have endured for My name’s sake, and have not grown weary.”

Jesus begins with a list of what this church did right….This is quite a list! Let’s just go down through here briefly and look at some of these qualities in detail:

deeds = something that reflect their character, the kind of lives they live, they were upright, and moral people. We could say they were good people.

This was not a sinful or immoral congregation.

toil = labor, hard work, the effort they put into the ministry. This was a church who labored for the Kingdom of God.

We could safely assume that these were people who gave up of things in their personal life to do ministry.

They made personal sacrifices

Toil makes us think about a hard days work yet in terms of church life.

And anyone who serves well will toil.

perseverance: this is their ability to press on despite hardships, to endure the difficult road. To not give up!

Churches in those days were persecuted. Not like someone calling a Christian a bad name on Facebook. Their very lives were on the line. They were persecuted by both the government and Jewish people.

Yet despite this, they continued, they persevered in the faith and they refused to compromise their faith.

they did not tolerate evil men = This implies they practiced church discipline. They had moral and ethical boundaries up and they kept them.

When someone who was a member of this church displayed a pattern of evil behavior, they took action! They did not allow wickedness to corrupt their congregation!

INTERESTING SICDE NOTE: The word “tolerate” here means “to carry a heavy burden” implying that when sinful people remain intimately connected the a church, they are a heavy burden. They afflict the health, joy, and well-being of a congregation.

They put to the test those who claim to be apostles = in other words they used discernment!

They did not just let anyone come in there and take an authoritative role in the church no matter how eloquently they spoke!

Those who call themselves apostles.

Those who call themselves preachers or pastors

Those who call themselves teachers or leaders were subject to scrutiny by this church.

How many false teachers today have found their way into the church because of a lack of discernment used by the church as a whole and church leaders?

Jesus commended them because they were a discerning church

The sin of the church and the reason they received rebuke from Jesus.

Revelation 2:4 “‘But I have this against you, that you have left your first love.”

When Jesus says, “I have this against you” this is indicating divine displeasure from the Lord. It implies that if there is not a change in that church, then judgement is imminent.

Leaving their first love does not mean that they do not love Jesus anymore. It means that they do not love Him like they did at first.

I would even go so far as to say that they loved doing all the right things more than they did their Lord.

Isn’t that is a scary thought, that our relationship with the Lord can become so mechanical, so much about a religious checklist that instead loving Jesus deeply, He becomes a list of things to do

When Jesus is loved less, He is no longer the priority!

The initial passion and devotion to him fades

We begin to prioritize other things in our life over our relationship with Christ, essentially putting him in a secondary position rather than the primary focus of their love and devotion

Matthew 22:37 “And He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’”

QUESTION: How do we know when we love Jesus less than we did at first?

It’s interesting that the NLT translates this, “You don’t love me or each other as you did at first”.

How does the NLT take the liberty to add words to this? That is not what it says in the Greek. They take that Liberty here, and I think they are right! The Bible teaches that it is impossible for us to love God and not love our brethren.

1 John 3:14 “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren”

Jesus said Matthew 22:37–40 “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ “This is the great and foremost commandment. “The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ “On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.””

A symptom that we love Jesus less, is that we love the brethren less. Maybe not outwardly, but inwardly. That we may even go through the motions, but they’re forced and not genuine as they once were.

Truth: We can do all the things right according to God’s Word, moral, upright, sound teaching, by the book, church discipline, squeaky clean and put together and still hear a Word of divine displeasure from Jesus.

Loving God and loving others is just as important as getting every detail right inside the church.

We must be careful that we are not focusing only on things instructed, but on loving God with all of our hearts and making Him the priority always

Now I want us to turn to the letter to the church in Thyatira.

We won’t read this whole letter either, just the first few verses and I want us to pay close attention to what Jesus says here to this church:

Revelation 2:18–22 “And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write: The Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and His feet are like burnished bronze, says this: ‘I know your deeds, and your love and faith and service and perseverance, and that your deeds of late are greater than at first.

Do you remember what Jesus told the church in Ephesus? What the problem there?

They loved Jesus less than they did at the first.

They had everything else right, but the love

What was it that Jesus commend about this church?

That they loved more than they did at the first.

Their deeds were greater than they were at first.

That when they started following Jesus, they loved Him, but as time went on they loved Him more and more

And we might stop there and say well I do not need to read anymore!

All that matters is that we love Jesus!? And if our love of Jesus is growing then everything else is just fine.

And there are some today who just say, love them and everything else will work itself out…

But that’s not entirely true

Look at verse 20 with me and see what Thyatira was doing wrong:

Revelation 2:20–21 “‘But I have this against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads My bond-servants astray so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols. ‘I gave her time to repent, and she does not want to repent of her immorality.”

What were they doing wrong? They were tolerating false teaching. They were allowing false teachers who lived lives of immorality into the church, into the pulpit, into the Sunday school rooms and teach the children of God lies and wicked things!

And we say how in the world did they do that? Because they fall into the error that many churches fall into today: if we just love everybody, and never turn anyone away, and never use any kind of discernment, and never tell anyone no then we will be a church who pleases Jesus

FALSE!

They have gone too far in the name of love!

Oh just love em and let ‘em and let em all join the church, and let that woman get up and preach if she wants to preach, who am I to say she shouldn’t be in the pulpit.

And who am I to judge someone by their lifestyle and ask any questions about the credibility of their testimony?

And the false assumption that it is unloving to tell anyone no! If you really want to please God, then you just have to please everyone else.

That’s just not true

Notice what it did to the church here at Thyatira: (v 20) “you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads My bond-servants astray so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols.”

Whom did they hurt by going to far to this side?

They hurt their own people. Their brothers and sisters in Christ are now doing what this woman is doing and the church is allowing it in the name of love!

Jesus said because they tolerated her, and allowed her to teach, she is misleading the very one’s Jesus calls His bond servants.

PRINCIPLE: Unrestrained love is not a healthy thing. Acceptance of all things is not true love! Tolerating wickedness in the name of love is not really love at all, but wickedness

Sometimes real love is to do things the world may say is unloving, but Jesus would commend

Love people yes, but not if it means crossing the boundary set by Scripture

What is the central truth here for us tonight?

We must avoid both extremes.

If we are absolutely Scripturally sound yet do not have love for God or each other, we have failed and need to repent. It is not enough to know truth and to teach truth, even to believe truth if we do not love the One who is truth.

On the other hand, if we think that love must allow us to compromise the truth, we have failed and need to repent. It is not enough to just love people, and love does not mean open the doors and never be stand against anyone, love must be within God’s guidelines of what love is.

Let’s put them together: We must love the Author of Scripture, yet fear the authority of Scripture.

Nothing can replace our love for God, not even complete dedication to His Word. And nothing can replace dedication to His Word out of love for God. The two are not opposed, but intimately connected. We must be sure we have them both!

~PRAYER~