| Revelations 2:1-7 - 11 October 2009
Andrew Lim
Most people have an opinion about the church
They’ll say things like: It’s too old-fashioned / too exuberant
too loud - too sober / too serious / too light-weight
too intellectual and no anointing / or too emotional no content
All that may be interesting to observe
but seriously / all said and done / they are really not crucial
What is crucial is what Christ thinks of each local church
In Revelations 2 and 3 Jesus looks at a tiny cluster of churches
He wrote each a letter / and told them what He thought of each of them
And reading all seven letters / we can form a composite picture
of the kind of church that pleases the Lord
And over the next seven weeks we will be asking the question:
What does the Lord consider to be really important for a church
So here we have seven churches / each receiving a letter from Christ
All the seven churches were actual historical churches
They were located in ancient Asia Minor
- a Roman province at the time the Book of Revelation was written
Today they have ceased to exist but archaeological excavations reveal
that all seven churches were located
on the Western seaboard / of what we now know as Turkey
- a predominantly Muslim location
But why these particular seven churches
Surely many other churches existed then / why were these seven selected
Numbers / in the Bible / always have significant meanings
other than that of quantity
The number 7 is seen some 40 times in the Book of Revelation
The number 7 represents “completeness”
- on the seventh day / God finished His work / God rested 7th day
- the Israelites marched around Jericho 7 times
- Naaman was told to dip in the River Jordan 7 times
- In Joseph’s time there were 7 years of plenty and 7 years of famine
- the psalmist says “seven times a day” I praise you
- Nebuchadnezzar was insane for 7 years
- there are 7 requests in the Lord’s Prayer
- Our Lord spoke 7 times from the cross / as He was crucified there
You see evidence of this in nature as well
- there are seven colours in the rainbow
- and seven musical notes in one octave
The figure 7 denotes “perfection” / and “completion”
and these seven letters
completes what Christ wants to say to all churches that exist
So / these seven churches perfectly represent conditions
that were characteristic of all the other churches throughout history
But the crucial thing is that the evaluation of these churches
is not man’s evaluation / It’s not what people think of the church
but rather these are Jesus’ evaluation of the churches
In fact in one of these churches He said:
“People think you’re dead but you’re at the point of new life”
It is what Christ thinks of a church which is crucial
And what does Christ think of Christ Sanctuary? / That is the question
Christ’s first letter was addressed to the Church at Ephesus
It is most appropriate that the first of the seven letters goes to Ephesus
Ephesus was the most important political centre of all the cities
When the church at Ephesus received this letter
the city of Ephesus had grown to a population of 250,000
- that more than three times the size of Palmerston North
The imperial cult was centred in Ephesus
the temple of Claudius was there
so were the temples of Hadrian / Julius Caesar Augustus & Severus
Ephesus was a wealthy / prosperous / magnificent city
perhaps the greatest city of Roman Asia
The Ephesians claimed that their city was
“the first and greatest metropolis of Asia”
One Roman writer referred to Ephesus as “the light of Asia”
- it was a meeting place of oriental religions and Greek culture
- it was the city of the great games
- each year hordes of people would flock to Ephesus
to attend the Pan-Ionian Games / which was
in rank and status / equivalent to the Olympic Games
Ephesus was situated on the main East West trade route
- it was a great sea-port / a business centre / a thriving prosperous city
But morally / it was a decaying city
The city was prominent for the celebrated temple
dedicated to the goddess Artemis
known to us by her Roman name Diana
This temple was twice destroyed and for a third time
rebuilt so magnificently / it came to be regarded
as one of the Seven Wonders of the World
Behind the Parian marble columns that stood 60 feet high
there was the inner sanctuary
and inside that / hidden from view behind a curtain
there stood this heavily-ornamented female figure
the image of Diana / highly sensual and voluptuous
Diana was the symbol of fertility
This was why the bee became both the scared insect of the temple
and the personal symbol of Diana
- she was the Queen Bee who demands to be pleased
- the thousands of temple prostitutes were called worker-bees
- the many eunuch priests were looked upon as drones
Now this / was the temple that stood in New Testament times
the traders were making a fortune selling little idols of Diana
and Paul put them all out of business through his preaching
and it caused such a riot / you read about it in Acts 19
And yet right in the midst of all this / was a church
Not only that / but it was a church
that could boast of an impressive line of ministers
Paul laboured there for three years / Acts 20:31
In fact / he ordained Timothy to be the bishop there / I Tim 1:3
Aquilla / Priscilla / Tychicus all contributed
to the building of a great church in the city
Apollos / the one skilled in expounding OT / preached in Ephesus
John made Ephesus the main strategic headquarter of his ministry
And it is to this church that Jesus Christ writes His first letter
And the letter begins with the words:
“To the angel of the church at Ephesus”
It seems like there is an angel of God in every church
- appointed by God / and reports to God
The letter begins with the words of Jesus “I know” / v.2
Jesus has a perfectly accurate diagnosis / for every single church
But how does he know? Verse 1 has the answer:
He holds “the seven stars in his right hand”
He holds each church in His hands
The word “holds” is one which gives a picture of a firm grip
It should remind us of that great assurance
“No one can snatch them out of His hands” John 10:28
This is how He holds Christ Sanctuary in His hands
No one can take it from Him / not even the gates of hell
The only One who can destroy the church / is Jesus
and this is what He sometimes does / with great pain in His heart
There is a second reason
why He has such an accurate diagnosis of every church
Verse 1 / “He walks among the seven golden lamp-stands”
He not only stands in the midst of the churches / he walks among them
He tirelessly moves up and down in the church
- Christ visits us / He lives with us / He walks among us
inspects us / scrutinises us / dissects and probes us
- watching the evil and the good / nothing escapes Him
- Amos tells us / He has a plumb line in His hands as He moves among us
And He is here in our midst this morning
What is He looking for?
Well what do stars and lamps have in common?
Yes! they both diffuse light
- Christ is looking for light in our midst
- The churches of Christ are meant to be light-bearers in this dark world
Now if Christ walked among the Ephesians what did he see?
He saw three things which pleased Him and He commended them for it
First: He says “I know your hard work and perseverance” / v.2
They were diligent labourers / they toiled for the work of the Lord
The Ephesian church was an industrious church
The Church at Ephesus was more than a building where people gathered
It was a congregation that worshipped on the first day of the week
and toiled and laboured the rest of the week
The word “toil” in the RSV tells us
that they laboured “to the point of exhaustion”
It speaks of a “strenuous and exhausting labour”
They were exhausting themselves in the work of God
John R. Stott described this Church as a “a veritable beehive of industry”
In fact they were so potent in its evangelism
that even the Roman emperors and the nobility of that day
had an opportunity to hear the gospel
Now there must be a place for hard work in church
or otherwise Jesus would not have commended them for that
Jesus comes to this church and He commends them for it
“I know how hard you’ve worked for me”
Secondly: Christ commended them for their endurance / v.2
The church at Ephesus faced aggressively fierce opposition
Ephesus was one of the great centres for emperor worship
Further it was also the centre of a number of false religions
- many practiced the magical arts from the Orient
As we’ve seen there was profound reverence for Diana
And as usual / all religions except Christianity were accepted
and the Christians found themselves snubbed and maligned
But this church “endured” / says Christ Himself
Remember / Paul was their first minister
and he strongly spoke up against the worship of Artemis or Diana
and he preached with such consuming power against idolatry
that many people threw away their idols and stopped buying them
with the result / that there was a sharp drop
in the sales of those little idols of Diana
and craftsmen suffered the loss of their business
Now this took place many years earlier / even Paul had died some years now
But the unpopularity of Christians at Ephesus still lingered on
And the Christians found business hard / they were losing customers
Some found shopping a problem
as numbers of tradesmen would not sell to Christians
The Christians at Ephesus were snubbed / hated / ostracised
- and yet they hung on there
- they did not thrown in their faith / they endured
- they were firm / unwavering in their allegiance to the Lord
And the Lord says: I know / I know your patient endurance / v.2
Are you enduring hardship for Christ?
Thirdly: They fought and stood for the purity of their belief
They tolerated no error / embraced no false doctrine / v.2b
Somehow false teachers had infiltrated the church / giving false teachings
They were called Nicolaitans
The Nicolaitans were mentioned twice in this Book
they were known not only in this city of Ephesus
they were known in Pergamos as well
But whereas the church at Ephesus was commended
for “hating the deeds of the Nicolaitans” / Rev. 2:6
the church of Pergamos was blamed
for “having them who hold their doctrines” / Rev 2:15
But as to who they really were nobody really know
There is no other first-hand evidence to give us certainty
about the nature of this sect
The name itself reveals they were false teachers
destructive in their behaviour and belief
The Nicolaitans taught that now that Christ has set us free
anything is permissible
they taught that Christianity and sexual permissiveness
may go hand in hand
they condoned a kind of moral looseness
Now Paul / their first minister / had warned the church at Ephesus
to be careful of wolves in sheep’s clothing
He told them that after his departure fierce wolves will come in
they will not spare the flock
In fact he told them / that from among your own ranks
will come people / teaching perverse things
to draw people away from God / Ac 20:9
Now the wolves have come / and got into the sheepfold
What did the Ephesian Christians do ?
They first gave it a hearing to see if it were from man or from God
They “tested the Spirit” (I Jn 4:1) / “proved all things” (I Thess 5:21,22)
They searched the scriptures
They compared these new teachings with the apostles’ teachings
And when they found them to be wrong
they resolutely rejected the teachings of the Nicolaitans
“They tested them / and found them to be false” / v.2
The Ephesians possessed this rare gift of discernment
They were not gullible / they were utterly discriminating
I wish that more Christians are like that
- carefully discerning what they hear and read
- testing the spirits / test-proving all things
What a splendid church / the church of Ephesus was
It appeared to be a model church in every way
It is marked by the three things a church should be marked by
toil / endurance / and orthodoxy
Who could ask for more? / Who indeed but Jesus !!
Jesus moved through that church with a plumb line
and He found one vital thing missing
and He laid his finger gently on it
and in doing so / He turned from commendation to condemnation
He says to them: “I hold this against you:
You have forsaken your first love” / v.4
They had not left their love
- but they had forsaken their first love / their hearts have chilled
Jesus once gave this warning / He said
“When wickedness multiplies - most people’s love will grow cold Matt 24:12
Jeremiah says to the people / “I remember the devotion of your youth
how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the desert
“First love” / v.4 / is love that loves
with all your heart / soul / mind and strength
First love is a devotion that is passionate and fervent
and openly displayed and uninhibited
Do you remember the first week you were saved
Everything was thrilling
you couldn’t read enough of your Bible
you couldn’t pray enough
you couldn’t wait for Sunday to come round to get to Church
You told everyone you’d been saved
Becoming a child of God was the greatest thing in the world
That / is what is meant by “first love”
Throughout the Bible / God looks upon the Church as His bride
Ezekiel tells us / that
- God had set His love for Israel / and she was at the age for love
- He wooed her / she responded / He took her to Himself
- But she began to flirt with other lovers / in the land
- She became unfaithful and forsook her husband
That passage from Ezekiel is a perfect imagery
of how Jesus wants to relate to us
Now precisely this was what happened to the church at Ephesus
she lost her pure and simple devotion to God
And Jesus says to the church:
You have lost your first flush of ecstasy for me
Hudson Taylor was once travelling on a train in France
in one of the stops the train made
a young and obviously newly married couple entered the compartment
- they were quite oblivious to the other fellow travellers
- the bride could hardly take her eyes from her lover’s face
- she was in total ecstasy / enraptured
- lost in total delight in her love for him
- they anticipated each other’s every wish
- they were just totally absorbed / enveloped in each other’s love
And some time later / remembering this incident
Hudson Taylor wrote these words:
“My heart cried out / Oh that I had such love for my Lord”
There is something about first love / that’s often never recaptured
- first love is undivided / and obvious / and undeniable
- first love has the endurance to stay on its course
- first love will suffer any hardship in order to be with the one you love
- first love will not talk about the sacrifices it makes for the other
- first love pines when the one you love is absent
Have you lost your first love?
I don’t have the time here to develop the thought
but there are at least three signs to watch out for
that will help you to determine if you’ve lost your first love for Jesus
First / you might probably be losing your first love
if you’re spending more time on other things
and less time in His presence
Second / you might be losing your first love
when you have no real desire to spend time alone with Him
for if you love someone exclusively above all others
then He’s everything you’ll ever want
Thirdly / your first love for Christ is dying
if you can go on to live in sin / and have no grave concern over it
In other words / if you’re not hating the sin in your life
you need to watch out / you love for Christ may be dying
Now reading Jesus’ mail to the church at Ephesus / we can tell
that the tide of devotion for Jesus had turned / and was ebbing fast
But Jesus will never give up on this church / or any church easily
He will woo her again / He will lead her gently back
So He leaves the church with three strong words of command (v.5)
First / He says “remember”
Remember from where you have fallen / Look back!!
There is a kind of looking back that is both unhelpful and unwise
Lot’s wife was delivered from the sins of Sodom
But she courted disaster by looking back
and she was turned into a pillar of salt
There is a kind of looking back that will kill you
But there is a kind of looking back / that will heal you
- it’s the kind of looking back that gratitude calls us to do
I have had people on their hospital beds
looked back with tears in their eyes
across the span of time to when they were younger
and more dedicated to the Lord
But somehow the locusts have been allowed
to eat up those precious intervening years
And now as they lay down in sickness
they look back to the time when their love for Christ
was warm and intense
This kind of looking back is good
for it is the first step along the road to repentance and recovery
Some of you here this morning can remember a time
when your appointments with God in the early hours of the morning
filled you with that flush of excitement and joy
Look back / try to recall / ask yourself:
“Was there a time when I was so much in tune with God
I imagined I was really hearing His voice?”
“Was there a time when my Bible was opened more frequently?”
“Was there a time when I couldn’t stop talking about God
but now / I’d rather keep it to myself?”
What’s happened to that first love ?
Somewhere over the years / it has turned frigid
For some of us / recalling the past may be disturbing
but it will be your redemption
Trench tells us that it was only when the prodigal son remembered
that there was enough bread his father’s house to spare
that the pig’s food became so intolerable
So Jesus tells the Ephesus Church: Remember
Remember from where you have fallen
Then Jesus says a second word: “Repent” / v.5
In the Greek “metanoia” means a change of direction
Repentance involves three steps
One / You’re moved by the Spirit to sorrow and grief over your sin
People who truly repent
repent not because they are afraid of the consequences of sin
but because they’ve become horrified / at the sin itself
Two / repentance demands / that you turn away from sin
If / there is no turning away from sin / there is no true repentance
Proverbs 28:13 “He who conceals his sins will not prosper
but he who confesses and forsakes them will find compassion”
Its as if when God says repent
He’s saying: “Prove your repentance by turning away”
Three / true repentance is evidenced by a change of lifestyle
Matthew 3:8 / “Bring forth fruit / in keeping with your repentance”
That / is the insistence of Jesus
Repentance is not only turning from something
It is also turning to something
The Living Bible says:
“Prove that you have turned from sin / by changing the way you live”
Finally/Jesus says a third word: “Repeat” / v.5
“Do again things that you did before” / Go back and start again
- love the way you loved / put in the time you used to put in
- be devoted in the way you were devoted
But in His letter Jesus Christ doesn’t just offer them suggestions
He says this to them: “Unless you repent I will come to you
and remove your lampstand from its place” / v.5b
No church has a permanent and secure place on the face of this world
Every church is continually on trial
Now I’m sure you would like to know
what happened to the Church of Ephesus after she had received this letter
- did she repent of her loss of her first love? / did she turn around?
We’d all like to think that she was roused from her slumber
- that she began to take stock of things / and repented
Sadly / that was not to be
She continued in their lovelessness / and Jesus destroyed her
In 262 A.D / the Goths came in great hordes / sacked the city
and reduced it to the ground / it never regained it’s former glory
And for hundreds of years / no one knew the exact location of the lost city
- no one could pinpoint it on a map
- that entire huge city / with all it pomp and splendour simply vanished
Then in 1863 Mr. J.T. Wood / working for the British Museum
obtained permission from the Turkish government
to excavate and search for the site of the lost temple of Diana
And eleven years of his excavations could not reveal the site
- not until January 1 1870 / when almost by accident
it was then found / completely buried beneath a swamp
Only its foundation alone remained
So complete was the destruction
The entire city of Ephesus totally vanished / from under the rubbles
- it was overtaken by the sea
- the valley silted up and the entire city became buried under
And this very old commentary on Revelations by RC Trench
printed in 1872 / tells us that / at the time of writing
a traveller visiting the village “found only three Christians there”
and none of them had ever heard / of the name Paul
And today / all that is left of the once glorious city
is the small Turkish town of Ayasaluk
and except a little railway station
a hotel and a few poor dwelling houses
nothing else remains of that great city
This is a silent but eloquent testimony of the doom of a people
who chose to continue in her lovelessness
Christ’s warning to the Ephesus is just as appropriate to us today
A church that has lost her first love / has no light
Only when love burns / can its light shine
Today / many churches in the world have cease truly to exist
their buildings remain intact / their ministers minister
and their congregations congregate
but their lamp-stand has been removed
But often churches have been caught off-guard
because when a church begins to plunge into a spiritual twilight
the darkness does not come suddenly
like the turning off / of a switch
The darkness goes our gradually
getting darker slowly as the years passed
until whatever light was is left flickering will go out eventually
When that day comes / hardly anyone in church will notice it
because they would’ve become accustomed
to the gathering darkness and adjusted to it
Until finally / no glimmer of light radiates from it
It has no light because it has no love
This is a terrible warning to our church
But this letter ends with a promise:
“If you repent / I will give you to eat of the tree of life”
The “tree of life” was first in the Garden of Eden
Adam and Eve were cast out / so that they could not eat of the tree
But by the time we come to the Book of Revelation (22:1,2)
we come across scene where life is abundant and death is absent
In the midst of such a scene is the tree of life
Have you forsaken your first love
Are you flirting with another god?
Who is your first love this morning ?
Three words I leave with you this morning
Remember what you used to be like
Repent of what you’ve become and
Repeat what you did at first
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