Equipping Eve: Have We Left Our First Love?

Is the church today doing everything it can to provide women a firm foundation of truth in Christ Jesus? Well, it's true there's no shortage of candy-coated Bible studies, potluck fellowships available to ladies.

But beyond Sunday morning, are Christian women being properly equipped to stand against the same deceptions that even enticed Eve in the garden? In an attempt to address the need for trustworthy, biblical resources for women, No Compromise Radio is happy to introduce Equipping Eve, a ladies-only radio show that seeks to equip women with fruits of truth in an age that's ripe with deception.

My name is Mike Ebendroth, and I'm pleased to introduce your host, Erin Benzinger, a friend of No Compromise Radio and a woman who wants to see other women equipped with a love for and a knowledge of the truth of God's Word.

The Gospel as the Foundation of Christian Teaching for Women

Well, hello ladies, and welcome to Equipping Eve, the show that seeks to equip you with fruits of truth from God's Word, God's holy, perfect, infallible, inerrant, inspired Word. The only thing that is objectively true in all that it says, why?

Because it is the Word of God, and we here encourage you to seek and search and study and know the Word of God so that you will recognize error when you are faced with it, which you inevitably will be here in this world, whether it's error in the secular world, be that at school or work or elsewhere, or whether it's even error in the church, the professing church.

We need to know God's Word, God's truth, so, so well so that when error pops up, we just know, hey, that's not of God, and so that's what we like to do here at Equipping Eve, talk about God's Word. Why else do we like to talk about God's Word, aside from the fact that it's God's Word, which is amazing, but it reveals the Lord Jesus Christ.

Every single book, 66 books of this Bible that God has been gracious to give to us and to preserve for us through the ages, reveals the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the only way, the truth and life, he is the only way to salvation.

You must repent of your sin and trust in Christ and his work alone for salvation. Friend, if you're relying on your good works to get you to heaven, you will fail. The Bible says in Isaiah 64 6 that all of our good deeds are as filthy rags before the Lord.

Romans 3 tells us that no one is good, no, not one, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, Romans 3 23. Friend, ladies, we can't do it. It doesn't matter how many candles we light, how many sinner's prayers we pray, how much money we put into the little bucket.

It doesn't matter how many homeless people we feed or how much money we give to charity. We cannot earn our way to heaven. We have incurred such a debt of sin before a holy, perfect, righteous God that we can never repay it.

The Bible tells us that if you are guilty of just one of the commandments, you're guilty of all of them. Jesus tells us that. So let me ask you, have you ever lied? Have you ever cheated? Have you ever put anything before Christ?

Then you are guilty before a holy God. But Jesus Christ is God incarnate and he humbled himself, came to earth, lived as a man like us in all ways except without sin. And so he kept the law perfectly because we cannot.

And he died. This sinless son of God died and bore the wrath of God that we deserve. For our sin, we deserve eternal damnation, eternal wrath. But Christ incurred that for all those who would believe even though he was sinless.

And he died an atoning death. And that sacrifice was acceptable and pleasing to God. And three days later, Jesus Christ rose demonstrating the acceptance of his sacrifice and also promising eternal life for all those who will believe.

Now don't get me wrong. There's eternal life for those who do not repent and trust in Christ, but it is not an eternal life to look forward to. So friend, if you're listening today and you have not been saved by this great and wonderful Jesus, I would encourage you in this moment to turn off this podcast, find a Bible, open it perhaps to the book of John and read and come to know this wonderful, merciful Savior Jesus Christ and what he has done.

Ladies, if you don't fall into that category and you're still tuning in, thanks for joining us. Have I even introduced myself yet? Sorry. The gospel just comes out sometimes and it doesn't really matter who I am.

I just want to talk about Jesus. I am Erin Benziger. I'm your host. And I'm so glad you're here today. And so I'm kind of excited about what we're going to talk about today. But before we get started, I would like to start with a list, oh, not a to-do list.

Don't worry. I am tired of those. I start every Saturday because I work during the week and I have scores of lists at my desk at work to make sure that I get everything done that needs to get done. And then I come home and on Saturday mornings, which is usually when I tape the show, I sit down and I make a list for the weekend and I'm looking at my list now and I haven't crossed anything off of it yet, but I will be able to cross off, tape a show after we're done here.

So anyway, I don't want to talk about to-do lists today because they are not my favorite. But I thought we might start with a list. It's still kind of the beginning of the year, the beginning of 2017 as I tape this.

And you know, it's kind of the new year is a time when a lot of us kind of evaluate what do we want to do with our free time. We'd like to read more books and learn. Of course, the Bible is our first go-to.

That's where we should be spending the majority of our time. But God's also been good to give us men and women who have written some wonderful books to teach us, open his word more to us, teach us his word, or maybe some biographies or things like that.

And so I thought I'd just go through some of the books that I've read recently and some of the books that I am hoping to read, at least get started in this year in 2017. I thought that might be helpful to you or interesting to you.

So my first book is actually a recommendation because I finished it. I received this for Christmas and read through it rather quickly because I enjoyed it so much. It's called John Owen, The Man and His Theology.

And it's actually a compilation of essays by several authors. So in that regard, I will say some of the authors aren't quite as skilled at writing just in terms of using punctuation as some of the others.

And so a couple of them were a little painful in that regard because you wanted to pause, but there was no comma and your brain doesn't know what to do with it. But the content was wonderful. And most of the material even had good grammar.

So that's great. So the contributors to this work are Sinclair Ferguson and his essays were amazing. Very, very, very insightful. Graham Harrison, Michael Hagen, Robert Oliver, and Carl Truman. So as you can tell from that list of names, most of you are probably familiar at least with Sinclair Ferguson and Carl Truman.

I've also read some other works by Michael Hagen and they've been really wonderful. So I highly recommend that book. I also recently read Authority by Martin Lloyd-Jones. It's a little book and it really just talks about the authority, not just of scripture, but the authority of Christ, the word of God, spirit of God, just the authority of God over all things.

So very good material there. It's Martin Lloyd-Jones. Of course, it's good material. Another book that I finished recently before the holidays that will certainly I think be of interest to you listeners, since you are ladies, is Eight Women of Faith and that's by Michael Hagen.

And I think the forward was by Karen Swallow Prior, but this is a little book. It's not really little, but it's not really long either. And it profiles eight women of faith as its title implies. And wow, it's just really, really fascinating.

I over the years have never been one for biographies, which has changed in recent years. But in the past, I was not someone who would pick up biographies. But this is a fantastic book. It just has little short, comprehensive looks at the lives of these eight women.

And I think you'll really be, for lack of a less cheesy term, inspired by the lives of these women to see what they did for the kingdom of God. And it's so far beyond what women are often limited to in the church today.

So this profiles Jane Grey, Ann Steele, Margaret Baxter, Esther Edwards Burr, Ann Dutton, Ann Judson, Sarah Edwards, and Jane Austen, the famous author that you no doubt have read Pride and Prejudice, Emma, all those girly books that many women read when they're teenagers.

I never actually read Jane Austen, believe it or not. I guess high school failed me. A couple of books on my list to read this year is, the first one is What Happened in the Garden? The Reality and Ramifications of the Creation and Fall of Man.

And that's written by John MacArthur in the Master's College faculty and edited by Abner Chow, who was one of my professors at Master's. And he's an amazing teacher, and so I'm really looking forward to digging into this book.

I think it'll be really interesting stuff. Along the same lines, well, different topic, but similar contributor, is the book I Saw the Lord, A Biblical Theology of Vision, and that is also by Abner Chow.

So I'm really excited to read those, but those will be heavy books. So we'll see. Maybe I just have to pick one at a time, otherwise my head might explode because it can't contain everything that Dr. Chow has to share.

And then I'm also hoping to read A Chance to Die, The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael, and this is a biography that was written by Elizabeth Elliott. So many of you maybe have already read that, but as I said, I've not been a biography person.

And so I'm just getting into some of these, and I'm looking forward to that. And then currently on my Kindle, what I am reading right now, is a book entitled Women's Ministry in the Local Church, and that's by Ligon Duncan and Susan Hunt.

And probably more on that later, after I finish the book, but so far it's been really good. Really insightful, and one that I would recommend if you're looking for something to read. So there you go. There's a reading list for you.

God's Definition of Love in 1 John and John 3

Now to our actual topic, what I would like to talk about. We are, if this show airs when I anticipate it airing, we are around the time of Valentine's Day. I'm not sure if this will air before or after Valentine's Day, but it will air somewhere, probably in February of 2017.

Valentine's Day. That's when all we hear about is love. Oh love, love is balloons and teddy bears and boxes of chocolate that aren't actually that good. Love is getting me a box of chocolates that I for sure will like every one of them, not just a few.

Anyway, moving on. Valentine's Day. We hear about love constantly. We see the world's definition of love, but what is God's definition of love? Well, ladies, turn in your Bible to 1 John, 1 John chapter 4, 1 John chapter 4 and verse, actually let's start with verse 7 just for context.

Beloved, let us love one another for love is from God and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. By this, the love of God was manifested in us that God has sent his only begotten son into the world so that we might live through him.

In this is love, this is the verse I was getting to, verse 10, in this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also have to love one another.

No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this, we know that we abide in him and he in us because he has given us of his spirit. We have seen and testify that the father has sent the son to be the savior of the world.

Unbelieving friend, if you are still listening, right there is a testimony to what we were talking about at the start of the show. God the father has sent his son, the Lord Jesus Christ into the world to be the savior.

And so God's definition of love is demonstrated in that he sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. And then verse 19 of that same chapter says, we love because he first loved us. And this goes back to verse 10, in this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and then we love because he first loved us.

Flip back in your Bibles, if you will, to a very familiar passage, but the same human author to the gospel of John chapter 3. John chapter 3, you know where I'm going with this. Verse 16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

We can really hear the echoes of the same human author here, can't we? The same language is being used here by John as he writes. Verse 17, for God did not send the son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him.

He who believes in him is not judged. He who does not believe has been judged already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten son of God. This is the judgment that the light has come into the world and men loved the darkness rather than the light for their deeds were evil.

Everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the light so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.

In this is love that God sent his son that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but shall have eternal life, those who have the light of life. And so God demonstrated his love in sending his perfect son.

Turn back again toward the back of your Bible to 1 Peter 3. In 1 Peter 3, verse 18, for Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that he might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which he also went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water.

Verse 18, Christ died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, Christ died for sins. Turn to Hebrews chapter 10, verse 11, every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins, but he, Jesus, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time onward until his enemies be made a footstool for his feet.

For by one offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. Christ died once for all who are being sanctified. Christ died, Christ. What does 1 Peter 2 tell us? It tells us what that looked like.

Christ suffered for you, Peter says, leaving you an example for you to follow in his steps, who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in his mouth. And while being reviled, he did not revile in return.

While suffering, he uttered no threats, but kept entrusting himself to him who judges righteously. And he himself bore our sins in his body on the cross so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

For by his wounds you were healed. For you were continually strained like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls. And this is love, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, says Romans 5, 8.

God demonstrates his own love toward us, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. This, friend, is love. Christ has loved us deeply. Christ has loved us sacrificially. Those whom the Father has given to Christ, he died for those, his people, and no one can ever snatch them out of his hand.

What love is this? What love is this? That he loved his Father so much that out of obedience, perfect, sinless obedience, he would obey even to the point of death, even death on a cross. What love is this?

And so, friend, yes, we love him because he first loved us. Let me ask you, what does your love for Christ look like? What does your love for Christ look like? Remember, do you remember, do you remember what it was like when you were first saved?

When you first had your eyes open to the depth and gravity of your sin and your deserved damnation for that sin, and then you realized that Christ, who was sinless, had died for you, and because he did that, you did not have to suffer the wrath of God.

Do you remember what that was like when you were first saved, how you loved and clung to the word of God that you couldn't get enough of it? Do you remember what it was like when you first loved Christ?

What does that love look like now? John MacArthur has said, the Christian life is about loving Christ. It is about loving him singularly. It is about loving him totally. It is about loving him sacrificially.

It is about loving him obediently. It is about loving him worshipfully. It is about loving him in terms of service. It really is about loving Jesus Christ. He says that's what it means to be a Christian.

It's that you now commit your life to loving him. Christian life is about loving Christ. Yes, we love him by keeping his commandments. If you love me, you will keep my commandments, said Jesus. Loving Christ is not a to-do list.

Loving Christ is about loving him totally. It's about your heart attitude. John MacArthur says, the real question to ask people when talking about their spiritual growth or condition is how much do you love Jesus Christ?

How much do you love Christ? Are you growing in your love for Christ? Do you love him more now than you have in the past? Do you desire him more now than you did in the past? This is about a singular love for Christ.

This is me talking now. Or has your life instead become so consumed with doing what Jesus said, and I have to do this because I'm a Christian, but your heart just simply isn't in it? Have you, regardless of your sound doctrine and moral purity, left your first love, the Lord Jesus Christ?

Christians are defined by their love for God, their love for Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 16, 22, if any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed. So do you love the Lord Jesus Christ with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and with a comprehensive, sacrificial, obedient, worshipful love?

That is the question that we all should take to our hearts today, isn't it? It's easy for people in our circles, and I say our circles, just knowing my general audience of conservative Christians. It's very easy for us to get caught up on doctrine, and we know the truth, and we have the right doctrine, and we just need to learn doctrine.

And I'm not sitting here telling you that doctrine's not important. Please hear me, because it is, because if you don't have right doctrine, you cannot love Christ rightly because you don't know the true Christ.

You can't worship him the way that he prescribes if you don't know right doctrine. But it's easy to build up our spiritual pride, isn't it? And we're so caught up in doing it the right way, and our heart just isn't in it.

I've seen it. I've seen it in our circles, friends. I know that the liberal-minded Christians and the egalitarian Christians accuse us of this. I have seen it, friend. It's real. And so we don't take that lightly.

The Church at Ephesus and the Danger of Leaving First Love

Instead, we take an opportunity to examine ourselves. I want you to turn to Acts 19 with me. Acts 19, and I'd like to look at the birth of a church, if you will. Verse 11. Well, okay, let's not start all the way back at verse 1, but Acts 19 is describing Paul's ministry at Ephesus.

And verse 11 says, God was performing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that handkerchiefs or aprons were even carried from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them, and the evil spirits went out.

So here in Ephesus, Paul, this church is starting, and God is doing great things there through Paul and through the preaching of his word, and people are being converted, and people who were previously involved in paganism and magic, they're bringing their magic books and all of these materials, and they're burning them.

What a demonstration of repentance, right? What a demonstration of turning from your sin and your former life to Christ. It's amazing. It's wonderful. Verse 21, it continues, now after these things were finished, Paul purposed in the spirit to go to Jerusalem after he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, saying, after I've been there, I must also see Rome.

And having sent into Macedonia two of those who ministered to him, Timothy and Erastus, he himself stayed in Asia for a while. About that time, there occurred no small disturbance concerning the way. For a man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines of Artemis, was bringing no little business to the craftsmen.

These he gathered together with the workmen of similar trades and said, men, you know that our prosperity depends upon this business. You see and hear that not only in Ephesus, but in almost all of Asia, this Paul has persuaded and turned away a considerable number of people, saying that gods made with hands are no gods at all.

Not only is there danger that this trade of ours fall into disrepute, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis be regarded as worthless, and that she, whom all of Asia and the world will worship, will even be dethroned from her magnificence.

You see, Ephesus was a hub of pagan worship, and yet Paul came preaching the gospel, and it wasn't Paul who caused these people to change. It was the power of the Holy Spirit regenerating and bringing people to repentance and faith in the only Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

In another sermon on a similar topic, and probably even the same passage, John MacArthur describes a little bit about the pagan worship of Ephesus, and you can see just from this passage in Acts how important that is to the context of understanding the church at Ephesus.

And so MacArthur describes that this was the center, the city of Ephesus was the center of worship of Artemis, who was a Greek goddess, and the Roman name was Diana, and she was Diana, and he actually points out something really interesting, is that Artemis appears to be a male name, and even sometimes a male figure, but Diana was very much a female figure, and he, in his estimation, sees this as all part of Satan's work that continues today to confuse the genders and mingle with those, and we certainly see that today with all of the talk of transgenderism and all that nonsense.

So that's kind of an interesting side note. But here the worship of Diana is very prominent in Ephesus, and MacArthur describes this worship, he says that the idol itself, idol, I-D-O-L, was a big, ugly, black, cow-like, buffalo-shaped thing, that's a quote.

He says it's not this beautiful goddess, you know, we might picture a movie star model, and that's certainly not what it was, it was a very ugly beast, he says, who was supposed to suckle people, to give them spiritual life, and the worship, the temples, had scores of eunuchs who had been castrated for the purposes of serving this god or goddess, there were priestesses who were basically prostitutes, who believed that sexual orgies would lift the worshipper up into the presence of the deities, there were singers, there were musicians, dancers, this is just chaos in this temple, as he describes it.

And people banking, people looking at museum pieces, he says, but then you have the worship going on with the prostitution, you have music, feasts, festivals, it's just hysteria, he says, and it all culminates in a frenzy of shameless sexual mutilation.

Heraclitus says, quote, the morals of the temple were worse than the morals of animals, for even dogs do not mutilate each other, and he said the people there were fit only to be drowned. So you have this horrible, awful place that is the center of the worship of this horrible, awful goddess, and here in the middle of the city, you have this little church, and you can imagine what Ephesus endured, can't you?

You can only imagine that this church is born in the middle of such paganism, you can imagine the persecution they endured, you can imagine that as Paul continued to preach the gospel and people were converted, that the idol industry started to fail, and that probably did not go over very well, we see that right there in Acts 19.

MacArthur says, so this is the beginning of the flock at Ephesus, no wonder God gave them Aquila, Priscilla, Apollos, Paul, Tychicus, Timothy, and even John, as we'll see in Revelation here. So this is the birth of Ephesus.

Jesus' Rebuke to Ephesus in Revelation 2

Turn with me now to Revelation, chapter 2, and verse 1. This is part of the seven letters that were written to the seven churches, this is John's vision, the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his bondservants, the things which must soon take place, says chapter 1 and verse 1.

So John is the human instrument, but these are the words of the Lord Jesus Christ to the church at Ephesus. So Revelation 2, verse 1, says to the angel of the church in Ephesus, write, the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand, the one who walks among the seven golden lampstands, says this, I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot tolerate evil men, and you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false, and you have perseverance, and have endured for my name's sake, and have not grown weary, but I have this against you, that you have left your first love.

Therefore, remember from where you have fallen, and repent, and do the deeds you did at first, or else I am coming to you, and will remove your lampstand out of its place, unless you repent. Verse 6, yet this you do have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. That's kind of an intense letter, isn't it?

Can you imagine sitting in your church, and this letter comes, and it's from John, but it's really from Jesus? And it starts out good. You hear this commendation from Jesus, and then there's this but, and you get that sinking feeling in your stomach, because this isn't some man saying to you, well, I have this against you, which can also give you a sinking feeling in your stomach.

If your boss says that to you, that's never good. But this is the Lord Jesus Christ. So let's look at this. I'm getting ahead of myself. Jesus at first commends this church. He says, I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot tolerate evil men.

Put to test those who call themselves apostles, and they're not. You found them to be false. He commends them for their discernment. They know the truth. They know it backward and forward. They've got doctrine down, and when someone shows up and is teaching false things, the church at Ephesus says, uh-uh, you're wrong.

Get out. They have it down. They've persevered. They've endured. For my name's sake, says verse three, Jesus commends them for enduring through the persecution. They've persevered. They've not grown weary.

They've endured. They know the truth. They are discerning. They have a knowledge of the truth, and they regard it highly, and those are good things. As we drop down to verse six, we see, continue that commendation.

This you have, you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. They hate the things that Jesus hates. They hate sin. They don't tolerate sin. That is good. That is a good church, isn't it? Wouldn't you love to be a part of a church like that?

Hopefully, you are a part of a church that does not tolerate sin. They love the truth. They recognize the error, and they toss it out fast. But, verse four, I have this against you, that you have left your first love.

How could we have lost our first love? I mean, truth is tops for us. Surely, you're not talking about us. This must have snuck into this letter. This is for another church. We love the truth. What do you mean, Jesus?

You have left your first love. This goes back to our to-do list, doesn't it? It's easy sometimes to just look at the commands of scripture, the calls to righteousness, and write them down as a to-do list.

I'm doing okay on this one, and I got to work on this one. Okay, I'll work on that. It's easy to focus on what we are told to do. We sit back and we say, well, we understand we're not doing this to get saved, but as Christians, we should do this.

That's right. We don't do works to get saved, and as Christians, we strive for holiness so that we look like Christ. We are actively mortifying sin, seeking to be sanctified. But have we left our first love?

We are actively seeking to know the truth. We uphold the truth. We love doctrine. We love sound doctrine. We love the truth. Have we left our first love? Is it possible? It is. It is possible to know all the right things and even defend all the right things and to still have left your first love, Jesus Christ.

And so what's the remedy? Jesus gives it to them right here in verse five. Remember from where you have fallen. Remember what it was like when you first got saved. Remember Acts 19 when you burned your pagan stuff and turned to me.

Remember that love. Remember when you couldn't get enough of the word of God, when you couldn't wait to tell others. Remember. And repent. He says, repent. Turn away from the sin of leaving your first love because all of your proclamations of truth, all of your striving toward holiness is empty if your heart is not there and you do not love Christ as you should.

He's giving them the answer. Remember where you've fallen, from where you've fallen. Repent of the sin and then MacArthur puts it as another R. Repeat. Do the deeds you did at first. Return to this place from where you've fallen.

How is your love for Christ? How is it? What does it look like? Does it look like it used to or is it fizzling? Do you uphold truth? This high lofty standard, but that ember of love for Christ is just that, an ember.

Christ gives them a warning. He says, or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place unless you repent. Friend, do you know what? There is no church at Ephesus flourishing like there was back in these days.

I'm sure there are believers there. God has his believers everywhere, but that church, that influential church, its lampstand has been removed. Jesus wasn't kidding, was he? Now, of course, we are promised.

We are believers. We are promised that once Christ saves us, no one can snatch us out of his hand. This is not about losing your salvation, but we can as Christians. Lose our first love, leave our first love for a time because we are not sinless, this side of heaven, and this is a sin.

We can get caught up in the knowledge and it's so deceiving because if I have all of this right and I want everybody to know the truth, I'm good to go. It's so deceiving. See, you can never have too much truth or too much knowledge of the truth.