The Seven Churches of Revelation
Ephesus: The Church Who Left Their First Love
Revelation 2:1-7
Introduction:
I am staring a series today that will last for the next several weeks should the Lord allow. I believe that God has a message for the church that can be found in the message given to the 7 churches in Revelation chapter 2 and going into chapter 3.
In Revelation chapter 1:12 we see 7 golden lamp stands. In the middle of the lamp stands John saw one like the son of man, clothed in a robe that went to his feet and had a sash that was gold that wrapped around his chest. His eyes were like fire and his feet were like bronze and his voice was like the sound of many waters.
In his right hand he held 7 stars which represented the angels of the seven churches. The golden candle sticks represented the seven churches.
but we see a church by the name of Ephesus. It was a church of perseverance. A church that did not tolerate evil people. They tested the apostles and found some to be false. They persevered in the name of the Lord and they did not grow weary.
The angel of the Lord wrote that God was pleased with some things but he says “But I have this against you, that you have left your first love.”
He tells them to remember from where they had fallen and do their first works over or else he is coming and removing the lamp stands from them.
I want to preach a little bit today on the church by the name of Ephesus. A church who at one time a passion for the Lord. Who at one time was a devoted church who had a great love for God. They had many things going for them but yet while they were spinning their wheels they were going in reverse instead of forward.
They were doing what seemed right to them but what they were doing was causing them to fall out of love with Jesus rather than helping them stay in love with him.
Family listen to me, we have access today to anything we want to know at the tips of our fingers. We have access to anything and everything. We have more tools today than we have ever had before to reach the lost and promote the gospel. Churches are diving deeper into technology today than they ever have before.
There ain’t no reason that we shouldn’t be having a cyber revival all across the globe with as much preaching that is going around the web on Sunday morning. But the problem we are seeing is we have churches and pastors and Christian leaders who are resembling the ungodly and the unholy more than they are the God of heaven.
But in the midst of promoting the Gospel we have started promoting those who preach it and now we got people who are falling in love with preachers and motivational speakers than they are their one who is being preached and spoken about.
God said I know that you persevere when times get tough. I know that you don’t tolerate evil. I know these things but I also know that you have left your first love. You have exchanged Intimacy for dignity.
Nobody dances in his presence anymore. No body runs a lap anymore. You have to pry a shout out because God forbid we lose our dignity in the presence of God.
We despise the evil doers, the rainbow flag wavers, and the Budweiser Sippers…yet we are more vocal about their sin than we are about the glory of God.
Brothers and sisters I came to preach to you in the house today.
We cannot allow our dignified appearance to be the reason we leave our first love.
Some of y’all won’t shout but you’ll be quick to voice your opinion about someone else. Yet you wonder why you can’t feel the spirit like you used to. Why you can’t worship like you used to.
Because in the process of developing a stiff necked pharisaical spirit, you have fallen more in love with dignity than you have with his deity.
- Correct Doctrine, Incorrect Hearts
Pay attention to what the angel wrote first. He said they were not tolerant to evil people. Evil doers. They put some apostles to test and found some top be fake.
Yet in the next couple of verses the scripture says they left their first love.
You know that means…
It is possible to have the correct doctrine without having the correct heart.
I believe we need to be aware of people. Be sober and diligent because many in the last days will try to deceive us. But listen to me…
We cannot let our love for doctrine override our love for God.
You can be so caught up chasing a belief system that you end up fleeing the presence of God. There are people who are sitting in churches today spiritually dying just because it is the church that grandma and grandpa took them to. They aren’t growing, they can’t remember the last time the fire fell. They cant remember the last time someone was healed, delivered, or set free but still they are dedicated.
They leave depleted and empty like a car puttering because the needle is past E. They don't have intimacy with God. They are not as close to God as they used to be, but they are dedicated…
Some people are more dedicated to the memories than they are the plans God has for their life.
and because of that they feel that God doesn't love them anymore. That God doesn't hear them anymore. Truth is, they can’t feel him because you feel that he’s not around you anymore.
It isn’t that God doesn't care, its that you chose complacency and comfortability over intimacy.
Traditions and routines have killed more moves of God than sin ever will. God forbid we do something outside of the normal. God forbid that the spirit moves so strong that preacher doesn’t get to preach.
Just because its the way that you have always done it does not mean that it is the way that is straight and narrow.
Can I preach in this house today and tell someone…
Correct doctrine is important, but the posture of your heart must align with it!
2. The Key Word
Pay attention to the context in which the Lord was speaking as the angel began to write. He said “You have left your first love.”
The key word is “First”.
How many remember your first love. Come on, I know your married now and you got kids and some has grandkids but how many still remember your first love?
Your first love is not easily forgotten because when the love bug bit you for the first time, you pursued the relationship with as much passion as possible because you felt something through their affection that you have never felt before.
So many of us have fallen from intimacy because we have fell in love with duties.
If the only reason you come to church is because of your position in the church. You are not in love with Jesus as much as you are in love with your title.
We have so many people in the modern church who worships out of obligation and not out of devotion. You know the program. You know how it should work. You know how it should operate and that’s great but…
Duty must never replace devotion.
Some of us will never hit a joint or allow our lips to touch a bottle and we criticize those who do, but we will spend our whole lives falling in love with a building and the people in it more than we fall in love with the Lord.
We will spend our time learning the songs and serving in certain capacities, yet we do not strive to learn what his word says.
There is a Gomer spirit that is running rapid in the church of Jesus today. Because he brought us from our sinful condition and put in a home and showed us his love and affection, yet we still can not be bride material.
We are supposed to be bride, but some of us still have a girl friend mindset. No commitment. A church date every now and then is fine. As long as we pray for forgiveness and escape the guilt and shame that sin and conviction brings we are fine…but listen to me…
He is not coming back for a date to prom. He is coming back for a bride that is adorned for her husband.
The gospel is the greatest love story that has ever been told it penned. Because God loved his creation so much but his creation lost their love for him because of deception. So he came up with a plan. To give the very best that he could, his son, to take the place of mankind and die a death that should have been yours and mine.
Someone said “life isn’t fair”…if it was fair there wouldn’t be a cross.
You and I deserved the cross, we deserved Calvary. But Gods love for you and I penetrated the depths of our sin and Even though we willingly turned our back on him; his desire was to bring us back to him.
yet if we are not careful, we will be working to expand the kingdom yet never be apart of it.
How sad would it be to do a work in a church and show up every Sunday and still not make heaven. How sad would it be to hear him say depart from me after you gave so much money and so much time and efforts to expanding the kingdom but you never had your name written down in the lambs book of life.
A church roster, is not the book of life.
This church at Ephesus got so caught up with testing false prophets and pointing fingers at evil doers that they never checked themselves. They got so caught up with persevering and and not growing weary that they never grew spiritually.
Backsliding does not start on a barstool. It starts on a church pew.
Y’all ain’t gonna like this but ima preach the truth to you.
No one should ever have to pump and prime you. No one should ever have to beg you to worship or to even show up. These people were in the church. Fighting for the future of the church, yet losing their intimacy with God. Going through the routines and traditions but never getting in his presence.
Some people are more interested in preserving dead, dry, traditions yet they are losing their intimacy with God. You can not preserve religion and tradition more than you pursue his character.
We got people wondering why churches are empty and we are so rapture minded that we are blaming it on the great falling away. I am not so sure that its the great falling away as much as it is the day of narrow minded, religious, self proclaimed saints who act like the hall monitors for the church.
You wonder why people don't go to church anymore…go look in the mirror and you'll find the answer.
Because somewhere along the lines we birthed a generation of people who said…if you gonna do church, you gotta do it like we do it. If you don’t do it like we do it, then you’re wrong.
We have a lot of amplifiers in the church and I ain’t talking about the ones in sound booth.
The church at Ephesus did not tolerate evil doers, but we know from scripture that sin is ultimately what separates us from God. So while they were not tolerant to other peoples sin, they swept their own sin under the rug and it eventually led to their demise and separation from God.
We cannot amplify the sins of other people just because we dont like them and at the same time let our sins go silent. We as the body of Christ must be disciplined enough to abstain from sin for the sake of righteousness. If we cannot live a Holy lifestyle, how then can we help someone who has fallen off of the wagon back on it? Scripture says you who are righteous.
The danger here is this…If you amplify the sins of other people, you’re sins become silent killers in your life.
Church is not about you and your preference, but rather about him and his presence. This is not cheap entertainment. It is a soul filling station where hearts can be mended, lives can be changed, and the lost can be found.
Can I just preach it how I feel it today?
The church has become a place of mass production. Don’t shout, I'm not finished yet. But what we are producing is not reproducing fruit and here’s why….
We have fell in love with the structure more than we have the scripture.
So what we are producing is a group of people who were desperate enough to get out of hell but not loyal enough to live a holy lifestyle. It’s all about the production. All about the lights, the smoke, and the glamor (Those are tools and I’m glad we have them.) but those things are not our first love.
Our first love said I love you in a way that no one on the planet had ever said before and no one has said it this way since. He didn’t just tell us he loved us. He measured his love for us when he stretched his arms open wide and said forgive them for they know not what they do.
God is looking for a church who is more in love with him than they are titles, preferences, and structure. A church that is not to dignified to get in the flow of the anointing and let God be God.
Well Pastor, God knows my heart and that’s all that matters.
You cannot say that God knows your heart when your lifestyle says that you don’t know his.
We have got to drop the excuses and come back to our first love!
3. We Cannot Lose The Flame
I am closing with this point. We can afford to lose the Itineraries and the programs, but we cannot forfeit his presence. We cannot surrender the authentic moving of the spirit just so everyone can be the first in line for lunch.
The angel wrote the words spoken by Jesus and he said if the church did not repent for walking away from their first love, he would remove their lamp stand from its place.
We cannot afford to lose the flame. We cannot lose his presence. We cannot lose his power and his glory.
We have to come to the realization that he is God and we are not.
I believe today that God is calling us to repentance and birthing a hunger within us for an increase of the anointing and the authentic moving of the Holy Ghost.
There are so many Pastors and Leaders of churches who are trying to build their church yet they are leaving out the main ingredient. The church was not established on production for entertainment purposes. It was established when Heaven opened and poured out the spirit on those who were awaiting his arrival.
If it was important for them to have the Holy Ghost, the presence of God, how much more important is it for us to have him today?
Conclusion:
My Momma can cook….when she wants to. One of my favorite things that she cooks is a Hashbrown casserole. It will make your tongue reach out and slap you. When she makes it and pulls it out of the oven…it is the best thing you have ever put in your mouth.
But when you go back in a couple of days and you warm up the left overs, it isn’t as good as it was when it was pulled out of the oven on day one.
It isn’t that my momma needs a new recipe…she just needs to make a fresh pan.
Some of us are trying to change the recipe to church by adding more programs for people to be apart of and this and that…listen to me, the problem is not the recipe…but we need a fresh outpouring and a fresh fire to bring us back to the original blueprint for the church.
We cannot thrive without the spirit of the living God at work in our lives!
If you have to create a program and throw a party to get them here you’ll need 5 more to keep them here. No sir. We are not selling the gospel through the glitz and the glamor. It is free, to whosoever will call upon his name.
Take me back to the original blueprint. What you did in the beginning, God do it again, but don’t let us lose the flame!
