Well this morning we have already read from the first book in the New Testament; we are going to turn now to the last book in the New Testament, to the book of Revelation. Revelation chapter 2. You can find that on page 1028 in the pew Bibles.
For the past year on Sunday evenings we have been studying through the book of Acts. And if you have been with us, then you will know that for several weeks now we have been focusing in many ways on Paul’s ministry to Ephesus and the way he preached there first in the synagogues and the way he then went to the hall of Tyrannus. We’ve seen how there was a riot that broke out related to the worship at the temple of Artemis or Diana, and then last week we saw how Paul was not going to stop in Ephesus on the way to Jerusalem but he met the elders from Ephesus in Miletus and sort of had a farewell speech to them there. He spent almost three years in Ephesus, and you can find the details that are recorded in Acts chapter 19 and 20. We’ve been studying that on Sunday evenings. If you haven’t been with us, we’d love for you to join us as we continue to trace Paul’s journey to Jerusalem, as we’ll see tonight, and then ultimately as a prisoner for the Gospel and for Christ as he goes to Rome at the end of the book of Acts.
And by the way, some of you may have been reading personally or in your small groups Sinclair Ferguson’s book, Devoted to God. Ferguson makes a case in that book for regular morning and evening worship. And he says at one point that the morning worship is usually thought of as the main service, but actually it’s the evening service that is the high point. And he says that there is a cumulative effect or a cumulative impact of the Word of God and that all week long the world has been trying to squeeze us into its mold, but on Sunday mornings we come together and we are fed in worship by the Word of God. And by the time we come together again at the end of the day and the evening service we’ve already been prepared and recalibrated in a way so that there is an extra that we often receive in evening worship in the reading and hearing and singing and praying God’s Word again before we head out to start a new week. And I think I sense some of that on Sunday evenings even from the pulpit. We would love for more and more of you to join us as we close the Lord’s Day in worship on Sunday evenings.
But anyway, we’ve been hearing about the church in Ephesus. And Revelation chapter 2, where we are this morning, gives us something of the rest of the story as we find it in the Bible on this church in the city of Ephesus. Now some of you remember Paul Harvey’s radio program. It was one of the most popular radio programs ever. He would tell an overlooked or maybe an unknown part of a maybe familiar story or the story of a well known figure and he would always end that program by saying, “And now you know the rest of the story.” Well we’re going to read Revelation 2:1-7 this morning; we’re going to hear the rest of the story in the Bible of the church in Ephesus. And I want us to see two things as we read these verses. I want us to see first a clear and present danger, and then secondly a clear and present way back. A clear and present danger and a clear and present way back. Before we read these verses, let’s pray and ask God’s help and blessing on the study of His Word.
Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You for calling us here together this morning to hear it and to break us from all the messages that we hear throughout the week, maybe already this morning, that would lead us in another way, that would lead us away from You. And yet You call us again and You call us again to hear from You and to turn to You and to bring You our worship. And Father, even as we hear in the verses that we are about to read, about “those who have ears to hear let them hear,” we pray even now as, before we read, that You would give us ears to hear. We cannot understand what You have to say to us, we cannot apply it to our lives, we cannot come to You in conviction and repentance and faith and hope unless You work in our hearts by Your Spirit to help us see Jesus and to give Him the glory in our lives. We pray that You would do that for Your honor and for our good. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Revelation chapter 2, starting in verse 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.
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.’”
The grass withers and the flowers fall but the Word of our God endures forever.
First is a clear and present danger. And maybe the first two things that come to your mind when you think about the book of Revelation are the future and the extraordinary. We think about the prophetic and the apocalyptic when we come to a book like the book of Revelation, but there’s more to it than that. In fact, if we were to look back at chapter 1 verse 19, we find an outline for the whole book of Revelation where it says, “Write therefore the things that you have seen, those things that are, and those that are to take place after this.” First, there are the things that you have seen, and that’s talking about John’s vision that he received on the island of Patmos when he saw “one like a son of man, this one who was clothed with a white robe, a long robe, and a golden sash around his chest. The hairs of his head were white like white wool, like snow, and his eyes were a flame of fire. His voice like the roar of many waters.” What he had seen, what he had seen was Jesus in His resurrection glory. And that was the first thing that John was to write down.
But he was also told to write down “the things that were going to take place after this.” And that’s what we find the most of in the book of Revelation – things like the throne, which was surrounded by four living creatures full of eyes in front and behind. We find things like the smoke rising up from the bottomless pit. We find the dragon who was bound and the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. It’s all very symbolic, it’s all overwhelming to the senses and the imagination, and that’s an important and intentional part to the message as its written down. But in between, in between what he had seen and in between the things that were to come are the things that are. These are the things that were happening in the churches and among his fellow Christians at the time that John wrote these things down, right then in the present. And instead of being complex and hard to understand and off in the future, it was simple, it was clear, and it was in the present. And maybe devastatingly so because there was a clear and present danger. “To the church in Ephesus write…But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.”
One of the things that has stuck with me over the years was a paper that I was given before going to seminary. It was a speech that was shared by our senior pastor at the time at a staff retreat. And he told the story about how when he became a Christian and he joined the church and then a few years later he went to seminary and became an intern and later a pastor. He said that when he became a Christian he devoured the Bible, he could not get enough of it, but now the Bible was his job and he had teaching obligations several times to fulfill throughout the week. He said before, worship was a joy, the sermon was a delight, the music was beautiful to him, and yet now the liturgy was his responsibility and that he was looking ahead to later elements of worship even as he was fulfilling the present orders of worship. He said there was an expectation on him as a pastor to be on time, to finish on time and he was talking about the danger of simply going through the motions.
And maybe that’s a danger, maybe that’s a temptation or an experience that some of you or maybe most of you have experienced and felt at some point in your Chrisitan life. It can happen to any of us and it can happen to churches as well. And that’s what happened in the church in Ephesus. But the thing that makes it so scary, the thing that makes it so scary in a place like Ephesus is just how quickly and how subtly it all happened. Because on the surface everything in Ephesus seemed fine. They were orthodox, not in the sense of a certain branch of Christianity like Eastern Orthodox or Greek Orthodox church, but in the sense that they held to right doctrine, they held to orthodox teaching. The Lord Jesus says to them in verse 2, He says, “I know how you cannot bear with those who are evil.” He says, “I know that you have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not and have found them to be false.”
Just think about the culture and the way of life in a place like Ephesus. In Acts we read about this great temple in Ephesus, to the goddess Artemis or Diana. This was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Some would even say it was the greatest of the seven wonders of the ancient world. And the worship of the goddess Artemis was ingrained into the life and culture of the people in Ephesus. It was ingrained into them socially, economically and politically even. And when Paul and the others who are with him, when they came there and preached the Gospel to them, when they told them and they preached against gods made with hands, they told them to turn from idols to serve the true and the living God, what happened? A riot broke out because in some sense the city of Ephesus was hostile to the Gospel. But the Ephesian church didn’t back down and they held to their convictions. They stood up for the truth. They stood up for the truth even when it was unpopular and difficult. Verse 3 says, “I know that you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake and you have not grown weary.” It talks about how they hated the works of the Nicolaitans – we don’t know exactly what that was but most likely it was some sort of heresy that they stood up against.
If we were talking about this church today, we might say that it was a confessional church. Now did they hold to the standards of the Apostles’ Creed and the Westminster Confession of Faith? No, because those things didn’t exist yet, but they would have held to the simple and basic confessions of the early church. Things like – Jesus is Lord. Or maybe what we find in 1 Timothy chapter 3 that sounds very much like an early creed of the church – “He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up into glory.” “Yes, Yes and Amen!” would have said the church in Ephesus because this was an orthodox church. But it was at risk of being a dead orthodoxy. It was at risk of being a dead orthodoxy.
I sat in on one of our Wednesday night small groups a couple of weeks ago and they are studying through the book of James. And someone had brought a breakdown of James 1:19-27 for the group to discuss. It was comprehensive; it had a verse summary, a linguistic analysis of some of the Greek words, it was calibrated to the Westminster Confession of Faith, and it gave an illustration of life in first century Roman Empire. And it came from chatGPT. It was AI, artificial intelligence. In fact, it was pretty good. It was pretty sound. In fact, the concluding statement said, “Throughout James” – listen to this – “Throughout James 1:19-27, James lays out a clear vision of what genuine faith looks like. James calls believers to a life that is not just outwardly religious but transformed from within, characterized by love, humility and purity.” Sounds about right. I don’t think we would disagree with any of that. It’s true, but it’s not the whole picture, is it, because it’s written by computer code.
Well here was the problem with the church in Ephesus – “You have abandoned the love you had at first.” It looked like they had it all right, it looked like they were doctrinally sound, but it was all head and no heart. It was truth without love. Francis Schaeffer once said, “Biblical orthodoxy without compassion is surely the ugliest thing in the world.” And to think, to think that it had happened in such a short period of time. You see, the Gospel had some to Ephesus somewhere in the middle of the first century. The book of Revelation was written somewhere towards the end of the first century, and so in less than 50 years this church had forgotten the most important thing – to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself.” “Faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love.” And they had drifted away from it. They drifted away from it so quickly.
You know they say it only takes one generation for a church to die. D.A. Carson has written about it in what he says may be a simplistic example but still a helpful one. And he talks about how maybe in one generation a church believes the Gospel and holds to certain social, economic and political entailments, but what can happen is the next generation assumes the Gospel while still holding and identifying with those other things. What happens in the third generation is that the third generation denies the Gospel while making the trappings, the entailments, everything. All it takes is that one generation to assume the Gospel and it’s no longer a church. Why? Because they lose their first love. And what Jesus says to the church in Ephesus is that they were at risk of losing their lampstand. They were at risk of losing their light, their mission, their whole mission as a church. Verse 5, he says, “I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.” And those are sobering words, aren’t they? It could happen so fast and in a place that seems so strong and reliable.
It can happen with us, can’t it? It can happen when worship becomes a matter of fact, when worship becomes merely habit and custom. It can happen with spiritual disciplines like prayer and scripture reading, giving, when those things become about checking a box or being done so that you will be seen by someone else. It can happen when ministry becomes about completing a task or following protocol or trying to maintain or keep up some program. Aren’t we at risk sometimes of carrying out ministry like chatGPT and we have certain inputs that come in and they’ll yield certain outcomes that we are to follow and it can become thoughtless and heartless. I like the saying that someone said before about the difference between tradition and traditionalism. That tradition is the living faith of the dead, but traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And we always have to watch out, we have to guard ourselves from slipping into a dead traditionalism or institutionalism. It happens when we forget our first love.
And that can be hard to admit, can’t it? And yet admitting it is the first step back to health. Admitting that we’ve lost our first love is the first step to taking up Jesus’ invitation that we hear in these verses in Revelation 2:1-7 because there’s not just a clear and present danger but there’s also a clear and present way back. And that’s the second thing we see here. And we have to ask ourselves the question, ask these verses the question, “What do we do about an abandoned first love? How do we get it back?” Well this writer actually makes it very simple and clear. He doesn’t say that Jesus is saying you have to go on a pilgrimage somewhere. You don’t have to try to drum up some ecstatic emotional experience. You don’t have to look to spiritual gimmicks and smells and bells and those sorts of things. No, it comes to us in just one sentence.
But before we see that sentence, I think this is where we need to also see how the rest of the book of Revelation actually finds its way into what’s written in these letters because the things that John had seen and the things that were going to take place after that, they’re right here in these verses. They’re right here in this letter because they’re important for what is right now. Verse 1 talks about the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands. That’s a reference to what John had seen in the vision in chapter 1. It’s what made him fall down on the ground as if dead. And then verse 7 at the end, it says something about “the one who conquers,” that “The one who conquers will eat of the tree of life which is in the paradise of God.” That’s a foreshadowing of what is to come later in this book and it will come to us in more detail and more vivid imagery. But what Jesus is doing is He is pressing home to them their privilege and their hope. He is wanting them to see the blessings and the rewards that come to them by trusting when they believed in Him for the first time.
And I think that’s one of the most encouraging things about this letter is that there is a letter because Jesus is still among them. They still have their lampstand. Jesus isn’t leaving them in their indifference, He isn’t leaving them in their unbelief, but He is holding out hope to them. In fact, that’s the good news and the encouragement for all of us here today if we hear from this letter conviction. That means we have ears to hear, that Jesus is still speaking and ministering to us, that the lampstand is still here and He is holding out this hope for us.
And he does so in three words – remember, repent and repeat. Remember, repent and repeat. First, Jesus says to remember. Verse 5 says to “Remember therefore from where you have fallen.” I read an article this week about Jayson Tatum. Jayson Tatum plays basketball for the Boston Celtics. He has his own shoe. He signed the largest contract in NBA history this summer. He won an NBA championship and an Olympic gold medal in just the span of a few weeks really. But in the finals this year he shot 19.4% on his pullup jumpers. That’s not very good. And then in exhibition games for the Olympics, he started out shooting 0 for 10 on jumpers. And then when he got to Paris in the Olympics, he started out 0 for 6. Again, that’s not good. But the first sentence of that article that I read about him, it said this – “The first step is acknowledging that there is a problem.” The first step is acknowledging that there is a problem. And apparently he has done that. He’s working with his coach to fix some sort of mechanical issue with his shot because the first step is acknowledging that there is a problem.
“Remember” is what this letter is saying to us. Remember the privileges and the blessings that Jesus has given to us. Remember from where you have fallen. In other words, call it what it is. Acknowledge that there is a problem. Call it what it is. Whether it’s worldliness or apathy or prayerlessness or backsliding or unbelief or whatever it may be, don’t ignore it. Don’t excuse it. Don’t rationalize it. Call it what it is and recognize that it is a dangerous place to be. So first, remember.
Then, Jesus says, the second thing is to repent. Remember and repent. A while back some podcasters were discussing the translation of the original word for “repent.” And one of them was saying that “repent” can be such a religious word that we import some maybe negative connotations into this command to repent. But what it literally means is “turn around” or “change your mind.” Now think about that. Think about that in the context of this letter. Jesus is calling this church who has wandered away in some sense and He’s saying, “Turn around.” What’s He really saying to them? He’s saying, “Come back.” He’s saying, “Return to me. Draw near to Me again. Come back to Me.” That’s what repent means. It means “come back.” And you see, the foundation of repentance, the whole substance of repentance from first to last is the grace of God that we see in these verses. Grace is like the roux. If you’re making something to eat and the recipe says, “First you make the roux,” you know it’s going to be a good dish, probably just from that first line. But the roux is that which saturates and it flavors all the rest of the ingredients in the dish. And you see, grace is the roux that flavors and saturates everything about what repentance is.
Repentance is not like that guy that I ran into one time on Canal Street in New Orleans and we were walking through the street and he yelled and berated and shouted and used caustic language, calling all of us to repent. No, that’s not the picture here. “Come back. Come back.” Jesus died for this church in Ephesus and He is calling them back to Him because He loves them. And if He did what He did on the cross to make them His own, then how will He not also shower them with grace if they would just return to Him? Think about how ready He is to show them grace if they would just return, if they would turn around, if they would come back and repent. Can you doubt God’s love for you, His grace to you today if you hear this call to us, First Pres Jackson, to come back? It’s grace that makes repentance possible. It’s grace that makes repentance a reality. Remember and repent.
Then the third word is repeat. Remember and repent and do again or repeat the works you did at first. Probably the big question from this letter is, “What was the first love? What was the love that they had at first? Was it their love for Christ? Was it their love for one another? Was it their love for their neighbors in Ephesus?” You know what I think the answer is? Yes. It’s all of those things because all of those things go together. And love for Christ means love for one another means love for our neighbor. And think about the words of Jesus. What is the first and the great commandment? “To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. And the second is like it – to love your neighbor as yourself.” He says, “By this all people will know that you are My disciples if you love one another. You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,’ but I say to you, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.’” It’s all of those things. Christian love is all of those things.
But perhaps the most important thing for us to recognize about that love is that it’s not just an emotion or a feeling but it’s an action. Jesus says, verse 5, “Do the works you did at first” – from a repentant heart, from a change of mind. To the one who is restored to Christ, He is saying, “Make worship a priority, the priority in your life. Serve one another. Go to the lost in love and compassion.” J.C. Ryle said once that, “A religion which costs us nothing and consists in nothing but hearing sermons will always prove at the last to be a useless thing.” It’s not complicated. It’s something you can do today. Remember, repent and repeat. Do the works you did at first with the love you had at first. That’s the warning. And the invitation – don’t miss that it’s an invitation to us this morning – there’s a danger, yes, but there is a way back for those who may have lost their first love.
Now here’s the rest of the rest of the story – if I could say it that way. Ignatius was a church father. He was from Antioch and he wrote a letter in the early second century to the church in Ephesus. So this was maybe 20 years after this letter in Revelation was written to the church in Ephesus. Perhaps there were still many of that generation that were still there. And in that letter, Ignatius says this to the church in Ephesus, he says, “I have heard of some who have come to you having false doctrine whom you did not allow to sow among you but stopped your ears.” In other words they maintained the truth, didn’t they? But then he adds this, he says, “I exult that I have been thought worthy by means of this epistle to converse and rejoice with you because with respect to your Christian life you love nothing but God only.” And love was on display in the church in Ephesus because they had opportunity to hear and to turn and to restore the love that they had at first. Truth and love in the church in Ephesus. Jesus shows us the way right here.
Let’s pray.
Father, we thank You for calling us out of our lethargy and calling us back to You in love and compassion. Help us to hear Your Word and respond in faith and obedience. We pray all of this in Jesus’ name, amen.