Revelation 2:1-7 (Letter to Ephesus - Do the First Works)

The Seven Churches and the Meaning of Seven in Revelation

All right, let's turn to the book of Revelation chapter 2. Revelation chapter 2, we're getting into the letters to the seven churches. And I had asked the question last week, you know, why seven? Why seven churches?

Why not the letters to the 35 churches? I mean, there's obviously a lot more than seven churches around. So first of all, John receives a vision from Christ where he sees seven golden candlesticks or the lamp stand with seven lights.

Today we call this what? It's right here on the screen, a picture of it. What do we call this? A menorah. Now it looks a little different than menorahs of today. Today the menorah has nine lights because that's for Hanukkah.

But the original menorah that was in the temple of God had seven lights. So the number seven has biblical significance. That number in the book of Revelation keeps getting repeated again and again and again.

And we had said that the number seven represents perfection, fullness, completion. So basically the letters, because it's seven churches, it's talking about fullness. Basically these are representative churches.

They represent the whole church. That's, I think, the best way to understand it. So even though we're gonna be looking tonight at the letter to the church at Ephesus, in a sense, this is written to all the churches.

Christ is walking through, evaluating his churches, and now he has something to say about the church at Ephesus, the church at Smyrna. So we're gonna look at Revelation 2, 1 through 7. This is the letter to the church of Ephesus.

Christ Evaluates the Church at Ephesus

Okay. It says, to the angel of the church of Ephesus write, these things, says he who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands. Christ says, I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil.

And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and you have found them to be liars. And you have persevered and have patience and have labored for my name's sake and have not become weary.

Nevertheless, I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen, repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.

But this you 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 and to him who overcomes, I will give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.

Okay, so before we go through this line by line, I just wanna give a brief explanation about verse six, because this is gonna come up again with the church at Pergamos, where he mentions the deeds of the Nicolaitans.

So I'll get into the theories about who the Nicolaitans were. I'll talk about that more when we get to the church of Pergamos. But does Jesus hate, does Jesus all love, or does Jesus hate some things?

Well, we see that he hates the deeds of the Nicolaitans. Basically, to make it simple, the Nicolaitans were a group that taught a false doctrine that today we call license, right? There's two extremes in Christianity.

There's legalism and there's license. So the Nicolaitans believed in essentially licentious living. So if you think of it, Christianity is the straight and narrow path. You wanna be going right down the middle of the road, walking in the middle of God's will.

On the left side, if you veer off the left side of the road, you could fall into the ditch of license. If you veer off to the other side, you could fall into the ditch of legalism. So these are two opposites.

They're both bad, legalism and license. Now, what is legalism? You think of legal, okay, let's refer it to law. Referring to the law of Moses, legalism is teaching that people are saved by keeping the law.

So you go to heaven because you're a good person. You know, you keep the commandments. You do this and you do that and you don't do that and you don't do this. So that's what legalism is. And legalism is a false doctrine, that's true.

But the Nicolaitans believed in license. So this is the idea that, hey, God is a God of love and we're not under law, we're under grace. Of course, that's true, that is what Paul said, but they take that to mean that because of the grace of God, we can basically live however we want.

You know, I can say a prayer and get saved and now that I'm saved, I'm good to go and I can just kind of do whatever because I'm under grace. So their living was, really, they were violating the commandments of God, but they were doing it, you know, this false virtue that, hey, we just have a license to sin.

They wouldn't describe it that way, but that's what it's called. Erin.

Is that what Paul was referring to when he made that comment, should I go on sinning that grace may increase? Right, yeah. Because he was contemporary of John, so this was going on while Paul was still around too, yeah?

Right, we figure Paul was probably dealing with this in the book of Romans, perhaps, that people, they thought, yes, because of the grace of God that I can continue to sin and Jesus will forgive me, which is, you know, in theory, true, but shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?

And what was Paul's conclusion? Yeah, God forbid. So this was what the Nicolaitans were all about, licentious living. And, of course, that represents groups today. There are groups that are legalistic, they have all these rules, and everyone needs to, you know, do the right thing, and you're saved, basically, by living a good life.

That's how you're evaluated. And then there's the other side where people are just, you know, living wild lifestyles. So that's what he's dealing with there. But we'll talk about that more later. But as for the letters to the seven churches, generally speaking, the pattern of these letters, Christ will say some positive things and then he'll say some negative things.

If you're gonna do that, you wanna start with the positive, right? I know when you ask somebody, they would rather have the bad news first, but it's better to tell somebody the good things they're doing if you're going to have something, some corrective things to say.

So here's what you're doing right, church, and here's what you're doing wrong. And it's really like preaching. You know, pastors, preachers, they're not saying negative things just to beat up on people.

Because of love, we wanna see people blessed by God, so this is what Jesus is doing. Hey, let me point out the problems, that way you can fix it, and that way you can be blessed. So that's Christ's heart, obviously.

Leaving Your First Love and Doing the First Works

So the church at Ephesus, was this a good church, a bad church, or somewhere in between? What would you say? Because there are some, with these seven churches in Revelation, there are some that are good, nothing but good to say, and then there's some, it's like there's hardly anything good to say.

What would you say about Ephesus? Good, bad, or in between? Yeah, I think there would be a B, B minus, something like that. I mean, they're overall pretty good. Yeah, it could be a lot worse, but Ephesus is known, I don't know if you have the New King James Version, I think it has the superscription, it says the loveless church, who sees that?

So that's what they're referred to, the loveless church. Overall, this assembly was very good. They were active, busy, serving God, doing the right things, but it almost seems like they kind of forgot why they were doing it.

So very busy, but in the midst, their love for God seems to be waning a little bit. So sometimes, this is something that can happen, people can be so busy serving God that you kind of forget why you're doing it.

You just get into the pattern of doing it, and you're doing the right thing, but your motivation, after a while, you're sort of going through the motions, or maybe you're doing the right thing because it just feels good to do the right thing, but the love for Christ as your motivator somehow gets lost.

So I think that's what's happening here. They're told in verse four that they have left their first love. So Jesus tells them to repent, basically have a change of mind, a change of heart, and they needed to rekindle some of that love that they once had for Christ.

Now, does it say that they didn't love Christ at all? No, that's not what's happening. They love him, it's just not, the fire isn't burning as bright as it once was. No doubt, there's many people today who are working for Christ, working for his church, and again, this letter is gonna apply to some churches and not others, some people and not others, but there are people who are working for Christ.

On the surface, everything seems fine. You would never know there's anything wrong, but Jesus, of course, right, the eyes is a flame of fire. He can kind of see through all of it. Jesus sees the heart, so he knows their true motives.

Maybe they love the work. Yeah, some people do good because it makes them feel good to do good, right? So that seems to be what's going on here. They were motivated by something other than that true love for God.

He doesn't get into specifics, so sometimes you wish he would, like what exactly were they doing or not doing, but let's just go through these verses. Revelation 2 .1 says, "'To the angel of the church of Ephesus write.'".

Who's the angel of the church? Is this like Gabriel or Michael or an archangel? Probably the pastor of the church. I mean, that's our best, you can't be certain about it, but that's what most commentators think.

So, "'To the angel or the messenger "'of the church of Ephesus write this. "'These things says he who holds the seven stars "'in his right hand, who walks in the midst "'of the golden lampstand.'". So we know who this is, this is in Revelation 1, this is the one who was dead and who is alive and lives forevermore.

So who's the author of Revelation? Yeah, I mean, John's writing the words down, but the letter is coming from Christ. How many of you have a red letter Bible, just out of curiosity? Okay, so that's like the majority of the group.

So a red letter Bible tells you what? The red letters are the words of Christ. So this is written, right? The whole letter of Ephesus is written in red, okay? So angel in Greek, angelos, refers to a messenger, probably the pastor himself.

He says in verse two, "'I know your works, your labor, your patience, "'that you cannot bear those who are evil, "'and you have tested those who say they are apostles "'and are not, and have found them liars.'".

So just one comment on the red letter Bible. I have red letter Bibles, and that's kind of a new thing for the last 100 years. It's very helpful because, yeah, it reminds you that these are the words of Christ.

Otherwise, Revelation, you think it's John writing. So that's very helpful that you know that it's Christ. What's the problem, though, a potential problem with a red letter Bible?

Erin? There's an entire group of Christians who say

Yeah, is it red letter only?

Is that Literally, that's the only part you have to pay attention is to the words of Jesus himself.

Everything else is Right, it's called red letter Christianity. Who's heard of that? Very small group. I've only known one person who said they were a red letter Christian. And yeah, basically, if John says something, if Peter says something, especially if Paul says something, you can just kind of disregard everything they say, and we're just gonna go by what Jesus says.

I mean, that might sound spiritual to somebody, but hey, we're just gonna follow the red letters. Well, what's the problem with that? Yeah, it gives you the impression that the words and the teachings of the apostles, and actually 99 of the Bible really isn't all that important, and only the red letters are important.

So that's really a wrong conclusion to draw. So are the words of Christ authoritative? Absolutely. And again, I do find it helpful to have the letters in red, but don't let it ever communicate that these words are more important than these other words, because it's all God's work, all right?

So Jesus praises up the church of Ephesus, basically, hey, guys, you know, you're doing a really great job. I know your works, I know your labor, your patience, doing well in all these areas, and you cannot bear those who are evil.

So remember, they hated the deeds of the Nicolaitans. I mean, they don't put up with any nonsense. And he says, you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and you have found them liars.

So the letter, Revelation, is written down by a real apostle, and that's the apostle John. But apparently others, other men came to the city of Ephesus, to the church, and they claimed to be apostles.

And the church said, okay, well, let's see, you're not Peter, you're not James, you know, you're not Matthew, I don't think you're really an apostle. So they tested them, and they found them to be liars.

Now, this is where we get into some application right away, because this is a perennial problem throughout Christian history, but it's especially a problem right now in the day and age we live in. There's sort of a resurgence of what is known as the NAR.

I've talked about this a couple times. It's called the New Apostolic Reformation. Who's heard of this? Or maybe you remember me talking about it. There is a whole group of people today who are claiming to be apostles of Jesus Christ.

Now, if somebody came into this church, let's say next Sunday, somebody comes in and he wants to preach or whatever, because he lets us know that he's an apostle. If somebody told you or told us they're an apostle, what would your reaction be?

Out of curiosity. 2 ,000 years too late? I like that. Yeah, well, I mean, I guess my, I don't know what I would say, but I think, like, okay, prove it. You know, it's like, if you're an apostle, says who?

Prove, you can't just say that. You need to be able to demonstrate it. So anyways, for the past 15 or 20 years, there has been this resurgence of a lot of men out there in the church who claim to be apostles.

So the church at Ephesus, they tested their claims. So a few tests of whether or not someone is an apostle is what? You could ask them, have you seen the risen Lord, right? This is one qualification for an apostle.

I don't know how someone would see the risen Lord today, but they would have to be like Paul or something to say that Jesus met me on the North Leveret Road here on the way to Moore's Corner and struck me down and told me.

But they would have to have seen the risen Lord. They would have had to be called by Christ himself. And the key, the sign of an apostle is can you work miracles? So if someone is gonna claim to be an apostle, they would have to be able to raise the dead, give sight to the blind, do something that would absolutely prove that they are who they say they are.

So basically you have, any questions or comments on this? You have the garden variety false teachers that we've talked about here over the past six, eight months but then you have false teachers who go kind of to the next level and they claim to be apostles.

So these are individuals who have such a large following they can sort of get away with making that claim. If somebody starts a cult and they have eight people and they claim to be an apostle, I mean, people are just gonna laugh at them.

No one's gonna take that seriously. But if you had a whole region that was following, tens of thousands of people, in the minds of some that gives credibility so maybe they are an apostle. So that looks like what was probably happening here.

Let's turn to 2 Corinthians 11 for a moment. So whoever these false teachers were, they must have had a sizable following and were able to persuade some people and they claimed, or at least others claimed that they were apostles.

You're in 2 Corinthians, right? Okay. Here's what the apostle Paul says about false apostles. Remember the church at Ephesus. This is one of the things Jesus praises them for that there were men who said they were apostles but they tested them, found they were liars.

2 Corinthians 11, three through five says, but I fear less somehow as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness. So your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he who comes preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit which you have not received or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you may well put up with it.

For I consider that I, the apostle Paul, am not at all inferior to what? What does it say? Yeah, the most eminent apostles. So somebody's translation, one translation puts it super apostles. Who has that?

Super apostles. Okay, so Paul is saying, you know, I'm not inferior to these. This is sarcastic, obviously. These men who claim to be apostles or they're claiming to be super apostles, look at verses 13 through 15.

This is what Paul says about them. For such are what? False apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. And no wonder for Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light.

Therefore, it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness whose end will be according to their works. Okay, so let's go back to Revelation chapter two, but this is all being lifted up.

This is a good thing. Now, there were men who questioned the apostolic ministry of Paul too, right? So, you know, there were people back then who got so overzealous and not believing men were apostles that they even, you know, called Paul a false apostle.

But again, they would prove themselves based on what they taught and their works. It would be self-evident that the church would accept them. Okay, so Ephesus, they didn't put up with any of this nonsense.

You might say the church of Ephesus had discernment. So churches today, we need to have discernment. So if a false teacher, a false apostle shows up at the doorstep, you know, the elders, the pastor's not going to allow them in.

So we don't know exactly what the church at Ephesus was doing wrong specifically, but verse three, they are praised for their perseverance. They've been working hard, but here is the correction in verse four.

I have this against you, that you have left your first love. So the word love here is in the Greek. There's a few possibilities. Does anyone know what the term love here is in Greek? Does anyone have a note?

Now, it's agape, which typically you think of that divine love or self-sacrificing love. That could be what it's a reference to. Sometimes the terms are used interchangeably. So whether it means a self-sacrificing love or just a really strong affection, their love for Christ, whatever it was, it wasn't what it used to be.

So leaving your first love. Christ is speaking, we might say he's speaking relationally, okay? He isn't saying that they have left, they've left me and are now serving idols. Is that what he's saying?

No. Rather, their love has grown into sort of a cold orthodoxy. Like they believe the right things, they're doing the right things, but they're just not all that excited about Jesus. You come into the church, everything looks good.

Yeah, again, they're believing the right things, but there's just something not quite right. So to understand this, let's think of relationships and what this could mean. You sort of have to read between the lines a little bit.

This is the common pattern in most relationships where there's love, right? The feelings are very strong initially. The feelings are very strong at first. The early stages of the relationship, the love is intense.

People talk about the honeymoon phase, right? So it's likely that the church members in Ephesus, they had been Christians for maybe three years, five years, 10 years, 15 years, we don't know, but they've been believers for quite some time.

They needed to go back and rekindle that fire, those feelings that they felt back in the early days. Can any of you, well, I'm sure probably any believer can relate that when you first came to Christ, you were on fire.

That's what people say, on fire for the Lord. And then after 10 years, you take a snapshot then, you take a snapshot 10 years later, and things have changed. It doesn't mean you love him less necessarily, we get it, right?

Can anyone relate to this? Here's one thing that I've noticed, because he says, go back and do the first works. It doesn't explain what the first works are. Usually when someone comes to Christ, the first whatever, six months, they want to tell every, they're telling their family, they're telling their friends, they're telling their coworkers.

And then after a while of that, when like nobody wants to hear it, and nobody's listening, and nobody responds, you can start to feel like, oh, this is useless, because every time I tell somebody, nobody listens, or they have negative things to say, and then you stop doing it.

Is that what Jesus is saying? You need to go back and do the first works. You need to get back into evangelism. I think that's a good possibility of what he's talking about. But it's just talking about relationships like married couples.

After so many years, people need to do things to kind of keep the romance alive. Go out on dates, do the things that you did way back then when you first met. So Jesus, in a sense, I think he's calling upon the Ephesians to do that.

Whatever you did early on when you were on fire, go back, start doing those things, rekindle the fire. Because he says in verse five, you need to, well, he's gonna say you need to repent or else, and we'll talk about the or else in a moment.

But he says, repent, change your mind, change your, amend your ways, think differently, do things differently, do the first works. Any ideas? Again, it doesn't tell us, so we're left to kind of figure it out.

What do you see when you hear the first works? What do you see?

Erin. I think of when people first come to Christ, they're at every Bible study, they're at every church supper, they're at every church function. And then life gets in the way and you stop showing up at a lot of things and you don't have time to read your Bible first thing when you get out of bed in the morning and you're not soaring over the scriptures because that coffee's not gonna make it's health.

I think that's one of the things maybe that Christ was saying is you need to get back into spending time with me.

Yeah, I think that's good. Is he speaking to church members here or the church? Is that the same thing? Yeah, well, I would say it's the same. I mean, he's talking to the church generally, so every member is hearing this.

I mean, the pastor's getting the message first. So I mean, the pastor needs to hear it as much as anyone because if the pastor's kind of cooling off, then that's gonna have an effect on everybody else.

But it would be to everybody, I think, yeah. Okay, so do the first works. Yeah, excitement. Part of that is the excitement that you felt when you first came to know the Lord. I think there's a difference in mood, right?

The difference in atmosphere between the church where the people truly wanna be there. They're really on fire for the Lord as opposed to the church where everyone's there, but they're just doing it out of a sense of duty.

Okay, well, this is what you do. Now, it's good to be there because it's the thing to do. That's a lot better than not being there. But yeah, this is something that even though it's to the church at Ephesus, I'm sure this could apply to some of the other churches that he writes to.

So again, along the lines of relationships. At first, when a couple, they meet, they're very attentive. The quirks seem kind of cute at first, but then after you're with a person a long time, starts to get annoying, right?

I'm not saying this. Yeah, this is true for church members, right? You join a new church and the people seem great. This assembly seems wonderful, but then after you've been with them for 20 years, that one guy or that one lady, this thing they always do or always say, you're just, yeah.

But this is all completely normal. But when you were first, when it was new, when it was fresh, when it was exciting, love covers a multitude of sins. You just kind of overlooked all of that stuff. And yeah, he's saying, go back, go back, do what you have to do to go back to those times.

Get that feeling back. Verse five, or else, here's what happens if you don't, I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place. And so if you think of the lampstand, the menorah, you have the lights burning, what's, you say, I'm gonna remove it or I can just kind of put the fire out.

Actually, you're gonna be the one putting the fire out. So if the light goes out, the church stops preaching the gospel. If they don't get that fire back, the fire is gonna get lower, lower. Yeah, and it'll get snuffed out at some point.

It might take a generation or two before the assembly ceases to exist. But once the light of the gospel is out, once the gospel is no longer preached, then God's blessing is removed. I mean, if a church isn't preaching the gospel, if nobody's evangelizing anymore, if nobody's being one to the Lord, then what's the point of a church existing, right?

There's no point. I think of all the church buildings in our area that could fit a couple hundred people. At some point over the past 100, 120 years, this is what happened in New England, a lot of churches that could hold 350 people, they just stopped preaching the gospel and they went to a social gospel.

You know, be good, you know, be a good person. And if there is a heaven, then you'll probably go there, maybe. You know, that kind of turned into their message of moralism. Well, guess what happened to those churches?

The gospel stopped being preached and the congregations went from 300 to 200 to 100 to 50 to 30 to 20, and then you end up with a committee of senior citizens who can't afford to keep the doors open. So what do they do?

They sell off their buildings. Guess who moves in? Bible-believing Christians who are fired up for God. You know, the Moldovans buy the building and take it over or something like that. So this is the message.

Hey, if this sounds familiar, of course, Christ knew this was the problem for this specific church. This is what you need to fix, or else here is what is gonna happen. Your light, the gospel light is gonna go out.

I'm gonna remove the candlestick. Now, here's the encouraging thing about this passage. It gives people, Jesus identifies the problem, which I'm sure if you're sitting there in the church at Ephesus, and the pastor's reading this.

I mean, first of all, it's gonna hurt the pastor to hear this, right? The people in the pews, if they had pews back then, I'm sure it kind of hurt to hear it, but they needed to hear it. Why? So that they can make those changes.

So Christ is saying this out of love. Here's what you need to do. Make these changes. Verse seven, he who has an ear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches. And to him who overcomes, I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.

So as long as the lamp is burning, think of the menorah, the flame was kept going. How? What was the menorah burning? What was the source of fuel? Oil. Oil is representative of what? The anointing of the Holy Spirit.

So as long as there are saved people in the church, telling people about Christ, preaching the gospel, the church will continue to exist because new converts are gonna come in. So let's make sure we're doing that.

If this applies to you at all, maybe in your Christian walk, you know that I need to get fired up for God. I need to return to those first works, whether you think it's reading your Bible or making it to every service or telling people about Christ, evangelize, whatever it is that the Lord is telling you, maybe he's telling you you're doing good and this isn't a problem for you, but it's maybe something someone else needs to fix, but Christ gives people the opportunity to fix it.

So let's close and we'll look at, Lord willing, the persecuted church next week, the church at Smyrna.