Love Is What Brings Us Together, Today, Revelations 2:1-7
Notes
Transcript
I really enjoy doing weddings. This year, I might have 3 weddings to perform, Lord willing.
I stand up here, before the father gives the bride away and I ask both the groom:
will you have this woman to be your wedded wife, to live together in holy marriage? Will you love her, comfort her, honor and keep her and forsaking all others, keep only unto her as long as you both shall live?
Then I turn to the bride and ask a similar question:
will you have this man to be your wedded husband, to live together in holy marriage? Will you love him, comfort him, honor and keep him and forsaking all others, keep only unto him as long as you both shall live?
And they always give the appropriate answer:
I will.
And then the father gives the bride to the groom. They look at each other so lovingly, people are tearing up.
It’s a joyous occasion.
Unfortunately, around 10% of marriage end during the first two years. 20% of marriages end during the first 5 years. 50% of all marriages end in divorce.
When the couple are so lovingly making their vows, they are not thinking about those statistics.
During premarital counseling, I go over expectations. And one of the popular unhealthy expectations is “Nothing will causes us to question our love for one another.”
That’s a lie. In fact, sometime during the honeymoon, or in some cases, after the first month, that question is going to appear.
And then things will start building up, questions, doubts, disagreements, and if the couple is not careful, their love will grow cold.
Other marriages will survive those first five years, and even the seven year mark. But, through it, they settle into the status quo, the nice little rut, and they have a roommate, but not a marriage, because they allowed complacency and boredom to move in. And their love grew cold.
There is so much more we could talk about, but I am not here to talk about marriage. I am here to talk about love. Not the love between a man and a woman, but between God and his bride.
God, the lover of our soul, yearns for his bride to return his love.
I appreciate Michael Bahr and Tim Worstell walking us through Revelation 1, painting a picture of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
We can picture Revelation in 3 parts, as seen in Rev 1 19
“Write, therefore, what you have seen, what is now and what will take place later.
Chapter 1 is what John saw. Chapters 2-3 are what is now, and Chapters 4-21 are what will take place later.
We are diving into chapter 2-3. Jesus picks seven churches to present a message to. These messages are true for that specific church. However, Jesus inspired those messages to be contained in this letter, all together, because there are principles in each of these messages that are applicable to all churches throughout time until Jesus comes back.
Let’s read Rev 2 1-7
“To the angel of the church in Ephesus write:
These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands. I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.
Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. But you have this in your favor: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.
In this passage, we are going to see when we lose our love we need to rekindle it.
Let’s pray.
1. When We Lose Our Love
1. When We Lose Our Love
The Ephesian church had a lot going for it.
We can look at
I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.
And superimpose Paul’s ministry on there. He did a lot for Jesus. He worked hard. He persevered through trials. He called out wickedness and tested false teachers. He endured hardships and kept going.
The Ephesian church imitated Paul, even as he told the Corinthians:
Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.
I think about the church at Thessalonica. Paul wrote of them:
We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus is saying the same thing about Ephesus. They displayed works, labor, and endurance.
This is very commendable.
Unfortunately, while the church at Thessalonica displayed works, labor, and endurance, inspired by hope in the Lord Jesus Christ.
The church in Ephesus just displayed works, labor, and endurance.
They were doing all these great things. They were witnessing. They were ferreting out false teachers. They were standing up for truth and making people mad because of it. So many good, solid, Bible-believing churches were probably holding up the Ephesian church as an example to follow.
But, Jesus was holding something against them. Such a sobering phrase: our savior saying: “I hold this against you.”
Ephesus: Look at all we are doing for you! Jesus: Sure, but I still hold something against you.
And what was it? “You have forsaken your first love.”
Jesus is dictating this letter probably about 30 years since Paul sent his letter to them. So, this is the second generation of Christians at the church. The first generation was on fire. But, the second generation began to minister and live “how we always did.” They knew the facts. They knew right from wrong. But, they didn’t know a vibrant relationship with Jesus Christ. Were they saved? Yes, many of them were. But, they experienced a “cooling of the heart” in relationship to God.
As John Walvoord says:
“Thus it has ever been in the history of the church: first a cooling of spiritual love, then the love of god replaced by a lover for the things of the world, with resulting compromise and spiritual corruption. this is followed by departure from the faith and loss of effective spiritual testimony.”
We see this in Ephesus.
"The church retained its vigor for several centuries and was not only the seat of Eastern bishops but also the meeting place of the third General Council which took place in AD 431 and was held in the Church of Saint Mar, whose ruins are still extant today. Ephesus declined as a city, however, after the fifth century, and the Turks deported its remaining inhabitants in the fourteenth century. The city, now uninhabited, is one of the important ruins in that area, located seven miles from the sea due to accumulation of silt."
Ever church has this danger. Every church is within 40 years spiritual cooling and apostasy.
But, how was this loss of love for Jesus seen?
Well, it is seen in our devotion to God. Is he our priority? Or is the pull and expectations of our community the priority?
Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them.
Is Jesus our priority or is our family and their desires?
“Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
I can just see some of the Ephesians say: Yeah, I know I should spend time with God, but I need to get ready for this family gathering. And so, they let their time with God at the gathering of God’s people slide.
Devotion to God is hard to recognize in other people. Like I said, the Ephesians were probably hailed as the John MacArthur’s of their day. This is not meant to be a slam against him.
They were doing everything right. In fact, most people would say that their priorities were just fine.
Which brings us to the second way that loss of love for Jesus is seen, and this is the much easier method recognizing loss of love:
A lack of love for the family of Jesus, his body, his church.
Consider these two verses:
God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them.
We show God love by helping his people.
For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.
Faith in Jesus is correlated with love of God’s people.
When we have a lack of love for God’s people, we are showing evidence of losing our love for Jesus.
Seeing the description of the church at Ephesus, you can see something going on. They are not tolerating wicked people. They are calling out false apostles and teachers. They are denouncing the sexually promiscuous Nicolaitans.
Were they beginning to be cynical? Were they beginning to distrust each other? To throw up barriers and theological divisions, to make sure that they were not harboring false teaching and sin.
We do not know. But, I can see how it can happen. I’ve seen it happen in our church and in other churches. A loss of love for the people of God evidences a loss of love for God himself.
I am not saying that we shouldn’t be discerning, that we shouldn’t stand for truth, that we shouldn’t call out sin. I am saying that we shouldn’t let those actions turn us from loving Jesus and loving his people.
Every believer, every church, needs to ask themselves how our love for Jesus is doing.
2. We Need to Rekindle Our Love
2. We Need to Rekindle Our Love
When we lose our love, we need to rekindle our love.
Jesus in this passage, in his call to the Ephesians and to us, gives three steps to rekindling.
A. Consider
A. Consider
First, we are to consider.
Jesus says:
Consider how far you have fallen!
They are to go back to the place of departure. What was it like when they were first a follower of Jesus Christ? What caused the fervor in their hearts? What was the wonder of their newfound salvation, and the joy and satisfaction that was theirs in Jesus?
How did they treat fellow believers? The amazement of knowing a follower of Jesus, that we were on the same path together. Who cares how many points of Calvinism they were. What even is that?
Where were we before?
Some of us can easily remember those moments, and we readily go back to them.
Others of us are too far removed and those days are foggy. But we can remember other times when we had rekindled that love for Jesus again. Perhaps it was a week of camp or a retreat that we were on. A mission trip that affected us or when we were able to talk with a family member about Jesus.
Everyone of us has a moment that we can remember when our love for Jesus and his people was strong.
We need to go back and remember.
Some of us remember, but we do not want to go back. Perhaps we are so jaded that we think that memory is the anomaly. We’ve gotten so that we look down on excited Christians, and we say “just give them time, they will cool down.” Shame on us. Because we are the ones that Jesus is disappointed in not them.
Perhaps we do not want to go back because that means giving up a soap box. We know that rekindling our love for Jesus means starting to love some followers of Jesus that we just don’t want to love. We love our standards and our pet theologies more than them, and because of that, we love our standards and our pet theologies more than Jesus.
B. Repent
B. Repent
After we consider where we had been, we repent. We change our attitude toward Christ and resume that fervent love which we once had.
Jesus says:
Consider how far you have fallen! Repent
We look at the path that we are going. A path that is characterized by a lack of love for our savior Jesus. We look at what we were. And we purposefully change directions. We change our mind about what we want to do, what we want to prioritize, what we want to follow.
We consider Paul’s passion:
What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ
That’s our goal. As we purposefully make the decision to have that goal, Jesus changes our mind. As we pursue him, he pursues us, and all of a sudden he is our goal, our heart, our love.
Some might hear this sermon and say: I’m good. I don’t feel a lack of love for Jesus. I am not the church in Ephesus. That might be the case.
But, one day it will. We are all in danger of losing our first love. The Christian life is a life of continual repentance, because we continually turn away from Jesus.
Luther famously stated, “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent’, he intended that the entire life of believers should be repentance.”
If you want a resource about this, I recommend Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth’s Seeking Him, experiencing the Joy of Personal Revival. Great resource.
To rekindle our love, we consider. We repent.
C. Do
C. Do
We do.
Jesus concludes:
Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.
Love for God is always shown in works.
"Though the Ephesian church had been faithful in many appointed tasks, these did not in themselves reflect a true love for God.” As followers of Jesus, we are not merely bondslaves of Jesus Christ bound by legal obligation, but we are those whose hearts have been given to the Savior.
So, as we turn to Jesus, he turns are hearts to the works that we are supposed to do, including to love one another.
What does it mean to live our lives in relation to fellow believers according to the love of Jesus?
Well, that is hard to answer, because situations are different, and we all have different giftings.
But, in spite of situations and giftings, we are all called to do works of love for fellow believers.
Sometimes we might look at a situation and say: I don’t agree with them. Or, I’m afraid of getting hurt. Or, I don’t have time.
What do we do with these situations? That’s too much for one sermon to handle.
What I can say is, we are not called to live or love individually. Jesus spoke to a whole church, and he calls us as a church to love one another.
So, when faced with a follower of Jesus Christ that we do not agree with, we bring in other believers to help us understand.
When we face a situation that reminds us of past hurts, we bring in other believers to help shoulder that load.
When we think that we don’t have time, we reach out to other believers to fill-in where we can’t.
We love as a community. And through that, we love Jesus as a community.
God, the lover of our soul, yearns for his bride to return his love.
Will we do it?
