The “revelation” of John …
What does the Book of Revelation “reveal”? Is it a book that “reveals” what is going to happen in the future? Yes. But more importantly … much, much more importantly … it is a revelation about the One … with a capital “O” … who holds the future in His hands. The Book of Revelation is about the “revelation” … or “revealing” … of Jesus Christ.
Right from the start, we get a revealing insight into who Jesus really is: the Alpha and Omega … the First and the Last … standing among the seven golden lampstands … the churches of Ephesus … Smyrna … Pergamum … Thyatira … Sardis … Philadelphia … and Laodicea … holding the seven stars … the seven angels … of these churches in the palm of His mighty right hand … clothed in a long robe … with a golden sash across His chest … His hair white as wool, white as snow … His eyes flashing with flames of fire … His tongue a double-edged sword … His voice like the roar of many rushing waters … His face shining brighter than the sun … and His bronze feet ready to trample His enemies and evil underfoot.
In chapter 2, Jesus turns His eyes … those fiery, penetrating eyes … on those seven lampstands and He begins searching the hearts of those seven churches. Whoa! Imagine, for a moment, Him turning those fiery, searching, penetrating eyes on this church … on us!
Well … guess what?
Just as Jesus stood amongst those seven lampstands or churches in Asia Minor, He still stands amongst His churches today. Don’t kid yourself … without a doubt, His eyes are searching and scrutinizing Canton First and Beaverdam United Methodist churches and … as scary as that might sound … I don’t think it’s a bad thing at all. In fact, I don’t even think it’s a scary thing.
You see, He searched the hearts of those seven churches to enlighten them … not to destroy them … but to keep them from destroying themselves. His goal was not to humiliate them but to strengthen them … to remove the dross and purify them …to make them shine brighter … to make them holy. We should welcome Jesus’ penetrating gaze. We should earnestly pray that Jesus keeps His fiery, penetrating eyes upon us, that He speak to us like He did to those seven churches … giving us His divine perspective … a perspective that comes from His heart, His love for the churches that He has created. “Those I love,” says the Lord, “I rebuke and discipline. Therefore, be earnest and repent” (Revelation 3:19).
The reason that we’re reading these letters is that I believe that many … if not all … of the problems facing the modern church today can be solved by reading the recommendations that the LORD made to those seven churches. It’s a good thing to get the perspective of the Head of the Church, don’t you think? As one Bible scholar put it: “What Christ thinks of the church is a question no professing Christian can ignore.” True, amen?
We are going to be taking a look at these seven historical churches to see how we can apply Jesus’ message not only to our churches today but to our personal lives as well. These were real letters written to seven real churches located in seven real cities that existed in real countries. While John was in exile, Jesus spoke to him about these seven real churches and the realities of their situations. Each of Jesus’ seven letters begin with the words: “I know ….” And each letter contains a promise to those who will listen and obey the letter’s Author. Each letter is tailored to the specific needs and issues of the church that it addresses but it also has offers practical and spiritual applications for every church and every Christian in every age, amen?
Jesus’ first letter is to the church at Ephesus. Ephesus was a wealthy, culturally diverse seaport of about 300,000 people in what is modern day Turkey … located about 60 miles east of the island of Patmos. We learn from the Book of Acts that Ephesus was the home of one of the seven wonders of the world … the temple of Diana … the Romanized version of the Greek goddess Artemis. Artemis or Diana was the goddess of the hunt, chastity, childbirth, wild animals, and the wilderness (drivethruhistory.com) … similar to the Babylonian or pagan goddess Asherah. Modern-day excavations have revealed three smaller temples dedicated to the worship of Artemis – slash – Diana in or near Ephesus.
These temples and the worship of Diana attracted a lot of visitors to Ephesus and the city generated a great deal of revenue from selling “religious” trinkets and silver idols of Diana. The temple itself served as a bank where people could safeguard their money. Even though Diana’s title was “The Virgin Goddess,” she was worshipped as the goddess of fertility. Prostitution was part of the religious practices of the city (Biblestudytools.com). Stop and think about that for a minute. Prostitution at the temple of Diana was not done for the purposes of making money like it is today … although the priests and priestess did charge for their services. The “act” that they engaged in was believed to produce or encourage fertility … fertility for your crops and fertility for your livestock, as well as, shall we say, personal fertility. The good Christian brothers and sisters of Ephesus lived in a city that taught and practiced the occult, astrology, and the magical arts … as well as make money from the sale of curses, potions, rings, scrolls, amulets, bracelets, and necklaces that claimed to have magical or supernatural powers (drivethruhistory.com). In fact, the term “Ephesia Grammata” … which means “Ephesian words” … was the most popular “magical system” in the ancient Mediterranean world and became a popular and commonly used term to describe any type of magic.
Paul established a church in Ephesus on his second missionary journey through Asia. He spent three years in Ephesus. We know a good deal about the struggles facing this church because of Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus … His “Epistle” to the Ephesians … and his two letters … 1st and 2nd Timothy … that Paul wrote to his disciple, Timothy, who served as one of the first pastors of this church. The Apostle John became the head of this church following Timothy’s ministry. It was while John was living in Ephesus that he was taken captive and exiled to the island of Patmos where he spent his final days. I can’t begin to image what it must have been like to be a member or a pastor of a church in that kind of situation, can you? They were surrounded by magicians, sorcerers, witches, seers, and fortune tellers, idols, and temples to a pagan goddess where they practiced temple prostitution. In the midst of all this, Jesus sends a letter to them … to encourage them … to enlighten them… and to strengthen them.
As you may remember, John started out by describing certain attributes of Jesus … white hair, flaming eyes, bronze feet, a face that shone like the sun. As we go through these letters, I will draw your attention to the fact that Jesus starts out each of His letters by describing one of these attributes … which validates what John saw in Chapter 1. For example, Jesus starts out His letter to the church at Ephesus by reminding them that He is the One “who holds the seven stars in His right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands” (Revelation 2:1). Why? Why would He start out His letter to the church at Ephesus by reminding them that He is the One who walks among the lampstands holding the seven stars or angels in His powerful right hand?
He did it to comfort the church at Ephesus … to reassure them. There is no safer place in the entire world or the entire universe than in the right hand of God, amen? No matter what problems or challenges the Christians in Ephesus were facing, they were safe because they were being watched over and protected by Jesus who was holding them safe and secure in the palm of His hand … the hand that would not only protect them but the strong right hand that would deliver them … the hand that no one, not even Satan, could snatch them from … just as we, just as our church, is safe and protected in the strong, powerful right Hand of the One … with a capital “O” … that no one … including Satan … can snatch us from … amen? Jesus walks among His lampstands … His churches … today like He walked among His lampstands, His churches, when He sent that letter to Ephesus … making His presence known … looking with His fiery eyes to see whether we are committed to shining our light on Him to reveal His perfection … to bring glory and honor to the One who walks in our midst and safely holds us in the palm of His strong, powerful, protective right hand.
What did Jesus “see” when He turned those fiery, penetrating eyes of His upon the church at Ephesus? He saw a “dynamic” church. “I Know your works, your toil, and your patient endurance” says Jesus (Revelation 2:2). Now … we know that you can’t be saved through your good works, amen? But once you’ve been saved, we know that “faith, by itself, if it has not works, is” what? Yes … “dead” (James 2:176). In fact, one of the roles of the church is to light a fire in the hearts of its people, amen? To stir the church up, to inspire its people to do good work … good works that come from the heart of a church which is made up of the heart of the people. Whenever and wherever you find a church where the message of grace is being taught clearly, correctly, and properly … without apology … you’ll find a “working” church.
People who understand “grace” Biblically also abound in their works for the LORD. The people in the Ephesus church were on fire … they were stirred up. They understood that they weren’t saved BY good work but they were saved to DO good works. Do you understand the difference? Good.
Because they were stirred up and on fire, they were able to shine a broad, powerful light all around them “so that all who dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Greek and Jew” (Acts 19:10). Because of this active, dynamic church, the whole area was flooded with the Gospel. They were on fire for the LORD and that fire was spreading.
Jesus starts out by telling them that He knows their work and their labors (Revelation 2:2). In the Greek, the word that Jesus uses for “works” and the word that He uses for “labors” are two different words. The Greek word that Jesus uses for “works” means “to work to the point of exhaustion.” It describes work that is hard … work that is exhausting … work that is also expensive, costly. The Greek word that Jesus uses for “labor” has a kind of an economic tone to it. Labor is what you get paid for and the church in Ephesus’ labor is rewarded with opposition and persecution. “I know how much you do,” Jesus is saying, “and I know how much it is costing you. I know that you are serving me with all that you have. I know that you are serving me with your whole heart. I see how hard you are working … pressing yourselves to the limit for me.”
Jesus saw that the Ephesus church was a “dynamic” church and He also saw that it was a “determined” church. “I know your works, your toil, and your patient endurance” (Revelation 2:2; emphasis mine). Jesus commends them for their patient endurance when it came to suffering. The Greek word that Jesus uses to describe their “patient endurance” relates to the previous word that He uses for “toil.” The word that He uses means to “endure while maintaining a forward motion.” It creates a picture of someone patiently toiling, trudging … constantly, if slowly … moving forward. In the case of the church in Ephesus, it meant trudging and toiling against great opposition and demonic or occult forces as well as persecution from the local politicians and populace.
In Acts 19, Luke described the fierce opposition that the church faced in Ephesus. In spite of this opposition, however, the people in the Ephesus church persevered. They kept going … pressing forward. And the more resistance they encountered, they more opposition that they faced, the stronger and more determined they became.
Jesus’ penetrating eyes saw that the Ephesus church was a dynamic church, a determined church, and He also saw that it was a “discerning” church. “I know that you cannot tolerate evildoers; you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them to be false” (Revelation 2:2).
Jesus praised the church at Ephesus for being a discerning church, a church which did not allow evil into its midst … no small feat given the environment that surrounded them. The people in the Ephesian church were patient when it came to service and suffering, but they were not patient when it came to sin. They stood for the truth and righteousness and they practiced church discipline when it was necessary. Jesus even cites their expulsion of the “Nicolaitans” and their persistence and endurance in fighting back against the Nicolaitans’ attempt to infiltrate their church. The Nicolaitans were a group who promoted the practice of eating meat sacrificed to idols and condoned the practice of sexual license engaged in by the surrounding culture. They participated in the “orgies and idolatrous feasts” of their Greek and Roman counterparts and then attempted to convince the Christians in Ephesus that God was okay with such practices and even condoned them (Biblestudytools.com).
The Apostle Paul had warned them that such a thing could and probably would happen. In his final words to the Ephesian elders in Chapter 20 of the Book of Acts, he gave them the following advice: “I know that after I have gone, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Some even from your own group will come distorting the truth in order to entice the disciples to follow them” (v. 29-30). They apparently took Paul’s advice to “be alert” to heart (Acts 20:31) and when the wolves came to attack the flock from within and from without, they sent them packing whenever they spotted one.
There is a trend among some churches and denominations today that I find alarming. They don’t identify themselves denominationally or doctrinally. They will come up with a name like “Living Waters” or "Redeemer," for example, but there is nothing in the name “Living Waters” or "Redeemer" to identify what denomination they are or what they believe doctrinally … you know, like “Canton First United Methodist Church” or “Beaverdam United Methodist Church.” It turns out that the “Church of the Springs” in Ocala, Florida, is or was a Baptist church. Now, there’s nothing wrong with being Baptist or attending a Baptist church … that’s not my point. What concerns me is their need to bury that information. I once had someone ask me why it bothered me and I asked them if their family attended the “Church of the Springs” … and they said “yes.” “Well,” I explained, “you may not know it but it is a Baptist church and what you are hearing from the pulpit and what you and your children are hearing in Sunday school is Baptist doctrine … which is okay … but shouldn’t you kind of know that upfront so that you can make an informed decision?” As I said, why bury it? Believe it or not, some major United Methodist churches are moving in that direction as well. I'm not a hundred percent sure what the logic behind this trend is but the point that I am trying to make is this: you need to know your Bible and you need to know the church’s doctrine in order to prevent distorted or false doctrines from infiltrating the church. Many people today don't pick churches based on denomination or doctrine. They chose a church for a lot of other reasons don't really know the difference between the Baptist, the Methodists, the Lutherans, the Presbyterian, Pentecostal, or non-denominational which means they don't know if the doctrine that they learning is correct. How can you protect the church from people like the Nicolaitans if you don't know the doctrines or beliefs of the church that you attend. That's why we have to be educated about these things. The Christians in Ephesus were able to stop the spread of the Nicolaitan’s doctrine because they knew the Bible, they remembered Paul’s warning about wolves, and they were protective of their church’s beliefs and doctrines.
On the outside, the church at Ephesus appears to be a dynamic, determined, and discerning church but Jesus’ penetrating eyes sees to the very heart and soul of this church and spots some cancerous growth. “But I have this against you,” says Jesus, “that you have abandoned the love you had at first” (Revelation 2:4).
When someone says that they have something against you it’s probably not a good thing, amen? And you certainly don’t want to hear Jesus say that, am I right? When the LORD says that He has something against a church or an individual, it’s time to start trembling, amen? When the “thing” that Jesus has against you is that you have lost your love for Him, that church or individual should not only tremble but fall on their knees and burst into tears. I know I would if Jesus said that about me!
The great preacher Vance Havner once observed: “People can be just as straight as a gun barrel logically and just as empty as a gun barrel spiritually” (azquotes.com). Outwardly the Ephesian church was a model church but Jesus’ fiery, penetrating eyes saw past all of the stuff … the dynamism, the determination, the discernment … and recognized that this church had heart trouble. They had lost their first love. They had fallen from the early heights of devotion to Christ that they had climbed. The first flush of ecstasy had passed. They had been in love with Jesus but now that passion had cooled.
Jesus didn’t say that they had fallen out of love with Him … He said that had lost their “first” love. Do you remember the time when you first fell in love with Jesus? That sense of peace … that feeling of joy that overflowed your heart? What did that feel like? Jesus is talking about that sense of gratitude and devotion to Him that so often sweeps up new believers. Their passion is fervent … personal … uninhibited … excited. The church at Ephesus no longer had that passion … that excitement. Do you? Does Canton First or Beaverdam?
At one time the church at Ephesus was so full of love for Jesus that it just shone like a lampstand. Have you ever met someone who loves Jesus so much that they glow and you just know that they’re a Christian without even having to ask? Have you ever been to a church where the spirit of love and joy and excitement for the LORD just swallows you up the minute you walk in the door?
From all that we have heard about the church at Ephesus, it certainly “looked” or seemed like they were in love with Jesus. How could they do all these good works that Jesus commended them for if they didn’t love the LORD? Well … they did all these works out of routine and habit … kind of like an old married couple who has settled down in to a rut or a routine, amen? I don’t know if you know this but you can do “ministry” and not have a relationship with Jesus … just like you can fall out of love with your spouse or the passion that you once felt for each other has cooled and you can fall into a routine where everybody knows what to do and just goes through the motions. It’s like the wife who complained to her husband one evening: “John … what’s wrong with you? Before we got married you used to say that you loved me so much that you could just eat me up,” to which her husband replied, “Well, Sarah, I guess that I lost my appetite.” It is possible for our first love to slip away gradually without us even realizing that it’s happening, amen?
That’s what happens when we or our church lose our first love. If we do not love God fervently, we can never serve Him faithfully. Externally, the Ephesian church was a great church … a commendable church in every way … but the gaze of Jesus’ fiery, penetrating eyes could see beneath of the surface and found something missing that they probably didn’t even know was gone.
So … what about us? Have we lost our first love? Do you … do we as a church … love Jesus as much today as when we first fell in love with Him? And if we say that we do … then how do we show it to Jesus? And how do we show it to the rest of the world?
Do you remember how goofy you acted when you fell in love for the first time? Everyone could see it and, well, frankly you didn’t care what they thought or if you were making a fool of yourself, amen? You see, our love for Jesus doesn’t care or shouldn’t care what others think about our joy, our enthusiasm. Our love for Jesus doesn’t worry or shouldn’t worry about whether we’ll look goofy or be branded as fanatics. First love … the kind of love that Jesus is talking about … just LOVES Him and doesn’t care who knows or what other people think about it, amen?
Now … thankfully … Jesus doesn’t leave the Ephesians … or us … stuck there. He doesn’t just wash His hands clean and then walk away or leave us to fade away and die. He comes right out and tells us how we can re-ignite our passion and fall back in love with Him. Would you like to know how we can do that? Are you ready? Well, Jesus tells us that there three things that we can do that will re-ignite our passion again.
First … we must remember “from what you have fallen” (Revelation 2:5). Remember back to what it was like … what you were like … when you first got saved … when you first fell in love with Jesus. Remember how you used to witness for Him. Remember how you used to bring people to church with you. Remember how awesome it felt when someone you witnessed to or brought to church fell in love with Jesus just like you did. Remember what it felt like when you gave your life to Christ and then a friend or family member gave their life to Christ because you shared you love and your passion for the LORD with them and they caught on fire too … and then watching their love for Jesus set someone else on fire. Remember what it was like to put your whole trust in Jesus … even when you had no idea where your trust and faith in Him would lead you. Remember when it was as simple as “God said it … I believe it … and that settles it!” Remember those days?
When Jesus tells us … well, actually commands us … to “remember,” He uses the present tense … which means to start remembering right now and never stop remembering from this moment forward. Remember and keep remembering. He’s not asking us to remember once in a while, is He? He wants us to start remembering what it was like when we first fell in love with him and then He wants us to never stop remembering what it was like when we first fell in love with Him. The way to keep the passion alive in your marriage is to remember why you married that man or that woman in the first place. Do you still remember the day that you first met him or her? Do you still remember the day when you first met Jesus and fell in love with Him? Do you remember the day that He saved your soul? Do you still remember that sense of relief … that pardon … that grace … that you felt when you realized that you were no longer guilty before a righteous God? Do you remember how it felt the first time you looked at the cross and realized just how much Jesus loves you and what He was willing to do for you? Do you remember how it felt when you realized that you were no longer destined for an eternity in Hell but an eternity with Him in Heaven?
But Jesus wants you do to more than just remember … He wants you to repent. “What do you mean ‘repent,’ Pastor? I go to church. I read the Bible. I go to Bible study and Sunday School. I give of my time, talents, and money to the church. I help set up, cook, and clean up after church dinners. I collect things and give them to the poor. Repent? For what reason?” As Jesus said to the people in the Ephesian church, He was happy with all the things that they were doing in His name, but they needed to stop and spend time with Him. And it was sad that He even had to ask them to do that, amen?
You see, when you stop and spend time with Jesus, you realize how much you do for Him and how little time you actually spend with Him … and when you spend time with Him you remember all the things that You love about Him … the things that inspired you to do things for Him that now distract you and take you away from spending time with Him. How can you reflect the Light of Jesus back on Him or out into the world if you are constantly running around doing “church” things and don’t turn and face the Light … with a capital “L,” amen?
Jesus commands us to remember … to repent … and then to “do the works you did at first” (Revelation 2:5). Author and pastor John Stott said this about Jesus’ advice to the church in Ephesus: “Repentance is resolutely and completely to turn one’s back on all known sin. Jesus Christ does not advocate conjuring up emotional experiences. He does not urge the Ephesian Christians to “feel” their sin. It’s not what they “feel” about them that matters as much as what they do about them” (ww.goodreads.com/book/show/24290651-the-message-of-ephesians; emphasis mine).
What was it like when you first became a Christian? Did you read the Bible for hours … drinking in every word? Did you go to bed on Saturday night excited, looking forward to going to church in the morning? Did you feel your excitement and joy increase as you pulled into the parking lot and took a seat in your favorite pew? Did you think about the message the next day?
Well … [pause] … what’s stopping you from experiencing that today? What’s stopping you from opening your Bible? What’s stopping you from coming to church every Sunday? Like Stott said, you don’t have to wait until you “feel” like doing them. You do them and guess what? That first love that kind of just slipped away will start to come back. You’ll fall in love and become deeper in love with God and you will want to serve Him with all your heart again … you literally have Jesus’ word on that!
What were the things that you used to do when you first fell in love with Jesus? What are the things that you stopped doing since then? Remember … repent … and then start doing them again!
Christ concludes His letter to the church at Ephesus with this somber warning: “Remember then from what you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not,” says Jesus, “I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent” (Revelation 2:6). In other words, if we don’t get back to our first love … if we don’t stop just going through the motions or doing the work of the church with little or no heart … our lampstand will be snuffed out and the influence and the outreach of our church will dwindle and disappear.
The history of the church at Ephesus is a solemn lesson for our churches today. When the Apostle Paul wrote his letter to the church at Ephesus, they were on fire. When Jesus dictated His letter to John 30 years later … just 30 years later … Jesus was already asking His church in Ephesus what had happened to their fire, their passion, their zeal.
Did they follow Jesus’ advice? Did they remember when they were madly in love with Jesus? History has the answer. Over that once famous city the word “Ichabod” must be written for the glory of the LORD has departed from that place. Ephesus, whose harbor could accommodate the largest and finest sea-going vessels … whose highways radiated out to all the cities of Asia Minor and beyond … now lies in ruins … a memory … a page in history. Its once brilliant lampstand has been removed from its place just as Jesus had predicted.
God has given us an incredible opportunity to influence the world for Jesus Christ … but if we get caught up in our statistics and we begin to think that all the stuff that we’re doing is what really matters and we quit loving the Lord Jesus Christ with the heart of a new believer, guess what? One day Jesus will come and take away OUR golden lampstand! As one man put it: “I was on my way to the Savior and started serving … and I got into serving and never got to the Savior.”
There is so much to be done. Some of us are so busy doing the business of the LORD that we don’t seem to have enough time for Jesus. We can be perfectly sincere in our devotion and our service that Jesus has to chase us around with His arms open wide, imploring us: “I know your works … I know your labor … I know your patience … but I miss you and I miss your love.”
Don’t let the stuff that we’re doing for the One we love get in the way of being with the One we love. The God in Heaven loves you with an everlasting love and the best thing that you or I can do is to return that love, amen?
Remember that we love Him because He first loved us. We show our love by keeping His commandments, which were given to us out of His love. Spend time with Him … lots of time … so that you can get to know Him better and better. Show Him that you love Him by worshiping Him … by praising Him. Make Him the primary focus of your life and I guarantee that you will get your first love back and that love will enable you to accomplish more than you could ever imagine. Remember the source of our lampstand’s light … the source of our light, amen?
Let us pray:
Almighty God:
You see our shortcomings and difficulties … please have mercy on us. Strengthen us. Heal our relationship with You. We are weak but You are the divine healer and the source of strength for all hearts and souls. Guide us to do Your will in this world … to love and respect each other … and to be Your representatives in this world … to love and respect each other … and to be Your light among the people.
Bless us with a peaceful, happy relationship with You and help us to share our mutual, thriving love with the world
.
Bring us together emotionally and spiritually for the good of those whose lives we touch and for the greater good of humankind.
Thank You for Your kindness towards us … frail as we may be … and for the strength of Your loving Spirit living and guiding us and growing in our hearts.
In the name of Jesus, our first and greatest love, we pray. And would all who wish to renew, rekindle, and re-ignite their passion for Him make it so by saying … amen.
