Revelation 2:4-5 (Lost First Love)

Hello, everyone. Welcome to a special edition of the Shepherd's Church podcast. Normally, this is our Saturday morning sermons that are coming to you from our podcast. But this week, we decided to meet online because of growing coronavirus cases in our part of the country.

And I decided to upload our online service sermon, which is a shorter devotional sermon, to our podcast. So with that, here is the sermon, Lost First Love. I want to thank everyone who's here with us this morning for a very modified gathering.

I hope that you have all had a good week and you've been blessed. And I wanted to share with you this morning from the book of Revelation specifically about a church that's been on my heart, been on my mind for a little while.

The Church of Ephesus and Christ's Message in Revelation

And that is the church of Ephesus. John begins the book of Revelation with Jesus's personal message to seven local churches that existed in Asia Minor. And Ephesus was probably the greatest. If you looked at all of the external features of this church, you would conclude that this is a healthy and a vibrant and a growing solid biblical church.

But as we'll see under the surface, this church was actually experiencing deep sickness that would have dire consequences if it was not addressed soon with decisive action. Here's what the text says to the angel of the church in Ephesus.

Right. The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand. That's Jesus who walks among the seven golden lampstands. That, too, is Jesus. I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance and how you cannot bear with one of those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not and found them to be false.

I know you are enduring patiently and you're bearing up for my namesake 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 that you did at first.

If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent. And then Jesus concludes the message this way. He who has ears to hear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches.

Let's pray. Jesus, I pray. This message that you gave 2000 years ago to your church in Ephesus would also ring clear in our ears and in our hearts today. Lord, let us have ears to hear the truth. Let us have ears to hear, hearts to love, minds to grapple with the truth that you are communicating.

And Lord, let this message, let this passage call us back to joy, to happiness in Christ and to the love that we had when we first believed. And Lord, it's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen. Now, again, on the surface, everything was fine in this church, it seemed.

They had good works that they were doing in the community writ large. They were demonstrating patience in the fiery sort of trials that they were facing at this point in time. There was huge amounts of persecution in the first century by Nero and by others.

They were the model of biblical endurance. They were trusting the Lord, even though they were living through some of the most uncertain times in human history. And in the midst of all of that, in the midst of uncertain times, political instability, persecution, even murder, Christians were being murdered at this point.

Even through all of that, they were standing up against false doctrine that was coming from a variety of different fronts. They were a church that loved truth and they did not tolerate error. They cared about doctrine and they taught it to their people.

They were faithful in the preaching and the teaching of God's word. And they would be a model church to many churches today who are watering down the gospel and who are abandoning Christ. It seems by all accounts that this was a wonderful, faithful, healthy church.

They had great community and great fellowship. They had a love for one another and they were a model to the rest of the entire region. Out of all the seven churches that are addressed in Revelation chapter two through three, Ephesus was the only one that had a New Testament letter written to it specifically by Paul, which meant that this church was a notable church.

It was an apostolic church and it was a well-known church in the region and in all of Christendom in the first century. This church was a model for Christian orthodoxy back then and in every way imaginable, it can be a model for Christian orthodoxy today.

Losing First Love for Christ

Every way except one. Because Jesus in this passage says that he has one thing against them and it is perhaps the most important thing of them all. See, they had everything right, but they had one thing very wrong and that was that they had no heart.

They had forgotten their first love. And now you may be asking, who was their first love? Well, that of course is Jesus Christ. He's the reason that they are Christian. He is the reason that they gather.

Even though Paul the apostle was the one who planted the church in one of his missionary journeys, everyone knew that it was Christ who founded and established this church. He was the one that they used to sing their hearts out to.

He's the one that they gave all of themselves to. He's the one who they thought about with every thought that they had. He's the one that they were eagerly awaiting for him to return. He's the one they were joyfully serving while they waited.

But after a few years now, since that church had been planted, things now seemed a little bit different. What do I mean? Well, what I don't mean is that they had forgotten Christ. They were still worshiping Jesus.

They were still gathered to praise him. They were still praying to him. They were still revering him. They were not worshiping false gods or another Lord. They hadn't bowed their knee to Caesar. They were still giving, at least on the surface, lip service to Jesus.

But what happened to them is often what happens to many of us. We begin with zeal and affection for Jesus. When we first come to know Christ as Savior and Lord, we're on fire because of his love and because of who he is.

We're fully invested. We can't wait to get to church each and every week so that we can feast upon the word of God. We can't wait to wake up early in the Bible study is joyful. Small group is satisfying.

Giving is generous. But for some reason, over the course of time, these lively affections cool down. Maybe it's because of life. Maybe it's because of kids and schedules and demands and everything else that's going on.

Maybe it's living in a broken world. It seems always to be in some sort of upheaval, but whatever it is, whatever it was, it was causing the Ephesian church to no longer place Jesus as their first love.

He was one of their loves, but he wasn't first in their heart. He might've been on the list, but he wasn't primary. And because of that, Jesus said that he held it against him. He literally is saying that he was offended by the fact that he was not their heart's greatest desire.

Now, listen, I think the same thing offends our Lord today when we say that we love Jesus, but we rarely think of him when we pledge our allegiance to Christ, but we do so little for him when we don't spend time with him and we do so little to advance his kingdom.

I think that offends Jesus because it demonstrates that he's not our first love. I mean, think about it. The reason that the church is in the awful shape that it's in in America today is because the church in 2020 has forgotten her first love.

She's more consumed with politics than Christ. She's more consumed and controlled by comforts than sacrifice. We want to be on the right side of history, but it puts us on the wrong side with Jesus. We give more of our income to restaurants and morning coffee than we do to the kingdom of God.

We, as a nation and as a church in this nation, have forgotten our first love. We still pay lip service to Jesus, but the reason that churches are not overflowing with people and the reason that the roofs are not being blown off of our buildings is because when we worship is because the church is dying.

And the reason that the church is dying is because we've forgotten our first love. Something other than Jesus has captivated our hearts, and I think Jesus is offended by it. And I think that we should be offended by it, too.

Whenever we see the love of God growing cold in our life, it should offend us to the point of repentance. Now, it doesn't mean I want to be very clear here. It doesn't mean that if you have a season of your life where the love of God has grown cold that you're not saved, that's not what I'm saying.

It doesn't mean you're in danger of losing your salvation. What you did not earn, you cannot lose. But we have to admit that Jesus did not die to create spiritual apathy in your heart and in my heart.

He did not die to produce lackluster, lukewarm, lackadaisical followers. He just didn't. He died to create men and women who would love God with all of their hearts and all of their minds and all of their souls and all of their bodies.

And yes, we fall short. Of course we do. But a Christian is one who repents and who fights to increasingly surrender those rebel parts of our life and our heart so that we can increasingly submit those parts back to Jesus.

We fight to surrender our life so that we can increasingly submit our life so that we can increasingly be filled with the love and the joy and the hope of Christ. Jesus wants more for us than just our salvation.

Praise God for our salvation. I'm not diminishing that at all, but he wants more. You see, Jesus is not waiting until eternity to give you life. He wants to give you life right now, overflowing life, life to the fullest life for him, not forgetting our first love, but thrilled by him.

That's what life truly is. And he wants that from us because it's the very best thing for us because we were made to be in relationship with God. We were made to function not only optimally in worship, we're actually going against our nature when we don't worship.

We are living below our own humanity and accepting less than what we were created for when Christ is not our first love. And again, it's easy to get there, but it's not okay to stay there. And in this passage, the Lord gives us two things to do when the fires of affection for God have cooled down in our heart.

Remembering the Gospel to Warm a Cold Heart

The first thing that we're supposed to do is we're supposed to remember. Jesus says, remember therefore from where you have fallen. He's saying that the first and the most necessary thing that you must do when the love of God has grown cold in your heart is to remember, to remember from where, where you were when you fully understood the gospel and when it captivated you to remember, to stop living in the doldrums of your faith, to stop accepting where you are right now and to go back to where you were to let all the glories of the gospel, refill your mind, to go back and to dwell upon what Jesus has done for you to think back and to recall just how deeply and how lost and how pitiful you were without him.

And then reflect upon all of the things that God has done through Christ to win you back to him and let that warm your frozen heart at a spiritual hypothermia at the fires of Christ gospel. And at the fires of Christ grace, let your memory warm your frozen heart back into life.

When you've forgotten how good God is, the remedy is not to keep on going in the same direction. The remedy is to remember, to actively recall. I mean, to put actual mental energy into stopping and remembering, to put your mind firmly and intentionally upon God and the gospel so that you will forget no longer, so that you will not live a life of forgetfulness, but a life of remembering.

That's what you must do first. You must remember, but that's not all that you must do. You must also repent. Jesus says, repent and do the works that you did at first, which means to you and I that remembering is not enough.

Remembering is not enough. When you recognize that the love of God has grown cold in your heart, then you must begin with remembering, but you cannot in there. You must then move on to repentance. Why?

Because remembering involves the mind. Repentance involves the will. Repentance is taking all of that mental energy that's involved in remembering and it's putting it into action. It is getting the thought out of your head and allowing it to trickle down into your heart so that your hands and your feet start following suit.

Let me give you an example. I was 12 years old and it was in the dead of winter in North Carolina, which is usually not that cold compared to Massachusetts, but in this winter we had a lot of snow. In North Carolina, snow can be really icy and it can be crunchy and you can actually break it off into individual blocks and you can build things with the snow.

That's one of the things that I used to enjoy doing. Now, I was 12 years old. I got angry at something my parents said for me to do. I don't even remember what it was at this point, but I decided that I was going to go outside and I was going to build an igloo.

I was going to live in that igloo until my family changed their mind. They told me something that I didn't like. I wasn't going to do it, so I was going to live outside in an igloo until they repented.

They came out there and they told me that they were sorry. So I went out, I built it, I moved into it. It almost had a roof. I couldn't quite get the roof, so I had to throw a tarp over it. But I was out there for about 30 minutes before I realized just how absolutely miserable I was.

I could barely feel my toes. And I remembered at that point how warm it was inside the house. I remembered how snugly it was in my bed. I was a child of the nineties, so I had a waterbed set at the perfect 82 degrees.

And that 82 degree waterbed was calling my name. I remembered as my teeth were chattering, as my toes were numb, I remembered that I had a full pack of hot chocolate in the cabinet waiting for me. I was starting to remember.

And that was good, right? I should have been remembering at that point. Trying to convince myself to live in an igloo was insane. It was foolishness. I should be remembering. I should be thinking about how much better it was back in the house.

But if that's all that I did was just sit in my little miserable ice castle, just reminiscing about the good old times, then I would likely freeze. I needed to take that mental energy and do something with it.

I needed to take those cravings for the fireplace and those passions for my waterbed or those yearnings for the cup of hot chocolate. I needed to let them fuel my body to get up, to swallow my pride, to walk the walk of shame back to my house and apologize for my behavior.

That is repentance. That is allowing your memory to fuel your actions. And that is exactly what gospel repentance is. It's allowing the memory of Christ, the memory of God's love, the memory of what Jesus did on the cross to fuel you back towards intimacy with God.

It's putting your thoughts into godly, Christ-centered, gospel-directed action. That's what this passage is telling us to do. When the love of God grows cold in your life, to remember and to let that memory fuel you towards repentance.

A Warning to the American Church

But the passage doesn't end there. The passage gives a warning. Jesus says, if not, meaning if you don't remember from where you've fallen and if you don't repent for your transgressions, then I will come to you and I will remove your lampstand from its place.

What Jesus is saying to this church in Ephesus is what I fear Jesus would say to this church that we currently live in in America in the very near future if she continues to refuse to repent. See, 2 ,000 years ago, this passage was written to a specific people, the Ephesian church.

And we want to honor that. We want to understand that. But at the same time, I also believe that this is particularly relevant to us today. And the reason I say that is because the same Lord who called the Ephesians to repentance because they had forgotten their first love is the same Christ who wants us to have nothing but love for him in our hearts.

He wants to be the first love of the American church as well. And I believe that if we refuse to repent, then the same thing will happen to us. I also think that specifically the American church has been a very interesting church in the course of all of human history.

Jesus says that he would remove the lampstand, the influence, the gospel night shining character of the Ephesian church, because remember, we said that they were a church that ministered to the entire region.

Well, America has been a country that's ministered to the entire world. There is no biblical scriptural data that says that America was given a biblical lampstand. But we know throughout history that America has been given a special place among the nations.

There has never been a nation that has been, that has sent more missionaries to the world. There has never been a nation that has printed more Bibles and given them away for free to people of every tribe, tongue and nation.

There's never been a country with more biblical translators, translating the Bible into more languages. There's never been a nation with more Christian colleges and universities. There's never been a people with more Christian scholarship, books, resources, movies, and materials in order to bless the entire world for Jesus Christ.

There has not been a nation that has advanced the kingdom of God more so than America in all of church history. Jesus has given us a magnificent lampstand and a magnificent responsibility to showcase the glory of God to the nations.

But that lampstand is not poured with concrete and it can be removed and it will be removed if the church does not repent. As notable and as wonderful as the Ephesian church was, there is no longer a church there.

At some point they continued on in their loveless ways. Jesus continued to not be first in their hearts and at some point Jesus made good on his promise and he removed their lampstand. They didn't remember, they didn't repent, and Jesus removed them.

Today if you go to Ephesus, to the ruins, there's no more light shining out of Ephesus. Just like there will soon be no more light shining out of America if we refuse to repent, if we refuse to remember.

We need to remember why we were founded. There's a lot of arguments about this, but I read the people who came to America, men like William Bradford who came from England and he said that America will be a light that shines to the nations, a city on a hill.

Boston is known as a city on a hill because the dream of the first colonists were that this place would be a beacon, would be a light to the world. That's why Beacon Hill is called Beacon Hill. We must remember why we were founded.

We must remember what Christ has done on the cross for us individually, but also for us as a nation. We must remember the good graces that God has given us and we must repent as a nation before God removes his favor from us.

Again, I believe that this is a 2000 year old warning that was not addressed to us, but it certainly does apply to us. Same Jesus who cares about whether the church loves him back then is the same Jesus who cares about those things today and I believe that he cares about that on the national level.

I believe that he cares about that on the personal level as well. If you are listening to this today and you feel like the love of God has been slipping out of your heart, like you used to be on fire for Jesus, but now you just feel cold.

Maybe Jesus used to be your greatest passion, but now the cares of the world have choked him out and he feels like a distant faded memory. If that's where you're at, I invite you to remember him right now.

To remember what he's done for you on the cross. John 3 .16 says, for God so loved the world, that's it's you, that he gave his only begotten son so that whoever would believe in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

I believe Jesus is inviting you today to remember just how much he loves you and to let that love fill your heart and to take that passion and that energy and that reignited flame and then repent. To turn again to this great Christ and give yourself wholly and fully to him.

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, I pray that everyone who hears this message from Revelation 2 .4 -5 would take heed of the words that it says. Lord, when you commanded us to remember, you commanded us to dwell upon the goodness of God.

Lord, I pray that we would not spurn your command. Lord, I pray that we would not think lightly of your command. Lord, I pray that we would put energy and effort into remembering. That we would remember the love of God, that we would remember the grace of God, that we would remember the mercy of God, that we would remember the gospel of God, that we would let our mind be flooded with these things so that our hearts would be fueled towards repentance.

And Lord, in that, I pray that we would repent. I pray that we would repent of our loveless ways. I pray that we would repent of our passionless ways. I pray that we would forget, repent of our joyless ways, and I pray that we would turn again to you and that our hearts would be filled with you.

Lord, I pray that, Lord, I pray that the Shepherd's Church will be a church where we love you with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, that we would not forget our first love. Lord, I pray that the church in New England would revive and would be reanimated with the love of God.

Lord, I pray that individuals who listen to this message from all over the country and all over the world, I pray that they would be revived in their hearts for the love of Christ. And Lord, I pray for this nation that you would, that you would breathe life into it again, and that it would experience an awakening, a gospel-fueled awakening where you, Jesus, would be our first love and that the light of the gospel would emanate from this place once again.

Lord, I pray these things in your Son's name. Amen. Thank you once again for listening to this special episode of the Shepherd's Church podcast. We will either be back to in-person gatherings next week or we will do another digital service, but either way, we will have a message coming to you next Sunday on the podcast.

Until then, God bless you. Bye-bye.