Ephesus
Tom Shrader introduces a study of the seven churches in Revelation by examining Ephesus, a church that Jesus commends for their hard work, perseverance, and doctrinal discernment but rebukes for losing their first love. He challenges believers to remember their initial passion for Christ, repent of loveless orthodoxy, and return to their early devotion, warning that knowledge without love leads to spiritual dryness.
“There's nothing you can do to make God love you more, there's nothing you can do to make God love you less.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: The 7 Churches (2010)
Recorded: 2010 at Cannon Beach Conference Center
Duration: 47 min
Themes: love, devotion, perseverance, discernment, passion, orthodoxy, repentance, faithfulness, losing spiritual passion, mature believer, church leader, doctrinally sound, spiritually dry, longtime christian, elder, pastor
Scripture: Revelation 2:1-7, Acts 19, Acts 20:29, 2 Corinthians 5:14, Romans 1, Genesis 1:1
Theological Themes: ecclesiology, church health, spiritual decline, doctrinal soundness, first love, apostolic correction, biblical rebuke, spiritual renewal
Full Transcript
Good evening, it's good to see you and I'm glad that you're here. Let me thank the band—they did a great job. I love that when Mila was singing and he said, "I wish I was six inches taller and 80 pounds lighter," I thought the next line was going to be "just like Tom." But it wasn't.
I was in the back and looked down when Jeff asked, "How many of you are here for the first time?" So do you mind doing that again? If you're here for the first time, will you raise your hand? So a chunk of you. How many of you have been here when Susan and I have been here before? Yeah, a bunch of you. Good.
It's 10 minutes to 9 and I've got 40 minutes, so that would be 9:30, roughly. Let me explain to you what we're going to do in the spirit of full disclosure here for the six times we're together.
Our Recent Vacation and College Football
Susan and I have been on vacation since the end of July. We've been on vacation for about four or five weeks now. We went up to Flagstaff and then went back down to the valley a couple of times. We live in Arizona, in Phoenix.
Literally 12 hours and 15 minutes from now, my girls—we have two girls and their kids, one has three girls, one has two boys—they'll be together tomorrow morning. Tomorrow's the kickoff. College football is all that matters, really, and the first Iowa game is tomorrow.
I haven't had a chance to be in front and speak in about a month, and it's really weird. This is always kind of scary because your skill level has fallen. Those of you who said we've been here when you were here before are going, "How low do we think this level is going to be about this time?" It's heading south, is all I can tell you.
What We're Going to Study
We're going to try to do something that's very ambitious. In fact, it's impossible—we're not going to get it done. But I want to invite you, if you have Bibles, to open them because we're going to do a Bible study for the entire time we're here.
We have in the past, when we've been here, done different things. I had three different people come up to me and say, "There's a little bit of Jonah in all of us." Everybody kind of remembers that. That's my favorite study, the Book of Jonah. We did that here five or six years ago. We've done different sections of books.
But we're going to go to the Book of Revelation. Now, as all of you go, "Oh, wow, this is going to be great," we're not going to do any of the stuff that you want to hear. I don't know if Bono is the Antichrist or not, and I don't care. It doesn't interest me. I'm just not an end times guy.
My Approach to Scripture
Some of you, I know, are interested in end times. It's interesting—the first book, Genesis and the five days, six days, seven day creation, or a long time, that's not one of my big deals. I know some of you it is, and that's perfect. I'm glad it is. And then at the end, when is Jesus coming and all that, that's never been a big deal for me.
Early on, God saved me in 1980, and early on I'm reading, "Nobody knows the day or the hour." So why am I spending time trying to figure out the day or the hour if nobody knows it? That was kind of my thing. The message was He's coming again, so live like it could be today.
Most of you know that from literally the time just shortly after Jesus died, they thought He was coming. Virtually every generation has thought this is it. And it feels like it now, doesn't it? It does kind of feel like we're looking at things. We've got Ahmadinejad—he's just nuts. You've got the whack job in North Korea. It's just a crazy world we're in. So it could be today, or it could be 1,000 years from now. I don't know.
Dealing with the Present
Here's what I know: I've got to deal with now. I'm in a church. Jeff mentioned we're part of a group that started a church 19 years ago, and I've been obsessed for 19 years with how to transition it. I watch a lot of churches where the guy who kind of starts it hangs on a little bit too long, or he doesn't in a proactive way transition.
I've been doing a lot of stuff with church. Up this way, it may not be a big deal, but down where we are, Driscoll and Mars Hill, that's big. There are guys in Sacramento, and that's kind of big. There are guys all over dealing with church and what church is like.
What Would Jesus Do?
There was a wristband that a bunch of people wore years ago: "What would Jesus do?" I always hated that wristband, probably because I didn't think of it and didn't make any money on it. The reason I didn't like it was this: what would Jesus do and what Jesus would have me do seemed like two different things.
If Jesus comes across the blind man, He heals them. I don't have that, at least that I'm aware of. I've got a lot of mud on a lot of blind guys' eyes, but none of them have opened yet. I can't get that done. So what would Jesus have me do?
What Would Jesus Say to Churches Today?
As we're trying to figure out church, and church in the 21st century, with all of these different things and all of the travails that are going on in church—multi-site videos, live, on tape, what kind of music, all the stuff that goes into it—I found myself wondering, what would Jesus speak to our churches today?
The cool thing is, you really don't have to speculate, because He's spoken. It's in Revelation chapter 2 and chapter 3. Now, we need to spend just a little time, and I'm really cautious about this.
Our shortest time together. Most of you've traveled all day. If you have small kids, they didn't sleep last night. They're all excited about getting here. So you got up early. You came in here. You're tired. You can barely move. You go in there. You just ate more food than you eat in a week. And for me, it feels a little warm in the room. You can just see some of you already just kind of dozing off.
So this is really going to be a hard session for us. But it's really important, because it's going to set the tone for everything else. So I'm just asking you to focus for 35 minutes. Most of you should be able to do that. There's always a few Washington State graduates who can't really come up to speed in that. But most of you, it's a gift. I'm just guessing, but there's always one. And I was hoping I got it right. So even you can get up to this speed for 35 minutes.
The Revelation Given to John
So you get the book. We're going to go really fast, and then we're going to slow down when we get to chapter 2. Look at the very beginning. Chapter 1, verse 1, "revelation of Jesus, which God gave Him to show to His bondservants, the things that will soon take place. And He sent them to communicate by an angel to His bondservant, John." So Jesus is appearing to John.
Now this John that we're talking about is the John that wrote the gospel. He's the John that wrote 1st, 2nd, 3rd John. He is John who, when you see that picture of the Last Supper, he is the one that's pictured there by the bosom of Jesus. John is the disciple that Jesus loved. By this point, John's about 95-ish years old. He's been exiled to Patmos. So he's on this little island.
All of the disciples, other than John at this point, all of the apostles have been murdered. John is now at the end of his life. And Jesus gives this vision to John to give to all of us until Jesus comes again.
Grace and Peace from Christ
So if you look at verse 4, "John, to the seven churches that are in Asia, grace to you and peace from Him who is and was and who is to come, from the seven spirits who are before Him on the throne, from Jesus, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, the ruler of the kings of the earth, to Him who loves us and released us from our sins by His blood." That's what we just sang about, that good news. Jesus Christ came, lived and died for a reason and it's to save people from their sin.
So He comes right to it. He says, here's what I wish you, grace and peace. I wish you this unmerited favor. You can't earn it. And peace, which is not the absence of turmoil. We're going to look at this tomorrow morning. Jesus speaks to the church at Smyrna and Smyrna is known for the suffering that is there. Tomorrow morning's session, I hate to say it this way because there's four after it, but it may be the most quickly applied. Tomorrow morning's session is very important.
To these, He says, grace and peace. Now, this is really important. Where do I find grace and peace? What does He say? Grace and peace, what? From Him. Our life is pursuing this idea of grace or peace or happiness or satisfaction in something other than Christ, other than the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
So in this world, you have this illusion that if I have this, I'll be happy. If this takes place, I'll be satisfied. If only that, then I'll be happy. And He says, no, no, no, no, no. In this life, it's not the absence of turmoil. It's the presence of God in our life, right smack in the midst of all of it. It's not necessarily the removal of it.
The Seven Actual Churches
So He's speaking to them and He says to these seven churches. Now, this is really important. These are seven actual churches. In the back of your Bible, why don't you keep your finger right there and flip to the back. There's all those maps that you only look at when you're bored stiff. So you'll probably see you thumbing through them tomorrow sometime or over the weekend.
Well, in there, you will see, find the map that shows - I don't know how it will be headed in yours. I'm trying to think. The missionary journeys of Paul show it in mine. But what you're looking for is kind of the Eastern Mediterranean. And you'll actually see, well, it depends on the detail of the map. You'll actually see the island of Patmos. But you will see these seven actual cities.
If you were to come ashore, you would land at Ephesus. If you spotted Ephesus on there, this is one of those points where it'd be helpful to have PowerPoint probably. But Ephesus. And then you just make kind of a semicircle journey. You go from Ephesus to Smyrna to Pergamum. Then you head southeast to Thyatira to Sardis to Philadelphia and Laodicea. Those are exactly the order that Jesus deals with these seven actual churches.
Sir William Ramsey wrote this, "the great circular road that bound together the most populous, wealthy, and influential part of the province of Aegean Minor." So there's a road. You could come ashore and travel down this road. And it would actually take you from one place to another to another to another. So Jesus is taking John on this flyover journey of these seven churches, seven actual churches that, in a sense, represent every church, to some degree or another, that's ever existed.
Christ's Sovereign Authority
Jesus comes. And He has this vision. Look at verse 8. We're still in chapter 1. He says, "I'm the Alpha, the Omega, the Beginning, the End, the One who is, the One who was, the One who is to come, the Almighty." There's nothing outside My authority. Jesus establishes immediately His sovereign control.
We believe that when we talk about God, we talk about this One who created. There was just an article, I think it was yesterday, the day before BBC released it, and we've read it on a bunch of the releases. Stephen Hawking's the physicist. He's absolutely brilliant, more degrees than a thermometer. He's smarter than snot. And he just declared that God didn't create the universe. So apparently, he's been educated beyond his intelligence. And if you read through what Stephen Hawking says,
Everything that exists came from something. Yet Stephen Hawking, the renowned physicist, claims that this whole universe came from nothing. That everything around you started with, began with, was moved by nothing. Jonathan Edwards, the greatest mind that America ever produced, said that nothing is what a rock dreams about when it sleeps. You can't get something from nothing.
This seems to me to be fundamentally flawed logic. We are manufacturers. We manufacture things, so you can take any instrument and say this came from something. Man has assembled. Man has manufactured, but man doesn't create. Only God can create. That's what Jesus is saying. "I spoke this into existence." It's right there at the very beginning. We can argue and debate all we want, but this is how the world got here: "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth." That's it. How did it happen? I don't know. He just did. He was the unmoved mover.
The Evidence of Creation
Isn't that what Paul says in Romans 1? You cannot look around and not see that creation screams of a Creator. That's why when I read something like Hawking's theories, I couldn't care less. I don't understand it, and apparently I don't need to be that smart. When I read that kind of reasoning, it just defies simple logic.
How did the world get here? I don't know how it happened. Did it happen in seven days? I think so. Some very bright people, Christian people that I love, say it was a little longer. Whatever. But God did it. That's what I do know. He created it.
Now, He created it, He sustains it, He holds it together, and there's no maverick molecule. There's nothing in this whole wide creation that is not under the authority of God.
God's Sovereignty in Our Lives
This always starts to separate people here. Everything that happens in your life—because ultimately you care about you, not about anything else, and I get it—everything that happens in your life is either caused by or allowed by God. If that's not true, then He isn't God.
He can stop the hurricane. He can cause the hurricane. He can allow it. We can argue about it all we want, but if that statement's not true, then He's not God. That's what He's establishing. He's establishing to John, and to all of us who ever read this: "I'm the alpha and the omega. I'm the beginning and the end."
Look at verse 11: "Write what you see, write to these churches," and then He lists these churches. Then He gives a little warning in verse 17: "Don't be afraid." He's going to show John a whole bunch of stuff, and He can take him even out of this situation.
Do Not Fear
"Do not be afraid" is the most frequent prohibition that Jesus gives us in the New Testament. He's not saying it isn't scary. He's not saying life isn't difficult. He's just saying you don't need to be afraid. Why? Because greater is He that's in you than he that's in the world.
All these things that you would lose, all those bad things you don't want, all those things that are present, all those things you fear—if they come into your life, they come for a reason. You may not understand it, but they're there.
The Pattern for the Seven Churches
There's a general pattern we find once we get to chapter two. The reason we say there's a general pattern is because there are some exceptions to it. But generally, in each church, Jesus identifies the recipient, then a strength, then a weakness, then a call to action, and a promise. There are some exceptions to that, but that's generally the pattern. This first church, the church at Ephesus, fits this perfectly.
Let's read these seven verses, then we'll come back and take it apart and try to apply it. Here's my job: our job is to understand what it says, and then try to figure out what it means to us. We're going to end with a "so what?" What does this mean to me?
The Message to Ephesus
"To the angel of the church at Ephesus, write: the one who holds the seven stars in His right hand, and the one who walks among the seven golden lampstands says this: I know your deeds, your toil, your perseverance, that you cannot tolerate evil men. You put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false. You have perseverance, and have endured for My name's sake, and have not grown weary."
You'd want to say "amen" at that point if you're these guys. Here's the problem. Look at the first word in verse four. What is it? "But." This is a killer. It's like that person who always starts, "I love him to death, but," then they just throw him under the bus.
"But I have this against you: you have left your first love. Therefore, remember from where you have fallen, repent, and do the deeds you did at first. Or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand—that's the church—from its place unless you repent. Yet you do have this: you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate."
The Nicolaitans come up later—they're the bad guys. Scholars don't really agree on who they are, other than they're clearly problematic.
He says this promise to him who has ears to hear: let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will grant to eat from the tree of life that is in the paradise of God.
The Recipient and Setting
He writes in verse one to the recipient: the angel of the church at Ephesus. That word "angels" can also be translated "messenger." When they gathered together in that early church, they didn't walk in and say, "Open to the book of Revelation chapter two, verse one." They didn't have those Bibles. So this letter would come as a piece of correspondence to the teaching elder, the lead pastor, the senior pastor. He is writing to him and establishes immediately who He is: Jesus.
Susan is probably my fairest and best critic of my teaching. There are certain lessons and times that she doesn't like, and things she likes more. She loves the beginning of a book when I do an introduction. She likes to know what's going on. Let me tell you a little bit about this church at Ephesus that some of you might find interesting and helpful.
The Great City of Ephesus
It was called the light of Asia. It was the greatest harbor in Asia. One scholar said a traveler from Rome would land at Ephesus and proceed up a magnificent avenue, 35 feet wide, lined with columns, which led to the harbor in the center of the city. Interestingly, it's not a port city now. Silt has come in, and Ephesus is now actually inland.
It was the market of Asia. It was considered the highway to Rome. It was also called the highway of martyrs. The Christians who would be gathered together and sent for prosecution and maybe persecution in Rome would typically come through Ephesus. William Barclay writes, "Its position made Ephesus the wealthiest and the greatest city in all of Asia. It is aptly called the vanity fair of the ancient world."
A Hub of Commerce and Religion
So it was a hub of commerce. Think of something like the port of San Francisco or Los Angeles or New York. It was a free city, which meant though it was under Roman control, it wasn't occupied continually by the Roman government. It was exempt from military occupation. Periodically a governor would come and visit. If there was an event, if there was a trial, they would come there and there would be presence. But otherwise it was a free city.
It was a city filled with religion. The most prominent religion was the temple to the goddess Diana. This temple was 425 feet long, 275 feet wide, with 120 columns around it. If I said picture a Greek temple, this is what you would think: 120 columns, 60 of those covered with gold. The temple was filled with temple prostitutes.
There were two things they were known for. If you remember Acts 19, Paul's coming through and he's casting out and dealing with demons. There's the coppersmith who's selling these idols that are supposed to speak, and Paul confronts them. So they were famous for idols, but they were really famous for temple prostitutes. Part of their religion was pure sexual unrestraint. So evangelism was a little easier for them than us. They had this going for them.
Christ's Authority Over the Church
To this angel, He writes and says these things. Look at verse one: "these things who holds the seven stars." There are two Greek words for the word "hold." One is like holding this cup, to control it, hold it. If you had a coin and put it in your hand, that would be the other word: to completely control it. This is the one, Jesus, who holds the seven churches in His hands. It's really a strong picture. Those of you old enough, think of Mahala Jackson singing, "He's got the whole world in His hands." Well, He's got the whole church at Ephesus in His hands.
God's Complete Knowledge
Verse two: "I know your works." He identifies three of them. I know you're hardworking. I know you labor. I know you persevere. I know you discern. As you think this through, this is either very comforting or very scary, because He says, "I know you."
I hope you get this about God, and I hope that it is mildly scary but very comforting: He knows everything there is to know about you. My suspicion would be, if we started with Jeff and went all the way through the room, that every one of you has something that you really hope we never know about you. It might be something you did, or something you're doing, or some thought you had, some dark side. The reason you don't want us to know it is because you'd be embarrassed by it. But on a deeper level, your fear is: if we knew that, we'd reject you.
Doesn't that happen all the time? People get together, they get married, and now it's not going well. One of them will say, "If I knew that about you, you jerk, I would have never married you. If I had known that, if I knew then what I know now, I would have never gotten into this thing. Would have never even started dating you. Would have never returned your email."
This is really big. God knows everything there is to know about you. It's not like He's ever going to say to you, "If I'd have known that about..."
The God Who Knows Everything About You
There's nothing you've done, there's nothing you're doing, there's nothing you're ever going to do that God's going to say, "That's it, you're out." That's an amazing thought, isn't it? He loves you. He knows all there is to know. He knows when you stand and sing, "I'll Fly Away." He knows when you learn how to play a game and think, "I'm really good at this," and "I can study that Bible and I can move that around."
He knows all of those things, but He knows all of those deep, dark thoughts, words, deeds, intentions—all of those about you—and He loves you anyway. This is a big deal. There's nothing you can do to make God love you more. There's nothing you can do to make God love you less.
So if you're going through all these gymnastics, if your motive for all these things you do is to win God's favor, you're wasting your time because you already got it. If you're trying to make Him love you more—"If I do this, if I do this, if I do this, if I do this, He'll love me more"—that's not true. He loves you. He can't love you more, He can't love you less. He loves you.
When God Says "I Know"
Now He says, "I know these deeds." Like I said, comforting or terrifying. And He says, "Here's what"—and this is pretty cool. He says, "I know you're hard workers." The word that's translated "labor" there means literally to work to the point of exhaustion. To be engaged in an activity that encompasses everything of mind and body.
He's saying to these people, "You're not lazy, you're energetic, you're serving, you're sweating, you're active, you're involved." Activities—you evangelize, you Bible study, you teach the young, you help the hurting. You're busy, you're engaged. And you persevere. You have that triumphant fortitude. You endure to the end. You don't quit. You're tenacious.
The Perseverance Illustration
I was flipping through the other night and that old "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" movie was on. It was toward this scene when they're down in Bolivia or wherever. Remember, they're trying to get away from these guys who are chasing them, chasing them. I turned around right into this classic scene when Sundance and Butch are there, and they look—they thought they were free—and there are the guys. And Sundance says, "Who are those guys?"
When I was a kid, we used to have this kind of blow-up toy with sand in the bottom, and you could take it and punch it and punch it, and it would go down, but it would always come back. That's what these guys are. They're hardworking. They persevere. And they're discerning. You can't fool them. You can't tolerate evil. You know the truth.
The Incredible Pastoral Legacy
Let me give you this. I was in a church earlier this summer and they had, down all the wall, all the history of all the pastors. I guess it was a big thing. Let me give you the pedigree, the best we have it, for this church that we're talking about.
First guy to come in there with the gospel: Paul. Paul's there three years. Then there's kind of a flow of people through. Apollos comes. You may not be familiar with that name, but remember in the book of Corinthians, Paul's dealing with the church being split. They're going, "I'm of Paul," "I'm of Apollos." So that's how big this guy is.
Then Priscilla and Aquila come. Now you may think those are backup singers from Marvin Gaye, but they are not. They were a husband-wife team. And it's interesting—here's a little challenge for you Bible scholars: Do a husband-wife study, because when you get into it, you don't have many role models. Really, about the only role model you have in the New Testament is Priscilla and Aquila. Study their lives and see what they did.
The Ultimate Pastor Arrives
Then they're gone. Paul says, "I'm going to send you a guy. I got a whole lot of guys here, but I got nobody like this." And he sends Timothy. Then tradition says John himself comes and pastors the church. Tradition also says, by the way, that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was at this church for a while. We can't establish that, but it makes sense that John would be there.
Imagine this—some of you are pastors, I'm sure, and you have pastors in your church—but Christmas and Easter are always difficult for me. I did an Easter or Christmas message, I don't know what it was, but I was so frustrated because we got all these people, all this part, all this stuff. And I did the message: "I don't know why you people come." That wasn't the most popular message. Staff said, "Let's not do that one again next year."
The Eyewitness Easter Message
But imagine the Easter message that John gave. Because he's not going to say, "Turn to chapter and verse." He's going to say, "Let me tell you what it was like. I was there. I was there on Friday. I was there when He died. I was there at the crucifixion. And I was there for three days of utter despair. And then on that morning when the girls came and said, 'He's risen,' I went there with Peter. I beat him to the tomb. I waited and let him go in. And that tomb was empty. And it was but a day or two later that we saw Him."
And then he would say, "He's risen." And they would say, "He's risen indeed." And it wasn't me 2,000 years later reading the story and trying to recreate it. It was him—"I witnessed."
That's the church. When Jesus is saying, "I'm Jesus," when Paul is saying goodbye to this church at Ephesus...
The Warning Paul Gave
In Acts 20, verse 29, Paul said, "For I know this, that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you. Also among yourselves, men will rise, speaking perverse things. Therefore, watch, remember, do not cease to keep guard." And they did it. That's the point. He saw it. They did it. "I know this. I know your labor."
But then comes verse four: "But I got something against you. You left your first love." You're a pit bull on orthodoxy. You know what they kind of are? They're kind of really evangelical Pharisees. Their Bibles are all marked up. They know the Greek. They know all the nuances. They love to study and study and study. But their motivation is gone.
Good people doing good things. Remember when Jesus appears to Peter after the resurrection? Peter had denied Christ three times. And it's as though that three's a theme. Jesus comes to Him three times and says what? "Do you love me?" I think that's what He says to this church.
When Knowledge Becomes Pride
This is why this resonates with me. Churches apply to every individual as well. Those of us who are kind of truth-oriented - knowledge tends to puff up. We become really prideful. We got the answer. And by the way, it may be true. Chuck Swindoll's got a little line. He says this: "They knew how to defend the doctrines of the word, but they forgot who the doctrines pointed to."
We say it at our church this way: "We study the word of God so we might know the God of the word." Cannon Beach, and I don't mean this with any disrespect at all, would be a great place for somebody like these people from Ephesus to hide out.
I've been coming here since 1960. Studied all the words. Heard all the great teachers. I've studied, going to the book nook, own them all, marked them all, memorized them all. But I lost my first love. I've lost the love of Christ that compels me.
The Love That Compels Us
There's a wonderful section that I do almost every time I go somewhere in 2 Corinthians chapter five where we're ambassadors and all that, but it begins with this. Here's our motivation: 2 Corinthians chapter five, verse 14: "The love of Christ compels us."
Those words that you've heard. Mila even referenced it in some of the singing. That sweet old song that we know that we've heard over and over again. You know what? You can hear it over and over again. It becomes so familiar to you that it loses its novelty. It loses its truth.
Losing Wonder
I had a friend who came to visit one time from Iowa. We were going in to have breakfast. I don't know how much you know about Arizona other than it's hot. But we have magnificent sunrises and spectacular sunsets. Our sunsets are prettier than the ocean sunsets. Our sunsets are amazing. Especially if you have a little pollution because that adds a pink to it.
We're walking in. He says to me, "That's an amazing sunrise." I said, "Yeah, it's like that every day." I remember the first time I saw it. It's one of those that kind of takes your breath away. I went, "Wow, look at that." But after a while, yeah.
That first time I heard that gospel, that first time I responded, that first time I understood that truth - wow, Jesus died for you. Yeah, I know. What do you do?
The Prescription for Restoration
It's verse five. He said, here's the action: "Remember from where you've fallen, repent and do the first works." Remember, look back. Throughout scripture, you'll see that word "remember" used over and over and over again.
God in the Old Testament, and then even in the New Testament, the nation of Israel is saying, "Remember. Remember back there? Remember when you were in slavery? Remember when you didn't have any shot out of this thing? You remember how there were locusts came and then there were all these different things. And then finally the firstborns were killed and Moses says, 'Let my people go.' And away we go. Do you remember that?"
"You remember how all of a sudden you come to the Red Sea and you're going, 'Hmm, we're not sure how this is gonna work.' And I parted that. Do you remember that? And you got to the other side and then that Red Sea gobbled up your enemy. Do you remember when you didn't have any food and there was manna and all of a sudden there was this manna from heaven? Do you remember what it was like the first day you ate manna? Yeah, it was spectacular. Do you remember after a while you were going, 'Manna again?' Do you remember how you didn't have any water and you tap a rock and out the water comes? Do you remember? Do you remember?"
Remembrance in Worship
See, at our church, we do this every Sunday. We stop and we take the elements and we say, "Do this in remembrance of me." Past, present, future. Past, Jesus died. Present, it affects me today. Future, one day I'll be with Him in heaven.
Listen, if you're here tonight and I don't care about the DNA of your church, you go fix your church. We'll focus on you. If you're this church, if you're this person that's become this loveless person, what do you do? Remember.
Thomas Goodwin says this, speaking of remember: "It's a turn up and down of your past life with a broken heart." Remember. I got this email and I found it the other day. It was sent to me January 22nd, 1999. So I hope he's not working, waiting for a reply. But it's kind of interesting. "Tom, this, that, and the other thing and awesome and God is good." Here's the way he signs off: "Just another poster child for amazing grace."
The Call to Action
Keep working hard. He's not saying stop working. He's not saying that. He's not saying don't persevere. Don't be discerning. He's not saying that. He says remember, repent. It means to change your mind, change your direction.
The Historical Reality of Lost Faith
Turn around. Reorientation. Repeat. Go back to what you were doing at first. This church at Ephesus was alive and vibrant. An observer arrives in Ephesus a few centuries later. Here's what he wrote: "I found only three Christians there and those sunken in such ignorance and apathy as to scarcely have heard of the names of St. Paul or St. John." Isn't that amazing?
I'm sitting in a pastoral staff meeting one day and we've got a lot of young guys and they're all really smart. We're sitting around and we're talking about the future and they said, "Well, we know our doctrine will always be there." And I said, "Stop! You don't know that. We fought for this for 15, 16 years. I don't take it for granted." And I went right to this.
The church at Ephesus goes, "Can we get on the pedigree again?" Paul establishes it. Apollos comes. Priscilla, Aquila, Timothy, John. And a couple of hundred years later, they can't find but three Christians and those don't know who John was and who Paul was.
The Pattern Repeats Throughout History
Go to London. They think the population is Christian. Really, the Christian in London is probably two, three percent. Wait a minute. This is where you had all of the great preachers. This is where Spurgeon was getting thousands and thousands and thousands of people. His sermons were the most popular publications for purchase there. The gospel was everywhere. And you can't find a Christian. Far more Christians percentage wise in China than you have in London.
Paris, you're just wasting your time looking there. You can go all through Europe. But you know what? You can start in the east and start moving west and you see the same thing in our country. You go back to where Jonathan Edwards was and Whitefield spoke and these giants that influenced the culture and started places like Princeton and Harvard and Yale. Gone.
How about you?
The Promise to Those Who Overcome
Here's the promise. It's verse 7. We have to close. "He who has ears to hear"—meaning, if the Holy Spirit is opening your heart at this time, you hear this—"To him who overcomes." And you'll see that phrase in two or three of these churches. You'll see it down in verse 7 we're looking at. Verse 11. See it again in verse 17. "To him who overcomes. To he who perseveres. We will eat from the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God."
Here's what He's saying. Eternity is yours. Is He saying you can lose your salvation? No. If you right now at this moment are a follower of Christ, you're as certain of heaven as the saints that are already there. You can't lose that. But you can sure lose the vibrancy of that relationship here.
Looking Ahead to Smyrna
We're going to tomorrow morning look at our second of the seven churches. We're going to look at the church at Smyrna. It's the shortest. Look at that. It's just a few verses. And He says this in verse 9: "I know your tribulation."
Here's my bet. My bet is that there are a whole bunch of you who are barely hanging on when you got here. Probably as you're driving over here, you're going, "Why the heck are we doing this anyway?" If you wouldn't have paid the money, you wouldn't have come. Sometime this summer, or maybe since you made that deposit, there's been a job that's lost or a child that's gotten sick or a relationship that's broken. Or there's a physical ailment or suffering. There's hurting. There's pain. That's just the world we live in.
Tomorrow, we got a great word to you. We're going to talk about suffering. Why do we suffer? How do we respond to suffering? Is it inevitable? How do we deal with that?
Closing Prayer and Application
Father, thank You for this amazing truth that these seven churches, there may be some of us in this room right now who really are, we've lost our first love. We're doing all the things. The fact we're here is evidence of it. We're studying and sharing. But man, we feel dry. We're not sure why. And the reason is we've lost that love for You. That love of Christ that compels us. God, do what You did early in our life with You. Set us on fire. Give us a passion and a love for You and for people.
God, I pray for each family here, each person. We thank You that we can come to a place like Cannon Beach. That we can enjoy this so much. It's a beautiful place to come and to get away. We pray You will do a mighty work in our lives here that literally for the rest of our time on this planet, we'll see the fruit of Your work. God, sustain us until that day when we fly away to be with You. We ask it in Christ's name, Amen.