Well, hey, good morning. I know we’ve got a lot of families out this morning. That’s okay. I’m glad you’re here. I’m ready for fall weather. I don’t know. It keeps getting hotter and hotter. It’s supposed to get cooler and cooler. So I don’t know what that is, but hopefully soon enough it’ll cool down. We’re going to be this morning in the book of Revelation, chapter 2. I just felt led to preach something a little different this morning instead of Matthew’s Gospels. If you have your Bible, turn with me to Revelation, chapter 2. We’ll be in verses 1 through 7.
And it says this, To the angel of the church in Ephesus write, The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands. I know your works, your toil, your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary, but I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.
Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen,
repent and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you, and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. Yet this you have. You hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
To the one who conquers, I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.
I wish it wasn’t this way. Maybe you’re better, but when it comes to house repairs, I’m incredibly negligent. When something’s broken, I wait until the last possible minute, when it’s at its worst, before I’ll fix it. I don’t like doing that, but I tend to do it. For the last several months, the sink in our bathroom has been like a drip, but it’s been getting faster and faster, and I just see it, and I try to ignore that it’s a problem, to the point where it’s almost just like a constant stream now. And Jessica said to me a few days ago, our water bill was so high last month, and I’m thinking, I know why that is, because she’s asked me a thousand times, fix that sink, and I have it. It’s one small little gasket you’re replacing that’s done, but often we’re negligent with stuff like that. We’re negligent sometimes with our physical health, and there are consequences for this. Sometimes we’re negligent in human relationships, and there are consequences for that. Sometimes irreparable, consequences.
I want to look at Revelation this morning, one because it’s a book that doesn’t just talk about the things that will be, it’s a book that talks about things that are. I think when we think about Revelation, which it’s literally that it’s a revelation that the Apostle John received when he was exiled in Patmos towards the end of his life. He gets this revelation from Jesus. So it does tell us about the end of all things, how Jesus will come back, and conquer the great enemy, the ancient serpent from the garden, how he’ll save his church, how he will bless the righteous, and how he will judge the wicked. So it is very much so, I think popularly we think about those kind of crazy passages that we read later on in the book of Revelation. But really the first many chapters of Revelation, it’s a book about things that are right now. It’s a book about churches, Christians who have a choice to be, either faithful with the responsibilities they have, or negligent. And in that chosen negligence, or willingness to tend to things as they ought, there will be very real consequences, even irreparable consequences, when the things that are to come, come to pass. So I want us to consider what Jesus says, particularly to the church at Ephesus.
If it’s true this morning, friend, that Christ is in our midst right now, He’s not just going to be in our midst when He returns, but Christ in His Spirit is here now, would that change how you tend to your Christian life? If Christ is here now, wouldn’t that change the way we think about ourselves as a church? Or would we be negligent? That’s what I want us to consider this morning. Look back at verse 1.
It says, To the angel of the church in Ephesus write, the words of him who holds the seven, the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands. Now at the end of chapter 1, Jesus goes ahead and He says to John, Hey John, here’s the mystery of the lampstands, here’s the mystery of the seven stars. The seven stars in my right hand, those are the angels of the churches, and the lampstands are themselves representative of the churches. So this is apocalyptic literature, so there’s a lot of symbolism that means things. So the stars, the stars in Jesus’ right hand, He’s got seven of them. Those represent the churches in Asia Minor to who He’s writing. All seven churches, the angels are in His hand, and the seven lampstands are the churches. But what does it mean by angel?
That seems maybe like an odd reference. There’s several different options here. One is, it literally means angel, that there is this heavenly counterpart for every local church, and that angel is protecting the church, speaking to that church in ways, held accountable for how that church is doing. It’s a possibility. I don’t like it, because you don’t see anywhere else in the New Testament where these heavenly angelic beings are responsible for the church. You see largely Jesus and the Spirit are responsible for the church. So that’s an option. Another option is that these are pastors. So angel can also mean angelos in the Greek. It means messenger. So is John just saying, hey, let the messenger or the pastors who preach the Word of God, let them faithfully say this, maybe. Is it just an ambassador whose job was to communicate to the churches at the time? Maybe. Was it perhaps just a way of saying in symbolism, the identity of the church? Like the angel of the church would be, hey, that’s your DNA, that’s your heart and soul as a church. I’m going to identify that and speak into it. So those are four possibilities. Which one is it?
I don’t know which one it is. And if you read 15 different commentaries, you end up in 15 different places. So it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter whether or not we know who the angel is. Here’s what’s important. Whatever Jesus meant by the angel, it’s supposed to be a messenger that communicates God’s message to the church. So, hey, church in Ephesus, here’s what you need to know. Hey, church at Providence Fellowship in the year 2019, here’s what you need to know and take serious. So when we get to heaven, if we still care, ask Jesus, who was the angel? What did that mean? Chad didn’t know. Okay, so I don’t know. But here’s what I know is we need to hear the message, either way. And here’s what Jesus really wants to emphasize at the beginning of chapter two, even though he had just said it at the end of chapter one. He says, I am the one who holds the seven stars in my right hand. Now that’s significant because anytime you see right hand in the scriptures, it’s referring to God’s power and authority. God is the one alone who gives victory by his power, who blesses, is those who do right or by the power of his right hand. He’s the one who judges. He’s the one who brings about a curse on the wicked. He’s the one who wipes out the wicked. So that’s very much so a theme throughout the book of Psalms. God has a righteous right hand we trust in. So Jesus wants us to remember as the church, one, he is powerful over his churches. But the second thing Jesus really wants to emphasize to us is he says he walks among the lampstands, not had walked, not will walk, not sometimes walks. It is present. Christ is always walking among the churches. That means in the ancient world to the present world, Jesus is perfectly aware of everything that’s happening in every church. So if Jesus is omnipotent, he’s all powerful. If Jesus is omnipresent, he’s everywhere and he’s omniscient. He knows everything. Friends, would that not push us to scrutinize how we’re living, living as Christians and what it means when we call ourself a church. If Jesus is looking that closely, it seems like neglect would be utterly foolish.
So if Christ is among us, I want us to learn this first thing from this passage. We must maintain zeal and obedience. If Christ is truly among us, we must maintain zeal and obedience. Verse two, the revelation goes on to say, I know your works, your toil, your patient endurance and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not. And you found them to be false. I know that you’re enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake and you have not grown weary. So this is nice. Jesus starts by saying to the Ephesus church, hey, let me pay you a big old compliment. You’re doing a lot of wonderful things. And you’re doing all these things, right? And it’s a big compliment, especially if you think about the context of the church in Ephesus, what they had to go up against to be a church. Ephesus at this time, it was a very wealthy city. It was a very well-to-do city. We know that they had multi-tiered residencies that had marble walls, mosaic floors, running water. It’s found that they had heated bathrooms. So these aren’t people that are lacking in luxury. Nor are they people lacking in worldly pleasure.
Prostitution houses, gambling houses, those were in the center of the city, as was the temple of Diana, the goddess of fertility. That was one of the seven wonders of the world in the ancient world. So you see what a place like Ephesus is. It’s a place with a ton of worldly influence, fashion, pleasure, possession, religions, worldly philosophies, all of these, all these things pulling at the church at Ephesus to be faithless to Jesus if they don’t. Jesus says, hey, you guys are actually doing a lot of this stuff really well. We could assume they took Paul’s letter serious. Now, when you reread Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, they must have taken Paul very serious. Jesus says, I see your work. I see your toil. So when Paul wrote to the Ephesians, hey, you know what you guys ought to be if you’re really going to be church? You’re going to have to be a unified body of believers. All the diversity of persons, all the different personalities, all your different walks of life. You guys are going to have to figure out what it looks like to love one another well. How difficult in a city with a multiplicity of backgrounds and people. Jesus says to them here, you’re patiently enduring. You’re bearing up for my name’s sake. So internally, you’re being faithful to one another. But externally, you’re showing everybody in Ephesus, hey, this is what it looks like to be a Christian without compromise.
Jesus says to them also in chapter two, you can’t stand evil. You can’t stand falsehood. You can’t stand false apostles. You’re good at snuffing out people who say they’re for Christ, but they’re teaching false doctrines. And you’re good moral people. So when Paul said in Ephesians, hey, don’t be tossed to and fro in your doctrine. Know what truth is so you can grow up together as the body of Christ in truth. And Paul says, hey, put away all falsehood. They’ve apparently done this very well. Paul also said, hey, in your families, have husbands and wives that love and respect one another. That looks like Jesus. Have godly homes where children are reared up to know the Lord. They, they’ve done that. And then you get at the end of the Ephesian letter, that very famous passage on where the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the belt of truth, the gospel of peace for your, for your feet, the sword of the spirit in your hand. So this is a very successful church, if you will, in terms of zeal and obedience. This isn’t like the Corinthian church. Remember when Paul had to write, you know, the Corinthians, hey, I heard there was like a, you know, a brand of sexual immorality that pagans aren’t even doing. You got, you got somebody sleeping with their stepmom and they’re proud about it. You got people getting drunk at communion.
You got people who are abusing the gifts of the spirit. Paul’s saying, cut this stuff out. You’re a church. He doesn’t have to do that with the church at Ephesus. Jesus is saying in this revelation through John, you guys are looking a lot like a really healthy, zealous, obedient church.
So that, that becomes a question for us. Does it not? But if Christ were here, and he had to get pen and hand and notepad, what would he jot down about your particular Christian life? And perhaps more importantly, what would he actually say in a few bullet points like he did Ephesus? What would he say about Providence Fellowship?
I hope he would say, this church is found to be approved because they’re a zealous church. They’re zealous for obedience and not zealous for zealous sake. Let’s be clear about that. Being zealous or being eradicated, that’s not a virtue. A lot of times it’s a vice. Hitler was a radical, right? So it’s not good to just be radical. When we’re talking about the church, when we’re talking about Jesus, we’re talking about being radically holy, which means looking like God. And if we want to look like God, it means we’re going to want to obey God in a radical way. Churches are, by their very nature, holy in disposition. If they’re not that, what could a church possibly be? So think about the word church, church member. You hear that, I’m a church member, my membership is at. To call yourself a church member is to say you’ve been grafted in as a body part into the body of Christ that’s holy. Now, why is the church holy? Because its head is holy. Jesus is holy. So Jesus expects all of his body parts to fall into line and be holy as he is holy in the way and manner of not earth but heaven. What is the definition of holy? It is to be separate. It means to be different. That’s what he expects of us. And so I don’t want to get like a pedestal and let me like say what everybody’s doing wrong. It’s not my place. But I think by and large, when you look at our culture today, I think churches want to be known for a great many things besides holiness. Like, yeah, that’s there, but it can go down the list. I think about professionalism in music. Oh, if we just have professional music, if we could have just a well-oiled machine of a service. You know, our church is trendy. Our church is relevant. We really get a culture. Hey, you know, you should come to our church because we don’t get like stuck up in theology. Our pastor, he’s down to earth and he’s got practical points of application for your life. Or, you know, we have a lot of programs and we’re going to meet you where you’re at. We’re just going to accommodate you. All these things, I’m not saying they can’t have a place at the table. Perhaps they do. But friend, if the marrow and the bone of a local church is not that of a holy disposition and kind, everything else is a great wash.
When the church chooses to reduce itself to the ideals and wants of sinful people, it will inevitably lose its most unique quality. And that is the holiness, the separateness, the differentness of who Jesus is and what Jesus is all about in his kingdom. So I would never, and no one should advocate, hey, the church, it should be this spiritual elitist club. I mean, if you want to get in here, you better believe all the right stuff immediately. You better know how to act. You can’t struggle in this church. It’s ridiculous. Churches should be a place where you can come in. Hey, I don’t have everything figured out. I’m confused about a lot of stuff. The Bible says, especially in Revelation, you know, I got these hangups and these struggles I’m doing. Great. Let the church be a place where people learn and grow. But how can people learn and grow if we’re willing to manipulate the holiness of the head? We would only have them to offer a maimed, disfigured body.
Without question, zealousness for holiness and obedience, friends, it removes the possibility of popularity with the many. If we are to be zealous for holiness, there are certain truth claims we must boldly affirm, not obnoxiously affirm. There’s a difference. Facebook is a place to be obnoxious, right? I’m not talking about obnoxiousness. I’m talking about boldly, gladly standing on the truth of God’s word. I’m talking about, I’m talking about committing your life to certain moral practices that the world says, those are wrong. Those are hate. Those are evil. So all the talk you could have about being irrelevant, you hear that a lot, our church is relevant. Or our church is authentic. Those two things miss the mark, and here’s why. You can be relevant to the point of compromise, and you can be authentically ungodly. You can be authentic in a lot of things you shouldn’t be. So before anything else, friends, a church, if it’s seeking to be a church that follows Christ’s head, it will desire to be holy. When the Apostle Peter writes his first letter to his recipients, they’re struggling in their faith. They’re getting persecuted.
And his advice is, hey, y’all should figure out a way to maybe water down your message or have a different strategy in how you really present yourself to the community. Maybe be a little bit more seeker sensitive in how you’re saying this stuff. It’s not what he says. He does the most counterintuitive thing he can do. He says, hey, let me quote to you the Torah.
Leviticus 11, verse 44. God said, be holy because I’m holy. That’s Peter’s advice to a church that’s struggling. Be holy because I’m holy. Does it mean that you and I will be perfectly holy in this life? Nope. Does it mean that you and I will be holy in our own power? No. But it doesn’t work biblically at all. All to say, well, since I can never attain it in this life, I shouldn’t invest too much trouble in it. Doesn’t work. God said, be holy in Leviticus. Peter reemphasizes it for us as New Testament Christians. Be holy because I’m holy. That’s what it means before anything else to be a church.
Jesus is not going for cool points when he whips the money changers out of the temple.
The disciples don’t say, geez, what are you doing? We’re going to lose popularity with this movement. We got going like do some more miracles. What are you doing? Throwing people out of the temple, dumping money everywhere. That’s not what happens. See what they say to this in John chapter two, verse 15. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and oxen, and he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, take these things away. Do not make my father’s house a house of trade. And his disciples remember that it was written,
zeal for your house will consume me.
Friend, if you’re a Christ follower, you’ve got to be okay with losing popularity points personally. And you’ve got to be okay with it all of us together corporately as a church. You won’t in every season of life want to commit to certain truths that are difficult to believe or people don’t like. You will in certain seasons of life not want to be pure in character, and morality, but you must.
As a church, we have to set our face before the trial comes to say, you know what, we’re going to stand on the truth of God’s word. We’re going to live the way that God wants us to live because it looks like Jesus. That’s why. So zeal is a willingness to suffer. It’s a willingness to pay a precious cost. Jesus says it this way in Luke. He says, take up your cross daily and follow me. He didn’t just say, take up. He didn’t just say, follow me. He says, take up your cross and follow me. Die to yourself. Die to your preferences. Die to your likes. Die to your popularity. Die to your own life as you seek to really come alive in Jesus. It’s not some seasons. It’s all seasons. That’s why Jesus says to the Ephesians, you haven’t grown weary. This isn’t a seasonal thing for you being holy. You’re doing it in all of life.
True discipleship then, it’s a becoming, it’s a realization of another’s life upon your own. That’s what it is. To call yourself a Christian means you’re dead and Jesus’ life is replacing your own. It’s letting go entirely of yourself and it’s taking hold entirely of Christ. Can we say again, individually and corporately, my mind, my life is set to take hold of the life of Christ in all zeal? Will we get that same commendation that the church of Ephesus got?
J.D. Pentecost gives this illustration. A surgeon who selects a scalpel in the operating room rejects a scalpel with the smallest spot of defilement on it as if it was one that was severely defiled. Because even the smallest spot means the scalpel is defiled and cannot be used in surgery. The degree of defilement is inconsequential. The fact of defilement is what matters to the surgeon.
Friends, what we can’t do is live for, as we’ve learned so often from Matthew’s Gospel, we just can’t live for two different kingdoms. You can’t be holy and unholy. You can’t sometimes be on this side of the fence and sometimes I’m on this side of the fence. I either have a zeal for Christ and what it means to follow Him or I don’t. And here’s what I don’t want to do. It’d be really easy to do this. It’d be really easy to breed a certain sort of fear-based legalism. Like, okay, if this stuff is true, what we ought to do is come up with this really long list of everything. We can do and can’t do. Let’s make it very black and white. And that doesn’t work. And it doesn’t work for this reason. The New Testament, especially, it’s not a cold set of dead rules. It is the living, active Word of God. And the only way to really know what it says and understand it is to be in a community of believers and we’re taking life day by day. Hey man, this was said at work the other day and I kind of said something that was really off spot for a Christian to say. And I think I heard my witness. What do you think it looks like for me to be holy in my workplace? Or hey, what do you think it looks like for me to be holy in my home and the way that I love my wife and the way that I love my kids? Hey, I know the Bible teaches this, but I’m struggling. Can we sit down and pray the Spirit and help us understand what this means so we can obey it together? So the Lord never intended for you, here are these truths I believe, here are the things I do, here are the things I don’t do. And so I constantly want us to remember if we’re going to be a church, we’re going to have to be a Christ-centered community. It means our community is centered around Jesus. We’re constantly trying to have a community that looks like Jesus. How do we get a community that looks like Jesus? Well, together we remain a word-saturated people. Here’s what Jesus said. Spirit, help us understand that. Help us apply that to a great variety of situations and complex and hairy situations that may come along we can’t even see coming. We’ve got to stay committed to the truth together if we’re going to be a holy people. Christ did not save one of us. He saved all of us to grow up in holiness together. So as much as you want to love Christ’s holiness, there very much so is the mandate from Scripture that we’re going to be a church that you be holy for the person next to you. I’m fighting for your holiness just like you’re fighting for mine. I might want to fight you, but rather I’m going to fight for your holiness. We’re going to bear with one another to get to that great end together as a church. That’s what it means to be holy. You’ve got to try to be holy together as a church. Don’t try to go it alone.
So if Christ is truly among us, the second thing I want us to see is we must maintain not just zeal and obedience,
but friends, we must maintain zeal and love. Zeal and love.
So verse 4 in chapter 2 of Revelation,
Jesus says,
but I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.
Remember therefore from where you have fallen, repent,
and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent. Yet this you have. You hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. Now with a good compliment that Jesus just gave the Ephesian church, you wouldn’t think He would have anything to say, but hey, y’all are a model church. Keep going with what you’re doing. I like what I see. I’m moving down the road to all these other churches to tell them where they’re messing up bad. That’s not what He does. But what else would there be to criticize?
One monumental, an incredibly important thing. And please hear me say, it’s all important. It is a matter of life and death.
Jesus says to them, you have abandoned the love you had at first.
At your conversion, probably for a long span of your Christian life, you had, you had a deep, deep, heart affection for Jesus and everything you did flowed from that love. But you’ve walked away from it now. Now that seems puzzling, doesn’t it? Admit that. It seems puzzling how Jesus could say, you’re an incredibly moral people. You’re a people that believes all the right stuff. You’ve got great doctrine. And you’re a people that has done all kinds of really good works. And yet Jesus could say, you don’t love me?
It raises this ominous question and I really want you to think hard about it. Is it possible to spend your whole quote unquote Christian life doing all the right things, believing all the right things, being a moral person, and yet it mean nothing in the eyes of God because you did it all for the wrong reasons?
The answer is absolutely yes. I want to read you a passage from Matthew chapter 7. And I really don’t like reading this passage because it’s honestly, I think it’s terrifying. But here, read it with me. In verse 21,
Jesus says, Not everyone who says to Me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of My Father who is in heaven. On that day, many will say to Me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name?
And cast out, cast out demons in Your name, and do many mighty works in Your name.
And then will I declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from Me, you workers of lawlessness.
So please hear this and hear this well. God doesn’t need you or me to do anything for Him. And anything that you or I could do for God, it could never possibly merit His love, His salvation, or His approval. There is a vast ocean between doing the right thing because you’re supposed to and doing the right thing because you love Jesus and it looks like Jesus and you want to please Jesus. The first is unwanted grunt work. The second is a joyful burden you’re so glad to carry.
Cold dead religion is grunt work. People mind their routines. They mind their formulas. They give their tithe checks. They try to do what they think is expected of them. But people who love Jesus count themselves unworthy to suffer in any kind of way for Christ. Their highest pleasure is just to know the love of this Jesus that saved them alone. There’s no treasure they wouldn’t give up. There’s no task they wouldn’t do because Jesus asked. So you see, the first one is, I must do this because the Christian faith tells me to. The second is, I get to do these things because God wants me to. God loves me in Christ Jesus. Please see the difference between doing things in the name of Jesus and doing things in the name of Jesus and for the name and person of Jesus. The people in Matthew’s passage, they thought on Judgment Day they were going to get paradise because of the merit, the degree, the quality of their good works just because they slapped the name of Jesus on it rather than trusting in the saving love of Jesus and then doing good works because they love Jesus. Because Christ loved and saved them. Do you understand the difference? The only way to do works that please Jesus is to live in His love. Why is that the case? Here’s why it’s the case. The cross of Jesus plainly teaches all of us this. Only Jesus is good. Only Jesus has merit in His life. Only Jesus can please the Father. There’s nothing I can do that would ever make God smile on my own. So when Jesus died on the cross, He took away my guilt and my shame of being a failure to be a holy person. And then Jesus, when He resurrected up out of the grave and He put His Spirit in me, by that power and Spirit alone, could I do anything good? And that was Jesus’ power in me doing it, not me doing it. And it goes back to Jesus. For His glory, I can’t do anything good. So whatever I’m doing that God sees as good, it first starts with a heart that sees I cannot save myself. I only can trust in the gospel of God’s love. I am frail and pitiful, yet Jesus has loved all of us so much. He’s saved us from our dead, pitiful, frail selves, our dead, pitiful, frail works, and He’s loved us and saved us on His merit alone.
Jesus is the motivation for doing things, not religion.
So Jesus is not going back on His commendation He gave the Ephesians. In love, here’s what Jesus is doing. He’s warning the Christians in Ephesus of the great danger and peril of false obedience and cold love.
Here’s what religion requires. It requires willpower. It requires you to be someone you’re not, to do something you never would have done otherwise, to attain a standard you can never reach. That’s what religion is. But Christianity is something altogether different. It bids you die to yourself. It bids you die to yourself that can’t do anything right. And come in Christ, become a new person with a new desire and a new heart and a new power and a new love to please God. It has nothing to do with you. God loves you so much He puts you in Jesus. So in Jesus, you can be seen as right and good. Friend, I think if we knew that as Christians, I’m not even saying how much that’s good news for the lost world, I think if we really lived in that truth as Christians, I don’t think we do often, if we really lived in that, that good truth that God loves us and because He loves us, we’re a saved people, I think we would have boundless energy to have zealous good works. I think we would have zealous obedience because it would flow from a zealous love.
So I just want to ask you this question this morning. Do you love, not religion, not Christianity, but do you love the person of Jesus? Have you ever actually known Jesus?
Have you forgotten who He is? I’ll remind you.
Jesus is your Creator.
He picked you up out of the dirt and formed you and breathed life into you. He didn’t have to, but He did it. And He created you and He knows you better than you know yourself. And He, as your Creator, will satisfy you as no one and nothing else can. When we walked away from our Creator in the garden, Jesus became our Redeemer and saved us from our sins. He brought us back to the Father. Jesus is our victor over Satan. Jesus is our victor over sin. Jesus is our purpose. When we know Christ, we know who we were really created to be as humans in light of God’s love and experience purpose in Jesus. Christ is our power to live right. Christ is our husband. The greatest marriage you’ve ever seen. The Bible says Christ will be a husband to His church with all the love and affection and care you’ve never seen. The Bible tells us Jesus is your shepherd. And He will protect you from wolves. He will guard and keep you. He will appropriately feed you and make sure you’re well nourished in Him. Jesus is your King and He will make sure for an eternity to come you will live in His just, equitable kingdom where all things are right and all things are good. Jesus is your friend. He cares about you more than you could ever know. He is deeply concerned with the smallest details of your life. Jesus is your God and He rules over you well. And Jesus is, last of all, Jesus is love. Jesus is the definition of love.
So He says to the church at Ephesus, remember all this. Remember from where you have fallen. And come back. Come back to that. There’s nothing better. He says repent. We haven’t talked about repentance in a long time. You know what repentance is? It is completely changing your mind and your heart about something entirely. It’s hating the way you were going. And loving the brand new way you are going. Jesus says come back to Me alone as at first. Let your love that you had for Me at your conversion, your love you had for Me in so many seasons of Christian life and ministry, let love alone be your fuel for all of life.
But He does leave them with this very terrifying warning. He says if you don’t, if you don’t want to repent and come back to the best thing ever, I’ll snuff out your lamp.
Does Jesus have to have Providence Fellowship? No. Did Jesus have to have the church in Ephesus to do His will and fulfill all that He wanted in His kingdom? Absolutely not. You’ve got to leave it as a very real possibility, friends. If we don’t want to repent and come back to Christ, He’ll snuff out the lamp.
Matthew Poole, old Puritan commentator, he said that Jesus is saying this to the church at Ephesus. I will unchurch you. I will say to you, Lo ami, which is Hebrew for you are not My people, which threatening has long since made good, for where now is that famous church of Ephesus? Matthew Poole asks. Where now is that famous church of Ephesus?
Well, we can rightly conclude from a loss of love, it’s gone.
It’s gone.
Jesus says, hey, but you’ve got this going. You hate the Nicolaitans. You hate the Nicolaitans’ works, and so do I. So they haven’t left Christ, but oh, how that warm burning fire for His love, it was just a spark. Christ says, don’t let it be a spark. Let the love of Christ be a flame within you. Let it be a zeal.
The American missionary David Brainerd, he lived a very short life. He died before the age of 30. He was a missionary to American Indians.
He wrote these words in his journal, I never got away from Jesus and Him crucified. When my people were gripped by this great evangelical doctrine of Christ and Him crucified, I had no need to give them instructions about morality. I found that the one followed a sure and an edible fruit from the other. He says, I find my Indians, when they’re gripped by this truth, they begin to put on the garments of holiness as their common life begins to change. To be sanctified, even in the smallest matters, when the doctrine of Christ and Him crucified grips them.
So that’s got to be the question, are you gripped, not by religion, but are you gripped by the love of God? Are you possessed by the love of Christ? And this alone is true devotion and obedience.
So don’t say to yourself, I should share the gospel because Christians are supposed to share their faith. You say to yourself, I’m going to share the gospel because I can’t stand there being a world of people that don’t know about this love. That’s the difference. You don’t say, I should pray because it’s spiritual. You should say, I can’t wait to talk to the God who loves me and pray for His will to be manifested in my life. You don’t say, I study the Bible so I can know what I’m supposed to believe. You say, I want to know more of what I get to believe so I can be changed by those truths. I don’t want to go to church because I’m supposed to. You say, I want to go and read the Bible. Be reminded of this great love of God in Christ Jesus for me. I don’t want to be a good dad because I’m supposed to be. I want to be an example of what it means to be a loving father. I don’t want to be a good husband because I’m supposed to be. I want to point to the love of Jesus on the cross for the brightest church. I don’t want to be a good friend because I’m supposed to be. I want to be a friend that magnifies the love and the care of Christ for others. I don’t want to be a good pastor. And you shouldn’t want to be a good employee because you’re supposed to be. You should want to manifest the goodness, Love the light of Christ wherever you go and whatever you do. Do we want to know Christ? That’s what matters the most in life.
In verse 7, Jesus closes by saying this to the church at Ephesus. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says of the churches. To the one who conquers, I will grant to eat of the tree of life which is in the paradise of God. Friends, if Christ is in our midst, should we not do all that we can to remain in His? If Christ is truly among us, won’t we prize that? Won’t we treasure that so much to listen to Him and repent from where we’ve fallen and live in His goodness and live in His love? The only thing that would ruin that, that great prize is this, willful neglect.
But you would rightly say this,
if willful neglect ruins fellowship with Jesus and us being a church truly, isn’t it just so because we’re fallen people, my love sometimes is going to be cold? I’m not going to shoot, you know, a bullseye every time. And isn’t it true sometimes our obedience is going to be faulty? Mine is. So how? How can this be good news to me if it’s the one who conquers that does all this stuff Jesus just said?
Because this has been the problem ever since the garden. In the garden when Adam and Eve were thrown out, God sent the cherubim with the burning flame sword to, it says, guard the way to the tree of life.
But John says this in his first letter. He says in 1 John 5, verse 3, For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments, His commandments are not burdensome. How not? For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that has overcome the world.
Our faith. Jesus does not say, hey, if you want to conquer, you better stir up a love in you for me, and it better hold you to the very end, and hey, you better work really hard to be obedient to everything that I say, and you better hope that that’s enough to get you to the tree of life. That’s not at all what the Scriptures teaches. Here’s what the Scriptures teaches. Just see and believe. That Jesus alone is love, and Jesus alone has been obedient. Place your faith and trust in His goodness, and His power to please God. And if you just trust and believe and see that Christ is good, here’s what the Spirit of God would do. It would supernaturally implant in you a love for Christ that is foreign to you, never would have known. It won’t just implant a love for you that’s foreign to you. It’s going to implant a righteousness that’s foreign to you as well. And God then would give you the power to love well. God will give you the power to obey. And so that Christ will not guard you from the tree of life, Christ will Himself become the way to the tree of life. Friends, we conquer because Christ already conquered for us in our place on the cross. He lived, He died, and He rose again. And when I trust in that Christ, He is my conqueror who leads me to eternal life in the paradise of God. It’s nothing that you can do, but you can believe you can do nothing, and Christ has done everything well for you, and then you would be saved. Then you would remain in Christ’s midst.
So I say to you in your Christian life, wherever it is, I say to us as a church, let us fight to believe by God’s grace, and in believing, love, and in loving, obey, and in obeying, glorify the God who loved us so much to lay down His life so that we would know Him.
Alright, let’s pray.
Father, we can never say it enough, but You are good, and Your mercy endures forever.
Lord, You’re kinder than we could know.
You’re more loving than we could know. You’re more beautiful than we could know. And when we think we’ve gone too far, and You surely can’t still be with us, oh, You are. How Your mercies are new, because the blood of Christ, it runs so deep, to clean us, and to purify us, and to keep us forever.
So I just pray for the conscience this morning. The conscience this morning that says, surely God can’t love me, and surely I haven’t loved Him well enough.
I pray Your Spirit would preach the Gospel to our very souls. I pray Your Spirit would preach the Gospel to our consciences, that we would have rest from the burden of a work we never could have done well. And we would rest in the righteousness of Jesus.
I pray that our church would be a church radically marked by love,
and so marked by love, or marked by obedience. And that would be a light that shines to our city, that shines to the world, that all men may know that Christ was high and lifted up.
So Lord, we just bless Your name, and we pray for a deeper walk with Jesus. We pray, Lord, for a walk that is so real in the Spirit, that is so full of grace and mercy. Lord, I just pray You would grow those very deep roots into our hearts and souls, that we would never wander away from You. And Jesus, we would by grace just remain in Your presence always.
We love You, and it’s in Jesus’ name. Amen.