Word of Salvation – Vol. 40 No.35 – September 1995

 

The Church That Was Losing Her Love

 

Sermon by Rev. P. Kossen on Revelation 2:1-7

 

Brothers and Sisters in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Boys and girls, who is going to school for the first time next year?  Who is going to turn four, five, six, seven?  Yes, unless something very big happens, like Jesus returns, or you die, next year is going to be a big year, isn’t it?  Another year of growing bigger.  Of learning more.  Of getting new friends.  But do you know what the most important thing is that you should do when a new year begins?  You should come and stand before Jesus, to listen to what He says.  I mean, the whole of our future depends on Him doesn’t it.  Life would mean nothing without Him.  And that is why we should always begin a new year, listening to Jesus.  And that is what we are going to do today as the Church.

We are going to come and stand before Jesus, to see what He says to us, as Church.  As we listen, we are going to hear Him say three things.  First of all, He will say some good things where we have been going the right way.  Second, He will also tell us off, where we have been going the wrong way.  And last of all, we will listen to Him calling us to love Him again with all our hearts.

Brothers and sisters, these seven letters to the churches are maybe the most direct way in which the Risen Lord addresses the Church today.  They are personal letters from the Lord Jesus to us.  In each of these seven letters, He is touching upon issues, and elements, which also are present in the life of our church here in _____________!

I don’t know how to stress enough the importance of these letters for the life of our church.  Maybe I can do so by bringing to your mind the area of the world where these seven churches were.  Where is Ephesus?  Where is Smyrna?  Where is Sardis?  Where is Laodicea?  Let me tell you.  They are all in that country we now know as Turkey.  It has a population of 60 million people.  And they are Muslim.  Completely closed to the Gospel.  The Church in Turkey is very small and finds it very hard.  Ephesus is now a pile of ruins.  There is no church for many miles from where the strong Ephesian church once stood.  And that is a frightening thought.  The lampstand has been removed.

That has been a pattern in the history of the Church.  The light goes forward all the time.  But so often, the lampstand is moved from one place to another.  That brings us to ask about where we will be in another forty years if the Lord does not return?  More importantly, where will our children be?  Where will our grand-children be?  And boys and girls, where will your children be?  And your grand-children?  And that shows us the urgency we have, today, to listen to what the Spirit of Christ says to the Churches.  The errors which He addresses in these seven letters, are errors which can lead to destruction.

The letter we look at today is addressed first to the Ephesian church.  Ephesus was an important city in Asia Minor.  Paul first visited there on his second mission journey, and spent another three years there on his third mission journey.  Paul wrote the letter to the Ephesians to them.

For some time, Timothy was the pastor in that church.  And if tradition is right, the apostle John also lived in that church for quite some time.  When he was exiled to Patmos, he was exiled from Ephesus.  After the exile finished, he returned to Ephesus, and we think that he may have died there.  So John himself appears to have been a member of this church.  So, when Jesus wrote this letter to the Ephesian church, the church had been established for over forty years, very similar to us.

Forty years has always been a crucial time in the history of a church, because this is the time it takes from one generation to leave and another to step into its place.  What was happening in Ephesus is that there was now a new generation coming up and the children did not have the same enthusiasm for their faith as their parents did.  As we will see, they carried on the church to the best of their ability, but much of the original purpose, the original zeal, the original enthusiasm and love had disappeared.

There is a story about the apostle John.  You know that he lived to be a very old man, and in the later part of his life, he was too feeble to walk any more and he would be carried into church at Ephesus.  And, the story goes, as he was carried in, the apostle John would admonish the members of the church, saying, “Little children, love one another.”  And if we read his epistles, this is the recurring message.  Little children, love one another.  As we look at this letter to the Ephesian church, there are 3 things the Lord says to them.

1.  He Praises Them

This church had had some tremendous pastors: Paul, Timothy, John.  What a blessing to have such leaders.  And Christ also, who walks among the lampstands, knows this church.  And He praises her.

First of all, they were hard workers.  They were not a lazy church.  No, they wearied themselves in the work of the Lord.  Maybe they remembered and followed the example of Paul who worked among them day and night.

Second, they didn’t give up easily.  The Lord says, “I know your perseverance.” Everyone who works hard for the Lord knows it’s not always rewarding in this world.  Efforts are not appreciated, nor crowned with success.  Then there is also the opposition which one meets when seeking to advance the cause of Christ.  Discouragement, and disillusionment can easily set in.  Remember Elijah who fled south from Queen Jezebel and became discouraged?  Every hard worker in the kingdom can feel like that at times.  But the Ephesians were tough – they weren’t ready to quit.

Thirdly, they are praised for their purity – purity, both of doctrine and life.  First of all, they cannot tolerate wicked men.  And that refers to people who said that they were Christians, but didn’t walk in a Christian way of life.  The Ephesians were very strong on this point.  We see that also in verse 6, when they were praised for hating the practices of the Nicolaitans, who also, in all probability, stressed the freedom of Christians from obedience to the law of God.  But, very commendably, the Ephesians didn’t tolerate this.  They did not tolerate wicked ways of life within the church, and expelled those who claimed to be Christians, but showed in their lives that they were not.  And so firstly, they were praised for their purity of life.

Then they were also praised for their purity of doctrine.  They tested those who claimed to be apostles but were not.  When they tested them, they found them to be false, and also with them, they exercised church discipline.  They didn’t allow the doctrine handed down to them by the apostles to be watered down at all.  Paul had warned them to be on guard against savage wolves who would attack the flock.  And they were on guard, and expelled them from the church.

And when we look at this church, we say, what a solid and faithful church.  It is never easy to be faithful in keeping the truth, and exercising discipline.  But the Ephesians persevered in both.  They stuck to it.  And the Lord, before anything else – He praises them for this.  Yes, would to God that today there would be a lot more churches like that – who work hard, who don’t give up, and who defend the church of the Lord in its doctrine and life.  And before we go on, we should also look at ourselves in the light of this praise.  Are we also a people who work hard in the Lord’s service, who weary ourselves in the Lord’s work?  Would we earn the Lord’s praise for that?  Would you?

Then also, are we a people who persevere?  Yes, we all know how discouraging work in the Church can sometimes be.  Sometimes we, too, might feel like giving it up.  But would the Lord also commend us for our willingness to stick with it, when the going gets tough?  Or might we too easily say, “Well, if that’s the reaction I get for all I do, I’ll just leave it to someone else.”  Would the Lord praise us for our determination to serve Him, and Him alone, without our eyes on the praise of men?  And then, would the Lord praise us as a church, for our dogged determination to uphold the truth of His Word above everything else, not tolerating wickedness within the church, and not tolerating false doctrine?  Sometimes it is said, we are too concerned about doctrine.  But here in Revelation 2 we see this concern for doctrine earns the Lord’s praise.  Can there be anything wrong in a church like this?  Yes, there can.  From praise, the Lord moves to rebuke.

2.  He Rebukes Them

Despite all your faithfulness in so many ways, yet I hold this against you, says the Lord.  You have forsaken your first love.  Remember the height from which you have fallen.  Repent and do the things you did at first.

The Lord speaks here of their first love.  Most likely, this refers to the love they first had in the beginning of their existence as church, when they had just recently been converted.  When the message of the Gospel first penetrated their hearts, what love they had had at that time.  When the darkness went out, the light came in, and their hearts were filled abroad with the peace and joy and love of God.

We are not told whether the love they lost was love for God, or for one another, but it seems that it was both.  Lack of love for one another stems deep down from a lack of love towards God?  And on the other hand, where the love for God is strong, so also is the love for one another, for as the apostle John says, “Anyone who claims to love God, but hates his brother, is a liar.”  Both love for God, and love for one another was becoming less.  Love was no longer the force behind them motivating them in all that they did.

Remember the words of Paul in 2Corinthians 5.14.  “For Christ’s love compels us…!” The motivating force in Paul’s life, when he wrote these words, was love.  Love for the Lord, love for fellow believers, love for the lost, love for the truth.

We can have that.  But we can lose it.  Love can be replaced by something else: pride, ambition, blind zeal.  Maybe without realising it, the believers in Ephesus were shifting away from their former position of love.

Isn’t this a sobering thought, to realise that we can lose the church, and her effective witness in the world, not because of a lack of activity and hard work on the part of the members and the leaders, and not because of our lack of keeping the church order and creeds and confessions, but by failing to be governed by love in all that we do?  There is no substitute for that.  It’s no use saying, “But I am active in the life of the church; I’m a Cadet or Calvinette leader, a Sunday school teacher, an elder, a minister or whatever.”  If we are not being governed by love in all that we do, then it seems, from the Lord’s words to the Ephesians, that all the other good things we do will only carry us so far, and only for so long.

A lack of love in the church is very, very serious.  True love is the heart of true religion.  True love is the only proper response to Him who first loved us.  True love is the heart of the Law.  True love is the first ‘Fruit of the Spirit’.  If we have all the spiritual gifts, and have faith that can move mountains, and we give all that we have to the poor, and surrender our bodies to the flames, and yet, have not love, it all means nothing.  And it remains for us today to examine our hearts in this respect.  Why are we here?  Why do we serve?  Why are we so busy?  If we are not busy, why are we not busy?  Down at the bottom of it all, is the driving and motivating force which drives us along, the love which the Holy Spirit has poured into our hearts through our knowledge of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ?

And that is why I said earlier that this is such a tremendously important message.  It drives at the very heart of being church.  And if love is not the driving force, in a very short time, we will be church no more.  For the Lord will remove the lampstand.  May we all, today, hear what the Spirit says to the Churches, and may He apply it to our hearts, and drive us again to a renewal of our loving commitment unto Him.

So, the Lord praises them, He also rebukes them.  Then thirdly:

3.  He Calls Them to Repent and Return

We don’t know what happened in the Ephesian church, which made them lose the love they had at first.  That is not important.  There are, however, two things which are of importance, and we consider them now.

            a.  Lovelessness is a great sin and calls for repentance.

We think of the message of 1Corinthians 13: If I have all these things, and yet have not love, I have nothing.  Love is the greatest commandment.  Lack of love is the most serious sin.  You see, love does not deal with surface issues, but it goes right down, to the attitudes, which we have towards God and one another.

So often, there are conflicts in the church, between members, husbands and wives, parents and children.  So often they are hard to resolve.  Why is that?  At the heart of it, is there a lack of love?  Not just a nice warm feeling, but is there a true commitment to each other’s spiritual and physical well-being?  When we look at a brother, how do we see him?  As a fool?  As someone I argued with and lost twenty years ago?  As a selfish person?  As someone I can’t stand?  As totally unlovable?

If that is the way we look, we have not understood the Gospel.  Christ loved us when we were totally unlovable.  He knows us as we are, with our pride, and our selfishness, and our sinfulness.  And yet He gave Himself for us, to purify us and to claim us as His own.

And now He says: As I have loved you, so also ought you to love one another.  We ought to see our brother in the light of the Gospel.  And that doesn’t mean to say we will never confront our brother with his sin.  Oh yes, the Lord loves us, and He confronts us.

No.  Love is not first of all what we do, but how we do it.  And we are called to love our neighbour and our enemy.  And above all, to love God with all our heart.  There is no excuse for lack of love.  It is lack of love which lies at the root of the problems we may have.  And because the Lord sees lack of love as such a serious sin, this lack of love needs to be confessed before Him and turned away from.  Not only does He say repent, but also:

            b.  Remember the height from which you have fallen.  Do the things you did at first.

All this really means is that we need to go back to the beginning every time again.  John also says this in 1John 4:19.  We love, because He first loved us.  In other words, it is only as we remind ourselves again and again, that it is all of God’s love and mercy that we are what we are; and that, apart from His undeserved favour, I am nothing, and have nothing, and deserve nothing.  He first loved us, not because we were so lovable or loving Him.  No, just the opposite!  He did not come into the world to condemn us, although that is what we all deserve – He came to save us by the sacrifice of Himself.

And we will only keep that flame of love burning bright, and strong, and enthusiastically, when we stay near His cross and keep that in the centre.  We will only be able to love the unlovely when we remember that He loved us without conditions, even while we were yet sinners.

CONCLUSION

And brothers and sisters, as we evaluate ourselves, there is no more important place to begin than here, at the foot of the cross.  The understanding of what the cross means to us is the heart of our faith.

The Ephesian church had everything in the right place.  But it had lost the heart, it had lost the gripping message and power of the cross.  When you lose sight of the Cross, you lose love.  And that is why the Lord also says, if you do not repent from this one sin of lovelessness, I will come and remove the lampstand from its place.  For a church without love is a church without the cross – a church without Christ.

And today, may we also have ears to hear what the Spirit says to the churches.  And by His grace, if need be, may we repent of our lovelessness; whether it be failure to love our neighbour, or our brother, or our sister, or our enemy, or the Lord Himself.  Let us come each day and drink deeply from the well of His grace for undeserving sinners, and there, at the cross, we will find the waters of life and love, to keep the lamp burning brightly.

To Him who overcomes, says the Lord, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.

Amen.