Getting Back to Basics: The Love We Had at First — Robert Wurtz II

We're continuing our study, of course, this morning in the subject that I have titled Getting Back to Basics. We are moving into chapter 8. Last week we talked about becoming fishers of men and that God expects us to begin to walk a path where we begin to win souls and evangelize and do his work in the earth.

And we talked about that last week. And this week we're going to look at a new subject that I hope that we can just cover this week and possibly we will extend on beyond this next week. But I've entitled this particular chapter The Love That We Had at First.

Returning to Our First Love

The Love That We Had at First. I remember some years ago God had given me a series that was titled Ten Keys to Total Victory. I had sit out for about a year from teaching. God was doing a work in my life.

And at the end of those twelve or so months, maybe eleven months it might have been, God gave me that series in which he started to show me through that series that God can give us the victory over sin.

And one of the points in there, and I'm going to switch to the mobile there, one of the points there is that we need to get back to the love that we had at first for God. How many of you remember when you first turned to the Lord and the great zeal and the love that you had for him?

And the way that you walked with God and the desire that you had to be in the Word of God. The desire that you had to read the Word and to even tell others about Jesus. And you thought about the Lord all the time and you talked about the Lord all the time and he was always on your mind.

You didn't miss a prayer meeting. You didn't miss a service. You were eat, sleeping and breathing God. And a lot of people probably thought that you had taken things just a little bit too far. Some people probably thought you had taken things a little bit too far.

But when we have that first love as it were experience in God, God does a work in us. And I would dare say that there is more growth that takes place in those months, hopefully years, of our Christian walk than probably does from there on after we move out of that initial experience.

We grow very much during that time because of our great desire to have and to know all of these things that God would have us to know. So I want to look this morning at getting back to the love that we had at first for God.

Love as the Foundation of Christian Life

Follow with me if you'd like in your notes or you can just listen. These are just my hand notes that I give out. The reason for everything. Okay? The reason for everything. Christianity in its purest form boils down to just two requirements.

That we love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength and our neighbor as ourselves. Upon these two commandments hang all of the Word of God. How many of you know that? All of the Word of God boils down to those two things.

Those are the two issues that it really boils down to. Without these two basic elements in our Christian life, no matter how much we give to God or no matter how much we do for God, it is all in vain.

It's all in vain. It is all in vain if we do not have the love of God. 1 John 4 16 reads,. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him.

This love that we know and believe then begins, watch this, to have a profound effect on us. Verse 11 states, Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. You see, this thing becomes progressive and it begins to spread.

When we recognize the love that God has for us, it begins to spread. When we deeply consider the genuine sacrificial love that God poured upon us while we were yet sinners, the natural outworking of that love is that we love one another.

How many of you, well, you don't have to raise your hand, but many of us saw The Passion, amen? And it had a very profound effect on me the first time I've seen it. And then the second time I've seen it, it had a more profound effect.

But the third time I saw that movie, I'll tell you what it did to me. It didn't bring a tear to my eye. I got up out of the movie theater and I said it would be a travesty for me to not win the loss and to do what God has called me to do after the suffering that he suffered for my sins.

It would be an absolute travesty to step on the love that he showed for us when he died on the cross, and it turned my life around in that regard. When we deeply consider the deep, genuine, sacrificial love that God poured upon us while we were yet sinners, the natural outworking of that love is that we love one another.

With the revelation of God's compassion for us to be revealed and it is allowed, when we allow it to sink down and touch every fiber of our being, Scripture tells us that it would be impossible to shut up the bowels of our compassion when we see others in need.

The Bible said if you see them in need, how dwelleth the love of God in you. It is a contradiction, Church, when we can see someone in need and shut our bowels of compassion up and still proclaim that the love of God dwells in us.

The Bible says how could this be? Moreover, it is the greatest evidence of all that we are truly saved, that our great love for God is translated to also include one another. As it is written, a new commandment I give unto you, Jesus talking, that you love one another as I have loved you, that you also love one another.

By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one to another. See, there are a lot of things that we use as an indicator to determine whether or not somebody is really legit, but the question is, do you have love one to another?

This is how Jesus said all men will know that you are my disciples, because listen, it's so unique to see people love one another. The world doesn't see that. When you genuinely love one another, when you open up and you begin to share with people and you give to people, that is so rare that if we would just do that, the world would say, that's Jesus, that's Christ.

I've never seen such a thing as this, when we love one another as God intended. The one who searches the minds and the hearts will give to everyone according to their works, and those works must have been motivated by love.

They have to be motivated by love, church. They have to be motivated by love. We're going to bear that out. To whom much is forgiven, to whom much is forgiven. There was a time in Jesus' ministry that a woman came and washed his feet with her tears and wiped them off with the very hairs of her head.

Jesus said the woman did not cease from kissing his feet. Have you ever seen such a thing, church? Have you ever seen that? Can I share something with you? Last night, we were in the nursing home, that beautiful Savior, and I remember this woman.

I walked up, and I'll never forget it in the years that we've been in this nursing home ministry. I'll never forget this woman. She extended her hand out to me like this, and she had such a skinny little hand that you could tell that she probably was only weeks probably from death.

There wasn't much left of her, and she extended her hand out because she wanted to be touched. She wanted somebody to touch her. She wanted somebody to touch her, and I can still remember seeing the little ligaments in her hand moving under the skin as she just extended that hand out to me to touch her.

There was another person. This happens all the time. They will just take you by the hand, church, and they'll just start kissing your hand. They'll just kiss your hand. Let me tell you something. They've come to a place where they appreciate and say it is good and blessed are the feet of them that bring the gospel.

They are so humbled in their condition that when they see you, they just want to kiss your hand. You know, church, I believe that's what this woman was doing that came to Jesus. The Pharisee who resented this showed no such affection for Jesus, and herein lies the great lesson about our love for Christ.

Jesus answered this Pharisee, and he said, Wherefore I say unto you, her sins which are many are forgiven, for she loved much, but to whom little is forgiven the same loveth little. You know that? You know what?

We've all sinned. I knew I probably wouldn't get much of the name in there. We've all sinned, church. We've all sinned. The Pharisee showed by his actions that in his own view, his sin was about $50 worth compared to this woman's $500.

In his view, in his view, not God's view, church, it only takes about one cent of sin to keep us out of heaven in case you didn't know it. The greatest sin that this man demonstrated was pride and arrogance, and God hates that.

It's number one on his list of seven things. He hates pride, church. You know what pride is? Webster defines it as excessive self-esteem. We live in a world that teaches self-esteem on every hand. Teach our kids, feel good about yourself no matter how you live.

Want to know how to feel good about yourself? Live with a clear conscience before the Lord. You'll feel all the good, and you'll be humble before God. You'll be humble. You know, humility does something for you.

You can go around the world, and I'm told that people have, they feel much better about themselves everywhere in the world but in America. And we teach self-esteem so much. Why is that? I believe because their hearts are so much humble, more humble before God.

They're humble. They're humble. They appreciate what they have. They're thankful. When we get so proud as this Pharisee was, his pride and arrogance stripped the man of any real and meaningful love for God.

You hear what I said? His pride and arrogance stripped him of any real meaningful love for God. He should have known that one sin of sin was enough to damn his soul, and that he ought to be thankful. Because he perceived his sin so little, and the woman knew her sin was so great, we learn a great lesson about the human condition.

See, it wasn't that her sin necessarily was so much greater than his. It was that she was so much more conscious of her sin than he was. She was so much more conscious of her sin than he was. When we cease to appreciate the love that God showed us by sending His Son to die upon the cross for our sins, we neither kiss the Lord's feet as it were with our love, and nor do we welcome others to do likewise.

We don't welcome anyone. As a matter of fact, what's she doing over there? I'm trying to talk to him. Hello? There she is over there kissing his feet, crying all over him. I'm trying to talk to this man.

See, he didn't recognize his sin like she did. And it had a profound effect on the way she viewed Christ as opposed to the way he did. He showed almost no love for Christ or his neighbor in this passage.

And it began when he would not recognize his own great need for forgiveness. He did not stop to consider, listen, he did not stop to consider himself. You know, Galatians 6 and 1 tells us that the spiritual will consider themselves.

Notice I didn't say the sinners. The spiritual consider themselves, lest they're also tempted. That's what allows them to be able to restore people when they fall. They consider themselves. It doesn't mean that you necessarily fell and you can relate to them, even while I fell this week, so you know what brother, birds of a feather flock together, so I'll lift you up because you can lift me up.

No. Listen, you can walk in victory and still consider yourself and lift them up. That's what God wants us to do. That's what he wants. He did not take time to name his sins one by one. He conveniently cast his thankfulness as far as the east is from the west, where God likewise had cast his sins.

That's what we do, church. We don't even take time to reflect on what we did. And therefore, we're not thankful for what God did. Therefore, we do not love as we should. You see the progression? When we just have this hurry up, drive through mentality, I'm going to drive through and get my sins forgiven, you don't even stop to consider the magnitude and the enormity of your sin.

Therefore, you're not thankful. Therefore, you do not love. This woman, hear me church, you have to get this. This will change your life if you get this point. This woman, this woman considered her sins and she realized how great it was for her to be forgiven and she loved much.

She loved much. How can a person truly love when they never consider their self? They don't consider their own sins. I buried it under the blood. Yeah, you did. But you're still a sinner. Oh, you're forgiven.

You're not perfect. You're not perfect. Let me tell you something, church. If we get this fact, you'll get to have victory in your life. Because God resists the proud. He gives grace to the humble. When you look at your sin and you see them for what they are and you say, woe is me, even as the prophet Isaiah, for I am undone.

I am a man of unclean lips. This is the prophet of God who foretold the coming of Jesus Christ. He said, I am a man of unclean lips. And in that humility, God pours the grace on him to be able to live right.

God will resist you if you're proud. He'll resist you. He'll push you away. His arrogance expected God to forgive him as expected him. Listen, he expected God to forgive him. You know what? When you act like that, you're not thankful.

Oh, God owed it to me. He died on the cross. He owes me forgiveness. That ain't even the right spirit, church. He's going to forgive you, yeah, but why can't we just stop and be thankful? Can't we just stop and be thankful long enough that we would love?

The Church at Ephesus and Its Teaching on Love

That we'd love the Lord? So that if we would just love the Lord, we could then love our neighbor, love people in need, and be moved with compassion to touch the lost. The church at Ephesus, page 2. The church at Ephesus had the greatest teaching available in the New Testament, and especially on the subject of love.

Both Paul the Apostle and John the Revelator worked diligently with this church. Paul in the book of Ephesians writes that we should be holy and without blame before him in love. And commends the church for their love for the saints in verse 15 of chapter 1.

In chapter 2, verse 4, he reminds the people of the great love wherewith God loved us when he quickened us together with Christ while we were dead in sins. In chapter 3, verse 17, Paul tells us that we should be rooted and grounded in love.

And in verse 19, we read these words, and to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge that you might be filled with all the fullness of God. In chapter 4, verse 2, we are admonished to bear with one another in love and to speak the truth in love until the body is built up and edified, verse 16.

He says a lot about love, don't he, church? Constantly telling them about love. Perhaps chapter 5, verse 1 and 2 are the most telling. Be ye therefore followers of God as dear children and walk in love as Christ also hath loved us and hath given himself to us for an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savor.

Three times Paul tells the husbands to love their wives as themselves even as Christ also loved the church and he gave himself for it. And then finally, Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, made two final pleas in the book of Ephesians concerning love, closing with this.

Peace be to the brethren and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be with all of them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. Amen. In sincerity. Sincere love, church.

Not loving in word and in tongue, but in deed and in truth. You know, talk is cheap, isn't it? Huh? It ain't talk cheap. You know, we can all say, I love you, but wouldn't it be great if we just showed love?

I prefer, I don't know about you, but I prefer somebody show me love as to tell me they love me. I might be a weirdo, but I prefer you show me love and never tell me, to tell me and never show me. This talk is cheap.

I know a lot of marriages where the husband and wife told each other they loved each other and kissed them every day and ended in divorce. But I've seen some that maybe they told them right when it was the right time.

Honey, I love you. And they're still together today. They didn't make a pretense. It was sincere. It was from the heart. It can be noted. Church. The first Corinthians was written by Paul from Ephesus, which contains the great love chapter, first Corinthians 13.

John the Revelator. If you've ever read any of his writings, that seems to be all he talks about is love. Love, love. Everywhere you look, it's love with John the Revelator. He spent much time at Ephesus, and it's believed to have written the gospel of John from there.

From Ephesus, he penned these words. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him, you know the passage, would not perish but have everlasting life. Ephesus was a city inundated with teachings of love, both in word and in example.

I say, man, they had a lot of love being taught. Kind of like our church. We've got Brother and Sister Birch, who for the last 20-odd years or more have done nothing but show love, nothing but taught love.

How the Church of Ephesus Departed from Its First Love

The question is, have we caught it and emulated it? Because the church at Ephesus Church did not do that. We're going to follow it. The departure. The departure. John the Revelator, writing from the Isle of Patmos, saw visions of the great and mighty majesty and glory of God.

I've often wondered many times, why is it that new converts always seem to head to the book of Revelation? I used to almost be like, why is that? Why is that? Why is it that they would head to the book of Revelation?

You know why that is, church? You know, you might read a lot of things and you might scratch your head. But you're going to walk out of the book of Revelation with two things. You're going to have a vision of the majesty and glory of God.

And you're going to have another thing, and that's the fear of God. And if you get those two stones in place, God can work with you from there. Oh, you may scratch your head at all the typologies and symbologies in the book.

You may not know one thing that's being said, but you'll go out of there saying something like this. I guarantee you one thing, he's God. Hmm? Whoever heard of such stuff, he's God. John the Revelator wrote the book of Revelation.

As one of the first orders of business, Christ gives a report of the condition of the seven churches at Asia. He begins with Ephesus. The living Bible captures the great essence of what is happening. Here Jesus says, I know how many good things you are doing.

I have watched your hard work and your patience. I know you don't tolerate sin among your members. And you have carefully examined the claims of those who say they are apostles but are not. You have found them to be liars.

You have patiently suffered for me without quitting, yet there is one thing wrong. You don't love me as you did at first. Think about those times of your first love, how different things are now. And turn back to me again and work as you did before.

Or else I will come and remove your candlestick from its place among the churches. Why would that happen? Why would that happen, church? It would happen for this reason. Without love, we are not qualified to minister before the Lord.

Without love, we are not even qualified to minister before the Lord. We have to have love. We have to have love. What horror John must have felt. He had taught at Ephesus. He had written the book of John from Ephesus.

Here was Paul, the great apostle, writing from Ephesus, 1 Corinthians 13. Sending letters back to them, repeatedly telling them to love, and here he arrives. And he said, John, they've left their first love.

They've left the love they had at first for me. Where you don't find the love for God like you had at first, you will not find love for one another either. Hello? You won't find it. You won't find it, church.

This was no different than the Pharisees. There was a lot of business going on. They seemed to be doing everything right, but their motivation was all wrong. They had become a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal, and all of these things profited them nothing.

Their hearts were hardened, church. We're going to get to that in a minute. Praise the Lord. There was a lot of business, but there was no real fruit. They hated sin, but they did not balance it with the love of Christ or love for Christ.

They were no different from the Pharisees that Jesus chastised in the years that He walked the earth. They had abandoned their love for Christ that should have been chief and foremost. The Greek word is protos.

And if there is no real love for Christ, we need not look for love for the saints or vice versa. Listen, church. In an atmosphere where there is no revival and people do not live holy, there is no love.

And there is an extreme atmosphere of distrust among each other. And it erupts into all sorts of kinds of schisms and fighting and everything. That is why it is so important to grab hold of this atmosphere of revival that we're in today.

Because if you have lost faces, you can regain it in that humility at the altar, and trust can be restored. Hear me tonight, this morning. Trust can be restored. When people see brokenness, church, it changes their mind about you, no matter what you've done.

I don't care what you've done. Brokenness causes people to want to love you once again when they see Christ in you. There's a lot of business, but no real fruit. They hated sin, they didn't balance it with love.

They had abandoned their love for Christ that should have been chief. If there's no love for Christ, we need not look for it among the saints. After all that teaching on love, and all the example of what love was, they forsook the great love that they once had for Christ.

And I dare say, when you forsake that love, your spiritual growth comes almost to a stop. What is there to drive your zeal? I remember Phineas Dake. How much time do I have? I need to move. I remember Phineas Dake.

In his book, he said he went, an angel, he's just telling this story. I think it's hypothetical, just by analogy. Went to this pastor, this angel, and said, Pastor, give me your zeal. Said, what? Give me your zeal.

He reached in the man and pulled out his zeal. Took the zeal out, put it on a Bunsen burner. I don't even know what those are. Until it started separating into various strata. Then he started breaking it down by percentage.

Starts at the top. Well, I don't remember how it broke down. Went something like this. 25%. Pride for the organization. 15%. Wanted to be seen by the congregational members. 10%. Strife and envy. 20%.

Hello? Got down to the bottom. About 10 love for the Lord. They naturally, in an atmosphere such as this, would have hated sin without having the heart of God to love lost souls. They would have been moved by contention, strife, fear, envy, resentment, jealousy, guilt, bang, glory, everything, but the love of Christ to do His work.

They would have condemned the guilty without considering their own sins, perchance they had so forgotten their sins, that they may have thanked God, listen, that they were not like the sinners like the wretched publicans as did the Pharisee did, and prayed with himself.

That's how you get. Pretty soon you get so puffed up, you don't even have the love of Christ, you start thanking God you're not like this poor wretched sinner. You didn't even realize it wasn't for the hand of God, there you went.

Amen? There you'd have went. There you'd have went. With them, yes, the gospel is preached, and we can rejoice, but for the workers, from their point of view, it is all in vain, because their motivation was not compassion.

It was not unmerited love. The fire, in the end, Scripture says, will try every man's work of what sort it is. And if it is birthed from a heart of great love, that work will not fail the test. Why? Because love never fails.

It never fails, church. Love never fails. When is there ever a time when showing love would be inappropriate? There are not many. Not many. To everything there's a purpose, I understand. They condemned sinners, and argued theology real good.

They were real good at it. The book of Ephesians is the most powerful theological book, in my opinion, in all of Scripture, other than possibly the book of Hebrews. It talks about more doctrinal issues in the first chapter than we could discuss in five years teaching, probably.

Retracing the Steps That Led Away from Love

But they didn't have compassion. They had left their first love. Retracing your footsteps, and we've got to get cruising here, I've got ten minutes. The church at Ephesus, like so many Christians, once had a great love for Christ, but they lost it little by little.

The physics law of the conservation, preservation, the conservation of matter, guarantees that the love didn't just disappear. It was redistributed somewhere else. See, things don't just disappear. They might change form, but they don't disappear.

This is a travesty in the body of Christ. The blood-bought saints of the living God begin to take the love, listen, that once belonged to God, and they give it to someone or something else. This is the true definition of harlotry.

To take the love that belongs to one and give it to another. You know what? We distribute a lot of God's love and affection in a lot of bad places. You know, the Bible said, love not the world and the things of this world.

You know that word love there is the Greek word agape? You know why it's that? Because you can't just be a filet-o of the world. You drop the world like a bad habit. Mistreats you too much. You got to love the world unconditionally.

After it beats you up and leaves you for dead, you got to keep loving it. You got to exercise unconditional love for the world. If it would have been filet-o, you'd have left long ago. How does this happen?

It is simple. Jesus has said that if you love me, keep my commandments. In verse 16, Jesus said that the Comforter would come. In verse 17, He said, He, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, is one that sinners cannot receive because it does not see Him or know Him.

Why? Listen. Because they do not have a heart to keep the commandments of Christ. Say, where did my love for God go? Let me help you because I'm not going to get through this lesson. What happens is, God wants us to do something and we quench the Spirit.

And when that happens, we create a hard spot in our heart. And the more we do that, the harder the heart gets. And pretty soon, church, we are so hardened that we cannot love. We don't have a love for God like we should.

We don't have a desire to win the loss like we should. Trace your footsteps back. Think of every time God told you, I want you to do this. And you said, nope. Quench, quench, quench, quench. Quench the Spirit.

You're just hardening your heart. Pretty soon, you know what? You don't even have love for anyone. You don't even have love for Christ anymore. You start coming to church out of ritual. It all began when you started quenching the Holy Spirit.

So we see then that the Holy Spirit is sent to steer us and empower us to keep the commandments of Christ and in so doing, bring forth the fruit of the Spirit which above all things is love. What happens?

The saints begin to quench the Spirit and they disobey the commandments, sins of omission, he that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, and sins of commission. The more the Spirit of God is hardened or quenched, rather, the harder the soil gets, the harder the heart gets, the harder the heart gets, the less impact the Word has when it's sung.

You know what? My front yard is horrible. Have you been by there? It's a mud hole. It is a mud hole right now. But you know what's really nuts? Over the last 10 years that I've lived there, I have sown anywhere from 30 to 50 pounds of grass seed in a space that you know probably isn't much more than this.

And it's absolutely mud. You know why that is? I talked to somebody who did grass just last week. They said, you know what? You need to stir the dirt up, brother. You need to get the fallow ground stirred up.

You need to get the fallow ground stirred up on your yard. You need to get it broken up real good and fine, then just take this machine over that's full of seed, and then it just kind of pokes the seeds down, about an inch down in the dirt, by the thousands and thousands.

Throw some hay over it, water it, and come back in a few weeks, you'll have a real nice green yard. I thought, wow, that's kind of contrary to what I've been doing. I just get the big old spreader out, I'll be honest with you, put about five pounds of seed in there, I'm just out there, didn't till up the yard, did nothing.

I'm just out there, this ought to work, so you can see seed literally just laying on the dirt. Amen. I thought, this is how you're supposed to sow it. I didn't know any different. I literally did not know any different.

Sometimes I might rake the grass a little bit, but you know what's worse than that, church? I've been teaching Sunday school like that for 10 years, without teaching the people to cultivate their hearts, and consider their sins, and stir up the fallow ground.

I've come in here every morning, on Sunday with my spreader, and I've just spread, I've laid it down so thick, brother, a lot of times thinking, well, I'm really doing God a service, but you know what the problem was?

The people's hearts were not ready to receive the seed of that word, and it wasn't because we didn't have worship before the service. It's because we don't stir up the fallow ground of our heart in this way.

We never allow God to bring us to a place of brokenness. Will we stop Galatians 6 and 1, and so consider ourselves. We begin to enlist all the sins that we did that got our heart hard in the first place, and we begin to repent, and we say, God, I don't want to do that anymore, and we begin to see ourselves the way we really are.

We don't do that. And our heart is as flat and hard as can be. We sow the seed on top. The rain washes it away. Oh, some of the seed goes down a little, but when a hard rain comes, just come by my house and look at the grass.

Years of sowing seed without stirring up the fallow ground. Years of it. I don't have time to get in the bottom section. I'll just tell you what I've done. Can I just give you my testimony? Oh, Brother Tony, don't mind.

Personal Repentance and the Work of Brokenness

The turn of last year, God begins stirring my heart. We're staring down the barrel of 2004. That's what I felt. It wasn't long after that I received a call from Brother Tony. When I looked into that man's eyes, I saw a brokenness I have never seen in a human being in my life.

It so stirred and moved me that I will never be the same. I'll never be the same. I will never be the same, church. I took a book that he had, told me go home and read this. God began doing the work, and I began doing a tremendous amount of soul-searching.

And the more soul-searching that I did, the more things I looked and seen just how messed up I was. How many things I just prayed, Lord, cover it in the blood, and he's saying, no, I want you to turn that thing over.

I want you to repent. I want you to consider this, because I've got to plant a seed there, so you'll bring forth fruit in that area again. Oh, God, can't it just say forgive me and get up and act like nothing even happened?

You see, church, I did that for 10 years. I never was humble before God. I got so proud and arrogant that God had to take the class from me in 1999. Just arrogant as can be. Who's going to teach this class?

Who's going to teach this? Let me tell you something, church. My life will never be the same from that day I sat across from him at Burger King. I saw a brokenness. I saw tears. I saw somebody trembling at the thought of their sins.

And I thought, he ain't that much more of a sinner than me. Where are my tears? Where are my tears from my sins? Where are my tears? Why do I see the women like Sister Sue and Sister Dorothy come up here every time communion service comes and cry and cry and cry?