2022 Jan 2 Sunday Morning Service

Of spiritual privilege. 1st Corinthians, 10:12 says, therefore, let the one who thinks he stands watch out that he does not fall. What that is saying, is it those who are singularly, blessed can become smug about the blessing and thinking their firm in their stand, can be headed for serious collapse. I want to expand on that over the next several months. Everything you can see on the surface looks to be good and we would have every reason to think that we stand firm and still we can be on the brink of a fall and following that idea up a little bit. We have to go to the real core of what it means to be a Christian and I believe that the church in our day is completely losing that simple perspective. I think the Christian Life is essentially a simple thing to understand. It is a life of loving Jesus Christ. I know that probably sounds pretty basic and it is the Christian Life is best defined as an ongoing relationship of love between the believer and Jesus. We don't need to talk about his love for us. That's fixed. The issue is our love for Christ. Evangelical Christianity has all but lost the perspective of the Christian Life. Most people have the idea that the Christian life is about how much God loves us and wants to fulfill our dreams, and our desires, and our Ambitions, and our goals and our objectives. And what he wants to do is to make something wonderful out of us. It's more about God. Loving us so much that he wants to do all this. Then it is about us loving him. But in reality, the Christian life is all about loving Christ. It's about loving him, totally and sacrificially and obediently and worship flea. It's about loving him and terms of service. It really is about loving, Jesus Christ. That's what it means to be a Christian. It's that you now commit your life to loving him, not to understand the Old Testament. The great commandment was to love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. That is the sum of all the god requires and your neighbor as yourself. But it starts with loving God, with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, which is just the ways of saying, loving God completely. Now that's the sum of the law. Then that has to be the sum of the relationship that can't be altered. When it comes to being a Christian. It is still the purpose of God, that we would love the Lord. Jesus Christ with all our heart soul, mind and strength. Being a Christian is about loving Christ. So much that you want to know him that you want to, please him that you want to serve him that you want to be with him that you want to tell others about him. It's about the overwhelming consuming affection for Christ. This is at the core of what it means to be a Christian. And so the real question to ask people when you talk about their spiritual growth, or their spiritual condition, or were they are, in terms of their life is how much you love Christ. Are you growing in your love for Christ? Do you love him more now than you did yesterday? Do you desire him more now than you did yesterday? Paul was driven to know more about Christ to know everything. He could know about Christ to grasp every reality concerning Christ's to understand every word. He said every deed, he did not understand the fullness of his purpose. His Redemption to grasp completely the mind of Christ to know how we fought about everything. Paul was driven to serve him to exalt him to honor him to Proclaim him because he loved them. This is consistent with the biblical definition of what it means to be a Christian. It is to love Christ, to love him as the one who first loved us and gave himself for us. Listen to the words of Jesus in Matthew 1037. The one who loves father or mother, more than me is, not worthy of me. And the one who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. It starts out with loving Christ more than you love anybody else even those that you most naturally love. It's about loving Christ to the point where you're willing to take up your cross, where you're willing to lose your life. Where you're willing to hate yourself and all your dreams and Ambitions hopes and desires. It's loving Christ, singularly.

Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 5:14 that for the love of Christ, controls us, or drives us or motivates us. The Christian life is about a heart attitude, much more than it's about theology or conduct and that heart attitude is an attitude of love. Listen to what the Apostle Paul says in Ephesians 6:20, for a verse that often gets overlooked. Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ with Incorruptible love. How do you define a Christian? One who has an undying Incorruptible. Love for Jesus Christ. Paul understood that. So did Peter Peter wrote in 1st Peter? 1:8 and no, you have not seen him. You love him. And in 1st Peter, 2:7, this precious value. Then is for you who believe, but for unbelievers, a stone, which the builders rejected, this became the Chief Cornerstone. John also understood this and 1st, John 4:16. It says we have come to know and have believed the love with which God has for us. God is love and the one who remains in, Love Remains in God, and God remains in him. We know God loves us. We've come to believe that with further and verse 19. We love because he first loved us, that's why we can say. In verse 20. I love God. How do you define a Christian by their love for God by their love, for the Lord Jesus Christ? 1st Corinthians 16:22 looks at it from a negative side. If anyone does not love the Lord, he used to be accursed. There are only two kinds of people in the world, the Damned and those who love Jesus Christ. This is the compelling reality for the Christian. It's a very simple thing. I understand what it is to be a Christian. It is to love Jesus Christ. It is to love him, singularly and selflessly. It is to love him to the degree. That you're willing to deny yourself in a band and everything. You have even hate yourself. You're willing to say goodbye to your family and your friends and your fortune. Whatever it is. Jesus laid it all out and the issue is to love him, singularly to love him, so that you desire to obey him to honor him and just serve him and Proclaim him. And that really is. The question. It's a hard question. Do you love the Lord? Jesus Christ with all your heart with all your soul? With all your mind and with all your strength. It was Jesus. Who said, if you love me, keep my Commandments. If you love me, you keep my word. If you love me, you feed my sheep. That is the issue. That is the heart issue in the Christian Life. It's about loving Christ. I suppose the right question to ask, all of us is what is the condition of your love for Christ right now? In John 16:27. Jesus says, the father himself loves you because you have loved me. That's right. You love Christ. God loves you. In fact, that's basic to experiencing God's love. Listen to John 14:21. The one who has my Commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me and the one who loves me Will Be Loved by my father, and I will love him. Do you love Christ? Do you keep his Commandments? Do you keep his word and because you love Christ, The Father loves you. This is what the Christian life is all about. It is living the life in which you are, literally, attracted relentlessly to the Beauty, and the glory, and the Majesty of Christ. That's why the Bible features him. That's why you have four gospels. Not just three synoptic gospels going over the same history, so that everything is confirmed in the mouth of two or three Witnesses. And so that you have all the nuances with so that you have a vast amount of material on Christ because of the glory of his person. And it's not just the gospels. The rest of the New Testament, defines the power of loving Christ and begins to unfold the meaning of the sacrifice of Christ for us in the Epistles and the glory of Christ. In the Book of Revelation. It's all about him and he is so inexhaustible as to his glory. That I could teach the rest of my life and not even begin to touch the fullness of the glory of God.

Christian life is about loving Christ. And the right question to ask yourself, as you begin, this new year is, what is the state of my love for Christ?

I'm not asking you about your Doctrine and I'm not asking you about your ministry or other services. I'm asking the heart issue. Question that shows up on those other fronts. What is the condition of your love for Christ? Am I concerned about it? Yes, because as you go, so goes the church. So goes this church and all the people, this church influences. Don't we all love Jesus. We all love Christ to some degree, but the level of that love can change and I wanted dry you to a scripture that serves as a warning. For the second chapter of Revelation. It's not about nearly loving Christ. It's about fully loving Christ and in the second chapter of Revelation. You have a letter from Jesus himself to a church. The church at the city of Opelousas in chapter 1, there's an amazing vision of Christ. Not encourage you to read it, not out of that vision of Christ in his church, come seven letters to seven churches and the seven churches are Ephesus, Smyrna, Sardis, Philadelphia and laodicea. Those are actual cities in modern-day turkey. They are actual churches in the Lord gives to John the Apostle on the island of Patmos where he was when he received the Revelation a letter for each of these churches. And these letters are contained in chapters, 2, & 3 of Revelation 7 churches, all real churches. Each unique with its unique characteristics and unique problems, two of them. No sin issues. Two of them were just honored churches. Five of them were seriously flawed churches. They were real churches that I identify the kinds of churches that exist in all ages, even today. So that they stand as models for examples for churches and therefore as warnings as well. In the first letter goes to Ephesus the main Church. It goes to whoever with the minutes minister or the servant or leader of that church Revelations 21. The one who holds the Seven Stars in his right hand, the one who walks among the seven golden lamp stands says this. Christ has a message for your church now, that'll get your attention. The messenger comes back and says, Folks at this wonderful Book of Revelation. It tells all about what's going to happen in the future. But right in the middle of this first section, there's a letter to you from the Lord himself. He has something to say to your church. That would grab your attention. And this is what he said versus 2 through 7. I know your deeds and your labor and perseverance and that you cannot tolerate evil people. And you have put those who call themselves Apostles to the test and they are not and you found them to be false and you have perseverance and having a new word on account of my name, and if not become weary, but I have this against you, that you have left your first Love. Therefore. Remember, from where you have fallen and repent and do the Deeds, you did it first or else I am coming to you and I will remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent. But you have this, you hate the Deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. The one who has an ear, let him hear what the spirit says, to the churches, to the ones who overcomes, I will grant. Eat from the Tree of Life, which is in the paradise of God.

This first letter is addressed to the Church of Ephesus. Very strong sound and theology, Ernest zealous busy Evangelistic. In fact, this church had a really incredible beginning, not too many years before this, and it's recorded and Acts 19 1, Paul passed through the upper country, and came to Ephesus and found some disciples. So God uses Paul to launch this church. And down at verse 8, it says, and he entered the synagogues and continued speaking out boldly for three months having discussions and persuading them about the kingdom of God. Do you have access to the synagogue? Because, of course, he was a great Jewish teacher. He went into a Jewish synagogue, in the Gentile, city of Ephesus. And for three months, he preach the gospel verse 9 says. But when somewhere, becoming hardened and disobedient, speaking evil of the way before the people, he withdrew from them and took the disciples away with him and had discussions daily in the school tyrannus. The Jews began to get harder and harder and then they began to speak evil of Paul. Before people, who would listen, Paul took over school and used it for teaching in first 10, this took place for two years. So that all who lived in Asia, heard the word of the Lord both Jews and Greeks. Can you imagine these disciples under the tutelage of the Apostle, Paul, for two years? They didn't have television or radio, or social media. How in the world did everybody in Asia? Minor know what was going on in the school of tyrannus with the few disciples from the city of Ephesus. Because of the power of His preaching was so great that everybody who heard him spread the message and even added to that was versus 11 through 12. God was performing extraordinary Miracles by the hands of Paul so that handkerchiefs or aprons or eat, or even carried from his body to the sick, and the disease has left them in the evil. Spirits went out. There was so much power exploding through the Apostle. Paul that even in his absence people were being healed and delivered from demons. You're talking about a phenomenal movement of God in the city of Ephesus. I mean, they would remember that beginning of their Church, like no other Church would ever remember an explosion of Miracles. It was so powerful that some of the Jewish Exorcist who made their living reporting to be able to cast out demons. Did using the name of Jesus. They thought Jesus was the magic word. And so these Exorcist began to say I order You by Jesus, who Paul preaches starting to command the demons in the name of Jesus. And of course, the demon said Jesus, we know all we know, but who are you? Power of the Gospel began to take over the city and verses 18. Through 20 says, also many of those who had believed kept coming confessing and disclosing their practices. And many of those who practice magic brought their books together and began burning them in the side of everyone, and they added up the prices, the books and found it to be 50,000 pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord was growing and prevailing mightily and of course a big battle ensues. Big business in the town was the temple to Diana. This massive Pagan Temple, dominated the town and with the gospel spreading and everybody burning their magic books and turning the Christ. The business is the temple was falling off and they 7 verse 25 men. You know, that our prosperity depends on this business. What they did was they made little gods of the people came to the temple and bought a little Gods to take home and kept them so that they would have a representation of the Gods in their home. And The Business of making a little Idols began to fall off. His people were coming to Christ and verses 28 through 32 says, when they heard this and were filled with rage. They began shouting sane greatest, Diana of the Ephesians, the city was filled with confusion and they rushed together into the theater, dragging along, gayest and Arista, Paul's Macedonian travel Companions. And when Paul wanted to go into the assembly, the disciples would not let him. Also some of the ACR Works who were friends of his sent word to him and repeatedly urged him not to venture into the theater. So then someone shouting one thing and some another, for the assembly was in confusion and the majority did not know for what reason they had come together. Kind of like a riot starts and the riot was direct result of the powerful explosion of the Gospel. I mean, can you imagine being a part of a church plant like that, Great Beginnings, incredible power, the whole city and Chaos. The whole business of idolatry crashes. This was Big Stuff. Temple of Diana, was one of the Seven Wonders, of the Ancient World. We're talking a major place. What? A spectacular start, how those people's lives must have been revolutionized. What kind of Joy did the experience? What kind of Peace satisfaction fulfillment? What kind of exhilaration to be delivered from all of that? And then when Paul wasn't there anymore, they had Timothy and Aquila and Apollo's in the great New Testament teacher and they had the best Beginnings imaginable in the best leadership and it showed they were strong. Back to Revelations 22. I know your deeds and your labor and perseverance. He tells them, I know how hard you work for the kingdom. I know you toil for Christ. I know your work is diligent consistent. There are a lot of Christian things you do, who do nothing but not in Ephesus. They worked for the kingdom and it wasn't always easy, and that's why he says, I also know your perseverance your ability to stay under pressure. Your ability to stay under distress and hardship and difficulty and keep courageously doing what you should. It. Isn't that you're just doing it because it's easy to do it. Isn't that you're doing it because the skies are fair you Faithfully work to the point of exhaustion Against the Grain and you stay there and you stay under it perseverance. And here's something else. Good about this church and you cannot endure evil men. You have a very limited tolerance for centers. In fact, look at verse 60 says, but you have this that you hate the Deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. The best we can do in reconstructing. The Nicolaitans is that it is a sect started within Christianity, which was given over to immoral conduct, and it was said they had the morals of goats, whatever that means.

But this church didn't have any tolerance for that. They hated any kind of doctrine that allowed for a morality to be tolerated, anything that was against the law of God, hardworking and during persevering suppressing evil. And I'm sure they had to deal with people in their Church who were sinful and they did it. According to the prescription was laid out by Jesus himself, as well as the instruction of the Apostle, Paul and several places mean everything about this church up to this point is so good. And then he adds this and Revelations 22. And you have put those who call themselves Apostles to the test and they are not and you found them to be false. This church was strong doctrinally so that it had discernment. It work hard and restless leg and serving the lord and do our opposition difficulty challenges and persevered suppress, evil and sin, wherever they found it and held up the truth and held up everyone up to the truth. They recognized the false prophet and that wasn't always easy to do. You can say, but this is the dream church and discernment is at the heart of it. They would have seen it and they would have understood it and they would have discerned it. They held everybody up and I measured them, put them to the test and they had the stuff to do to determine who was false. In verse 3 says, again, and you have perseverance and haven't you heard on account of my name and have not become weary. And this is sort of the final comment and all of this is continuing right now. All of this Commendation is going on right now. This is a church to die for. You know, if we put this as the basic description of the church that was looking for a pasture and put it in the lobby of a seminary, they kill each other to get the phone number, right? This is the perfect Church. They've got it all. Denver's for comes like a bomb. But I have this against you that you have left your first love.

It's all become Duty. Jesus has penetrated through to the core of that church and found a fatal flaw. The hearts were growing cold. They had left their first love. The first love for Christ. Will they were doing what they always did because that's what you do and that's what's expected. So, what's the plan? That's the way the programs laid out. That's the way people are going to evaluate you and respect you and honor you and they did it. And the theology was in place, but the honeymoon was over. It was like a marriage can be, you know, everything was there, you know faithfulness Duty responsibility was all their passion was gone. No great Scandal. Organizational blunder. No loss of resources, Financial or human, but the heart was cold. The thrill was gone. The enthusiasm was drying up. I think if I had to compare us to a church in the New Testament, this church has more characteristics that Apple has had. I mean, we work hard, we persevere and we have four years Faithfully. We can add your sin, and we don't, and our Doctrine is strong. And we know heresy when we see it, and we're willing to expose it and we never grow weary. We get an A, for all that and a for faithfulness with the Lord can see what we can't see, you can see our hearts and I know we've been at it for a while now, and I know that the warning of scripture is that you can be doing all the right things and believe in all the right things and have your heart grow cold, right? How does the church get like that? It gets like that when it's people get like that. We're just a collection and you're part of it. We can come like that when you become like that. So the real question we have to ask ourselves. Now, as we look at this New Year's, what is the condition of my relationship to Christ? How would I describe my love for Christ? On a 1 to 10 scale? Am I consumed with his glory in his honor and his word and its pleasure in his will what is the description of my Christian Life? I don't really worry about some massive Scandal. Bringing us down in a crash and sinful corruption or about this church. Wandering off into heresy. If I miss quoted verse, somebody comes after up afterwards and tells me about it. And I thank you for doing that. Those are things that can certainly the things that concern me have to do with the heart. It has to do with you becoming indifferent to Christ and therefore, compromising and falling into sin and bringing destruction into your own life and your own family, and eventually into the church, it has to do with where I can't go, what I can't see and neither can anybody else except Jesus? What does it look like when the honeymoon is over? Well, when the past is gone, and the joy is gone, and the exuberance is gone and it all just becomes Duty and Doctrine. I don't know whether your experience is the same or not. But if enough of you have found the end of the honeymoon, then we're in some serious trouble because if we go down that road verse 5 says, therefore remember where you have fallen and repent and do the deed you did it first or else I am coming to you and I will remove your lampstand from its place. Unless you repent, literally I'll shut you down. It's amazing to think about the Lord being an enemy of his own church. Do you know what happened? That happened to Ephesus the Lord. Shut the church down its testimony disappeared and there's none there. Even now though there were some Overcomers verse 7, listen to what the spirit said and there was some Believers. They're True Believers, perhaps most and they would eat from the Tree of Life, which is in the paradise of God. They were headed for heaven. So what do you do, three things first? Five. Remember? What he saying to them, is a go back. Remember remember your paganism? Remember how lost you were remember how desperate and destitute? You were remember what? It was like to worship idols? Remember the immorality that you were involved in and remember what happened? When the gospel exploded in the power of God was seen everywhere in the midst of Miracles. The preaching of the Gospel came into your heart and you were given Faith to believe and repentance in your heart was turned around and literally replaced and you were transformed. Remember the joy, the exhilaration, the satisfaction you overwhelming peace. Remember what it was like to see the city completely overturned as the gospel triumphed, over Idols spiritual defection, can come from Forgetting. That's what makes it hard. Go ask somebody. That's been transformed. Hang around new Christians. Remember the Bible constantly calls for us to remember all the feasts and festivals throughout the Old Testament are designed to teach Israel, to remember what God has done for them. So they would never forget. Peter says, I write these things to put you in, remembrance, go back and remember what? You felt at the beginning, when you were overwhelmed with joy,

You couldn't get enough Bible teaching. You couldn't get enough time alone with the Lord. You couldn't get enough Christian Fellowship. You couldn't talk about Jesus to the people around you enough. You couldn't get enough of him. Remember the flashes of First Love? Because if you don't, you follow the fat, the path of a diminishing, love you follow it right into compromise and then into corruption. Look at your life. Is there anything you love? More than Christ? Is there anything you want more than Christ? Is there anything that you want to serve more than Christ anyone? You might want to honor more than Christ. Anyone, you might want to Proclaim more than Christ. If there is, you've left your first love, go back and remember how it was, or find out how it is for people who transformed from a pagan environment. Secondly, he says, not only remember from where you have fallen and that indicates that this is sin leaving. Your first, love is. So that's why you were falling. It's a fall and when you have fallen into sin, you need them to repent. He says repent there in verse five and repeat that again. At the end of the verse, unless you repent, judgement will come. See you at the sin confess, the sin of losing your first love or leaving your first love confess, the sin of your coldness of the sort of routine approach to worship and anything else in your Christian Life confess, the sin of serving the lord without exuberance and without Joy confess the sin of only doing your duty confess, the sin of doing what you do. Because you think somebody wants to see you do it. And therefore somehow will think well of you. If you love your theology more than Christ, you've left your first love. There was a time when you didn't know, enough theology to love it and you just loved him. Paul says that I may know him. He loved him so much. He could never get enough of him and so repent. And thirdly, he says, repeat do the deed. You did it. First go back when you were swept up in prayer and bible study and fellowship and witnessing and worship and who was also exhilarating pretty simple, little path. Remember how it was, how it is for people transformed in a few of the Fallen repent. Because it is a sin not to love him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

I don't know if you often asked for forgiveness for that sin, but you shouldn't. So should I? And then begin to repent, repeat the things you did at first when you were swept up in the joy of Salvation. It is a silent killer when a church leaves its first love and the church doesn't necessarily see. It stopped loving Christ and make him the focus of everything. And you will be sent in to compromise with the world. In the whole idea of loving Christ will disappear from your vocabulary and then you'll go from compromise to corruption in a word. You'll go from Ephesus to become a church. Like the one in pergamus to become a church like the one in theater. Tyra to become a church like Sardis. That was dead and it starts here. We look at a new year and my prayer. And my desire for all of us is that the Lord would grant us an increasing love for Christ.

What's bright?

Thank you, Father for the power of the truth.

There is nothing we could say that could even come close to the power of defying truth. We thank you for the letter to the church, to our church to us. The reminds us to rekindle our love for Christ. They might be a church lost and love and praise and service to you. And your name we pray. Amen. Thank you, and you are dismissed.