Ephesus:
# 1 in series: The Letters of Christ to the Seven Churches
From the pulpit of Bayview Baptist Church, April 22, 2001
“Is Bayview Baptist Similar to Ephesus Baptist?”
Revelation 2:1-7
Very seldom does a person take a giant step backward in life from being a good person to being a totally bad person.
Usually a person begins his or her journey into evil and wickedness by taking little steps at first, until one day, hardly aware of the journey, the person finds his or herself entangled in a life of evil.
In the Old Testament, Samson was a person like that.
In the book of Judges we find Samson as a dedicated man of God.
Then gradually, Samson flirted with evil.
Little by little, evil came into his life, until in Judges 16:20 we read: “…he did not know that the Lord had left him.”
Isn’t that one of the saddest verses in the Bible?
The same thing was true of King Saul, the first king of the mighty nation, Israel.
At first, Saul was a man who God loved.
The Bible says in I Samuel 10:10, “…the Spirit of God came upon him in power…”
Then gradually Saul turned his back upon God and God’s Spirit left King Saul.
We read in I Samuel 15:35, “…the Lord was grieved that He had made Saul King over Israel.
And we read in I Samuel 16:14, “Now the Spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him.”
That must have been similar to the way it happened in the church at Ephesus in Revelation 2:1-7.
Jesus looked at Ephesus Baptist Church, and He saw some very positive things.
Listen to the first 3 verses which begin the letters to the seven churches in the book of Revelation.
Remember that the number 7 is a complete number, so since Jesus writes to the seven churches, we can assume that He is addressing all the Christian churches of the world today.
Read Revelation 2:1-3
Isn’t that a great description of a church?
We’d be proud to have Jesus say something like that about Bayview Baptist Church.
Jesus said He knew all about the hard work and the perseverance Ephesus Baptist Church had.
He even knew that they didn’t tolerate the wicked or anyone who pretended to be an Apostle, but was not.
The Ephesus Baptist Church had endured many hardships for Christ, and while they were enduring all these hardships, they didn’t even grow tired.
What wonderful things Jesus said in His personal letter to the Ephesus Baptist Church.
At one time, they were full of purpose, were dynamic and intimate in their relationship with the Lord.
But then Jesus tells the rest of the story in verse 4:
Read Revelation 2:4
“I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love.”
I don’t imagine this happened in one giant step, but instead it was a gradual thing.
It was similar to the kind of thing that happened in the lives of Samson and King Saul.
For a while Ephesus Baptist Church loved God and the people in the community were drawn into their fellowship.
Great Bible based sermons were preached from the pulpit, and when those sermons were preached, wonderful things happened in the lives of those listening in the pews.
Ephesus Baptist Church was known far and wide for their compassion and faithfulness.
But then something happened!
The people in Ephesus Baptist Church who prayed to God a lot gradually stopped praying.
The people in Ephesus Baptist Church who gave their money to the Lord gradually stopped giving.
The people in Ephesus Baptist Church who witnessed to the lost in their community gradually stopped their witnessing programs.
Until finally, Jesus wrote them a letter and it said, “I have this against you: You have forsaken your first love.”
In other words, Christ was saying that the people had lost their intense and enthusiastic devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, what is this first love?
A first love is when a couple holds hands and they dream of a wonderful future together.
A first love is when a couple places each other as the object of their affection without any reservation.
So, a first love in God’s eyes is the love that first brought you to God.
It was when you realized that the blood Jesus shed for you on Calvary’s cross was for your sin, and because of His shed blood as the perfect sacrifice that God demanded, you were overwhelmed with His amazing grace.
It’s when you first became a child of God.
That’s this first love!
First love looks at the mountains to climb and the rivers to swim, and says, “Give us those mountains to climb together, and give us those rivers to swim together, because we can do this since we’re in love.”
First love for God says, “Give us something to do for God to prove to others His greatness and show others how powerful God is.”
The Apostle Paul is a perfect example of that kind of first love.
After his Damascus Road experience with the risen Christ, Paul’s life changed forever and he recognized from that moment on that he owed everything he had to God; and he set out to climb every mountain he could find for the glory of God, and swim every river he could swim to prove to the world the power of almighty God.
Ephesus Baptist Church was once known for this kind of first love.
Oh, I believe Bayview Baptist Church was once known for this kind of love.
How then could a church lose something as wonderful as this first love?
Something gradually happened to their first love at Ephesus Baptist Church, and it just vanished away.
It didn’t happen over night, but gradually, one step at a time, the membership at Ephesus Baptist Church backslid in their relationship with the Lord.
In Matthew 24:12, Jesus is talking about the end of time and He said, “Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold.”
That’s the way sin works.
It doesn’t take giant steps, but little bitty steps.
And as the wickedness increases, the warm, vibrant love begins to grow cold like a piece of burning fire wood taken off the fire; and once the wood is no longer a part of the fire, the wood burns out, and grows cold.
Jesus told Ephesus Baptist Church to rekindle the fire and go back to the original commitment of their basic priorities.
Let me tell you something!
Satan is never more happier than when you and I are busy working and doing church work.
He’s happy you’ve attended church today.
Satan is even proud that you’ve given a special offering today to help purchase Gideon Bibles because Satan is satisfied that you feel in your mind that you’ve done your part to give a Bible to someone.
Therefore, you feel that you don’t need to go out and find someone who doesn’t already have a Bible, and give him or her one.
Because if you’re busy working doing church work, then you’re not out there witnessing about the Lord Jesus Christ to your neighbors and friends.
But if you rekindle your fire for the Lord Jesus Christ, and begin to be in a more intimate and personal relationship with God, then Satan gets scared.
You’re no threat to Satan as long as you’re unplugged from the power source, but the moment you plug into the power of God and rekindle the fire of your first love, then you declare war on Satan, and you win.
A boy and a girl meet and they fall in love.
They spend precious time together, talking, sharing, and thinking of their hopes and their dreams.
They spend quality time together over candle light dinners, and they engage in romantic conversation with each other.
They dream about how they’re going to spend a life time together, and how they’re going to be so happy.
Their love grows, and then one day they become husband and wife.
Then they both settle down in their careers, and if they’re fortunate, God adds children to their family.
Then, as time goes on, they begin to have the normal stresses of life to deal with.
Soon, there are problems with their marriage, family feuds and a few arguments.
Over the course of time, all of these things begin to take their toll, until they look at one another one day across from the breakfast table, before the husband has shaved and showered, and before the wife has put on her makeup and dressed.
The wife looks at her husband chewing his fruit loops with his mouth wide open, and the husband looks at his wife with her hair still in curlers and a cigarette hanging out of the side of her mouth, and they both say silently to one another, “You’re not the person I married.”
That’s kind of the way it happened in Ephesus Baptist Church.
They had forsaken their first love.
Is that the way it is at Bayview Baptist Church?
Praise God, Jesus gives us hope!
Look at verse 5:
Read Revelation 2:5
Here’s Jesus’ prescription plain and simple.
When you lose your car keys where are they?
When you lose your sun glasses where are they?
If you think real hard about it, when you lose your car keys or your sun glassed, they’re right where you left them!
And that’s the way it is with your first love for God.
If you’ve lost it, guess where it is.
It’s wherever you left it.
Jesus says, go back and find it.
Wherever it is, it’s still there because God hasn’t moved!
He’s waiting for you to come back.
He says, “Repent” and redo the things you did at first.
It’s not enough for us to be free from the power of Satan.
We have to be filled with the Spirit of God.
For Jesus said, “I have come that you may have life and have it to the full.”
That’s God’s invitation to us, to not be like Ephesus Baptist Church.
For if we do not go back to our first love, God says He will “remove the lamp stand from Bayview Baptist Church.
And if God removes the lamp stand, then the Light won’t shine.
The Light of Jesus won’t shine!
Yet, God says, in a promise to us that if we rekindle our first love for the Lord Jesus Christ, He “…will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God”(Rev. 2:7).
“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (Rev. 2:7).
Heavenly Father, if there is one here today reading this sermon who has not yet entered into a personal saving relationship with You, I pray this miracle of salvation will be present in his or her life and You, Dear God, will take up residence in the Holy Temple of his or her heart. Amen.
Rev. Jimmy Davis
Bayview Baptist Church
5300 Two Notch Road
Columbia, SC 29204
Email: BayviewBaptist@aol.com
Telephone: 803-754-8690
