Revelation: The Loveless Church
Revelation 2:1-7
Introduction
A dear friend of mine works for a company that mines salt. He has given me a few gifts related to salt. One is this salt crystal that he brought back from a deep mine in Louisianna. Another is a New York Times Bestseller by Mark Kutlansky titled "Salt: A World History." In the book, Kutlansky tells the history and importance of salt. While we take salt for granted today, it was once the thing that made kings. It had the place oil has today in the world's economy.
Salt, it is a simple compound that we use for everything. It preserves and flavors our food. Jesus said that His people were the salt of the earth and the light of the world. His church is meant to give flavor to the world and preserve it.
Salt is a simple compound. It is made of sodium and chlorine.
Sodium is a metal that when alone is highly flammable and explosive. It is not found alone naturally. It easily combines with other elements and so it is always found connected to something.
Chlorine is a poisonous gas. It is what gives bleach its pungent smell.
These two elements alone are dangerous, but together they form a compound that we cannot live without.
Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus that they should "speak the truth in love" (Ephesians 4:15).
Truth and love are two elements that left to themselves can be unstable and dangerous. Love alone, like sodium, can be flammable and passionate to the point that it connects to anything. Truth by itself can be like a noxious gas that suffocates those that come into contact with it. But, when truth and love are compounded the new substance becomes salt that flavors and preserves.
The church at Ephesus is the first church that Jesus speaks to. He speaks to them about truth and love. They have a zeal for truth and orthodoxy, but they have lost their love for God, one another, and their neighbor. This puts them in danger of not being the church that Jesus designed them to be. This morning we will look at how this message to Ephesus can be applied to our lives.
Text:
1“To the angel of the church of Ephesus
Jesus addresses this letter to the messenger or overarching spirit of the church at Ephesus.
Ephesus was an important city in the first-century Mediterranean world. It was important to Rome the world economy. It was important to the major religions. There were temples to the cult of the Emperor. Luke tells us that there were enough books of magic in Ephesus that those who got rid of them after conversion amounted to fifty thousand pieces of silver (Acts 19:19). Ephesus's greatest architectural structure, one of the seven wonders of the world, was the Temple of Dianna. It controlled the trade of the city. We read in Acts about the uproar of those who made and sold images of Dianna being upset because of Paul's preaching there. The temple also housed a thousand prostitutes. Dianna was the goddess of "love."
The Spirit used Ephesus as a starting point for the evangelism of all of Asia Minor. Priscilla and Aquilla found Appolos there and showed him the way more perfectly. Paul found the disciples of John the Baptist there who had not received the Holy Spirit or been baptized in the Name of Jesus. He led them further. Paul spent two full years in Ephesus teaching and preaching. When he finally left, he warned them that there would be false teachers that would arise among them. True to his prophetic words, the Ephesians would face false teachers.
Later, Ephesus was mainly associated with John. History says that Mary the mother of Jesus lived there.
write, ‘These things says He who holds the seven stars in His right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands:
Jesus introduces Himself as the One who has power over the churches and the One is present beholding what is going on in the church. Because He is there, He spends time inspecting His church. He tells the church at Ephesus.
2“I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars; 3and you have persevered and have patience, and have labored for My name’s sake and have not become weary.
He begins with commendation. They had been zealous for the truth that they had received. They had worked hard. They would be among the crowd that emphasizes the importance of works that prove one's faith.
They fought against those who taught things that were contrary to the truth. When others might have grown weary, they kept fighting.
Preserving the truth became their primary goal, but in their effort to maintain purity they began to lose something.
Truth by itself is like chlorine. It can be a poisonous gas that smothers the life out of what it comes into contact with. And so Jesus continues to speak...
4Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love.
Jesus sandwiches this short rebuke between two commendations. He is not telling them that they were wrong for being passionate about truth, but that apart from love they did not have what they thought they had.
They had left their first love. Jesus said that the defining characteristic of His church would be love. John writes over and over in His epistles that love is primary.
The greatest commandment is to love God. The second is to love your neighbor. Christians are to love their enemies. To bless them and to pray for them. The way that people know that a Christian community is Christian is that those looking from the outside can see that those on the inside really love one another.
Love works no ill towards its neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. He that does not love does not know God, God is love.
5Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place—unless you repent.
His solution is threefold (Borrowed these three Rs from Tim Barker):
Remember: Jesus says that this lack of love is actually a fallen state. They felt their protection of orthodoxy was a higher place than where they began. But, Jesus reminds them of the way things were when they first came to know Him. They loved Him. They loved one another. They loved their neighbor. Ever-so-often it is a good thing to think back on those first moments of our relationship with the Lord. Do you remember that first love? When you prayed through and you hugged everyone you saw? Do you remember how clean you felt that night you were baptized in the Name of the Lord? When God first began speaking to you through the Bible? Remember!
Repent: His answer is repentance. Repentance is a change of mind that results in a change of direction. They have been fighting error, but Jesus says they are deficient and need to repent!
Redo: The answer is to redo what we did before. Sometimes what we need is not to do something new, but to do what we have done before.
If they did not find the lost place of love again, Jesus warns them that He will remove their candlestick. They will no longer represent His church. They will not be salt (sodium-chloride - a love-truth compound), they will only be a noxious gas that poisons and cannot last.
He warns that getting their love back is their first priority. Stop what your doing and renew your love!
6But this you have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.7“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
Then Jesus puts the other bun on the sandwich. He again commends them again. They hated the deeds of the Nicolaitans. The Nicolaitans are mentioned two more times in the letters to the seven churches. They were a group that mixed idolatry with the truth. The Lord hated it, and He was glad that the Ephesians did too. The Nicolaitans were connected with images of the false prophets Balaam and Jezebel. Both of the Biblical figures got Israel to compromise.
The Lord does not want Ephesus to go too far in the other direction. They need to return to their first love, but they need to hold onto the truth.
Sodium connects to pretty much anything. Love alone can connect to anything. It needs truth to be all that God desires it to be... a preserver and flavored. The main religion in Ephesus was the worship of Dianna. She was the goddess of love, but it was not real love. The temple prostitutes would connect to anything. In order to be salt and light, our love must be connected to truth. It is not either/or, it is both/and.
This message is for the "churches" (plural). For the church in Ephesus, for the six other churches in Asian Minor, for the second generation of Christians in the first century, for the church universal throughout the history of the church, and for us today!
To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God.” ’
In each of the messages to the seven churches, Jesus begins by identifying Himself with some aspect of the initial vision that John saw and ends with a promise of something that will be seen later in Revelation.
In this promise to the overcomes, He offers the opportunity to eat from the tree of life.
The overcomes are those whose lives are characterized by a compound of truth AND love! To overcome means to win the gold, to finish the race, to continue in the faith to the end.
The prize is to taste what Adam and Eve lost. In the final vision in the Revelation, John sees a renewed earth where there is Edenic perfection and trees of life. Whoever eats from them lives forever. They are fund in Paradise, a place of true pleasure. Not the temporary pleasure that worshippers may have found in the lewd practices of the temple of Dianna, but true pleasure.
Psalm 16:11 ESV "You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore."
There is salt there.
Conclusion:
We live in a world that is filled with confusion. There are moments when we feel that all the world needs is a strong dose of truth. Our tongues are sometimes coated with the gaseous chlorine of truth apart from love. At other times we may type passionate words of flammable love that wants to connect to anything and everything. God is calling us to speak the truth in love. Our world needs us to be a compound of truth AND love.
The place we will find that balance is remembering where we came from and how good has been to us. Oh, would you cry out to the Lord to remind you this morning?
The Prodigal's journey began when he came to himself...
