God’s Love and Our Response:
Loving God
Bethel Assembly of God
3/4/2002 AM
INTRODUCTION
Last week – “The Incredible Love of God” from 1 John 4:8
The next two weeks – “Our response – Love God… Love People”
REVELATION 2:1-7
This is a church with historical promise. Paul started the church and stayed there three years training leaders for it.
It was the central point of evangelism.
Paul complemented them in his letter to them.
This was church at its best.
It was a church in the heart of religious activity. The people of Ephesus worshiped the Goddess Diana. The impact of Christianity was so powerful that idol makers got mad because they were loosing revenue. Wouldn’t that be powerful for us today? The church could be making such an impact that the bars, nightclubs, adult entertainment business would begin to shut down for lack of business.
A LOOK AT THEIR WORKS - COMMENDATION
Rev 2:2 I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false.3 You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.
They were complimented by God. Jesus noticed. "I know your works" appears in all 7 letters to the churches.
Christ is in an intimate manner present and conversant with his churches: he knows and observes their state. He has perfect knowledge of the Church and knows the hearts and motives of each member.
He takes pleasure in them, as a man does to examine his job after a hard day. He observes what is good and observes what is amiss.
He notices that: firm discipline maintained, false apostles detected and confronted, patient, intolerant of evil men, perseverance, resisted the Nicolations fleshly indulgences.
If this were a church today we would see: a church of evangelism, good doctrine, a teaching church, great S.S. people saved and discipled, youth group, worship inspiring, etc. And Jesus never diminished any of these. These are needed in the church today.
WHERE THEY WENT WRONG - CORRECTION
Rev 2:4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love.
"Yet" - Stop there! Don’t go any further. There is something else. I’m not finished yet.
"I hold this against you" - You are on trial and you are guilty. I love you but I have got to tell you this.
"You have forsaken your first love." A cooling process had begun. They were doing everything right but the fervor of their first love was gone. Their fault was a decay of spiritual affection. A matter of the heart.
They were so busy with church business that they didn’t even miss the one they were working for.
It wasn’t that they forgot who He was, they did not loose the object of their first love but the fervent degree of their love. They put Him on the shelf. They began to take Him for granted. Their love was put on automatic.
John Walvoord, "The church at Ephesus was now in its second generation of Christians, those who had come into the church in the thirty years since Paul had ministered in their midst. Though they continued to labor faithfully as those who had preceded them, the love of God which characterized the first generation was missing. This cooling of heart which had overtaken them in relationship to God was a dangerous forerunner of spiritual apathy which later was to erase all Christian testimony in this important center of Christian influence. Thus it has ever been in the history of the church: first a cooling of spiritual love, then the love of God replaced by a love for the things of the world, with resulting compromise and spiritual corruption. This is followed by departure from the faith and loss of effective spiritual testimony" (The Revelation of Jesus Christ, 56).
This is very grievous to God. He is displeased with His people when they grow cold to Him.
Jesus issues a strong warning. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.
Judgment begins in the house of God. Christ is very jealous of our love. If the warnings are not heeded to the church will disappear or loose the privilege of representing Christ in this world.
APPLICATION
A. To Our Church
Whenever our programs take more of a priority than our emphasis to pray and desire to seek Him then we are loosing our first love.
The priority for each of our programs should be the knowledge of God and our worship to Him.
Even being politically involved, or feeding the hungry, or starting witnessing programs can take the place of God.
Don’t get me wrong; we need more of these. We should be about our father’s business.
B. To Our Lives
Searches our hearts individually.
It is so easy to let things overcome us. Even our problems can become idols to us. We can get to the place where they take the place of our love for God.
Christ Examines the House
Lois K. Blanchard pictures Christ as still walking the streets today. She asks these pointed questions: "If Jesus came to your own home to spend a day or two -- If He came unexpectedly, I wonder what you’d do? I know you’d give your nicest room to such an honored Guest, and all the food you’d serve to Him would be the very best. And you would keep assuring Him you’re glad to have Him there -- That serving Him in your own home is joy beyond compare; but when you saw Him standing there, could you go to the door, with arms outstretched to welcome Him your Heavenly Visitor? Or would you have to change some things before you let Him in? Or hide some magazines and put the Bible where they’d been? Would family conversation be continued at its pace? And would you find it hard each meal to say a table grace? Would you be glad to have him meet your very closest friends? Or would you hope they’d stay away until His visit ends? Would you be glad to have Him stay forever, on and on? Or would you sigh with great relief when He at last was gone? It might cause some embarrassment the things that you would do, if Jesus came to your own house to spend some time with you.
Think about it. Does your home need a bit of spiritual remodeling?
Sometimes we run so fast towards things that we think will make us happy or bring us peace and we substitute things for God.
THE ROAD BACK
Rev 2:5 Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.
A. Remember
What was it like when you fell in love?
How big was God to you then? We need to check the rear-view mirror once in a while. The past is both an encouragement and a warning to us. Have we grown or strayed?
What kind of commitment did you make at that time?
For me, it was: "Anything you want, I’ll do it, have Thine own way."
Compare that with today. How much better was it then than now. If there is a big gap something is wrong. We should be growing in Christ, not drifting form Him.
B. Repent - absolutely necessary and needed at once.
Cannot live on the past experiences. Some of us need to start that commitment process over again. The same way as the way by which the sinner came at first to Christ. - Through the cross. Repentance. Direct, personal confession to Jesus.
God was not the one that moved away from you.
Repentance indicates that you are taking responsibility for your falling. You cannot blame your spiritual walk with God on anyone else. You must confess.
C. Return: do the things you did at first.
We need revival.
We need to come back to the original commitment and love for God. Stirring up those coals and putting fresh wood on them. We must endeavor and strive to get back to that place.
We must pray as earnestly, watch as diligently, seek as seriously as we first did.
Get back to the basics.
How Much of God do you want?
$3 Worth of God
Wilbur Reese writes with biting sarcasm:
I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please
Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I don’t want enough of him to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant.
I want ecstasy, not transformation.
I want the warmth of the womb not a new birth.
I want about a pound of the eternal in a paper sack.
I’d like to buy $3 worth of God, please.
How much of God do you want?
You get as much or as little as you desire
MATTHEW 22:37-40 MARK 12:30,31
Matthew 22:34-39 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
A. Scriptures admonishing us to love God 16 x we are told to Love the Lord.
Deuteronomy 6:5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
Deuteronomy 11:1 Love the LORD your God and keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands always.
Deuteronomy 11:13 So if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today--to love the LORD your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul--
Deuteronomy 11:22 If you carefully observe all these commands I am giving you to follow--to love the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways and to hold fast to him--
Deuteronomy 19:9 because you carefully follow all these laws I command you today--to love the LORD your God and to walk always in his ways--then you are to set aside three more cities.
Deuteronomy 30:16 For I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess., 20 and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Joshua 22:5 But be very careful to keep the commandment and the law that Moses the servant of the LORD gave you: to love the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to obey his commands, to hold fast to him and to serve him with all your heart and all your soul."
B. It is apparent that loving God is tied in with faithful obedience to whatever He wants from us.
1 John 5:1-3 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome,
C. Loving God redefines all priorities.
What time was yours, what energy was yours, what resources were yours, they are now given unselfishly to Him. You did that for your spouse when you first fell in love.
There is a huge difference between infatuation and commitment
If the only time you spend with God is on Sunday mornings - that’s religion, not love.
He is committed to you, are you committed to Him?
