Revelation 2:1-7
Let’s hear God’s word together. This is Revelation chapter two,
beginning at verse one. To the angel of the church in
Ephesus write, the words of him who holds the seven stars in
his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands.
I know your works, your toil, and your patient endurance, and
how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested
those who call themselves apostles and are not, and have found them
to be false. I know you are enduring patiently
and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown
weary. But I have this against you,
that you have abandoned the love that you had at first. Remember,
therefore, from where you have fallen. Repent and do the works
you did at first. If not, I will come to you, and
I will remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. Yet this you have. You hate the
works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. He who has an ear,
let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the
one who conquers, I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which
is in the paradise of God. Amen. This is God’s holy word
for us. When you ride by a church, how
do you know? How do you know what you want
to know about it? You know, it can have all the
right signs, it can have the right appearance, it can have
the right words, it can have notoriety in the community, it
can have large attendance, it can have what we might call amenities,
you know, for the young people, it’s got to have a climbing wall,
for the older people, it’s got to have choir, for the middles,
it’s got to have mom’s morning out. It’s got to have all these
sorts of things. Now we’re down to coffee and
other sorts of things. But when you ride by a church,
how do you know, how do you know, is it a whitewashed tomb, as
Jesus calls the Pharisees, or how do you know it’s Maybe a
synagogue of Satan. How do you know, or as Paul puts
it to Timothy, how do you know whether it’s a pillar and a buttress
of truth? How do you know? Well, it’s hard
to tell sometimes. Sometimes you’ve got to go. There’s
a family that has visited here in recent years, and they said,
we got tired of going to churches and having, they called it a
misfire. You know, you get up, you get
dressed, you go, you think you’re gonna end up visiting a good,
healthy church and it’s a dud. And they said, we were tired
of wasting Sundays. And it’s why being able to put
your church on the internet or sermon audio and those sorts
of things is helpful. People can give you a test drive
before they show up. And as this couple said, have
a misfire, a wasted Sunday. How do you know when you ride
by a church, how do you know what you’re gonna find inside.
Well, there’s one thing we know for sure, Jesus knows. Last week
we looked at Jesus, the appearance of the Son of Man, and today
he continues in his ministry and he walks among the seven
churches. He walks among the golden lampstands. And he knows the reality, he
knows the condition, he knows the context, the ministry, the
struggles, the hardships of every single church. Y’all get asked
about churches in town. What do you know about this one?
What do you know about that one? And we might know about seven or
eight of them, right? And we might know some misinformation
about others. We ought to be careful when we
get asked about things like that, because we don’t know everything
that we ought to know. And sometimes we can maybe not say true things. We should be very careful. But
guess what? Jesus knows. He knows every single
church in every single denomination, in every single neighborhood,
in every single street corner. Every uptown, every downtown,
every country church, he knows them all because he walks among
the lampstands. He walks among his churches. As we think about our study of
Revelation, as we consider particularly chapters two and three, where
I think I put in the sermon title, a word from the head man. That’s
kind of a good Southern way to put it, isn’t it? The head man
has shown up. What do we do when the boss shows
up? We get a little more efficient in our work. We dress up that
day. We come on time. We don’t cut
out early. We do all the right things we’re
supposed to do. That’s what is taking place. Maybe some of you
have a military background. It was inspection time. Were
your boots polished? Was your uniform pressed? Is
your belt straight? Are your decorations on correctly? You have your inspection, that’s
what’s taking place here in Revelation 2 and 3. We have God himself
through Christ the Son, the King of the church coming to give
inspection. The first church he’s gonna speak
about is the church at Ephesus. It’s probably the one you’ve
heard about the most. And I want us to look at this
little section from three perspectives. Jesus is going to be affirming,
He’s going to be accusing and he’s going to be admonishing.
And it’s always interesting to me, these seven letters to the
seven churches, every time you read them, there’s always a little
something for you and your ministry, you and your church. And by God’s
grace and through the Holy Spirit, it’s good for us to say, how
can we improve? How can we be better? How can
we strengthen what has become week. And so we want to take
a peek at what the Lord Jesus says about the church at Ephesus.
The first thing we want to think about in verses two and three
is Jesus affirming the church at Ephesus. He says, I know your
works. I know your toil. I know your
patient endurance. I know how you cannot bear with
those who are evil. I know that you have tested those
who call themselves apostles and are not, and you found them
to be false. I know that you are enduring
patiently. I know that you are bearing up for my name. I know
that you have not grown weary. I was always taught that you
should lather a man before you shave him. Right, and the meaning
behind that is don’t just blast people. Right? When we’re younger,
we want to give everybody everything they deserve. And so we shave
a man before we lather him up. But that’s what Jesus is doing
here. He’s affirming what can be affirmed to be good about
the church at Ephesus. They’re hardworking. They’re
on the right committees. They’re teaching Sunday school.
They’re making the coffee on Sunday morning. That’s the important
thing, right? James will become a saint. Mandy
will become a saint. Those who have made coffee will,
not in the Roman Catholic sense, of course, they’ll be made saints
one day for making the coffee. But we tirelessly work, we labor
in the church. We’re patient under circumstances.
You know, a lot of life, if you really think about it, a lot
of life is waiting for things to come to pass. A lot of life
is waiting for what is promised to come true. A lot of life is
waiting for a prayer to be answered. A lot of life is waiting for
the next thing. We’re patient under circumstances. We work, we labor. It’s an interesting,
they don’t tolerate evil. They test the apostles or the
ones who call themselves apostles. They test them to see if they
are true. You know, I’ll tell you this,
this is where I’ve lost my hair. This is where my blood pressure
has gotten too high in being a pastor. It’s coming to a church
in really the first one, two and three and four years. and
seeing what is taking place, putting things in order, and
then where there’s resistance to putting things in order, praying
and agonizing through that. That’s one of the most difficult
things that a pastor can do. We’ve talked in times past in
some of our town hall meetings about how churches go through,
they go through crisis. Right? The church is figuring
out what’s what. The new pastor is figuring out
what’s what. They go through alignment. Let’s get together
with the word of God and do the right things. Once there’s alignment,
you can have growth. And Jesus is in a sense coming
to the church at Ephesus and saying, you’ve got a lot of good
things going for you. You’re doing a lot of things
well. you’ve got some hard circumstances, you’re exhausted, but you’ve
done some good things. In a few verses, he’s gonna say,
here’s something else you’ve got. You hate the Nicolaitans. Now, we have no idea who the
Nicolaitans are, probably some kind of Gnostic, early church
heresy. Bad, right? We know that. But
they, They were not letting false teachers or Nicolaitans take
over their church. Oh, and what a difficult thing
it is today. You know, the hardest thing a
pastor does sometimes is this, hey, hey preacher, I was watching
TV the other day. That’s never a good conversation
starter. And you’ll never guess what I saw or what I heard. And
a group of us were thinking, that’s the next worst thing you
don’t wanna hear, a group of us were thinking, unless it’s the elders, and they’re
good men, but you’ll never guess what I heard, and then a group
of us were thinking, and that’s how false teaching comes in the
church. We get outside the eldership,
we get outside the ordained ministry, and we let these books seep in,
we let the latest fads seep in, and what is Jesus able to say
to the church at Ephesus? You’ve said no. You guys know
how hard it is sometimes to say no to people? We can’t have that
in our church. It’s against our doctrine. Our
denomination doesn’t stand for it. We don’t believe that. It
doesn’t accord with our confession or our standards or even the
scripture. That’s a really difficult thing.
And so to affirm the church at Ephesus for not only their hard
work, but they have looked They have examined and they have said
no. And so let me encourage you this way. If you’re in a faithful
church and you have faithful ministers and elders who have
said no, you’ve got something worth holding on to, something
to hold on to quite dearly. He’s affirming to this congregation. He has encouraged them in this
way, but he’s also going to accuse them And isn’t it gracious of
God, we must see, that he accuses, he admonishes. It seems the church
at Ephesus has lost their spark. They’ve lost their edge. They’ve
lost their twinkle in their eye, you might say. Their love for
God has waned. And so God, as he ought to be,
he’s direct. He’s clear. He’s going to speak
what will become to us the Word of God, what is the Word of God.
And we know that all scripture is breathed out by God, and it
is useful for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, and for the training
in righteousness so that every person, every man of God, every
child of God is fully equipped, fully furnished for every good
work. And so we need to count it a
blessing when Jesus comes into our midst and says, you’re not
quite there. You’ve got some work to do. It’s
an area you’re lacking in. We shouldn’t see that as something
so horrible, something so bad. Now, how has God spoken to his
church previously? How has he spoken to Israel and
told them what they’ve been doing good, what they’ve been doing
wrong? He’s done it through his prophets. And so here you now
have Jesus, the great prophet, the last prophet, the final prophet,
the supreme prophet, he is coming and speaking to his church directly. Revelation, we remember, is written
for our encouragement. And so when Jesus comes to accuse
us, we need to remember a pattern that often seeps into the church.
And that pattern is this, God forms us. He says, do these things,
do them right, do them well, do them for God’s glory. And
after a period of time of formation, there’s deformation. Maybe this
happens around the house. You know, we’re gonna, you know,
you get a new car, we’re gonna wash it every week. We’re going
to vacuum it every week. Nobody’s going to track mud in
the new car. We’re going to swing through
Chick-fil-A, but nobody’s going to eat in it. And if they do,
the trash is going to get thrown out. But about a year or two
later, it looks like a pig’s die. That’s what can happen in
the church. We start out well. There’s formation. And then there’s deformation,
and if we’re going on the Mation words, what do you think the
next word is? Reformation. That’s what Jesus is preaching
here towards. He’s working here towards. There’s
been formation of the church at Ephesus. How old is Ephesus? Remember, Paul planted it in
Acts. Timothy pastored it, and now John, as an old man in his
90s, in the late 90s, ministering to the people at Ephesus. And
they’ve formed, they’ve deformed, and now they need to reform.
They’ve gotten forgetful, they’ve been worn down a little, they’re
tired. And so Jesus gives a pattern
for reformation here. Remember, repent, and recover. Remember is an ongoing word.
Keep remembering, always be looking, always be examining. Some of
you are like this in your minds. You’re always wanting to make
things better. You always want to make things stronger. You always
want to get things to be more efficient, more effective. And
so maybe you’re a process person. We have process engineers now
out in the world. They want to figure out how to
do things better. So they’re always studying how
is it we’re doing this? Well, the church should be doing
that. There’s a sense where every month when the session meets,
are we worshiping God biblically? Are there some areas where we
could clean up worship? Are we teaching the word effectively?
Are we ministering to our people effectively? Are we doing church
as well as we could? We need to remember. We need
to go back to the Bible. We need to go back to the source.
We need to repent where we have fallen short. We’re not loving
our people, teaching our people, leading in worship. If we’re
not doing all the right things, we should repent and say, God,
we’ve gotten off track. That’s what Martin Luther, that’s
what John Calvin, that’s what the great reformers were striving
to do. They didn’t mean to set the world
on fire like they did, but aren’t we glad that they did. They just wanted to fix a few
things they thought were broken. But oh, aren’t we thankful for
the heritage that we have, for they repented. about where the
church had come and we recover, we do again what the word says. We do again the things that we
loved at first. And just like with the new car,
you’re going to keep it clean, you’re not going to eat in it,
no trash, no chewing gum under the seats. No muddy shoes, that
kind of thing. When we become Christians, or
when we get to a new church, we say, oh, I’m gonna be faithful.
I’m gonna be a tither. I’m gonna be a giver. I’m gonna
be a server. I’m gonna be a, and on and on and on we go. And
then over time, it’s like, well, I could use that extra money.
I could use the extra time. Somebody else will pick up the
slack. And so on and on we go, and things begin to fall apart. And so maybe just as in the church,
we need to remember, repent and recover. Maybe there’s some areas
of our own lives where we need to do just the same. And so Jesus
is affirming you’re doing some great things. He’s accusing you’ve
lost your first love. He tells us in verses four and
six, you’ve abandoned the love you had at first. And then he’s
admonishing. Find that admonishment in verse
seven. He who has an ear, let him hear what the seven or the
spirit says to the churches to the one who conquers i will grant
to eat of the tree of life which is in the garden of paradise
this is kind of a speech your parents give you listen up and
listen good jesus is saying there’s a blessing a promise there’s
a there’s a a bit of great joy ahead if you listen. In some sense, the seven letters
to the seven churches are like a royal proclamation. You know,
you’ve seen the movies about King Arthur, they blow the horn.
Herald goes out, listen up, and hear you, hear you, that kind
of thing. The king proclaims something, you know, dear people
of the land, this is what your king wishes of you, and this
is what your king will do for you. That’s what Jesus is doing
here. He’s saying, listen, obey, and
respond to the words of the herald. hear God’s word and respond to
it. There’s urgency, there’s spiritual
need, there’s eternity at stake. And you will conquer, he promises.
So think about this for just a minute. And really challenge
yourself and challenge our church life as we think about this.
Where have we grown careless? in our walk with the Lord, in
our worship with the Lord. Where have we grown careless in the
performance of our duties? I think it’s very interesting
to have read Exodus chapter 16 and to remember, and a pastor
can feel like this sometimes, when the people are grumbling,
it’s against, oh, it’s against me, they don’t like me. But you
know, it’s a great comfort. It’s a great comfort for me,
at least, to know the grumbling is against the Lord, or the carelessness
is against the Lord. The carelessness is against Christ
and His church, and that’s a wonderful freedom, particularly for a minister,
for a group of elders to think about. Let me challenge you. Where have you, where have we
become careless against what the Lord has given us? Where
have we lost our first love? Where have we lost our spark?
What are we loving more than worship? What are we loving more
than Bible reading? What are we loving more than
Christian growth? What are we loving more than
being together and encouraging the other saints? What are we,
where have we digressed maybe is a good way to put it. Where
have we waned in our love for God that at one time led us to
tell others about Christ and his worship and his church? Notice the promise that Jesus
gives here, to the one who conquers, I will grant to eat of the tree
of life, which is in the paradise of God. I know every one of us,
when we’re first reading the Bible stories, we say, well,
okay, Adam and Eve were in the garden, then they were out of
the garden, and then there were the angels and the flaming swords,
and you couldn’t get back in. When are they ever going to get
to go back in the garden? Well, here’s your promise. The
one who conquers, the one who overcomes, the one who makes
it safely home to heaven, I will grant to eat of the tree of life.”
Where is that tree of life? It’s in heaven. We’ll see that
in the book of Revelation. It puts us back in the larger
story, doesn’t it? It puts us back in the grand
scheme of the whole Bible that we lost paradise of our sin,
but paradise can be regained by following Christ. Another way to think about this
passage, and I want to just be terribly brief and we’ll end
with this, think about what Christ is asking us to do in the midst
of this culture. Go back to the question I asked
earlier. How do you know when you ride by a church? How do
you know they’re faithful? How do you know they hold fast
to the scriptures? How do you know they haven’t just fallen
off the wagon, as it were, and they’re doing everything but
worship, everything but Bible teaching? How do you know? How
do you know? And it’s good for us. It’s good for us to be a church.
It’s good for us to be a congregation that says we don’t care what
the rest of the world says. We don’t care how loud their
voices are. We don’t care if we could be bigger or better,
so to speak, if we just offered more amenities in the midst of
2019. Our challenge enough is to be
faithful to Christ, not to be faithful to the world, but to
be faithful to Christ and to have him, as he walks among the
lampstands, to be affirming and yes, when necessary, to be accusing,
but also to be admonishing. And what a great promise he gives
us. Blessed is the one who conquers, I will grant to eat of the tree
of life, which is in the paradise of God. Let’s go to the Lord
in prayer. Our God, we thank you for your
blessings to us. We thank you for your church.
We thank you that you’ve entrusted us with. The words, the oracles,
the ordinances, the the ministry of the church. And Lord, we we
do love it. We. We really do, but we get
forgetful. We get weak. We get busy. Our
heart leads us this way. The world tugs us that way. Our
time is eaten up and. Sometimes we wax and we wane
in our love for you, our service to the church. And so we pray
that your word would strike in us a holy fear, a holy terror,
as it were, to love you more, to serve you better. to fix what
is broken, to quit what is wrong, and to hold fast to the things
that we are doing, that in the midst of this dark and dying
world are the greatest answer to the problem of sin in this
world. Help us and give us your grace,
we pray in Jesus’ name, amen.