The Church at Ephesus
I imagine that one of the hardest things for someone to ever go through is for a spouse to come to them and say, “I don’t love you anymore.”
For the person with whom you have entered into a covenant for life to say, “I no longer desire you. My feelings for you have grown cold. I don’t love you,” must be like having your body ripped in two and your soul torn.
And, you know, from the outside looking in, other people may not see the problem. A marriage can look great on the outside, but when one of the spouses is lying and putting on a good public face — deceiving others with their cordiality and public persona — it can come as a shock to onlookers when things fall apart.
Turn to Revelation 2, that’s on page 698 of the white pew Bible. This morning we’re beginning a new, short series called, What the Spirit Says to the Churches, in which we will look at some characteristics of what it means to be a healthy, vibrant church and also look at the steps Jesus and the Holy Spirit lay out for a church to get there.
In the opening chapters of the Book of Revelation, the apostle John — the same one who wrote the gospel of John and the three letters — he’s given a grand revelation of the risen Lord Jesus Christ walking among his churches, intimately involved with them and their oversight. This risen Jesus tells John to give seven prophetic messages to seven churches in Asia.
The first church John writes to is located in Ephesus. Ephesus was a very important city at the time, so it’s no surprise that the first letter is addressed to them. They had a place of honor in the world.
And yet, what we said before about a marriage is exactly what was happening in the first-century church in Ephesus. From the outside looking in, everything there was fine. But their Savior who walked among them knew better.
Like many churches, this church was doing good things. But they had walked away from the most important thing: Christ and his gospel.
Here’s our big idea from the letter to Ephesus:
A healthy, vital church holds to sound doctrine and displays an intense love for Christ and for people.
A healthy, vital church holds to sound doctrine and displays an intense love for Christ and for people.
Let’s read the letter from Christ to his church at Ephesus:
Revelation 2:1–7 CSB
“Write to the angel of the church in Ephesus: Thus says the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand and who walks among the seven golden lampstands:
I know your works, your labor, and your endurance, and that you cannot tolerate evil people. You have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and you have found them to be liars.
I know that you have persevered and endured hardships for the sake of my name, and you have not grown weary.
But I have this against you: You have abandoned the love you had at first.
Remember then how far you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. Otherwise, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.
Yet you do have this: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
“Let anyone who has ears to hear listen to what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.
In chapter 1 of Revelation, the risen and glorified Christ has been revealed to John and us in all of His glory. He is revealed as the atonement for sin through his death and as the triumphant victor over Death and Hades through his resurrection. And he’s also shown to be walking amongst seven lampstands, which he tells John are the seven churches he’s about to speak to. Christ is revealing himself to John and the churches as the one who is sufficient for all their needs and who is with them, among them, walking beside them, in the right here and the right now.
Then Jesus tells John to write to the church at Ephesus along with six others. Now, each of these letters was meant to circulate to all of the other churches. This first letter was not a private message for Ephesus — all the others were meant to read it in a “Hey, y’all listen up so I don’t have to say this to you too,” sort of way. As such, they are applicable to us as part of the same New Testament Church.
I said earlier that Ephesus was an important city. It was a political, commercial, and religious center of Asia Minor.
The church of Christ at Ephesus was no less important and influential as the city. The city was first evangelized and the church planted by Paul, Aquila, and Priscilla — you can read about that and the riot that ensued in Acts 18-19. Paul’s protege Timothy was one of the first pastors at Ephesus. John — the writer of this letter — was one of the elders there at one point.
This church had a great heritage! And therein, most likely, was the source of the danger it had fallen into. It was a second-generation church that was living off the prestige and momentum of the past. The past was great, but the present condition of the church was near death.
Jesus says two things to this church — one praise, one criticism.
First, Jesus praises their sound doctrine which expresses itself in holy living.
This is the first part of our big idea:
A healthy, vital church holds to sound doctrine...
A Healthy, Vital Church Holds to Sound Doctrine
Listen to what Jesus said to them, verse 2:
Revelation 2:2 CSB
I know your works, your labor, and your endurance, and that you cannot tolerate evil people. You have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and you have found them to be liars.
Jesus is commending them here for their commitment to understanding the truth of God’s Word and not letting someone come in and teach contrary to it. By the way, when Jesus says “you cannot tolerate evil people,” he’s talking about these false teachers. He’s not commending them for refusing to deal non-Christians outside the Church. He’s pointing them to teachers within the Church who are trying to leading them astray.
Who are they and what does this commendation mean for us? Well, during this time — and it hasn’t stopped today, though mostly we see it now through books or YouTube or TikTok — there were people who went around to churches, claiming to be teachers of God’s Word but who taught contrary to what the Scriptures said and what the original apostles taught.
These people fell into two major categories:
The Judaizers — who said that to be saved you had to become Jewish and follow the Mosaic law. I don’t think that’s who John is talking about here. Rather, he seems to be talking about a second group that was just developing during this later time of the first century.
This second group were called the Gnostics. The Gnostics believed two essential things (and this is important, bear with me):
One, they believe in something called dualism between the material and the spiritual — which means that the physical world is inherently evil and that the only good exists in spirit. And as a result, the Gnostics believe that anything done in the body, even the grossest sin, has no meaning because real life exists in the spirit realm only. The modern “Free Grace Movement” would be a good example of this type of thinking.
Secondly, the Gnostics believe and claim to have an elevated knowledge, “secret truth,” that only a few privileged people know. And yes, while we can deepen our knowledge of God, the Gnostics believed that they received this knowledge not through the Scriptures, but from a mystical higher plane of existence, almost as if it were downloaded to them. Sarah Young, the woman who wrote Jesus Calling would fall squarely into this. Jonathan Cahn with his emphasis on secret prophecy and having God revealed to you while never mentioning Jesus Christ easily falls into this.
So these people were coming into the Church at Ephesus and trying to weasel their way into the teaching leadership and Jesus commends the congregation for saying, “Uh, no, we can see that you are teaching something contrary to Scripture. Yeah, it may sound good and make us feel good, and it may scratch our itch for something exciting, but it’s not what Jesus said. It’s not what the apostle’s taught.”
By the way, part of the reason the Apostle’s Creed — which we recited this morning — was written was to combat heresy like this. We need to know the truth of what we believe so that when false teaching comes, no matter how subtle, we can point it out and reject it.
You’ve heard the story, I’m sure, of FBI counterfeit investigators who are trained to intimately know US currency in and out, back and front. They take that bill and they study it, the feel the ridges in the portraits coat, they look for the color-changing ink, the study the security bar codes, and the ultraviolet watermarks. Knowing what is true about a bill helps them spot counterfeits.
In the same way, having a fundamental and deep understanding of the truth of God’s Word, how it flows, it’s grand narrative, what the literary genres are, how to read in context and not just cherry-pick verses, an understanding of the covenants…all of that helps us to spot false teachers and reject them. And Jesus tells Ephesus, you guys are doing a good job there.
Folks, doctrinal clarity and sound theology is not an optional thing for a church or believers. If we want to be a healthy and vital church, we have got to recover a sound, biblical, historic theology and learn to reject theological fads and false teaching.
By the way, I’ve got some plans in the works to move our church along this trajectory. To get a better grasp on what God is doing and saying in the Bible. I’m not ready to throw it out there yet…but just be ready. Before the end of this series we’re going to have a couple of things to get us closer on this piece of holding to sound doctrine.
But let me tell you, it starts with being in the Bible. Soaking in it. Meditating on it. Creeds, confessions, discipleship classes…all of those things are good, but they are only good if they help us understand what is written here and point us back to here. We’ll be doing some great things that I am really excited about…but they will be pointless unless we are in here.
So, that’s what Jesus commends the church at Ephesus for. But, he says, I have this against you. Holding to sound doctrine is important and good, but it is not everything. Read what Jesus criticizes them for, verse 4:
Revelation 2:4 CSB
But I have this against you: You have abandoned the love you had at first.
Probably one of the most memorable phrases from the King James: You have left your first love.
Not only does A healthy, vital church holds to sound doctrine, but it also displays an intense love for Christ and for people.
A Healthy, Vital Church Displays a Love for Christ and for People
Ephesus was still doing some of the right things, but they had forsaken the right motivation. And without the right motivation, they had left aside some of the works that Jesus had called them to do.
Ephesus was a church with acute heart disease. They knew the truth but their spirits were not stirred by it.
“But I have this against you.”
Not exactly the words a church wants to hear. Sometimes even gentle truth is painful to hear. And it ought to be sobering.
But Jesus loves his Church — his bride — enough to tell her the truth. When He seese something He doesn’t like, He is honest and straight forward. And in this case, the words cut deep. “You stopped loving me and you’ve stopped loving people.” You’ve abandoned the love you had at first.
Do you remember what Jesus said was the greatest commandment?
Matthew 22:37–40 CSB
He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and most important command.
The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.
All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.”
Those two things go together, Jesus says. That’s what he means when he says the second is like it. You can’t do one without the other.
We cannot love our neighbor without loving God, and we fail to love God when we fail to love our neighbor. You cannot separate them.
The fervent and passionate love the people had for Jesus and His gospel when they first received Him had waned. Now they were just going through the motions. Coming to church because that’s what you did. Singing because that’s what the guy with the microphone told us to do.
And out of that waning love for Christ came a waning love for other people. If we forget the beauty and the immensity of the grace that Christ has bestowed upon us, it won’t really seem to us like good news for anyone else. And if it doesn’t really seem like good news, then what’s the point in telling someone? I really believe that part of why Jesus is calling out the church at Ephesus is because they have forgotten the Great Commission. They have forgotten what Christ told them to do — to make disciples, to proclaim the gospel, which is the greatest expression of love toward another human being.
To tell someone, Hey, that brokenness you feel, it’s a result of living outside of God’s design, which the Bible calls sin. And yeah, you can try all sorts of things to fix that brokenness or to numb it, but the Bible says there’s only one cure: the gospel of Jesus, which is the good news that in the midst of our sin, he came and lived the life we couldn’t live and died the death that we should have died so that we can be truly mended, free of our brokenness if we repent, turn away from that sin and believe that who He is and what He did saves us. And then, the Bible says, when Jesus comes into our lives, he frees us to recover and pursue God’s design from right where we are in our lives. We don’t have to turn back to past or even clean ourselves up, we are free to believe God and walk with God from right here.
That’s the truth of the gospel and if you are in that place of brokenness right now and nothing’s fixing it — pursuing more money, or becoming more religious, or dallying with a new relationship — I urge you to consider Christ, hear His call and come to Him. I’d love to talk to you more about that after we’re done here, seriously.
But, back to Ephesus. To tell someone that truth is the greatest expression of love we can show them. And Ephesus had left their first love. They had abandoned it on the side of the road. And I think Jesus’ implication is that they abandoned it in the name of sound doctrine.
It’s interesting, isn’t it, how the negative is often the inverse of the positive? It seems to be true in Ephesus.
They were highly commended by Christ for their commitment and ability to maintain doctrinal purity. But, it came at the expense of their love for the world. Their concern to be “pure” led to them not being committed to evangelism, lest “those people” be admitted into the family of God.
More evangelism means more people coming to Christ, which means more people coming to the church, which means we have to increase our budget (God forbid we spend money), and it means that we’ll have to spend more time training people in the truth, and our church will start to look different, and the pastors time will be spread out even more and he needs to spend more time calling me not anyone else…so it’s better if we just sit here as we are. It’s better that way.
That’s abandoning the love we had at first. And Jesus says, end of verse 5, there are dire consequences
Look at what he says at the end of verse 5:
Revelation 2:5 (CSB)
Otherwise, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.
And you might be saying to yourself, “Well, that seems like a bit much. Near death? Jesus just gave them a compliment! He said he knows their labor and their endurance and that they are calling out false teachers! Surely they can’t be close to death!”
The church at Ephesus — and every church, Gore Springs Baptist included — serves only at the pleasure of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He walks among us and holds us…and he removes us if we ignore the mission he has given, to make disciples of all people.
Right before he dies, Jesus told his disciples the same truth, did he not?
John 15:1–2 CSB
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.
Every branch in me that does not produce fruit he removes, and he prunes every branch that produces fruit so that it will produce more fruit.
That was said to individual people, but the principle applies to churches as well. We have a specific task, church, a mission given by God himself, to make disciples of all people, teaching them everything Christ has said. And if we decided our mission is something different…well Jesus has shown us the outcome of that mentality.
If we decide that our mission is to wage culture war instead of making disciples, if we decide that our mission is to make sure people don’t drink coffee in the sanctuary because we paid a lot of money for that carpet instead of making disciples, if we decide that our mission is to make America a Christian nation, whatever that means, instead of making disciples…we oughtn’t be surprised when our lampstand is removed. We have our warning right here.
But we also have a path back.
“Remember how far you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first.”
Remember and repent. Does that sound familiar? It’s the same thing God told the Israelites to do in Psalm 81, which we looked at last week. When the Israelites strayed from their calling to be a kingdom of priests, God told them to remember what He had done for them, and to repent of their idolatry.
When the Church at Ephesus has strayed from their love — for Christ and for people — he told them to remember the love they used to have, remember how excited they were to be in relationship with him. Remember how excited they were to tell others of who Jesus is and what he had done. And then he tells them to repent, turn around, make a sharp break with the evil they had fallen into, and then get back to work. Do the works you did at first.
The Church at Ephesus had a problem. They had abandoned their love in the name of doctrinal purity. And Jesus said they were on the verge of having their lights blown out by him.
So what do we do with that?
We go back to the truth that we saw in the Big Idea from the text:
If we want to be a healthy, vital church, we must both maintain sound doctrine and develop and intense, tangible love for God and people.
Part of recovering a love for God is learning sound doctrine. You cannot believe what you do not know, so we have to learn. You can’t love someone you know nothing about, so part of loving God is learning good, biblical theology.
But part of recovering the love we had at first, like Jesus said, is doing the works we did at first.
And to do that, Gore Springs, starts with remembering, then repenting, then going.