Rev 2:1-7
Revelation • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 2 viewsNotes
Transcript
Revelation 2:1-7, First Love
Revelation 2:1-7, First Love
Week 2
Often times for me I will see videos pop up on facebook that is like, “Christian Thinker Owns Atheist,” and you watch the video and it is really good the Christian thinker is like amazing
They give such good points that the atheist can’t even respond to it.
I see these kinds of videos pop up in my feed and as a christian and a person that does some thinking myself. there is an allure to the truth right…
And we live in such a world that there is a battle between what is truth and not so defending it become impotrant right?
Well Hold this thought
Christian Thinker Owns Atheist…Just hold on to that, we will come back to it
We are in week 2 of our Series on the book of Revelation…So week 1 we saw this vision of Jesus …the one who was and is and is to come…The one who holds the seven stars in his throne and the one who walks among the lampstands
And just incase we didn’t get it, John wrote at the end of Chapter one that the lampstands were the churches
So now Jesus is going to speak to his church, to both the complete church, us! but also to this very particular church in Ephesus…Lets get into it today
“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 and 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.’
In a certain way, this is really nice to read
It seems discernable
Like, Okay…Church you are good at doctrine but you have forgotten your first love..
It is nice to read something and immediately understand it
But there is a lot happening here under the surface that I want to show you because, when you dig in the book of Revelation you are likely to find gold.
The first thing I want to point out to you is that in Chapter 1 John is really careful to point out that Jesus is both Yahweh Incarnate and Jesus and at the end of the first letter to Ephesus he says
“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the seven churches.”
John writes this as Jesus standing there and speaking to him but it is the Holy Spirit that delivers the message to the church
John wants you to see the trinity right in the very beginning, the Father is God, the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God
So he carefully embeds this into his letter so that you can see it
So last week I told you that there are over 500 illusions to the old testament in the book of Revelation so I thought I would share some of John’s source text for this and all of the seven churches..
Because did you notice that John writes…To the angel of the church in Ephesus
Well there is a chapter in the book of Zechariah that John will continue to reference again and again
And that is Zechariah 4
This is a chapter that John will continually reference because if you read ahead to Revelation 11 and see the two witnesses, that is all Zechariah 4 imagery…But that is way off and I dont want to necessary go down that rabbit hole right now
So lets look at these two verses from Zechariah 4…
And the angel who talked with me came again and woke me, like a man who is awakened out of his sleep. And he said to me, “What do you see?” I said, “I see, and behold, a lampstand all of gold, with a bowl on the top of it, and seven lamps on it, with seven lips on each of the lamps that are on the top of it.
For whoever has despised the day of small things shall rejoice, and shall see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel.
“These seven are the eyes of the Lord, which range through the whole earth.”
So in Zechariah you have angels and lampstands
So what I think John wants you to know is that from chapter one he says that the lampstands are the churches: They are the ones giving light to the nations
So lets read Revelation 2:1
“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.
Do you see the similarity?
And Jesus walks in the midst of his lampstands! He cares for his church
And From the vision of Zechariah 4 he calls these angels, “The eyes of the Lord, which ranges through out the whole earth”
But the angels and the lampstands are tied together
So my point in telling you all of this is that when Jesus address the church
it’s not just one person who is accountable before God
Its not just an angel that is accountable before God
it is the whole church & Its angelic oversight…
And what God wants this church to know is look, hey if you dont get your act together, I am going to recall your lampstand
Your supernatural agent…your angel is gone if you dont get your act together
This is not a crazy way to think, When Israel goes into exile, the glory of the Lord leaves the temple ahead of israel
It is because of their lack of allegiance to God
And so this is kind of a warning to the church, dont forget what you are doing has a supernatural reality,
Its a warning, dont forget church and angel are the eyes of the lord that go through out the whole earth!
if you stop following me…if you go after strange things…then I am not going to keep fighting for you!
So I know that is all a bit strange but I wanted to help us understand that God has a view of the church that both has an earthly reality and a heavenly reality
Apparently we have angelic guardians or oversight
So in Chapter 1 John says: Blessed is this person who reads these words aloud, meaning in the church
And then in Chapter 2 he says to the Angel
Much ink has been spilled covering what this could mean. But most generally what scholars believe is that John is referencing a supernatural guardian of the church an angel, but also the church as a whole, because of the reality of the things that are happening in the church.
and another way to read this semantically To the angel of the church of Ephesus
Is kind of like when you get an email about your performance by your boss and your work mentor is carbon copied
Its like shoot, we better get our act together.
So before we get into the rest of the letter lets take a look at the importance of Ephesus:
Ephesus
So if the gospels show how farmers and fishermen in rural areas were called into discipleship..
Then Revelation shows how discipleship looks in the big city!
So when this is written, it’s now 60 years later and the church has moved out of Jerusalem,
in fact Jerusalem has been destroyed and the church is scattered all over the Roman world and into India, into modern day Ukraine…all over!…This is now Discipleship in the context of big city problems
The city of Ephesus is the 4th largest city in the Roman Empire at this time
This was a massive city with 225,000 people living there
It was the center of Roman religious life, in fact there was an Olympics held there shortly before Revelation was written where Ephesus was named the center of the Emperor cult
This was a massive city when it came to Roman paganism
One of its chief industries was selling supplies for dark magic…
They also had a temple built to Artemis the goddess of fertility and the embodiment of sexual lust…
Her temple in Ephesus was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world
Ephesus was the center of business, politics and religious pluralism
The church here was about 40 years old
History of church,
Founded by Paul
Nurtured by Persila and Aquila
Pastored by Timothy (church tradition says that he was killed by the romans and)
John took it over, thats right, the author of the book of Revelation was the pastor of this church
Church tradition also tells us that a long time member of this church was Mary the mother of Jesus, Remember that Jesus looked to John on the cross and asked John to care for her?
(there is a ton in the New testament written about this church, Ephesians Timothy, Acts)
Then it says
These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands.
See Jesus here reminds them of his place, he holds all power and authority and he walks among the churches, he is present within the life of the church, and jesus knows what he wants to see out of his church!
Jesus is always intimately aware of the status of his church because He is always present with it.
Jesus is always intimately aware of the status of his church because He is always present with it.
Jesus is not unaware of River’s Edge Church
So it is impotrant to ask Jesus questions while reading the Bible. Lord where do we please you as a church and where do we need to repent?
Where is it that we are blind to the fact that we are falling short?
Help us to see where we are blind
“ ‘I know your works, your toil and 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.
Jesus encourages the church:
These first few verses you get this sense of wow…what a church…the church that others look at and say…I want to be like that church…
It is a church that is working hard…There is tons of activity, its members want to advance God’s kingdom…When Jesus says, I know your toil, your hard work…he is emphasizing their “strenuous and exhausting labor”
These are people who are willing to pay the price of commitment…They understand the phrase, “discipleship that costs nothing is worth precisely that, nothing”
Saying I know your Perseverance is the inner attitude…Jesus is saying, I get your long suffering! Your faith in the face of such opposition…
You cannot tolerate wicked men: Jesus was commending them for their good theology and the purity in which they live their lives…They were not settling or compromising their morals or their ethics.
This is where I want you to dust off that thought from the beginning…”Christian Thinker Owns Atheist” Ephesus was a church that because of the environment it was in, they had to guard their doctrine
The world around them was so wicked that they had to be like these people you see in the videos protecting the faith against bad theology, bad doctrine that would lead people astray!
They guarded the church against the intrusion of unholy ideas and things…
You have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false: Such alertness to doctrinal error may reflect the Paul’s warning to the first-generation Ephesian Christians to be on guard against false teachers…Paul will say this over and over again
Good doctrine is a good thing, but its not the only thing.
So what did this church do well? It guarded doctrine…It got serious about it! John had been their pastor and even he had told them to guard the gospel…All through the New Testament letters you see this admonition to Ephesus to guard doctrine…
They did it…and you almost wonder what could be wrong with this church?
But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.
Ouch! Right?
What Jesus is saying is that this church has everything except one thing…and that one thing is the thing that Jesus deserves most…Love for Jesus…
Intimacy with Jesus was gone and it is replaced by theology and doctrine and good works…Which in and of themselves are good, but when it is missing love then it is as Paul says a resounding gong or a clanging symbol…it is fleeting
One of the chief metaphors of the entire Bible is marriage…God called Israel his Bride…
When Jesus came he called himself the bridegroom, and the church was the bride of Christ…
And the book of revelation even ends with the wedding feast of the lamb!
Let’s look at Jeremiah 2 real fast
The word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem, Thus says the Lord,
“I remember the devotion of your youth,
your love as a bride,
how you followed me in the wilderness,
in a land not sown.
Thus says the Lord:
“What wrong did your fathers find in me
that they went far from me,
and went after worthlessness, and became worthless?
Wow! Do you hear the pain in God’s declaration? Where did my lover go? What did I do wrong? Come back!
Now I think the best way to understand this is not that the church stopped loving Jesus or one another.
Verses two and three confirm that they were willing to suffer to defend the truth of Jesus
This church was a fierce defender of Jesus
So when Jesus says you have lost your first love…What does he tell the church that they need to do?
Lets look at the next verse
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.
Go and do the works you did at first (Rev 2:5)
Go and do the works you did at first (Rev 2:5)
What are the works?
What is the work of the church?
The work of the church is to be a faithful witness!
So losing their first love was tantamount to not sharing the gospel!
Christian Thinker owns Atheist…Ok thats great, your theology towers that over an Atheist, but are you inviting them to know the same God that you know?
Great! You’ve won the argument, congratulations everyone thinks your smart…Did you forget that the person you just beat into a theological pulp might be the most famous atheist in the world but at the core of it, they are actually spiritually lost!
I have no doubt that the church in Ephesus Loved Jesus! I have no doubt that they loved the church
But what I think Jesus is correcting in this church is the tendency to circle the wagons against the world…
See in circling the wagons you create a posture of fighting the world but you forget that on the other side of you are spiritually lost people
And that the great commission is to teach them all this good theology not to fight them with it!
Its an easy and subtle shift…
I have to confess, there was a time that I was asked to be a Christian on a panel of speakers where there were buddhist, atheist, Gay and Lesbian Activist and they asked all of the tough questions of life, and I think that I did a really good Job defending the faith but when I took a few steps back from that day and really looked at it I was kind of left thinking…were they invited to know Jesus by me or were they just told they were wrong?
I came out of that experience repenting saying Lord, I think I forgot to love them and invite them to the kingdom
losing your “first love” was tantamount to becoming un-zealous witnesses for Jesus
And its not Just Ephesus…You can fall into this really easily too…
When Jesus sat down with his disciples on the mount of olives he told his disciples
And Jesus answered them, “See that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray.
See the church at Ephesus must have gotten this!
Remain in the truth
Dont be led astray
But then look at what Jesus says a few verses later:
And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
See how Jesus said that the love of many will grow cold!
But the gospel still has to be preached to all nations!
SO Back in revelation Jesus says: DO the work you did at first
What is the first work of the church:
The “works” that the church in Ephesus did at first was evangelism
The “works” that the church in Ephesus did at first was evangelism
The love of many will grow cold, but the one who endures preaches the gospel to the nations! (Matt 24:12-14)
I think John is linking back to this conversation of Jesus with his disciples
Because they were on their guard against false teachers but they were so on their guard against false teachers that they forgot their first job wasn’t to defend the truth, but to share the good news of Jesus with them!
See we do this too! There are so people in our world that are just so wrong, they believe in a bag of lies and we tend to think about how we can systematically defeat their argument!
And its not a bad thing at all to defend the faith as long as you never ever see the person to whom you are defending the faith against as someone who is your rival or enemy but someone who is spiritually lost and needs a relationship with Jesus
When in reality we need to spend our time yes remaining in the truth, but sharing the gospel with them…
The reason why evangelism is the key here is that Jesus says, go back and do the thing you did at first!
What are brand new churches great at? Sharing the gospel!
First: Remember therefore from where you have fallen:
This would be a great time to take an honest evangelism temperature in your life
Do you care more about winning an argument or seeing someone get saved?
Jesus wants us to remember that when we came to follow Jesus, we were once faithful witnesses!
We were at one time the kind of faithful people who shared what Jesus had done for us in every area of our lives
When was the last time I shared the gospel?
Who was the last person that you prayed for?
Do you remember the last time you invited people to church?
The reason why Jesus tells the church to do what they did at first is because new Christians are the best at telling their stories.
Second: Repent:The word means to make a radical U-turn
Lord I am sorry that I haven’t shared the good news lately!
Lord I am sorry if I have been an unfaithful witness
Lord I am sorry that I haven’t loved people enough to share the gospel with them!
So what is Jesus getting to here? He is reminding the church to get back to the great commission
To go into all the world and share the gospel!
Teach the nations about Jesus and what he has done for you!
To Love God and to Love Others!
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.’
We’ll cover the nicolatians later because they come up again. But again, this church is great at defending the faith!
But look at the promise here…to the one who is victorious they will eat from the tree of life…They wont have their lampstand removed!
The tree of life is found in the first and last pages of the bible
It represents all of the goodness of life that the Lord longs to share with those who love him
It represents God’s life…That we can eat from again…I have often made the connection whenever we have communion that Jesus hangs on a tree and that when we take communion, we eat from that tree!
In creation because of man’s sin, the tree of life was blocked…But now in the new creation, the path to the tree of life is paved with Jesus’ blood
Because Jesus himself is the tree of life!
Revelation tells us that things are not as they seem…
The son of man is even with us now moving among the lampstands…Moving among his people…
He is here with us!
Response:
Maybe you’re here and you’ve lost your first love. For you it is all about doctrine and arguments rather than sharing the gospel!
I want to invite you to do what it says in this chapter:
Repent and go do what you did at first
Ask Jesus to make you a faithful witness again!
Maybe you are here and you have never encountered a God that loves people more that doctrine…A God who would lay his own life down for people who are broken
A God who would give his life so that you can have life
Maybe you are here and you need to say Yes to Jesus for the first time
That can happen this morning with a Prayer
Jesus I recognize that you died for me, a sinner
I accept your free gift of salvation
Please forgive me of my sins and make me new again!