FBC Morning Light – November 21, 2022

Well, a good Monday morning to you. Here we are kicking off another new week and probably for most of us it's a shortened work week I'm gathering. Most of you would probably have Thursday for Thanksgiving off and maybe Friday, probably Friday as well.

You have a very long weekend this week and I'm sure you're looking forward to that, looking forward to the holiday and time with family and however you're spending this Thanksgiving week. I trust you're looking forward to it, I am, and I hope it'll be a good week for all of us.

But today we begin the week looking at Revelation chapter 2 and the first three letters to the seven churches in the book of Revelation. But I want to point something out before we look at one of these letters in particular.

Remember the big picture of the purpose of the book of Revelation. You know when we come to this book we we get fascinated by the imagery and just the hyperbole of that imagery, and it is indeed fascinating.

But the book wasn't given to us to tickle our fancy and to just simply fascinate us with dramatic descriptions of various events coming in the future. And we can also get enamored of it all and focusing on the specific meaning of various things and how that applies and what that means for the future and so on and so forth.

But I want to remind you and keep this in mind as you read the book of Revelation, what is the big picture, what is the primary purpose for this book? And we're told, John tells us, right at the beginning of the book in Revelation 1 verse 1, he says, the revelation of Jesus Christ.

The revelation of Jesus Christ. He doesn't say the revelation of things to come. He says the revelation of Jesus Christ. So as you read the book of Revelation you want to be asking yourself the question, what does this teach me about Jesus?

How does this reveal Jesus to me? What is Jesus like? What is John's intention of informing us about Jesus with this particular passage? Now when we come to these seven letters, what's interesting is that each of them begins in a little different way.

Jesus is the author of these letters, he's sending a message to the... it says each one begins with a message to the angel of the church, the messenger of the church. That's probably the elder, the pastoral leadership of the church who stands before the congregation to deliver the message.

But nevertheless, to each one of these angels of the seven churches, the Lord Jesus identifies himself in a unique way. So for example, in chapter 2 verse 1, he identifies himself as the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands.

In verse 8, he says, these things says the first and the last who was dead and came to life. And in verse 12, he says, these things says he who has the sharp two-edged sword. Each of these is a different way of describing Jesus and tells us a little something different about him.

So we want to be alert to those things and ask ourselves, you know, what does this mean, that he is the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand? What does it mean that he walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands?

Well, I think if nothing else, walking in the midst of the seven golden lampstands tells us that Jesus is personally present. The lampstands in these seven letters are the different churches, and he walks in the midst of them.

He's personally present. He knows what's going on in these churches. And to this first church, the Church of Ephesus, Jesus is very commending of the church. They have a lot to be commended for. He says, I know your works, your labor, your patience, that you cannot bear those who are evil.

So they have a great deal of patience on the one hand, but they don't have a whole lot of patience for those who are evil. He says, you've tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars.

He commends them further by saying, you have persevered and have patience and have labored for my namesake and have not become weary. All of those things are very important. It's important that we be faithful and steadfast in our labors for the Lord.

It's important that we endure the difficulties and challenges of this life and not turn our backs on the Lord. And it's very important that we are careful about doctrine, about theology. As he says here, you've tested those who say they are apostles and are not, you've found them liars.

They've applied theology in a very practical way, discerning between truth and error, discerning whether or not someone who comes and claims to be an apostle is indeed an apostle worth listening to. So all those things are important and very commendable, but Jesus then goes on to say, this is what I have against you.

You've left your first love. You've left your first love. Now there's differences of opinion about what that first love is, that the love that you had at the first, or is it the chief love? I think it may be the chief love.

You've left your chief love. You see, we're called to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and called to love our neighbor as ourselves, and all God's commands hang upon those two things.

And we can be very busy for the Lord. We can work hard, we can be diligent, we can endure great difficulties, we can persevere and have patience, we can labor for the Lord's sake and not become weary, and we can be very theologically astute to the point where we can analyze very quickly and thoroughly some teaching that comes down the pike, and know what to reject, and know what to smile upon.

We can be all of that, and we can do all of that, and we can do it without really having a love for our God. We may instead have a great love for ourselves. We can be very proud and become very arrogant about our work, our perseverance, our patience, our diligent labor.

We can become very arrogant when it comes to sniffing out error and rejecting false teaching. We can have a high and mighty attitude about it all. We can look at ourselves as greatly superior, and none of which is really rooted in a love for God, it's rooted in the love for self.

Jesus counsels the church at Ephesus, repent. You need to repent of that loss of your love, and that elevation probably of self-love. Repent of that, or he warns, your lampstand is going to be put out.

He who walks among the lampstands warns, your lampstand will be put out and be removed from its place. Now the sad and tragic thing is that that eventually happened in the city of Ephesus. There's not really a church there, there wasn't, after a period of time, its lampstand was put out.

So let's be careful about this, let's be on guard. Is it love for God, is it love for him that drives what we do and how we go about doing it? Well, let's pray. Father in heaven, we do thank you for this challenge to us today, and we pray that we would accept that challenge.

We would hear it, and we would do a little self-examination. Do we become proud and arrogant over our work, our labor, our meticulous adherence to doctrine, and so forth? Are we just proud, or do we really love you?

We pray that you would examine us in that today, and we ask it in Jesus' name, and for his sake, amen. All right, well I hope your week gets off to a great start. Have a good day. May God bless.