The Church of Ephesus (2)

Orthodoxy

Revelation 2:1–7 NIV

“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.

Recap — since it’s been two weeks.

It’s a wild city full of idolatry and competing ideologies. The temple of Diana is the most important religion in the region. Though it also hosted a temple to Caesar Augustus and this city was known as the “guardian” of the imperial cult. (Worship of Caesar)

SO there’s a lot going on in the Ephesian church.

-Busy, booming, trade center, populous and privileged

-Competing ideologies with rampant idolatry

-False teachers are trying to influence

Sooo Jesus says to the church in Ephesus: -Great work on deeds, hard work, perseverance, hating wickedness, testing false teachers.

-But you’ve lost love. You’re doing the righteousness without the LOVE and that’s not good. That’s actually really bad.

Righteousness should be a byproduct of LOVE not the other way around.

Righteousness on it’s own without LOVE —- doesn’t lead to LOVE it leads to bitterness and pride.

LOVE in the way of Jesus leads to both righteousness and more love.

Return to Love without forsaking righteousness

Legalism is a dangerous drug that quenches love

Repent and Return

So as we enter back into the text today. We need to wrap up the church of Ephesus and what Jesus says but we didn’t really dig into ORTHODOXY - one of the things the church did really well.

Orthodoxy means - correct teaching. It comes from two Greek words the first being “True” and the second being “Glory”

-True Glory which is a bit too literal of a translation for our English ears. And it’s better understand as True Belief or True Thinking.

Orthodoxy starts with a very simple premise — that there is truth. And that truth isn’t free-flowing or ebbing and flowing. There’s concreteness to it.

Like Math - 2+2= 4 it always does. There may be other ways to make 4 but if you put 2 and add another 2 it’s 4.

Or Language — If you are learning a new language, you can splice together words but you know that you are headed towards the right way to say things. Now there may be some gray areas or multiple ways to say certain things. Saying the word “jump” doesn’t mean “sleep” no matter how much you feel it should or how much you want it to.

Or rules to sports - we’ve added umpires, replay, etc. To make sure we are getting calls CORRECT. For the rules are the rules. You can feel however you want about a play but it either IS or ISN’T a touchdown.

We live in a world where we have watered down truth and decided we can do whatever we want with it on the biggest issues but take it to heart on small things.

But truth is truth. There may be gray areas or different ways to slice things but an apple is always an apple no matter how much it wants to be a pear.

Orthodoxy works this way - it starts with TRUTH. Now in Christianity, there are levels to it.

-The first circle out is - Dogma --- These are the creedal things. The most important things for Christians.

-Trinity, Jesus is fully God/fully man, God as creator, etc. -THE CREEDS

-Doctrine is the next one out -- these are the major beliefs but may have slight variations by denomination

-at their core they proclaim the same or similar things but may be seen in different ways

-Baptism - adult, infant - communion - transubstantiation, etc. -Gifts of Holy Spirit

-These can be important for many believers but ultimately we trust we will see each other in heaven

-Opinion is the third ring

-these are not essential to the faith. This may be style of worship, garments of dress, etc.

I don’t even fully agree with myself on everything. Nor do any of us agree with each other completely.

Heresies in the Biblical sense hang out in the Dogma and

Foundational areas. Not in the others.

so the church in Ephesus is being praised for being good at orthodoxy and righteousness. The task before them is to keep that but from the source of LOVE.

Cause it’s real easy to condemn, it’s a lot harder to help someone fall in love with TRUTH.

It’s real easy to yell at someone for being WRONG it’s real hard to bring be along towards the truth. Lead them to the source of Living Water.

Trevin Wax in his book “The Thrill of Orthodoxy” says - “Carefulness regarding theology is an expression of love, not a distraction from it.”

So let’s dig into Jesus’ desire for the church of Ephesus. He starts with

Revelation 2:2 “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.”

1- Tested the claims of false apostles

The wording is important here…

Testing - literally “to put to the test” - In other words they did what any good person should do with teachings.

-Stack them up against scripture. While the New Testament wasn’t finalized or even canonized there was certain established TRUTH and the Old Testament wasn’t thrown out. Jesus was the fulfillment…

-But the teachings of Jesus were established at this point and circulating. So — tested what these “apostles” said in comparison to the teachings of Jesus.

It goes beyond that —- also testing would be with:

-Character

-Motives

Claim - The claim from these people is not that they just have a teaching they heard… or a cool idea they thought of. They are saying - They are recognized teachers of God and of the church.

Apostles - “one sent out” — typically in the New Testament - “a special messenger, particularly from God.” — One called by God, placed in a special role, and teach the church…call witness to the resurrection of Jesus.

False apostles - those that claim to be sent from God with a new teaching or a new way to follow God. But the claims/character/motives were tested and proved false.

2 Peter 2:1 “But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves.”

What’s this mean for us?

We live in a world similar to Ephesus in which the most prevalent ideologies of the day are:

-Cultural plurality - anything goes

-Political idolatry - the worship of a political part and the leaders at the top.

There were two types of false teachers in the early church and we need to still be cautious of both:

Water down the gospel - make the claims of Christ and the power of Jesus less serious. —- Jesus doesn’t mind sin or Jesus didn’t really rise from the dead, or things that take away.

Paul also warned of those that try to add on rules/regulations/legalism to the Gospel. You must do X rules to be a TRUE Christian.

We still need to be mindful of both too. Especially in the same vein as the church of Ephesus - cultural plurality and political idolatry.

2- Hate the practices of the Nicolaitans

So not only did they “past-tense” test and remove false apostles. They also are dealing with a “present” problem of the Nicolaitans.

We will revisit the Nicolaitans again and even in further depth when we get to the church of Pergamum.

Revelation 2:14–15 “Nevertheless, I have a few things against you: There are some among you who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin so that they ate food sacrificed to idols and committed sexual immorality. Likewise, you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans.”

Except in Pergamum, the struggle was that they didn’t HATE the teaching of the Nicolaitans, they actually seem to love it, and run towards it.

Now - who are the Nicolaitans?

There isn’t any primary sources left for the Nicolaitans. Whatever they taught can only be pieced together using context and conjecture.

They are grouped together with another known entity later in Revelation… the teachings of Balaam… who taught the Israelites to compromise. Mainly with sexual immorality and eating food from idols.

The sin of the Nicolaitans is clearly different as it’s listed separately but the wording makes it in the same category. It may not be eating food sacrificed to idols or sexual immorality but it’s clearly in the category of COMPROMISE.

The Nicolaitans were Christians who practiced and preached COMPROMISE. Of some sort.

We live in a world where the church is often known for COMPROMISE.

-toward sin

-toward political powers

-toward self-justification

“It’s not that big of a deal…”

-What is it for US? Where do we compromise?

“The sin of worldliness is a preoccupation with the things of this temporal life. It's accepting and going along with the views and practices of society around us without discerning if they are biblical. I believe that the key to our tendencies toward worldliness lies primarily in the two words "going along". We simply go along with the values and practices of society.” 

- Jerry Bridges

This is why ORTHODOXY matters. It keeps things grounded, rooted, foundational. Without a foundation we are like sinking sand. Shifting sand.

Orthodoxy reminds us NOT to compromise. And it shows us what is and isn’t compromise.

2 Timothy 4:3 “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.”

Guys… this is a MESSAGE FOR US TODAY.

-The biggest problem with America today is ECHO CHAMBERS.

-We only listen to teachers/news/media/friends that tell us what we want to HEAR. We find the narrative we like the best and we silence anything else.

-We won’t listen to people because we already believe we are right.

And the problem with the church in Ephesus according to this letter, is they do a great job of hating the teachings of the Nicolatians. They WON’T compromise. But in the process, they’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater and become caught in their own version of an echo chamber of RULES and LAWS without the relationship.

“The most rebellious thing we can do in a world that prioritizes nonconformity above all is to stand out from the crowd by deliberately conforming our soul, mind, and body to a truth bigger than ourselves and our desires.” -Trevin Wax

He goes on to say —- “The greater adventure is in exploring something beyond the depths of our own heart. The greater adventure comes when we find something beyond the realm of my perspective and your experience—truths we didn’t invent or adapt to suit ourselves, but truths we discovered, to which we adapt. Discovering truth is a little like dealing with the weather. . . . You may have your preferences, but you don’t say my weather and your weather, because you’re not in control.”

For a time will come where we will surround ourselves with teachers…To suit our own desires.

-Whether we call it COMPROMISE or LEGALISM.

-We are caught up in a world in which we are no longer LISTENING to JESUS.

Legalism vs. Obedience

“God calls us to obedience but not to legalism. Legalism is following the rules to get something out of it for ME but obedience is following God because he’s already given everything to me.” -Pastor Tyler Ells

God wants us to be obedient because we want to love Jesus well.

Not simply because rules are fun.

“Orthodoxy is like a blueprint for a building, a grammar for a language, a map to give us the lay of the land. The lines and boundary markers are not meant to shackle us but to free us.” -Trevin Wax

I’ve used this analogy before but it’s helpful. Christians often approach their conversion and decision to follow Jesus as the finish line and the next steps get muddy.

Imagine, after Lindsay and I got married. I decided I no longer had to talk with her or relate to her. We already got married. I proved I loved her and that was it.

-Some people do this with their relationship with Jesus. They become a Christian but then immediately just put things on cruise control, compromise on their relationship with Jesus in all sorts of ways. Forsake Jesus for other things. And basically attend church.

Now say, when I get married, instead of just cruising. I actually make sure I do everything right. All the time. Do all the chores, pay all the bills, make sure all the household rules are followed. Do everything expected of me BUT still don’t talk with or relate with or fall in love with Lindsay daily… that would be silly.

And yet, that’s also what some Christians do. They mistake a relationship with Jesus for rules. They mistake obedience for legalism.

This is exactly what Jesus is on the church in Ephesus about.

-You hate the compromise of the Nicolatians but you yourself have FORSAKEN YOUR FIRST LOVE.

This is a message for you too. It’s for me. It’s for you.

3- Ears to hear - Tree of life

Revelation 2:7 “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.”

This will be a message we hear a lot throughout this series.

And it’s a call to each and every one of us.

The tree of life is an imagery throughout the Bible of healing and wholeness. Eating from the tree, restores you, and makes you well.

So Jesus is saying - listen to my voice. Follow my voice, and eat of my tree. For in it, you will find life, peace, wholeness, healing.

Notice it doesn’t say - become obedient and you will WIN… Or do all these right things and I will be proud of you.

No, we can’t do the gospel in our own strength.

The process to following Jesus is to LISTEN and then eat.

This is why church is structured in such a way.

That we listen to the words of TRUTH (Bible) and we eat them. But also eat in remembrance.

WE RECEIVE from the Lord.

We don’t add anything to the gospel nor can we take anything away.

Orthodoxy reminds of this clearly.

We don’t create orthodoxy nor can we compromise from it.

And if we have wandered, open your ears… for those that hear, EAT from the tree of life.

Jesus is offering you his life today. Will you take and eat?

Let’s pray