Dennis Tuuri

encouragement as well as rebuke. Please turn to Revelation 2:1-7 for the sermon text. Please stand for the reading of God’s command word to his church. Revelation 2, beginning at verse one.

Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus, write, These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. I know thy works, and thy labor, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil, and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars, and hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name’s sake hast labored, and has not fainted.

Nevertheless, I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. Remember, therefore, from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works, or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent. But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the spirit saith unto the churches. To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God.

Let us pray in song that God would illuminate the text for understanding.

Return today to the series of sermons going through the first three chapters of the book of Revelation. We did ten weeks, ten sermons on the first chapter and we’ll now move through these seven letters to the seven churches.

I have produced a little inconsistency in the series. Now, however, next week instead of moving on to either finish Ephesus or begin the next church, Smyrna, I will spend a week talking about ballot measure 51 and the relationship of the scriptures to suicide and to that particular measure.

I want us to begin by remembering where we’re at. And what I have in your outline is remember first of all that chapters two and three are the firmament or Passover portion of the book.

If you break Revelation into a sevenfold division, you can correlate those seven chapters or not chapters but seven sections of the book to the seven days of creation. So chapter 1 would be the first of those seven days. Jesus is the light of the world and he manifests that light in the context to John. Chapters two and three could be seen as the establishment of the firmament. So the light of creation is really replaced by the light of the Lord Jesus Christ in his fullness of his ascension.

And the firmament, the division that comes between heaven and earth and our place as a firmament people in the New Testament can sort of be seen in these letters to the seven churches that make distinction and bring division.

We also said another scheme for looking at these seven sections of the seven feasts in Leviticus 23. First feast being that of the Sabbath itself. And so chapter 1, they met on the Lord’s day. All the relationship back to Genesis, you know, the first Sabbath day when God came to meet with his people and they heard the voice of God, the wind, etc. But chapter 1, Jesus, John is in spirit on the Lord’s day, and he hears the voice of Christ. Chapters two and three are sort of like the second feast, which is Passover. And there again, there’s a distinction made at the Passover celebration between those who have the blood applied and those who don’t.

And so Jesus comes and visits, and to some, he is an angel of death, and to others he is the angel of life, bringing them to life and redemption and salvation.

So I got I remind you here the sevenfold outline and I’ve kind of filled it in a little bit more. Seven attributes, first section, seven appearances, which is chapters 2 and three. And the next section, I don’t know, I was trying to do it all sevens.

And seven horns, Jesus is described in chapters four and five as having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God. So that third section, chapters four and five, the seven horns and eyes of our savior, which is also the seven spirits. And the next three sections are quite easy to break up and to outline in the book, seven seals, seven trumpets, seven bowls. And then finally, the last few chapters, the heavenly bride on earth.

I don’t have a sevenfold designation for that. I’ll need to do more study on those last few chapters, but I imagine we’ll see some sort of sevenfold series of characteristics articulated there in the word that makes itself clear to us.

I might just mention that another way to outline this book is to do a fourfold division and to lump some of these sections together. So, to lump together sections one and two, you could see that as the seven letters. The fourfold division will look like this: you got seven letters. Then you got seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven bowls. And so sections one and two, the seven letters have a preamble, an introduction as Jesus comes to see John in chapter 1. And then we actually have the formality of the seven letters. But you can see chapters 1 through 3 as a natural grouping of seven letters.

And the seven seals, Jesus ascends in chapters four and five, takes the book and opens the seven seals. And so his ascension, which in the sevenfold outline is broken off as a separate unit is linked together. You could link it together in the seal section of the book as he goes up to receive the book. Okay? So you got seven letters is the first portion of the book. Seven seals, Jesus ascends to heaven and opens the seals of the book of rule and governance given to him and then seven trumpets as the book is trumpeted out in actions.

Remember this is a divine history of what happens between 30 and 70 AD and the trumpets are blown. Paul is out there preaching the gospel and Peter is and the church is out evangelizing the world, giving warning, judgments and also saving many people. So the trumpet section and the last section, the bowl section. and now the bowls end with the result being the establishment of the heavenly bride. The bowl section is one of judgment.

Blood is poured out. Now instead of the trumpeting forth of fire judgments, the bowls are full of blood and the false church, the Jezebel church is destroyed and the true church is established by the end of the bowls by what the bowls accomplish. So you can see all of Revelation is fitting nicely that fourfold outline.

Let me just mention that fourfold outline and much of what I’ll be presenting in today is based upon the work of James B. Jordan. There’s a significant section in the in as we get to the second half of the sermon where the tapes of Reverend Bahnsen on the epistle to the Ephesians were quite useful. And if we get to it, I have some quotes from R.J. Rushdoony and his work on Revelation chapter 2 and the letter to the Ephesians in conclusion.

Now, I bring that up self-consciously for a reason which will become more obvious as we go along.

Okay. Now, first I want to make some observations general observations on the literary structure of these seven letters. Okay. So, first we’re going to have some general structural and literary observations. And I want to start with one. And you know, you’re going to say, “Oh boy, he’s already getting pretty technical. He’s going to get more technical.” Well, let’s start with one that isn’t technical at all.

And yet it’s a result of understanding the structure of these seven letters and it should be able to be immediately applied by you today maybe and certainly as you go into the week particularly if you have a family heads of households.

The first observation is that the seven letters give us a model of how to exhort one another. You know we’re supposed to exhort and encourage each other supposed to exhort one another in the context of the body of Christ and certainly in our families and our friendships etc.

How do we do it? And if you look at these letters. It’s very amazing that now there are variations but there’s a basic pattern of how Jesus when he approaches his church to exhort it, to bring correction to bring his presence, he does it in a particular way and look what he does first of all he brings himself as the measure. In the text before us, of course, the first thing that Jesus says to the Ephesian church, he tells them who he is.

I’m the one who holds the churches, the stars in my right hand, and I’m the one who walks in the context of the lampstands. Okay? So, the first thing Jesus does in each of these epistles is he says who he is. He gives himself as a measure. Okay? And so, when we correct our children, we want to put forth the Lord Jesus as the measure by which to measure. Later in the book of Revelation, John will be told to take a measuring rod and measure the temple and what’s going on in the city and everything, the holy city.

Well, see, we’re supposed to measure ourselves relative to the attributes of Christ. And each church has a particular attribute of Jesus that they’re supposed to measure themselves in relationship to. Here in Ephesus, as I said, he holds the stars and he walks among the lampstands. We’ll see why that measure is used in a little bit.

Secondly, he brings praise and/or criticism of what Christ has seen. He’s going to the church at Ephesus and he says who he is, but then he says, “I’ve seen some things about you.” And he begins his seeing, his correction of the Ephesians church with saying first what they’ve done right? You’ve done some real good things, he said. I’m really happy that you’re so doctrinally astute and you’re so persevering under persecution and you’re so persevering under these false apostles.

You’ve done some great work. Good job, church. But nevertheless, in the King James version, “but I’ve got this against you. You left your first love.” And you know, he goes into fairly long length about what his praise is. And then there’s this very short, but oh, what a powerful statement. You’ve left your first love. And he says, if you don’t change that, I’m going to do something. I’m going to remove you as a church.

Serious stuff. I’m talking to you about a children of mine at the church of Ephesus. He says, “My desirable bride.” The word Ephesus means desirable. My desirable bride, I desire you and I see how you’ve been a great bride in some ways, but I see that you’ve left your first love bride. And if you don’t repent of that, then you’re gone.

So Jesus brings himself as the measure. He praises what’s right about the Ephesians church. He criticizes what’s wrong with it. He sees both positive and negative, if it’s there. Now, one of these churches, he doesn’t do that because there’s not much positive to see. This church is dead. He’ll tell them later on. But in most of the cases, he says what’s good about them first. Then he moves to correction and then he exhorts them to faithfulness.

He says, “I see this and you got to do this and this is what I will do in response to what you do.” He lays out for them very clearly. This is the way, walk you in it. And if you go to the right hand and do these things and repent, you’re going to get a great blessing. You’re going to eat in the paradise of God. Good times. Blessing for me. But if you go to the left, if you continue on that left path, unless you make an abrupt right-hand turn, unless you correct of your loss of your first love. Not loss, you’ve left your first love.

Unless you repent of that sin, you’re gone. That path leads to push right off the edge of the world. You’re gone. The lampstand is removed. He articulates. He makes very clear to his children what will happen to them either way, obey or disobey.

And then he promises to the overcomers, to victors, what they will receive. He assumes that they’re going to be victorious. Overcome means win, crush heads, means win and conquer the sin in yourself and the sin round about you in the culture.

And then I think that this is implied in the text. But the measure of Christ is the means whereby they correct the very thing that he has come to them for. Because see, he promises them his presence. And it can either be a condemnatory judging presence if they don’t repent. But it’s exactly what they need to love him and it’s what they need to love one another is to see themselves as the presence of Christ walking in the midst of the congregation and loving them.

So Jesus as the measure has a negative side. We don’t measure up but he also brings that measure so that they will hear what they need to fix the problem.

Okay. Now this has some real obvious implications to us when we talk to our children or when we exhort one another. I think this is a great model. You know, you don’t have to go through all the formality of the whole thing, but in general, it’s kind of what we should be doing, right?

If we’re going to talk to somebody about an error in their lives or a problem, it’s because they haven’t met some standard that Christ has portrayed, right? So, we’re going to talk to them from the word. Otherwise, you know, if you start by with your children, well, this is the way we do it. Well, I don’t want to use that example because with kids, you do assert your own authority, but as they get older, you want to make sure they understand that your authority is based on the word of God.

It’s based on Jesus’s standard, not your particular likes and dislikes. You want to bring a measure of Christ and you want to praise them. There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s everything right with it as you’re about to criticize your child thinking first, you know, what have they done right? I don’t want them always just to be hearing the negative. It’s so easy. We’re so busy and so much work to do and homeschooling is so difficult.

It’s so easy just for the kids to hear all day long, don’t do that. Don’t do that. Do this now. Do it. And they need to hear from you as Jesus understood the Ephesians church needed to hear was commendation. You know, he loves them and he wants his correction to be understood as it were with tears. He’s not happy to find his church doing something wrong. He’s sad about that. He loves them and he wants to encourage them in the right first.

And we should want to encourage each other and encourage our children in the right before we move to the correction. We want to make very clear though what they need to correct and he says it in a very pungent pointed way. You’ve left your first love. Now it’s pretty vague and he leaves it I think intentionally vague because it covers an awful lot of material and it causes the church to ponder what does that mean?

He says remember they begin to ponder what it was they need to do to correct. They remember the past. So what I’m saying is when we correct our children sometimes it’s very specific but it can also be driven to drive them to a point of self-consciousness about their sin. And then with our children, as he did, we want to make real clear to them, hey, you know, Johnny, if you keep hitting your sister and don’t repent of that, you’re not taking the supper Sunday.

That’s a real big deal. It’s not a punishment to make you feel bad. It’s that we cannot give you the Lord’s supper when you re you keep in bad sin. And you know what? If you don’t repent the rest of your life about hitting your sister and you keep hitting you’re not a Christian. The light’s going to be plucked out that was there. Make real clear this is the end result of that action. And you can make more detailed application than just the end final row, but that’s what Jesus lays out to them here.

You know, church, this is what’s going to happen if you don’t repent. But if you repent, look at the great things that’ll happen to you. You get to eat in the paradise of God. And when we chastise our children or when we exhort one another, bringing Christ as the standard, putting it in the context of praise for what people have done right, bringing the criticism certainly we want to make clear to them you know this is going to be the result unless this thing is corrected it seems to me at least now we can’t say it authoritatively the way Jesus does but still he calls us to do it so we want to do it with some humility we want to say you know if you don’t correct in this area it looks like this is what’s going to happen you know so we want to make those things clear to our children and to each other.

And then we want to assume they’re going to be victorious the way the church at Ephesus was assumed to be victorious. You could see this in terms of the fivefold covenantal model that Ray Sutton and others have talked about: transcendence. Jesus is who he is. Hierarchy. I’ve you know you’re my church obligations. This is what you got to do or ethics. You got to do this. Sanctions if you don’t do this you know you’re either going to be blessed or cursed.

And then succession. If you overcome, you’re going to eat in the paradise of God. You can see that same model and it’s a good model for us to remember.

Okay. So, there’s one literary structure. I mean, it’s you look at the way these letters are laid out and that’s the way they work and it really helps us. It’s quite practical and hopefully some of you will begin to apply it tomorrow with your children or with your friends or whatever it is.

Okay. Secondly, these seven letters restate the creation week. We’ve talked about this before. We got seven letters. We got seven days of creation. And it seems like we can see a correlation there. Jesus is described as the light here in the first letter to the Ephesians church. He holds the candlesticks. He walks in the middle of the c. He holds the stars in his hand. So the references here to light and the first day of creation was a day of light.

Now on the on the I think it’s the second page of your outline, there’s a long list of things in these seven letters that correlate to the creation week. I got it out of from Jordan’s hand. I don’t think it’s his. I think he took it from someone else from the typography and I couldn’t find the source. But in any event, it’s a nice listing out and I don’t want to go over that at all today. I just want to point out that with Ephesus, it correlates to the first day of creation light.

And you know, if you study through this and you see these correlations, they’re not tough, children. They’re not tough. If you should know by the time you’re, you know, 7 8 9 years of age, you should know what the seven days of creation are I mean not in great detail but you should know that in the first day God said let there be light and you should be able to reinforce that knowledge and apply it by saying hey here at Ephesus Jesus comes in the context of light to the church okay the other and we’ll show these as we go through each of these letters we will talk a little bit more detail about the relationship of each particular church and then

The third observation is that the seven letters restate past history. Remember Kim Frasier said last week that some people are saying they try to read Revelation as what’s happening in the future and what’s happening and it always ends up as our future. Well, some people take these seven letters to the seven churches and say it’s a history of what’s going to happen from the time that they were written on. Okay. So, for instance, one of the commentaries I read says Ephesus represents the first century church.

Smyrna, the next letter, the period of persecution, Pergamum, the age of Constantine, Thyatira, the Middle Ages, Sardis, the Reformation, Philadelphia, the time of the modern missionary movement, and Laodicea, the apostasy of the last days, which surprise surprises us.

The problem with that model, of course, is every time you write it, you’re going to have to revise it in a 100 years cuz things change. So, I don’t believe that’s proper to impose what we see as church history upon those letters and what might happen in the future. I do think, however, the letters give us distinct representations of the past history. Remember that’s what Kim was saying. These prophecies interpret what God has done. And the seven letters to the seven churches, I believe, recapitulate the history leading up to AD 70. And here in Ephesus, there are obvious to the garden.

I’m sorry. Those handout I gave you actually to this section here, that page two, that detailed explanation. It really has to do with this uh church history point I’m making here. Point is that in Ephesus if they overcome, they eat in the paradise of God. It’s an allusion to the Garden of Eden. And they have left their first love, which it seems also is what Adam and Eve did to God and each to other as well as they fell their fall from grace.

So it seems like each of these letters recapitulate Old Testament history. And the most obvious indication of that is in the middle letters where we see reference first to Balaam and Balak and then to Jezebel. And so the historical progression clearly laid out in the identification of some of the persons in these churches or difficult groups.

Okay, so you got to think a lot about that now, but it’s interesting how they seem to correlate Old Testament history.

Fourth, the seven letters emphasize church discipline. Well, again, I’m trying to set up the categories by which we’ll look at each of these seven churches in turn. When we get to Smyrna, we’ll talk about how it relates to the creation week. We’ll talk about what period of Old Testament history it correlates to, and we’ll talk about what it says about church discipline. Each of these churches has a part, you know, obviously that’s what he’s doing.

He’s coming to discipline them, right? He’s coming to trim the lampstands, make them shine bright. They’re going to cut them off a little bit. Some he’s going to might even say, “I might very quickly snuff you out as a candlestick.” So, discipline. Now, in Ephesus specifically, we have a unified but compromised church. There’ll be other churches in this list that are divided churches. Okay? Some that are mostly good in a division with some guys that are bad, some that are split right down the middle and some that are almost all bad.

But beginning and ending of the section of churches, we have unified churches, but they’re compromised. Now, Smyrna is a unified church, but it’s not compromised. It’s faithful. Philadelphia, the sixth church, is unified, but it’s faithful. But then the last church, Laodicea, is unified, but it’s compromised.

In other words, he doesn’t signal out one group in the church at Ephesus for the instruction. He sends it to the whole church. It’s a unified church. Okay? And in disciplinary situations, sometimes we need to think of our families as an example of this as a covenantal unit that may be unified in a particular problem or a particular strength. Last week at our prayer meeting, we exchanged prayer requests not about each of us individually, but about our families. What do we thank God for? That our family is characterized by what? And what do we need in our family?

What does Christ examine us as a covenantal unit? Does he want us to change about our family as a whole? Not just as individuals. Think covenantally. The church of Ephesus is addressed not as individuals but as a corporate entity and actually as a city. Right? Okay.

So these seven letters emphasize church discipline. And in the context of Ephesus, we have a unified but compromised church which means that when you have a group that is unified and compromised and they unified in a unified fashion, they need to take the corrective actions.

Okay. Fifth, the first three letters describe assaults on the saints. Ephesus, they got the people called Nicolaitans. That’s what the word means. And then in Smyrna, the Jews are persecuting them. And in Pergamum, the people eaters, the Balaamites are trying to eat them up. So there’s groups here. And actually, if you look at that, people conquerors, Jews, people eaters. There’s a little structure there to these first three churches.

We have these outs, these people within the church, but specific groups that are troubling them. And the people conquerors and the people eaters are connected. We’ll see that as we get into the next couple of letters. This group is the Nicolaitans, the people conquerors who are troubling Ephesus is struggling with. Now, they’re doing a good job, but they’re having to work against them. And we’ll see that they essentially are the same group as the Balaamites and Jezebel later on as well.

So, enemies to the church that are common to all churches. The epistle ends to the church at Ephesus, not by saying, “Listen, Ephesus, what Christ has to say to you.” He says, “Let the churches plural hear what the spirit says to the churches.” So the letter of the church at Ephesus isn’t just for that church. It’s for our church. Okay? It’s for all churches. And in the context of enemies, then we can expect to see articulated spelled out in the letter to the church at Ephesus and the rest of the letters enemies that we’ll encounter as well.

We’ll talk about those enemies as we go through these seven letters.

Sixth, the first four letters prefigure the major enemies of Christ as described in chapters 2 through 18 of Revelation. It’s a sense in which Revelation can be broken up in two parts. You’ve got the seals and the trumpets and the bowls and then at the end you got several chapters about the bride of Christ and how beautiful she is. It’s sort of a separate section.

Well, the first four letters, Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, and Thyatira describe the enemies that will be addressed. It’s almost like it’s a little outline of what’s going to happen in a major part of the book to come. It’s another prefiguring. We saw that in the seven seals. We see that here as well. Specifically in Ephesus, they’re dealing with false apostles, right? You’ve tried those false apostles. He says those guys that said they were ministers and really weren’t apostles and really weren’t.

You’ve done that. What’s Jesus doing? He’s going to go to seven churches and say, you’re either a false apostle or a true apostle. So, the first letter, the one to Ephesus, really talks about all seven letters where Jesus moves in history to protect the churches from false apostles. Okay.

Now, the second letter in this sequence of the first four letters, they’ve got the Jews persecuting them, false Israel. And the seven seals, that’s the enemy that’s portrayed as Christ dealing with in the seven seals, false Israel, the Jews. Pergamum. They got Balaam and Balak. Balaam who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before Israel persecuting the church at Pergamum. Okay. Balak was a king. Balaam was a prophet who was trying to help the king conquer God’s people. And in the trumpet section, the false king, the beast and his various manifestations and false prophets are dealt with by the trumpets.

And then Thyatira says, “You got Jezebel in there. Well, that’s the false bride. And the false bride is dealt with in the bowl section. I said that earlier. Okay. So, there’s little You don’t got to think about this a lot, but recognize that there’s a way to all this stuff helps to remind us over and over what the whole book is about and what the whole flow of biblical history and what churches have to deal with is about.

Okay. Okay. So, now having gone through those observations of a more general nature of the letters to the churches. I want us to move to more of a specific consideration of this epistle itself. So, you know, turn back to that portion of your scriptures and actually I’ve got a hand on your I think it’s the third page. I’ve got again, this is from Mr. Jordan. The way the epistle breaks itself out in terms of a structure we won’t spend much time on this at all but you know it is important that we look at this a little bit you know as I said in each of these he says well it’s to this church and at the end he says listen to what I told you okay so there’s brackets and then he says this is what I’ve seen going on in your life and with emphasis specifically, he says that he knows their deeds and their toil.

That’s toil is really hard work that brings weariness. He knows their toil. He knows their perseverance and he knows they cannot endure evil men. And you put to the test those who call themselves apostles and are not. And you found them false. That’s their deed. Their work that they’re doing is they’ve been doing a good work in heresy trials and excommunications. That’s what it means. And you have perseverance.

Okay, he already talked about the perseverance. Now he says you do have perseverance and you have endured for my name’s sake and have not grown weary. Okay, so there’s there’s a repeated back and forth here. He says that I know your toil, your exertion that would produce weariness, yet you haven’t grown weary in doing what’s right. You’ve done a lot of hard work and you’re still trying to do the hard work.

Okay, you haven’t given up. That’s good. He says, I know that you’ve borne up in this task, but I know you will not bear with evil men. See, they have endurance for the cause of Christ, but that doesn’t mean that patience marks every one of their actions. They are impatient with the enemies of the Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, they hate those enemies and their works. And that’s good. You see, you want to have endurance in the work of Christ, but you do not want to endure with evil men, right?

They’re connected together and they have perseverance and patience articulated twice as well. So, there’s this repetition of the good things that Christ has seen in them. And then, as I said, there’s this very simple statement of what they’ve done wrong. You have left your first love. And the word means you’ve abandoned your first love. Not that you’ve lost it. It just sort of twittered away somehow or, you know, you just sort of wandered.

No, you abandoned your first love is what he tells them.

And then he brings to them as we said you should do with correction of your children too. He tells them what they should do about the situation. He says there’s three things you ought to do. You should remember. And that word remember means to remember continually. Remember now what was happening in you, what your history was like, and keep on remembering that as a church.

Don’t forget your birthright. Remember it and not just occasionally. It should be part of your memories all the time. And then he says you remember perpetually and you repent. Now that is not perpetual. Repent is a sharp action. It is a one-time thing. When we repent, it is a sharp break from sin. They’re on the left path. They want to make a sharp right-hand turn to get back to the path of God. Okay? And then do the first things. He’s trying to correct love, but he gives him actions, doesn’t he?

You remember, you make a commitment to break with the past and you do what’s right. And that is as clear an explanation of repentance as there is. And that ought to be the way we instruct our children. You know, repentance at the center is the most important. The middle usually is. We know it because it’s repeated again to that they should repent.

Remembering what was right and what’s wrong and all having a consciousness of what God has done for you is part of repentance and a sharp break with that and doing not just stop doing what’s wrong but to do what’s right. That’s biblical repentance and we should teach our children repentance isn’t saying you’re sorry. Repentance is remembering that you sinned against God who delivered you out of hell.

Remember what he did for you. Keep that in mind and break quickly. Get away from what you’re doing wrong and not just that, do what’s right. If you’re a thief, stop stealing, but start working so you can give to people instead of taking from them. You know, you know the score here. Okay, that’s a general overall structure of what’s going on here.

Now, let’s look at some observations on the text then the specific text.

And first of all, so point number seven on your outline. Point number seven, the church at Ephesus had done very well in maintaining doctrinal purity. Okay, like I said, he commends them even as he’s going to bring criticism. Remember Paul warned this particular church in the book of Acts. Grievous wolves are going to come in. It’s going to be tough times, guys. You’re going to have opposition.

You know, one reason for that, I mean, it isn’t true of every church. Ephesus is a very important city. It was important politically. It was like a capital city. It was what they call an assize town. If a guy, the proconsul, the whole area had to take his reign by going to Ephesus first. So, it’s like big capital city. It’s a big commercial city, a lot of shipping going on. They had a harbor that silted in. At this point today, that silting end of the harbor continuing. Ephesus is now several miles inland from the coast.

But at this time, it was on the coast. A lot of commercial activity, a lot of trade routes going through it. Real important in a business sense. And it was also real important in a spiritual sense. Remember the temple of Diana was there. They had the title of being the temple sweepers for Diana. And they were important religiously. Remember the big riot that was there. Paul spent two years in this city.

It’s an important place. He left Timothy there for a while. Aquila and Priscilla worked there. That’s where they worked with Apollos was at Ephesus. Very important thing. Paul wrote an epistle of course to the Ephesian church. John here with Christ is writing an epistle to them. Very important city. And this city was going to have a lot of opposition because of that of course. By their very birth they had persecution and trouble from the Diana worshippers.

So Paul had warned them they’re going to have a lot of trouble and they need to stand fast for the faith. And he doesn’t say you’ve stood too steadfastly. You’ve been too steadfast in correcting sin and correcting bad doctrine. He doesn’t say you’ve gone over the edge. That’s what people want to imply in this letter. But that’s not true at all. There’s no separation in this epistle between sound doctrine and the maintenance of it and that is somehow difficult to keep in line with love.

No, there’s no indication that in the text at all. They have not worked too hard at keeping a pure church. He commends them for it. He doesn’t criticize them for that. He says, “You’ve done great.” Apparently they listen to this critique because they’re still around in 107, 30 or 40 years after this epistle is written. And St. Ignatius wrote this about the Ephesians church.

He says, “You all live according to truth. No heresy has a home among you. Indeed, you do not so much as listen to anyone if he speaks of anything except concerning Jesus Christ in truth. I have learned that certain persons pass through you bringing evil doctrine, and you did not allow them to sow seeds among you. For you stopped up your ears that you might not receive the seed sown by them, these bad guys.

You didn’t listen to them.” He said, “You are arrayed from head to foot in the commandments of Jesus Christ. See, they’re a sound church. And they were like that when Jesus wrote to them, too. Now, they weren’t arrayed with all the commandments of Christ cuz they stopped loving. They had a problem. But you understand that this commendation for doctrinal purity. That’s something a church wants to hear. Every church wants to hear that we’re doing a good job fighting heresy, suffering the persecution we’re suffering in this big city that is so idolatrous.

We’re having heresy trials. We’re having excommunications because we got a lot of sinful people in the context of the church. If this church was to if all the church support and get together in biblical truth next week, you are going to have a lot of heresy trials and excommunications because there are a lot of heretics and there’s a lot of immoral people in the context of the visible church of Christ in any city today.

See that? Just because the church has a lot of heresy trials and excommunications, that’s not a bad thing. And in fact, in the context of Ephesus, it was a very good thing. It was so good that the savior came to this desirable bride and said, “Oh, you’re a great bride. You’re crushing serpent’s heads. That’s great. I’m glad you’re doing that.” So, that’s the first observation. They were commended for that doctrinal purity.

You know, of all of Paul’s epistles to various churches, it appears that the only one that does not have a criticism relative to doctrinal truth, doesn’t bring some kind of correction, a doctrinal error, is the epistle to the Ephesians. See, that’s the kind of church word. But nevertheless, but I have somewhat against you. The church at Ephesus had left her first love.

What does this mean? You know, maybe the way we normally think of that is well, they’ve forgotten the glow, you know, of when they became a Christian, you know, and there is the proper application of that. Probably many of you as you remember your salvation. Some of you grew up in the faith. Maybe you don’t remember a time when you really were conscious of your own depravity and the great love and mercy as God brought you forth from hell as it were and delivered you from death. But some of you do remember that had some pretty distinct memories.

I’ve got some distinct memories and you know you tend to time you forget about those things perhaps and maybe that’s what he’s told you forgot your first love. You forgot that love for Jesus you know when you were aware of the fact that he brought you out of your sin and misery and if you’re here today and you have forgotten that and as you remember that from years ago or whenever it was, I want you to be encouraged to keep that in mind in your Christian faith.

I want to say that’s a good application of this text. But I also want to say that it’s not, I don’t think, the first interpretation of the text because the text is not talking to individuals. Remember, he’s talking to a unified church. I don’t think they all had forgotten what their salvation experience was like. And in fact, probably many of them were raised in the Jewish faith. It wasn’t all Gentiles there. So, it’s not as if, you know, they were all converts from terrible pagan lies.

So I don’t think it quite means that he’s talking to them as a church, as a covenantal group as I said earlier. Obviously their first love should be in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so I think we would have to say that this church somehow perhaps because of the great persecution they suffered, they had tailed off in their enthusiastic love for the Lord Jesus.

Now personally I did not know that upon my conversion., a sense an emotional response to the love of Jesus Christ with a emotional love for the Lord Jesus in my life has only come about probably in the last 8 10 years. It’s been in those and I’ve seen that demonstration in my life and I’ve grown an awareness of how deep my sin was and how great his love was for me from eternity that caused an emotional response., but I think that what this is really talking about is the preeminence of the love for the Lord Jesus Christ as exhibited in the context of this particular church and its original zeal as a church for the reformation of the world.

Ephesus was the missionary center for all of Asia. Paul writes when this church got birthed at first and Paul goes there and Aquila and Priscilla and Apollos and Paul leads Timothy there. These guys they have a zeal for the Lord Jesus Christ and its transforming power in the context of personal lives but also cultures. And they want to see Ephesus not as the capital of some political world that is in opposition to the Lord Jesus, not as the center of the great spiritual reality of Diana worship and not as commercial transactions for the sake of money alone.

They want to see Ephesus export the full gospel of Christ into the rest of Asia. So that Ephesus is the capital represents the obedience of the merchant, the obedience of the clergy, the obedience of the civil governors to King Jesus. You see, they had zeal like that. And I think that after years of persecution, remember we’re talking here mid-60s, things are going to get bad. It’s going to get worse. A lot of martyrdom is going to happen leading up to AD 70.

The first century church for the most part is going to be killed. You know, think of that. So, they have all this zeal, all this doctrinal integrity, and the providence of God though it’s not going to convert the world yet they’re going to die a lot of these people and I think that’s probably a key to them losing a zeal for the task.

I think what they’re doing is they become pretty duty-oriented without joy for the Lord Jesus Christ and his work and you can’t do that faith hope and love work together as a unit and if your love and zeal diminish your faith diminishes your hope diminishes and your effectualness for the Lord Jesus Christ diminishes and if something didn’t correct it, you die.

The Lord Jesus takes you out.

Let me suggest a few other texts that might bring us a little bit of more understanding of this. In Jeremiah chapter 2, we read this. Moreover, the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, Thus sayeth the Lord, I remember thee the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, talking to Israel now, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not known or not sown rather.

Israel was holiness to the Lord. You loved me. You were holiness to me. He said in the wilderness and the first fruits of his increase. All that devour them shall offend. He’s talking about how he protected them in the wilderness as well. Evil shall come upon them shall come upon them, sayeth the Lord. Hear ye the word of the Lord. Oh house of Jacob, who used to love me this way, he’s saying, and all the families of the house of Israel, thus sayeth the Lord, what inquiry have your fathers found in me, that you are gone far from me, and have walked after vanity and are become vain.

Neither said they, where is the Lord that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, that led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and pits, through a land of drought, nor the shadow of death, through a land that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt. And I brought you into a plentiful country to eat the fruit thereof, and the goodness thereof. But when ye entered, ye defiled my land, and made mine heritage an abomination.

The priest said, “Not, where is the Lord? And they that handle the law knew me not. You see, Israel didn’t stop handling the law at this point in their history. But they stopped inquiring of the Lord. They stopped praying for the Lord to discern that law to them. And they forgot, like Ephesians had forgotten, the great deliverance God had brought to them. And very importantly, God’s protection of them in the midst of tremendous persecution.

You see, they were looking at it wrong. They were saying, “We’re persecuted. We got all these trials and excommunications. The church is no longer, you know, join And he was saying, “What you should be seeing is how greatly I’m protecting you in spite of these persecutions. And in fact, you should see that when people strike out at you, I bring more men to the faith through even some of you getting killed.” Remember, we’ve talked about that theme in the book of Revelation.

So, I think that Jeremiah helps us to think through times of Israel in the past when they left their first love by forgetting their deliverance, that initial salvation and deliver this forming of the church for forgetting their missionaries field. They were going to conquer Canaan. And Ephesus knew at first they were going to conquer Canaan. They’d forgotten that. They got entered in. They had some degree of success.

They wax fat and happy. And then they just kind of lost their love.

Matthew 24 says that many false prophets shall rise and deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. Love can be lost through sin, through living in the presence of sin. Second Thessalonians says, “We’re bound to thank God always for you, brethren, as it is meek, because your faith grows exceedingly, and the charity of each and every one of you all toward each other abounds, so that we ourselves glory in you and the churches of God.

That church had it right relative to love.

So, the love of a church can be lost as it forgets its mission, its birthright. I was at the homeschool conference a couple weeks ago, and Joe Bell spoke on the birthright of homeschooling, how it’s easy for homeschoolers to get so hung up with academic excellence that they begin to instruct their children. They teach the tests. They want to show the world how good they are.

So, they take on the world’s system of credentials. And the whole, you know, what brought them to the game was a love hopefully of God and a desire to raise up children as children who had strong Christian character. Not to show how great we can do in the SAT tests that are written primarily by pagans. You see, see, Joe Bell has some experience. His father back in 1950s started a private school with seven kids and he suffered persecution the way the early homeschoolers did in the country as well.

The head of the school board came up after the school had grown up to 11 students and Mr. Bell’s father was out trying to fix the septic system. A little growth of numbers of students in his private school. I wanted to make sure it could take care of it. The local public school guy comes over. The president of the school board hits him right in the mouth and knocks him into the sewer that he was working on.

Persecution. But Bell’s saw the private school movement desire, you know, praise from the world and so lose its first love, its birthright of wanting distinctively Christian education. And so private schools, as we know today, have become, you know, not much better than public schools. It’s not inevitable that would have happened. It’s not the institutional structure. They forgot their birthright.