James White - You Have Left Your First Love

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If you'll turn your Bibles with me please to Revelation chapter 2, we will be looking at one of the letters written by the risen

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Lord to his churches. Now there is a lot of discussion in commentaries and scholarship about these letters.

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It is sobering to recognize that these letters were all written to churches that are now in Muslim lands.

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You could say these churches don't exist any longer but there are Christians in these areas.

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Maybe just as many as there were back then to be honest with you. But certainly they live under persecution and in very difficult situations today.

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But there is much discussion about whether these letters are meant to talk to us about different ages in the church, different periods in the church.

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Personally I think we can look at each one of the letters and see application to every aspect of our lives in the church today.

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I think there is something we can learn from each one of these letters. But I've chosen the first letter because it's written to the church at Ephesus and you are probably aware of the fact that the

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Apostle Paul spent a great deal of time there. And in fact there is that tremendous chapter in Acts chapter 20 when

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Paul calls the Ephesian elders together and he warns them of the difficult times to come.

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He had specifically invested in that church because he wanted to have a real lighthouse for the gospel there in one of the major cities.

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The Lycus River Valley goes up from there. This was a place where there was a great deal of commerce.

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This was a place where if you have a thriving witnessing church the inevitable result is going to be the spread of the gospel all around the world.

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Now churches back then were small. They didn't have buildings. They didn't have that luxury for literally hundreds of years.

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And so to have a solid church there meant certainly a fellowship no larger than ours.

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And yet the risen Lord writes a letter to them. Now if you're visiting with us, love to have you with us.

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We appreciate everyone who joins with us online, though I must admit when I do that when

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I'm traveling I am always amazed at the conversations taking place in the comments which have absolutely nothing to do with what's being preached about at all.

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It's a little bit frustrating. I try to just ignore it or turn it off or do something like that. But you're welcome as well.

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But I will be honest with you. My thinking in the preparation of this sermon has been completely focused upon us as a local church.

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And what we can learn from this text and what encouragement we can take. We are living in a day, we are living in a month where every morning you get up you are assaulted by the hatred of God's ways.

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Yesterday the president of this nation, well he didn't tweet it, I doubt he would know what Twitter is, but whoever runs him and tells him where to go and what to say and what to do, which is the dangerous part these days, tweeted a picture of the

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White House, the people's house. And on the center of the balcony was not the

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American flag, the American flag was there but it was off to the side. The center of the balcony was the pride flag.

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When you put a flag, when you raise a flag over the primary building of a government you're telling everybody who runs that government and what its ultimate commitments are.

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And that's where we are. That's where we've been called to serve in. And in Ephesus there was a tremendous amount of sexual debauchery and idolatry just like here today.

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The difference being the Ephesians did not have a foundation of Christian law that they were expressing their hatred of.

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Instead this was something that they had been experiencing, this form of idolatry was something they had been experiencing for a very, very, very long time.

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But still, if you remember the story in Acts, when the church started growing there was a riot there because of the deep commitment that the

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Ephesians had to Artemis and to their various gods and temples and deities that also had a pretty important financial element to it as well.

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That's always there. Just like we have today. And so we have a church and when the

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Lord Jesus writes to this church he starts off saying some incredibly positive things that I think can be said about us.

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That's why I want us to look at this letter. So, to the angel of the church in Ephesus, write, this is what the one holding the seven stars in his right hand says.

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The one walking in the midst of the seven, it could be candlesticks or lampstands, either one, they're golden candlestick holder type things, it's not described for us specifically.

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Here's what he says, and this is, by the way, if you look at the rest of the letters, this comes from the vision of the risen

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Lord in chapter one. And so this is tying all of these things together.

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The exalted Lord who has been enthroned in heaven, all authority is his, he's ruling the nations with a rod of iron, he's writing to his churches.

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He's, from the world's perspective, teeny tiny little churches.

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And yet he has all authority. He is exalted. And he knows what's going on with his people.

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He says, I know your works. I know your deeds.

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And I know your toil. I know your perseverance.

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Think of those three terms, your deeds, your works, your toil, your work, your labor, and your perseverance or your patience.

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The Lord Jesus knows when you serve him in his church.

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Tonight, as whatever group has been assigned the task, breaks down the sound equipment, takes down the speakers, vacuums under the pews because, you know, some of the little ones lose a few

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Cheerios along the way. As people put the chairs away in the overflow, sometimes you might think, the

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Lord doesn't know. Jesus says, I know. I know.

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I know your deeds. I know the works that you do. When you're involved in all the things that we do, all the ministry, all the outreach, you need to realize the

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Lord knows what we're doing. He's intimately aware of all of our motivations.

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He knows when you're doing what you're doing because you just have to do it. And he knows when you're doing it because you have joy and love in doing so.

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He knows. I know your deeds. He's not some faraway person.

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By his spirit, he dwells in all of us. I know your deeds. I know your toil, that hard work, mothers raising your children, you're four, you're five, you're six, you're seven, you're eight, nine, oh yeah.

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I know your toil, that you're working for the kingdom and raising those children.

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And my goodness, in our day, if you don't recognize that you're giving your life in the service of those children and teaching them in the nurture and admonition of the

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Lord is one of the greatest kingdom building actions anyone is undertaking.

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Don't ever forget that. I know how tiring it can become.

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The 47 ,000th load of laundry this week, but God knows,

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Lord Jesus knows your toil. As long as you're toiling for him, in his service, and your perseverance.

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Some people start off real well, start off real excited. I'm old enough now.

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I see people come in, you know what my first thought is, yeah, we'll see. We'll see.

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A few months, a few years down the road, we'll see. I don't have to be one of those people that just jumps on the immediate bandwagon anymore.

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We'll see. Perseverance. That's the work of the Spirit in your life.

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That's why you press on. You continue with the studies, you continue with the learning, you can sit, continue with the teaching.

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Perseverance. Jesus says, I know all of this. I know what you're doing.

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You are an active church. And then he says, and I know that you cannot bear, you cannot stand with those who are evil.

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These people have discernment, and they want purity in their midst.

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You can't stand, you can't bear with those who are evil. That doesn't mean that they weren't witnessing to their neighbors or whatever else.

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We're talking about in the fellowship of the church. There is a true desire for purity and holiness.

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There's also doctrinal discernment. And you put to the test, you tested the ones claiming themselves to be apostles, and they're not, and you found them to be false.

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Wonder where they got that example from. Again, who had trained their elders.

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The apostle Paul had spent years there. They had gotten the best training anyone could have.

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And so even when people came along who claimed to be apostles, they put them to the test.

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They were looking for consistency. These, this is not a fellowship where people are being blown about by every wind of doctrine.

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These are people with discernment and a solid grounding in truth.

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And Lord Jesus knows it. And he commends them for testing those who claim to be apostles.

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Oh, would that be wonderful today? How many people today are running around with a word from the

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Lord? It also happens to involve your sending $69 .95

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to their ministry. And you're not allowed to say a word. Don't quench the spirit.

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No. You put to the test those who call themselves apostles.

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They're not. And you found them to be false. He commends them for perseverance and discernment and their deeds and their activities.

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This is the Lord of the church saying to a mature church, a grounded church.

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I know and I commend you. You're doing what your leaders have taught you to do.

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And they were trained to do by the apostle Paul himself. And that in the midst of a difficult situation, it would be pretty easy.

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And many people today are doing it. It'd be pretty easy. They were experiencing persecution.

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Read about it next. And their city is filled with idolatry.

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And there is clearly the thinking on the part of the people in the city. These Christians are bad for business.

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They're bad because they don't, their beliefs do not lead people to our temples.

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We have all these temple prostitutes, male and female, and they're important to our economy.

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And these Christians, these hate -filled Christians, they don't think we should be doing these things.

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They have discernment. It'd be so easy for them to be quiet in the midst of the society they're in.

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And notice he goes on to say in verse three, and you have perseverance, patience, and you have endured.

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It's interesting. It's the same terms used in the preceding verse, repeated but with different meaning.

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They can't endure evil, but they have endured for the name of Jesus and have not grown weary.

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They have endured for his name for many years.

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We've been sort of looking back over the history. It's sort of scary. A guy came up to me in Tullahoma, Tennessee, a number of months ago, and he says,

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I'm working on a project and I hope you all become involved with it. He's using AI, basically, to create a complete index of every dividing line program

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I've ever done, every debate I've ever done, every sermon I've ever preached. It's fully searchable.

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Now, put yourself in my shoes. That's scary. That's really scary.

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I mean, that's like being married to a wife that remembers everything you've ever said. You know what I mean? Especially because I always talk about consistency.

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And it's almost done, and I've got a friend of mine that has access to a lot of it, and he'll all of a sudden post a paragraph from something 20 years ago talking about a subject

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I just addressed on the dividing line last week, and I'm always nervous. Thankfully, so far,

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I've been saying the same thing, even though I don't remember what I said back then. I don't remember what I said last week, and you don't remember what

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I said last week either. That's the problem. But when you think about all the things that we are saying today that could immediately cost us, and you all know what

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I mean. Some of you work for companies. You know exactly what I'm talking about. If even what you believed in your heart was known openly, that would be it for you.

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That'd be it for you. You have endured for my name's sake, not because we chose to be jerks, but if you're going to follow

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Christ, a world in rebellion against his ways and in love with idolatry, what did

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Jesus say? The world is going to hate you because it's hated me.

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And so you've endured for my name's sake. Make sure it's for his name's sake, not for what you do, but his name's sake.

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You need to endure. It may mean losing a lot of what this world considers to be important.

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We have to have a different set of priorities, a very different set of priorities. You also have not grown weary.

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There's the issue.

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Ever grown weary? Ever grown tired? In history, you've probably heard it said that when

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Islam swept across North Africa into what had been a Christian area for many, many years, that Christianity was wiped out by the sword.

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That's not really how it happened. That's not really how it happened. They'd have battles and people would be killed in that context, but it wasn't like they just went in, just wiped out the entire populace.

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That wouldn't work. The most efficient way that Islam did what it did and made

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North Africa the stronghold of Islam that it is today was not with the edge of the sword, but with money.

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If you were a Christian, you wouldn't get to have the types of jobs that would allow you to really live very well.

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You were limited to the lower echelons of society. And they discovered fairly quickly that that was an extremely efficient and effective way of dealing with those that were opposed to Islam.

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Many people were willing to go, you know, they have their holy book, we have our holy book, their holy book says our book is holy too, let's just all get along.

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And those churches, which had been filled by what we would call nominal Christians for a long time, were quickly emptied out.

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And many of them, of course, converted in mosques, places of Islamic worship. And the impetus was that you grow weary when every single day you have to go to work and only earn one third of what the

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Muslim sitting next to you is earning. Weariness would set in.

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I remember a number of years ago, a story coming out of Pakistan, a bomber had exploded a bomb outside of a school for girls.

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If you know, there are certain elements of Islam that do not believe that women should be educated.

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And so the bomb went off outside. Why? Because the man had been prohibited the entry he had hoped to have by the janitor who died in the blast.

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The Christian janitor. That was the only job he could get. But he took it and he did it and he gave his life to save those

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Muslim girls. Don't think that didn't have an impact? It did. But you see, that can be very wearying.

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Most Christians will stand firm for a while. It's when the pressure is on day in and day out, day in and day out.

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That's when it becomes difficult. That's why we need this time together.

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That's why we need to gather around the word. That's why we need the supper. That's why I need that encouragement.

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That's why we need fellowship with one another. So that you do not grow weary.

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And amazingly, in the midst of all of that idolatry and sexual depravity in Ephesus, you also have not grown weary.

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If Jesus were to write to us today, what would he write to us?

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Would these be the commendations we would receive? Do we have discernment?

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Do we call out the false apostles? Are we actively doing the deeds that we've been called to do?

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As the bride of Christ, we certainly desire to be doing those things.

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Have we shown perseverance in the face of opposition?

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And have we endured for the sake of Christ? Would Jesus say to us, you've not grown weary?

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We hope so. We pray so. I would ask that you would make it a part of your prayers for our fellowship.

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That these would be words that would be said of us. And they say much about the

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Ephesians. But then there's verse four.

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Then there's verse four. But I have this against you.

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After all those positive… Wouldn't that be enough? I mean, just think of all the things that…

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Shouldn't that be enough? No. Not if we truly want to serve

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Christ. We want to hear His divine diagnosis of our spiritual state.

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But I have this against you. That you have left your first love.

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Think about that. You've left your first love. How can that be?

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They've not grown weary. They've endured. They've got discernment. They're doing all the deeds and the patience.

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And yet, sometimes it's that very busyness that can keep us from recognizing that we've left our first love.

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Well, what does that even mean? Sometimes it's best to just simply read the verse and let you fill in the rest.

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Because if you're truly desirous, I hope your prayer is that,

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Lord, I want to hear what you have to say to me from this text.

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And there might be a number of different ways in which we as believers, when we hear

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Jesus say, I have this against you, you've left your first love. Then immediately, we recognize, we recognize what that might be in our own experience.

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There is some disagreement, some speculation as to exactly what that's supposed to mean.

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Because the only thing that's said afterwards is, therefore remember from where you have fallen and repent and do the deeds you did at first.

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And so there is a call to remember, to think back to what your first love would be.

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Because they had fallen from that first love. And there was a need to repent and to do the deeds you did at first.

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Now, some people have understood this to refer to the idea that the church at Ephesus had ceased being truly evangelistic in its outreach there in the city.

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They had started to become settled and comfortable with their fellowship.

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And maybe they were really starting to get, maybe there was a little bit of pride in how discerning they were.

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Maybe they sat around at fellowship meals and said, remember when those people who call themselves apostles came along and, we sent them packing, didn't we?

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We figured that out pretty quick. We tested them. And oh, don't we have a fellowship where everybody knows exactly what they're supposed to be doing?

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And we don't put up with any evil here. Well, Jesus had commended them for all those things.

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But we both know, all of us know, that these good things can over time become bad things when we don't have the right motivation for what we're doing.

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You've left your first love. I think back,

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I was saved at a very, very young age, and I am very thankful for that. I am not one of those people that has ever sat around going, man,

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I wish I had one of those great conversion stories like that guy delivered out of, you know, you name it, everything.

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I've never been one of those people. I was raised in a

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Christian family, heard the gospel at an early age. I truly believe I was converted at a very young age.

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And I've told the story before. My mom told me years ago, and I remember it, about taking me to work.

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She was a secretary at a print shop. And she took me to work and looked around, couldn't find me anywhere.

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She walked back into the print shop, and there she found me between the presses arguing with the pressmen about the existence of God.

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They were atheists. Now, I remember that because those men were mountains.

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They were all as big as Luke. Not that Luke, the other Luke. They were big.

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And I don't remember the details of the conversation.

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I was nine years old, but I had a love for the message of the gospel.

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I didn't know then what I know today, but what good is it for me to know all the stuff

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I know today if I'm no longer sharing that, proclaiming that to those around me with the same love

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I had then, right? And so,

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I think back to those days. I think back to experience in high school where the

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Lord really got hold of my heart, really brought about a desire to serve

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Him. So, starting in my junior year, I would carry a Bible on top of all of my books, and I became known as Billy Graham White, BG White.

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And I tried to have a testimony, and I had a passion.

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I had a love for wanting to see Christ honored and glorified in my life and how

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I lived. And we all know the experience of the

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Christian life. We have those times where we're sensitive to the Spirit's leading, and we're in love with His Word.

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We want to do what we're doing out of the proper motivations. But then all of us, if you've known the

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Lord for any period of time, you know there are those other times.

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And it's not like you decided you were going to get into this. It's just like you wake up one morning, and it's like, wow, it's been a while.

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How have I become so spiritually dry? Some of you maybe have never heard of a man that meant a lot to me when

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I was in high school, a man by the name of Keith Green. Keith Green was one of the early names in the contemporary

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Christian music world. He wrote some incredible songs, and he performed them with passion.

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He was only a Christian for seven years. I was on the air.

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I worked at a radio station in Sun City. If you ever drive out Grand Avenue, you get to 107th Avenue and Grand, look over.

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If you're going out toward the west, look over to the left, you'll see a radio tower there. That's where the radio station was.

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My dad had built it with his own hands in 1974. And I worked there.

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That's why me and microphones are buds. We've sort of grown up together. One night,

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I was on the air, and the UPI machine, it was a news machine out in the other room, I heard ding, ding, ding, and that was the indication of a bulletin coming across.

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And I remember ripping it off. It's the old dot matrix type thing. And it was the announcement of the plane crash in Tyler, Texas that had killed

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Keith Green and some of his children along with him. And he had a song.

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Maybe Elliot can look it up sometime. My eyes are dry.

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My prayers are cold. My heart is hard. You know the words?

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And he's saying it with such passion. You knew he had experienced it. And as a Christian, you couldn't help but go, yes,

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Lord. That's me too. That's me too. How'd I get here?

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I'm still doing all the things I was doing before. I'm still going to all the studies.

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In fact, I lead studies. I mean, I'm always there when the door is open.

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And I'm involved in this type of activity and that type of activity. And yet, in the midst of all of my busyness,

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I've become cold. It literally, it says you've left.

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It means you've abandoned your first love. Sometimes things that are a good, something has a good motivation behind it.

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It'd be good to learn about that stuff. It'd be good to get involved with that kind of ministry. But we all know how sometimes it's all the stuff we do that gets in the way of actually maintaining spiritual fervor, spiritual depth, prayer, love for the

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Word of God. Jesus says to this mature, trained church, you've left your first love.

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So, what do you do? You repent. Remember. Remember from where you have fallen.

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The same God that gave you that passion and love for His truth can give it to you again.

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He hasn't changed. He hasn't changed. Remember from where you have fallen.

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Repent. Not repent of the toil and the deeds and the perseverance and the discernment.

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You don't repent of all the good things that you're commended for, but you have to recognize that good things are only good before Christ if they're done on the right basis.

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And that's not love for me. That's not putting myself forward and saying, oh, look how good

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I am at discernment. Look how good I am at refuting those false teachers. Look at how good I am at showing up every day.

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Remember from where you have fallen. Repent and do the deeds you did at first.

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So, maybe it was they had become insulated. They had gotten to a size where we're comfortable now.

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We don't necessarily need to have those newbies coming in. They're a little bit weird anyways.

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Takes so much time to get them going on the right foot, right? And maybe do the deeds you did at first meant get back out there.

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Get back out there and despite what it costs you and despite what it might mean in this society where they rioted when the gospel first arrived, do the deeds you did at first.

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Be bold. Ask yourself, have I gotten too comfortable where I am?

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Do the deeds you did at first. But if they don't remember and they don't repent and they don't do the deeds, if not,

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I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place unless you repent.

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Those are serious words. See these cameras?

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They're allowing us to shine light all around this world. I mentioned that Jeff's going to get to go do something

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I wish I could do. We've just made a commitment to do a different, do things in a different way.

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But I have dear brothers in Frankfurt, Germany. Peter Schultz and Tobias Riemenschneider.

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Love that German name. I'm hoping Tobias is making way.

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He's talking about trying to get over here because he hasn't been able to, the vaccine stuff. But he wants to come here.

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And if he does, I would love to have him preach to us. He speaks wonderful German.

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He was my translator when I was there. He speaks wonderful English. Did I say

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German? Of course. Okay. He speaks wonderful English too. Most Germans speak better English than we speak

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English, actually. And if he gets a chance to come, I really, really hope that I can give him an opportunity to speak to us and hear from these people who are bold in their witness.

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I see pictures of them all the time out in the streets in Frankfurt. And that is a secular nation.

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You think it's hard here. It's very hard in Germany.

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And those folks, they look at apologia and we were a light to them during COVID.

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We were such an encouragement to them and to people all over this world.

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We have a light. We have a lamp stand. We have a lamp stand. And Christ says to the

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Ephesians, they too were well known. Don't repent. I am coming to you and remove your lamp stand out of its place unless you repent.

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The sad thing is once you collect this amount of white on the chin,

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I can think back about a lot of churches and a lot of ministers and a lot of ministries that were the big thing 30 years ago.

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And now they're a stain in the name of Christ. And I don't know about you, but I don't want that for us.

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I don't want that for us. We need to hear.

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And if we need to repent, if we need to do the deeds we did at first, if we need to make it our prayer,

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Lord, let us not abandon our first love.

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May the people of Apologia Church be a people that say to the whole world by how we live that we first and foremost love

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Christ and his gospel. Lord, don't take our lamp stand out of its place.

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But then there's more positive. It's like there needs to be more encouragement. Yet this you do have that you hate the deeds, the

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Nicolaitans, which I also hate. I tweeted about this yesterday.

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I said, have you ever thought about the fact that there are things that Jesus hates? My goodness, that was not popular.

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Because the Jesus, the Jesus that you can believe in in this society is a

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Jesus that's accepting of everything. Now, we don't know a lot about the

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Nicolaitans. There are some people that say that the Nicolaitans, that was the beginning of a clergy laity split.

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And they had these people that were elevated to a higher position. I really don't know where that comes from, from Revelation.

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And there are others that said that the Nicolaitans, that they in essence were teaching, and boy,

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I can give you an entire denominations today that fit into this category. They were basically teaching that sexual morality as found in God's law was no longer for the church today.

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Oh, we might call this the Nicolaitan month, pretty much the same thing.

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Maybe so, but Jesus commends them that they hate the deeds of the

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Nicolaitans. Now, there is a line, and we have to be careful about this.

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It's so easy for us to pander to our godly hatred of evil because Jesus has it, and his people do too.

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This you do have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which

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I also hate. You have to be very careful that when you identify something that you are going to hate in light of what

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God's word teaches, that you are standing firmly on that. That you are not doing something just simply to give yourself a reason to be a jerk.

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But let me suggest something to you. When you see religious people, people who claim the name of Christ, I could give you names.

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When you find people who name the name of Christ in our day that are saying they join together in the celebration of the mutilation of young children, that is something that must be hated by the

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Christian soul. Mutilation of little girls, mutilation of little boys, destruction of their lives, never be a father, never be a mother.

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I look around this room. I was stunned when I went into the gym today. It's like, did we have 47 kids while I wasn't watching?

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I've never seen so many kids as we have here today. It's amazing. Nobody's on vacation. What's going on? And I look at these precious children.

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I look right now at parents in this room holding their children. And I think about the culture of death that is coming along.

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It not only murders them in the womb, but if they manage to get out of that place, let's mutilate them.

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I cannot imagine a greater evil. I honestly think some of the doctors at Auschwitz would look at what we're doing today and go, wow, we had never thought of that.

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And if you don't know what Auschwitz was, well, that didn't work very well, did it? There are things we need to hate because they are hateful to the creator.

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And Jesus says, the deeds and Nicolaitans, you hate them, which

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I also hate. Notice it was the deeds that were hated, not the individuals. The letter ends with this standard.

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He who has an ear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches. We need to pray that the spirit would give us the ear to hear.

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Lord, what do you want us to hear from this text at this time in our church?

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Because he gives a promise to him who overcomes, I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.

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That very tree was taken away. No, Adam. No, Eve. Lest you reach forth.

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Oh, no. It still exists. It's in the paradise of God. And while it could not be eaten then, to him who overcomes,

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I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. There are things that God has prepared for us that we cannot even begin to imagine the glory.

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We can't begin to imagine. And that he's prepared those things for us.

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And so, my friends, I want to be brief, and I have been.

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Not because I'm trying to make up for Jeff doing an hour and 20 minutes just last week.

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But I want you to be focused on this text, and I want you to leave this room asking yourself the question.

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If you're a believer, if you're a member of this church, you're a follower of Christ, and you hear those words, you've left your first love.

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You've left your first love. What does that say to you?

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There may be people here, you're not in that position at all. I'm not trying to put a guilt trip on everybody.

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But if you, like me, have walked with the Lord for many years, there is always a place for you and I to stop and say,

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Lord, have I abandoned my first love? Am I in the process of allowing something to take that place, that place that's center in my heart?

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Bring me understanding, bring me conviction. And we as a body,

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Apologia Church, we have a bright lampstand right now. I want that lampstand to be just as bright when you all gather to put my body in the dirt.

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We need to pray, God protect us, give us unity, give us love for one another. Make that lampstand, that candle to burn brightly in this very, very dark world.

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That's my prayer for us. Let's pray together. O King of all the churches, we've gathered in your name this day.

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And Lord Jesus, by your Spirit, we ask that even now, you would write upon our hearts your truth.

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May we not be like those who look into your perfect law of liberty and then walk away and forget what we've seen.

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May we not allow these words to be so quickly snatched from us by the busyness of the world.

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May we contemplate this entire week, what does it mean to abandon that first love?

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May we be encouraged by all the words that we have read about perseverance and toil and patience and endurance.

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But Lord, in the midst of it all, let us not skip over that call. We want to once again have that first love.

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And we know that only you can kindle that love in our hearts. We ask you to do so even now.