The Church of Ephesus
Tom Shrader walks through Christ's letter to the church at Ephesus in Revelation 2:1-7, commending their hard work, perseverance, and doctrinal discernment while pressing on their central failure: they had left their first love. He argues that knowledge, Bible study, and theological precision are means, not ends, and that when love for Christ is lost, even the most diligent church becomes hollow. Drawing on Revelation 2:5, he calls believers to remember where their love for God began, repent of letting duty replace devotion, and return to the works that once flowed from genuine affection for Christ.
“We study the word of God so that we can know the God of the word.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: What Christ Says to the Church (Revelation)
Recorded: 2010 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 41 min
Themes: first love, repentance, devotion, diligence, spiritual drift, love for god, duty vs devotion, perseverance, feeling spiritually dry, longtime believer, burned out in ministry, pastor, elder, going through the motions, mature christian, church member
Scripture: Revelation 1:1, Revelation 2:1-7, Revelation 22, Genesis 3, Psalm 139, Acts 19, Acts 20, 1 John 4, Ephesians 6:24
Theological Themes: ecclesiology, church health, christology, letters to the seven churches, sanctification, doctrinal discernment, revelation, means of grace
Full Transcript
Introduction: What Would Jesus Say to the Church?
Open your Bibles — that is what is important. We are in the Book of Revelation, so if you do not have a Bible, raise your hand and someone will bring one to you. Go all the way to the back, find the maps, then go left — the first book there is the Book of Revelation.
Let me remind you what we are doing here for these seven weeks. We are asking ourselves a question: what would Jesus say to the church today? If Jesus were walking around in this day, in 2010, speaking to the church, what would He say? And there is a legitimate sense in which we do not have to speculate or imagine. John Stott tells us that Christ reveals what He wants His church to be like at all times and in all places in this Book of Revelation.
Here is how we started. Look at verse 1: "The revelation of Jesus Christ." That word *revelation* means unveiling, disclosing, uncovering. Jesus is the primary character here. He is communicating His vision, His desires, His thoughts, and even His ultimate return to John, who writes this book. This is John the disciple whom Jesus loved, the John who wrote 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John, and the John who wrote the Gospel. Jesus tells him: write about the things that are right now, write to these churches, and then from chapter 4 on, write about the things that will come.
When we talk about the Book of Revelation, we almost intuitively jump to the things that are going to happen — we go straight to His return. But before He does that, He speaks very clearly to seven actual churches. Throughout this book you see His power, His might, His majesty, His holiness, His judgment, and His love. We receive His instruction, His direction, encouragement, advice, commendation, and condemnation directed at these churches.
The Seven Churches and Their Locations
Most scholars agree that these seven churches are representative of seven types of churches you will see throughout the ages. What is true corporately is almost always true individually, and what is true individually can be true corporately. So these may also represent seven types of personality traits or leanings we might find in the church.
Looking at a map, you can see the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea in what is today modern Turkey. The small island at the bottom of the screen is Patmos — about four miles long and six miles wide — and that is where John is when he receives this vision. Moving onto the mainland, we encounter, in consecutive order as they are presented in Revelation, seven churches connected by a major highway. There is Ephesus, then heading north: Smyrna, Pergamum (which you may also see written as Pergamos), then a bit east to Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.
Over the next seven weeks we are going to study what Jesus has to say to each of those seven churches, always asking: what type of church are we? Is there one of these churches that might represent us collectively? Within any church you will find all of these character traits that Jesus identified — you will find them in individuals — but most often a church will have one dominant character trait.
The Letter to Ephesus: Pattern and Address
Let us read the passage beginning in chapter 2, verse 1, and we will make a few comments along the way. Each of these messages begins with that familiar address to the recipient: "To the angel of the church at —" followed by the city name. *Angel* here means messenger, and this is in all likelihood the person charged with taking the letter and communicating it to the people gathered in that church.
Right after that address, Jesus identifies Himself — and that is another familiar element of the pattern. Here He identifies Himself as "the one who holds the seven stars in His right hand and the one who walks among the seven golden lampstands." That identification changes subtly from letter to letter, though there are similarities, and He is always emphasizing one particular attribute or characteristic of who He is. Most of the time He emphasizes that characteristic because it is precisely what that church needs to hear.
The general pattern of each letter is this: recipient, then a strength, then a weakness, then an action He wants the church to take, and then a promise. There are a couple of deviations, but for Ephesus, Pergamos, and Thyatira, that is exactly the flow.
Commendation: What Ephesus Got Right
We see a perfect example of that pattern beginning in verse 2 with the commendation. He says: "I know your deeds, your toil and perseverance, that you cannot tolerate evil men. You put to test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and they are found to be false. You have perseverance and have endured for My name's sake, and you have not grown weary."
You would love to stop right there, because that sounds very good. He is saying: I see you. You work hard, you persevere, you are discerning, and you do not grow weary. But that is not the end — because verse 4 arrives with a turn: "But I have this against you."
The City of Ephesus
"Therefore, remember from where you have fallen, repent, and do the deed you did first, or else I am coming, and I will remove the lampstand out of its place, unless you repent." Yet this you have: that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which He also hates. We are not going to talk about them today — we will talk about them later. They are a group, and we are not even totally clear on what their false teaching is or how they permeated and infiltrated the church, but they did. They are bad guys who bring false doctrine at the very least, which He also hates.
Verse seven: "He 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, which is in the paradise of God."
Ephesus: A City of Wealth and Influence
Going back to verse one, He identifies the teaching elder and leader — the one who is going to deliver this, who is literally going to deliver the mail, the one who is going to read this letter to the church at Ephesus. Let me tell you a little bit about Ephesus. Of the cities in Asia Minor, it was the wealthiest and probably the most influential. It was a cosmopolitan area, considered the greatest city, and called by one author "the Vanity Fair of Asia."
It was situated inland, with a harbor about three miles in, making it a very protected and safe area. That protection made it a critical and busy seaport. Imagine what comes with sailors and commerce constantly moving in and out of a central hub like that. It was also the convergence of four major highways — the one you looked at on the map, and three others that began to tie these cities together.
It was nicknamed the Market of Asia, or the Highway to Rome, and in one place also called the Highway of the Martyrs. Christians would be brought from this area and shipped to Rome for persecution, prosecution, and martyrdom — some killed, some enslaved. It was a strategically significant city. Robert Morris writes that the traveler from Rome landing in Ephesus would proceed up a magnificent avenue, thirty-five feet wide, lined with columns, which led to the center of the city.
Politics and Religion in Ephesus
Ephesus was a politically free city, meaning it was not under Roman occupation, though it was under Roman authority. In a sense, it was self-governed, with certain exceptions. If something critical was happening — perhaps a major event — Rome might send a governor and some ruling force. But by and large, it had earned the status of a free city over the years.
It was also a major religious hub. The Temple of Artemis, also known as Diana, which is one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was located there. It was 425 feet long, 225 feet wide, and had 120 columns. If you picture the stereotypical image of a grand Greek structure, that was it. This was a pagan religion, and central to its worship was prostitution and rampant sexual immorality. There were literally thousands of priestesses practicing out of that temple.
In chapter 19, you see Paul come into the area and begin to preach the gospel. Demetrius the coppersmith rises up because he had been making idols that served as iconic objects of worship, and Paul's preaching was cutting into his profits. So Demetrius stirred the people up against Paul, and persecution and opposition rose against him. That was the condition of the city.
If you took New York and San Francisco and rolled them together, maybe threw in a little Seattle and a little Los Angeles, that is something like what you have. It was a major hub of activity — business, politics, commerce, and a dominant but thoroughly pagan religion. And then God moved, and He pulled a remnant right out of that city. But they remained in that city.
What These Cities Teach Us
We can learn a great deal from these seven cities — not just how to look at and evaluate ourselves, but how to interact with the community around us. There are principles we can draw from that. So He says in verse one, "These things says He who holds the seven stars in His right hand" — the seven messengers — and the seven golden lampstands, representing the seven churches.
Now there are two Greek words available for the word "hold." One would be to hold the way I might hold this music stand — I have a grip on it, but it would not take much to shake it away. The other word carries a very different meaning. Imagine taking a coin and closing your fist tightly around it — absolute control, no way for anyone to get at it. That is the word used here. This is the One who holds the churches, who has them under His sovereign control. In that we discover safety, security, and protection — the idea of His continual presence in our lives.
He Knows Your Works
He says in verse two, "I know your works." That is what the psalmist writes about in Psalm 139: where can I go to hide from You, God? If I go up, You are there. If I go down, You are there. You are ahead of me, You are behind me, You know what I am going to say before I say it. That is what He is reminding them. He has absolute control and authority. He holds them. And He knows all about them — nothing can be hidden, nothing can be concealed.
We see this whenever we pray to God. There is no reason to be anything other than absolutely honest, because you are not going to give Him any information He does not already know. We pray not for His benefit, but for our own.
and Sapphira — that's the one you don't want to be — and Priscilla and Aquila. So that's your choice. And then Apollos is described as a man mighty in the scriptures. And then Timothy is the lead pastor for a period of time, and he's Paul's son in the faith. And then tradition tells us John himself was there. So that's your DNA. That is your pedigree. That is who built this church. And so it's no surprise that they're hardworking, that they persevere, and that they have this incredible doctrinal discernment. Nobody gets anything past these people.
The Church's Strength: Work, Perseverance, and Discernment
So Christ, looking at this church, sees all of this and affirms it. He says, I know your deeds. He knows their labor — the work that takes everything of mind and sinew. He knows their patience, their steadfast, enduring, triumphant fortitude. And He knows their discernment, that they cannot bear those who are evil, that they have tested those who claim to be apostles and found them to be liars. These are not passive, lukewarm believers. They are engaged, active, sweating, evangelizing, teaching the young, helping the helpless.
Think of the context they were doing this in. Ephesus was a city like a hybrid of San Francisco, New York, Seattle, and Los Angeles all rolled into one. And in that environment, with that enormous temple dominating the landscape, these believers are out in the street saying, no, that is false, this is true. No matter how hard the city pushed back, they kept coming. Like that inflatable toy from childhood — the one with the face and the boxing gloves and the sand in the bottom — no matter how hard you hit it, it kept coming back up. That is the church at Ephesus. As Sundance says in the film, who are those guys? It was the church at Ephesus. They just kept coming and coming and coming. They did not grow weary.
Their doctrinal vigilance was not accidental. In Acts chapter 20, Paul is saying goodbye to the elders of the church at Ephesus, and Luke records these words: "For I know this, that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Also from among yourselves, men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore watch, and remember that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears." Those were his parting words to this church: watch out, protect the doctrine. And he didn't even point outward — he said it was going to come from inside. Someone teaching a class, someone with a pulpit, someone with a platform, introducing what Paul calls perverse things. It might be flat contradiction. It might be subtle. It might just take a nuance and move it slightly. Watch out.
And approximately sixty years later, they had done exactly that. That is the point Jesus is making as He reveals the condition of the church to John. They are still hardworking, they still persevere, and their discernment is intact. Nobody can fool these people.
Some of that comes down to pedigree. I was in a church recently, and in the lobby they had framed photographs of their founding pastor and every lead pastor since. I found myself looking at them — they had that Civil War-era blank stare — and thinking this must have been a pretty bleak season. Now, that may be a little judgmental. But think about the DNA of the church at Ephesus by comparison. The man who planted it and poured three years into it is Paul. That is a remarkable foundation. Then Priscilla and Aquila arrive with Apollos. If you are looking for a married couple in the New Testament to model yourself after, you essentially have two choices — Ananias and Sapphira, which is the one you do not want — and Priscilla and Aquila. Apollos is described as a man mighty in the scriptures. Timothy serves as lead pastor for a period, Paul's own son in the faith. And then tradition tells us John himself was there. That is your DNA. That is your pedigree. That is who built this church. So it is no surprise they are hardworking, that they persevere, and that they possess this extraordinary doctrinal discernment.
The Rebuke: Leaving the First Love
And yet. And yet Christ has something against them. He says, "Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love." This is the turn. Everything He has just affirmed is real and true, and He is about to say, but there is something missing, and what is missing is everything.
go home, and it's late, and there's a homeless guy outside, and he's hungry. And my friend goes, you know what? Let me get you some food. And the guy says, I could really use a meal. So he takes him into a restaurant, and they're sitting down, and the homeless guy is on the other side of the table. And my friend is a pastor, and he's sitting there going, I need to share the gospel with this guy. And so he starts sharing the gospel with him, and the guy's trying to eat, and my friend said, I realized I was competing with a hamburger. He said, I finished the gospel, but the guy was not engaged. And then he said, you know what, I paid for the meal, I left, and I went home. And he said, I thought about that the next day, and he said, I think I got that all wrong.
The Church of Ephesus
So what is a first love? Let's frame it this way. Love is almost impossible to describe to somebody who's never experienced it. Can we all agree on that? But when you've experienced it, it's unmistakable. Those of us who've been married for a long time, you remember when you first started dating? You remember what that was like? There wasn't anything she could do that wasn't amazing. There wasn't anything she could do that was wrong. I mean, you are just, you're infatuated. You want to be with them all the time. You just want to sit with them. They're just so fascinating. And then the stuff that was amazing about them is not so amazing anymore. But here's what's interesting. A lot of people say, well, that's just the natural progression of love, it deepens. And I'm going to say yes and no. That can happen, but it doesn't automatically happen. Because if it automatically happened, we wouldn't have divorce. But it doesn't automatically happen. Marriages don't grow and deepen just because time passes.
And so here's the question. Can we, in the church, look at a group of people, and this was the group of people that were the best, they were the tip of the spear when it came to doctrine, they knew what was right, they knew what was wrong, and they worked hard, they didn't give up, and they got it done. And yet, Jesus says, I have something against you. You've left your first love. So let's talk about what a first love looks like. First, if you love somebody, you want to spend time with them. It's just that simple. You want to be with them. Now, there's a word for people who pray, and it sounds really spiritual, and it's called a prayer life. I don't know that I love that term. Because if you have a prayer life, it could be a very mechanical thing. Could be a very disciplined thing, and that's good. But ideally, prayer, at its most beautiful, is this: it's just a conversation with the God who loves you. Because you want to talk to Him. Not because you have to, not because you're checking a box.
Second thing: if you love somebody, you want to know more about them. You want to know their story. You want to know their history. You want to know what they were like as a kid. And so when we study the Bible, is it because we're going to master this material, or is it because we want to know Him? And here's the hard question. When was the last time you were reading your Bible and you just went, wow, that's amazing? When was the last time reading, you got a little emotional? When was the last time you just had this sense of the presence of God as you're reading? Or is it just a task? Is it just something you do?
Third thing about love: you want to make them happy. You want to please them. You want to serve them. And here's what's interesting. When you love somebody, you don't serve them out of obligation. You serve them because you want to. You want to see them smile. You want to see them pleased. And so when we serve in the church, when we show up on a Sunday, when we do all the things that we do, are we doing it because it pleases Him? Or are we doing it because it's what we do, it's our routine, it's our habit?
Losing First Love
Here's a picture of losing that first love in a very practical sense. There's a man and a woman, they get married, and early on, he brings her flowers. He brings them because he loves her, because he wants to see her smile, because he wants her to know that he was thinking about her. Twenty years later, he still brings her flowers, but now he brings them because if he doesn't, he's going to hear about it. Same behavior, completely different heart. And that's the picture. The behavior at Ephesus was right. The behavior was excellent. But the heart had drifted. And this is a church that Jesus looks at and says, you've lost your first love.
Now, here's the thing that I want you to notice. Jesus doesn't say, you've lost your doctrine. He doesn't say, you've lost your work ethic. He doesn't say, you've stopped persevering. He says, you've left your first love. The word there is "left." It implies a choice. It implies movement away from. It's not that it was taken from them. It's that they walked away from it. And that's a sobering thing. Because it means it can happen to the best of us. It can happen to the most doctrinally sound, hardworking, persevering church. You can drift from your first love.
And this is what I think happens. You start out loving Jesus. That's the whole thing. That's the whole reason. And then the things that come from loving Jesus, the study, the service, the community, the doctrine, those things become the thing. And the person gets replaced by the program. The relationship gets replaced by the religion. And that's where Ephesus is. They are doing all the right things, but they have moved from doing them out of love to doing them out of duty. And duty without love, over time, produces exactly what you'd expect. It produces people who are very good at being right and very bad at loving people who are wrong.
The Command to Remember, Repent, and Return
So what does Jesus tell them to do? He gives them three commands. The first one is remember. Remember from where you've fallen. Go back in your mind. Go back in your heart. What was it like when you first believed? What was it like when the gospel first hit you? What was it like when you first realized what He had done for you? Go back there. Because sometimes the first step back is just remembering what it felt like when it was right.
The second command is repent. This is not a word we love, but it simply means to turn around. Change direction. You've been walking away; now walk back toward. Repent doesn't mean feel terrible about yourself. It means recognize that you've moved in the wrong direction and choose to move back. That's it.
The third command is do the deeds you did at first. Go back and do what you were doing when you were doing it for the right reason. And here's where that's interesting. Sometimes you have to act your way back into the feeling, not feel your way back into the action. You do the deeds first. You start praying not because you feel like it, but because you know it's the right thing, and you're asking God to restore in you the love that motivated those prayers at the beginning. You go back to serving, not because you're fired up about it, but because you're choosing to, and you're asking God to put the fire back.
A Warning and a Promise
And then there's a warning. Jesus says, if you don't, I will come and remove your lampstand from its place. Now, a lampstand in Revelation represents a church. A church that has lost its first love and refuses to come back, refuses to repent, refuses to remember, refuses to return to those first deeds, that church loses its reason for existing. Because a church is not fundamentally a place to learn doctrine. It's a community of people who love Jesus and love people because of what He has done. When you remove the love, you remove the light. And a church without light has no business being called a church.
But there's also a promise. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the Paradise of God. To overcome here means to come back. To hear this word, to remember, to repent, to return. And the promise is stunning. The tree of life. Back in Genesis, access to the tree of life was cut off. It's one of the consequences of the fall. And Jesus says, to the one who overcomes, who comes back to their first love, access to the tree of life is restored. It's a picture of full and complete and eternal communion with God. Which is exactly what first love is reaching toward. It's reaching toward Him. And the promise is that for those who keep reaching, they will have Him, fully, forever.
When Busyness Replaces Love
There is a story about a man who had a colleague at the office come to him desperate for help. His life was falling apart. He needed someone to talk to right then. And the man said, "I can't talk to you now. I have to go." He left and went to a Bible study — on the Good Samaritan. He walked right past the man who needed him, then went and studied the parable about the man who walked right past the one who needed him.
There are times when something may matter more than being in church on a Sunday. A neighbor, a family member, someone in your sphere of influence calls and says they are really hurting. Telling them "I don't have time, I have to get to church" doesn't seem right. Now, sometimes you can say, "Can we meet at one?" and that works fine. But if they say, "No, I'm dying, I need you right now," you have to pay attention to that.
That is precisely what was happening to the church at Ephesus. They were busy, busy, busy.
The Danger of Knowledge Without Obedience
Doctrine and truth are important — genuinely, critically important. Radical discipleship matters. There is nothing wrong with Bible reading plans, quiet times, Bible studies, or faithful church attendance. But those things are not the end. They are the means.
A man came up after a teaching at Cannon Beach and said something that captured this perfectly. He had a daily procedure — a devotional study, a section of scripture, a set routine — and that morning he was so obsessed with getting through the material that he had no idea what it said or what it meant to him. That can happen very quickly. It is far more important to let God speak to you through His Word than to simply get through chapters four, two, and twelve.
The crucial distinction is this: learning does not equal obedience. God places opportunities to study in our lives, but the end is not merely to study them. The end is to have them impact our lives. The head must be informed, the heart must be transformed, and the result must be a life that is radically changed. If the life is not radically changed, then the other things are misguided.
They Left Their First Love
And yet, Jesus says to this church, "Nevertheless, I have this against you, you have left your first love." The motivation — perhaps the love for the cross — had faded. John, the very same John who writes the book of Revelation, writes this: "This is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and gave His Son a sacrifice, the propitiation for our sin." There was action there. You are a God-lover today because He first loved you. That is clearly not who any of us are by nature.
When the risen Jesus appeared to Peter, He asked him, "Do you love me?" Peter gave his answer. "Do you love me?" He answered again. "Do you love me?" A third time. If Jesus appeared to someone from the church at Ephesus and asked, "Do you love me?" they would have said, "Boy, do we work hard." "Do you love me?" "We persevere." "Do you love me?" "We can slice it and dice it. We know all the subtleties in the Greek."
Chuck Swindoll writes about the church at Ephesus: "They knew how to defend the doctrines of the Word, but they forgot who the doctrines pointed to. They could win any debate, but they lost their first love." It is the love of Christ that compels, the love of Christ that motivates, the love of Christ that drives.
Ignorance on Fire
Maybe this is autobiographical. It can happen quickly. You get so into the study of scripture, God opens it up, and you become almost addicted to the study itself — and then James comes along and says you need to be a doer of the Word, not just a hearer. It is not done when you can parse it. It is not done when you know what it means.
Chuck Holmes used to use the phrase "ignorance on fire" to describe when he first became a Christian. Early on, Jesus was in every sentence. People might not have known whether he was evangelizing or swearing, but all he talked about was Jesus. And then somehow he became more sophisticated, more mature, more slick. The knowledge got in the way.
We study the Word of God so that we can
Remember, Repent, and Return
Now, if you're sitting there going, "Okay, that maybe describes somebody I know," what do you do? Three things. Verse five: remember, repent, and then do the works.
Remember. Look back. It can be harmful, and it can be helpful. Remember where you started. Trace back and ask, where did this amazing study and life in Christ become dry to me? Thomas Goodwin talks about this — he calls it "a turn up and down of my past life with a broken heart."
I got an email a while ago from a friend. "Tom, just dropping you a note. Hope you're doing well. All's well here. Want you to know you're in my prayers. Encourage the church. Wow, what an awesome God we serve. Thank you. Is there anything I can do for you? Let me know." Here is how he signed it: "Just another poster child for amazing grace." That's who you were. That's who we are.
I was teaching at Cannon Beach, and there was a guy wearing a shirt that said, "I'm the wretch the song's about." That's who we are — the wretch the song's about. And sometimes I can study and study and study, and I think, yes, that's back there in my past somewhere. But that needs to stay fresh in me. Not in any way where I'm immersed and swept away in my own debauchery, but I am reminded of who I was.
When Susan and I were on vacation, before we came back, we had a loose, haphazard meeting scheduled with some guys up in Flagstaff, just to hear what they were doing. One of them said something I thought was really interesting. He said, "I find myself saying to God, 'God, here I am, and I'm still sorry. I'm still sorry about that.'" There's a humility and a brokenness associated with that. I don't have to live in that place — I'm still sorry because I'm forgiven — but somehow I need to hold onto that posture.
Grace and Truth in Tension
See how these things get mixed up? If I'm a truth person, I'm afraid that grace will turn into license. If I'm a grace person, I'm afraid that truth is going to make me brittle, hard, and Pharisaical. But God calls us to live in the tension of grace and truth. I get it right sometimes, not right other times, and somewhere in between in still other moments — and that is where He calls you. Just think about that: you're the wretch the song's about.
So I remember, and then I repent. Repent means to change my mind, change direction, turn around, and not just keep going. Going with the flow is good if the flow is going where you want to go. I'm not looking to be arguing and fighting and debating just for the sake of expending energy. But if the flow is not going where I should be going, I need to repent, turn around, take responsibility, head the other way, and fix it.
Understand that love is way beyond an emotion here. It is a commitment. It is the thing that drives me. And then I repeat — I do the things I did at first. If it was the love of Christ that motivated me, then I need to let it motivate me again. I begin to think about the cross, and even now as you move into your time of communion, you will remember. Even as you listen to the songs today, you will hear about the love of Christ and the love that God has for us. I repeat it. I go back.
The Warning of Ephesus's History
Let me give you this as a close. The church in Ephesus was hardworking, persevering, and discerning. Yet a couple of centuries later, a traveler commenting on coming to Ephesus said, "I found only three Christians there, and those sunken in such ignorance and apathy as to scarcely have heard the names of Paul and John." So even a hardworking, persevering, truth-driven church — that is not a guarantee.
I remember being in a staff meeting with the pastors one day, talking about different things and the future, and one of them brought up our doctrinal statement and the things we believe and hold to. He said, "Those are givens." I said, "Stop. Those are not givens. They may be givens right now, but the next group in, the next people in — if we are not careful, we will lose those." I don't want to lose those, but I don't want that to be all we care about.
Even in the promise, He says in verse seven, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches, and to him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life." The last time we saw that was back in Genesis 3, when we were prohibited from it. But when we get to Revelation 22, we are now invited to participate in it.
Duty Versus Love
So is that you? Does that fit you, or us as a church — hardworking, diligent, persevering, discerning, knowing the truth — but something is kind of empty? Something is missing? You are driven more by duty than by love.
What He is saying is: remember, repent, go back. Study the Word of God — don't stop that — but fall back in love with the God of the Word. Let the love that Christ has for you become the driving motive in your life, not duty. And all of a sudden, you are driven to radical discipleship. You start to look at your life and see what happens when your heart and your head are changed.
Closing Prayer
Father, thank You for these amazing, wonderful truths. I pray that we would have ears to hear, and that we would repent and remember, and that we would react. We would be drawn and driven by our first love, that we would think of You and study this Word so that we might know You and know Your Son and know Your Spirit. God, would You have Your way in our life? We ask it in Christ's name, amen.