Church at Ephesus Rev, 2:1-7

Continuing on in our study of the book of Revelation this morning. First of all, I have a confession to make. I didn't finish last week's sermon. So what we'll have to do here, you have a handout here that has talked about the three satanic strategies. So what we want to do is, this is a little bit more of an overview before we move into looking at the church at Ephesus and the message to it. And so in your handout, it has these satanic strategies, and in fact these are not mentioned explicitly in the letter to Ephesus, but I think it's important that we bring it up, because these are the three strategies that are mentioned in these messages, and also were common in fact to many of the churches in those days. So let's take a quick overview.

The first one is mentioned in Revelation 2.13, and that is, it's called the throne of Satan. and that's referring to the Roman imperial cult. See, in those days, the way the Romans had it is as long as you acknowledge Caesar as a god, they don't care how many other gods you have. So you could just kind of have all your gods along the shelf and make a little space, move over, put Caesar in there, and as long as you do that, they're happy.

So that was a requirement. Kind of the strategy headline or the slogan, if you will, is everybody's doing it. Right? Sound familiar? That's right. Everybody's doing it. If you're not doing it, you've got a problem. And it's called, you know, you're going to die. Okay? That was one of the things that they were all dealing with. I will leave it to you. This is your Mission Impossible, right? Your mission, should you choose to accept it? Okay?

Is to look up the passage there in 1 Peter. The next one is in Revelation 2.24, that is the depths of Satan.

You see, one of the things that many in the Greek culture of the time that had spread throughout the Roman Empire, many of them were subject to this Greek mystery religion. And one of the key slogans or headlines there is, I know something you don't know. Their attempt was to get special knowledge and special power and have special experiences, and with all those special things, that must make them special, right? That's what they were aiming for.

And I'll leave it to you to look up the Colossians passage that is kind of the... when it says polemic there, think of that as the cure. The remedy. The third one there is the synagogue of Satan, and that's the Jewish synagogue religion. And what had happened, the Jews had spread throughout the Roman Empire, and even though they were a minority, they were a very loud minority.

And their slogan or strategy headline is, I'd rather do it myself. It was the idea that you can live the Christian life on your own strength. You can do what it takes, you have what it takes to satisfy God's requirements. That was the philosophy of the Jewish synagogue religion. Between those three things, the Roman imperial cult, the Greek mystery religion, and the Jewish synagogue religion, those were kind of three big enemies that the believers in those days faced.

And you know what? We face them today, don't we? The first one, everybody's doing it. We may not have some edict that says you're going to worship this, but boy, have we got pressure. And it gets piped into our living rooms every day. The next, the Greek mystery religion, that's special experiences and special knowledge. And boy, we've got all kinds of people that are touting for that. And the last one is one, boy, if you just try harder, if you just follow our set of rules, you'll have holiness.

You see that? We've got all three of those messages today, so this is perfectly relevant. But it's important that we understand that as we're going through these, you're going to see these pop up, whether they mention them by name, as they do in three places, or not. Anyway, let's keep that in mind as we go through this. Let's turn now. We're going to be looking at Revelation 2, verses 1-7. Remember, these are the messages to the seven churches. Ephesus is the first of them, and that's the one we'll be looking at today. I want to give you an intro there. Ephesus was a major port city on the western coast of Asia Minor. It was a center for seaborne trade and it was the hub of the road system. All the Roman roads led in from Asia Minor into the city of Ephesus.

It was a thriving community of more than about a quarter million people. Some estimates are much higher, even as much as twice that, but still a very large number of people. By the late 1st century AD, when the Book of Revelation was written, it was the fourth largest city in the Roman Empire. The Romans made Ephesus an administrative center. It had in that area, Asia, which is on the western end of Turkey, it had in that area somewhere between 500 and 1,000 townships, everywhere from a little village up to a large city. So we're talking a lot of administrative work to keep track of all that, and believe me, the Romans wanted to keep track of all of it.

Now, it was also renowned as being a place full of religious shrines, lots of them. It had a spacious theater, it had a stadium, it had elegant public buildings, a fantastic library that is still in some parts standing today. It had all kinds of things in terms of enhancing the cultural life of the region.

Now, just to kind of give you an idea, here's some of the ruins of Ephesus that have been excavated and are there to see. Obviously, almost 2,000 years have gone by since this was first put into place, so things have gotten a little torn down. But still, I think you can get a sense of the grandeur and the development of this city. Now, but there's something bad news I've got to tell you.

Ephesus was a city of rampant paganism. It included the worship, manufacture, and sale of fertility idols of the goddess Artemis. Artemis, and I won't show a picture, Artemis had dozens of breasts on this statue, and so they would produce these statues with dozens of breasts all around. Ephesus had a huge volume of magic and occultic arts.

Acts 19.19 describes how those who had become believers took their books of magic and occultic arts, it was valued at, in today's dollars, roughly $3 million that were burned. In Ephesus, a really strange thing, remember how the Greek mystery religion valued special knowledge? Something was magical if it had words on it that supposedly nobody else had ever read. Now, I don't know how you get them on there without reading them, but that was the way the people thought. That's not all.

In Ephesians 4.19, Paul talked about the unbelievers in Ephesus having, quote, given themselves over to the sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness, and he warned them about it again in Ephesians 5.3.

So apparently it was a big problem. Now, like other Greek cultures in general, Ephesus had four different kinds of female prostitutes. One wasn't enough. They had four different categories or classes. I'll spare you the details. But men, both married and unmarried, were all expected to make use of them.

There was a temple of Artemis. It was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. And this temple, just to give you a sense of it, here's an artist's reconstruction. The temple of Artemis there had priestesses who used the temple for religious prostitution. The priests were eunuchs, but the priestesses were temple prostitutes. And while there was no polygamy, marriage was easy, and so was divorce. Wives were considered to be useful for bearing and raising children, and that's about all. Just raise the kids and keep the house.

The Ephesian culture was of such a character that Paul had to warn believers about lying stealing and drunkenness. See, they had an annual festival of bacchanalia in which for several days everybody in town got passed out drunk. So Paul had to warn them about that when he wrote. Now, to make it worse, crime and hucksterism and trickery were common.

And you know why? See this temple? That was a safe zone. If you committed a crime and were able to get to that temple before they caught you, you're free. So what is that going to do? It's going to draw every possible criminal that can get there, right? So what does that make Ephesus? Just a nest of criminals. It's infested with criminals. Nice place, huh? Okay. That's not all.

Remember we talked about the Roman imperial cult? Ephesus was a headquarters. It had demonstrated royalties to Rome, and they would have these shrines to the Roman empires, and because Ephesus had these shrines, and because they had spoken so much loyalty to Rome, Rome said, we'll be nice to you, we won't even put a Roman garrison in Ephesus. So here's this city, they called it a free city, and what that meant was it isn't free to live there, it just meant you could go ahead and have your whole city, no Roman garrison, we trust you that much. But everybody has to keep coming to this shrine.

What you don't see here was there was a statue of Domitian, and that's the one that put John away in exile. There was a statue of Domitian. We don't know how large it is. The forearm, however, is all that's left standing, and it's six feet long, to give you an idea.

People would have to come to this shrine, and periodically they would go and declare their loyalty to Rome. and acknowledge the Roman Empire as deity. Once they did that, they would get a certificate. And if you didn't have the certificate and they asked for it, guess what? You're in trouble. There's more to that, but guess what? We'll have to wait until next week to take a further look at that. Now, as to the history of the roots of Christianity in Ephesus. Ephesus enjoyed the ministries of Aquila and Priscilla, Paul, Timothy, Apollos, Aristarchus, Gaius, Tychicus, and John, the last living apostle.

Most of the New Testament is in some way related to Ephesus. Example, of course, you know that the book of Ephesus was written there, right? Some of the other books, excuse me, the book of Ephesus was written to the Ephesians, A number of other books in the New Testament were written from Ephesus. And there was other mention in other books about people having gone to Ephesus. So by the time you put all the list together, over half of the Bible has some connection to Ephesus. Half of the New Testament, rather.

Okay. Ephesus received at least one of Paul's letters, and it was some 40 years later that this message in Revelation 2, 1 through 7 was written. So let's read that now, okay? To the angel of the church in Ephesus write, the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand, the one who walks among the seven golden lampstands says this, I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance that you cannot tolerate evil men. And you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false. and you have perseverance and have endured for my sake and have not grown weary but I have this against you that you have left your first love therefore remember from where you have fallen and repent and do the deeds you did at first or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place unless you repent yet this you do have that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans which I also hate He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.

Let's break this down phrase by phrase. First, he starts off with, To the angel of the church at Ephesus write, and of course we've gone over this in previous times here, but this is the first of the standard introductions to each of the churches. Each of these messages starts off with a phrase like this and just specifies the city that it's addressed to, the church in the city. And as we've noted before, the word translated angel, as we brought out a couple of weeks ago, is the Greek word angelos, which in its most literal form means a messenger. This messenger is to take the message, which we have in verses one through seven, to the church, the assembly of believers at Ephesus. Since Ephesus is the first church on the route, the closest to the harbor, it's quite likely that they were the first in time to receive their first church-specific message.

Next we read of Christ's own description of himself. And as we noted last week, each of the descriptions of Christ to each of the seven churches is different. So this is the first one here to Ephesus. The one who holds the seven stars in his right hand The one who walks among the seven golden lampstands says this. Now, right there it says, Our Lord Jesus Christ is identified here by this description of him found, and it's in the last half of Revelation 1. He's just drawn this from Revelation 1. This is part of the overall description that focuses on Christ's involvement with the Church of Ephesus itself.

The seven stars were, according to Revelation 1.20, the seven messengers, held in the right hand.

And the right hand was the hand of power. It is also the hand of blessing and authority. When Jacob went to bless his sons, all the sons of the heads of the tribes of Israel, he did it with his right hand. And it mentions that several times. It was the hand of blessing. It was the hand of power. And one other thing I should note, that word holds is not just a sort of a loosely hold. gripped tightly is the meaning of that word. He holds him tightly.

Next it says, Christ our Lord is the one who walks among the seven lampstands. We know this from Revelation 1.20 to be the seven churches that is addressed here in Revelation chapters 2 and 3. But look what the Lord has recorded for us in Leviticus. In Leviticus 26, 11 and 12, here's God speaking to the Jews.

He says, moreover, I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul will not reject you, I will also walk among you, and be your God, and you shall be my people. See, to walk among us, to have dominion, but to be close. It's both, I am familiar with you, and I have power, but I'm close to you. I'm in your midst. He's trying to communicate to them, he says, I'm not unfamiliar with what's going on at Ephesus, not in the least. I am sovereign over this church, but I know it's every detail." That's what he's telling him in this, okay?

Now, some other things that you should know is that the churches are identified as lampstands. In Ephesus, they had these main streets, had lamps all along it. And so when they heard, walking among the lampstands, they knew very well what that meant, because the whole street was lined with lampstands.

Now, so they would understand that when Paul wrote to them in Ephesians 5.8?

It says, For you were formerly darkness, but now you are light. Light in the Lord. That's their eternal position, isn't it? Having trusted in Christ for their salvation. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the light consists of all goodness and righteousness and truth, trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness. but instead even expose them, for it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret. But all things become visible when they are exposed by the light, for everything that becomes visible is light."

So he says, okay, you know your position. I'm appealing to you about your condition, okay? You see that? These are all messages the Ephesians would understand well, having those lamp-lit streets. All right. And I think that's something important for us to take home there.

Christ is very aware of what goes on and doesn't in each of the churches, Ephesus included, and Holly Hills Bible Church included. He has the ultimate hand of power and authority and blessing in the churches, and He walks among the churches. He knows them. He is daily and intimately concerned about them. He is the one who is able to act according to His good pleasure.

There's something else we should know about this description, and that is nobody else fits the description, only Christ. As brief as it is, it tells us He is eternally unique. He is the one who was ever concerned about the churches, personally, continually, intimately. He is the one who paid the price nobody else could pay, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross. Christ is unique. It's in His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension and seeding as well, that we have every spiritual blessing on the heavenlies. Christ is unique, and He is uniquely described here in these verses.

Then He says, He starts off verse 2, I know. He says, I know. He is not ignorant at all. He says, I know, and He means, I know intimately. He deals with each of the churches, and He knows, this is in keeping with His intimate and continuing concern for each of the Churches, it's in keeping with his omniscience. He knows everything. It's in keeping with his being the head of the Church.

Ephesians 5.23 tells us Christ is the head of the Church. It's in keeping with that.

It's also in keeping with his love for the Church, which Ephesians 5.25 tells us.

These are all things that the Ephesians had... If I keep quoting from the letter to Ephesus, The letter to Ephesians? It's because the Ephesians had heard many of these things before. Much of this has been brought up by Paul, but they need to be reminded, and we'll see more why.

Now, let's take a look at what Christ knows. In the first grouping of things Christ knows, he says, are your deeds, your toils, and your perseverance. Now, the deeds, or works, are all the things that the Ephesians did. And they apparently had much to count among their deeds.

It works as you find it in some translations. Now, next is the word toil. You might be tempted to think that it's just the same as deeds, but it's different. The word toil is a word that in the Greek means working to the point of utter exhaustion. See the difference there? The deeds, yeah, that's stuff you do, but you work to the point of utter exhaustion. You have really put your shoulder into it.

You see, one couldn't fault them for doing enough things, right? Not from the sound of it. He wasn't faulting them for that. They had, after all, to maintain in the midst of a grossly immoral culture. I gave you some description earlier, but I'll withhold the details, but you get the impression.

This is a grossly immoral culture, and they had to indeed work hard in the midst of that. It was a challenging and moral and spiritual environment, as ours is increasingly becoming. And in the midst of it, it's clear that they persevered. They hung in there.

But remember, it had been roughly 40, 45 years since Paul had written this letter to the church at Ephesus. So what had happened is a generation had gone by. Now you've got a new generation, a second generation of Christians, and the question is, how are they doing? And that's what he's addressing, isn't he?

Next, our Lord tells the Ephesian church, you cannot tolerate evil men. Remember the criminals at the temple? They've had lots of evil men. And they said, it's fine for these criminals to come in and be saved, but we're not just going to let that criminality run rampant in the church. And we need to indeed have people that are saved. And we need to indeed have people understanding that once they are saved, that that's not the life that they're going to continue to live.

That word tolerate, or you'll find it translated bear in some translations, is in the Greek pastazo. And the Ephesians are recognized for not bearing with those who are evil. Next after that, the Greek word for evil men, kakos, is used to describe those who are innately or intrinsically evil. I mean, we're talking evil to the bone. That's what he's describing here. evil to the bone.

It's their basic nature. We have it on record that John has used the same word once before in 3 John 11, and he said, Beloved, do not imitate what is evil. Don't imitate the criminals that are before you, right? But what is good? The one who does good is of God. The one who does evil, that's that same word, kakos, okay, has not seen God. Then our Lord Jesus continues on in his observations there in Revelation 2. He says, And you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false.

Now this was written at a time when there was, to our knowledge, but one apostle left living, right? Remember that? That's John, so far as we know. He was the one who had endured all these things and survived in time, and the others, so far as we're aware, were gone by this time. But there was a lot that tried to claim apostolic authority. And one of the things that's interesting is now that some 1900 years have passed, we still have groups and individuals today claiming apostolic authority.

But what does he say to do? Test them. Check them out. And that's why we want to take a look at something here. Scripture tells us what an apostle should look like. What are their requirements? We better know them because there are people today that are saying that, hey, I'm an apostle, right? Or our church has apostles. And here's what Scripture lays out.

An apostle received his gift and office by the sovereign decision of God. Paul writes that in his introduction to three of his letters. Secondly, the Apostle had to have been an eyewitness of the resurrected Lord. We have the first group of Apostles that he had been selected who saw him directly immediately following his resurrection. Paul by subsequent revelation. But that has to have happened in order to qualify as being an Apostle. The third thing An apostle was endowed with power to perform signs, wonders, and miracles. One of the things you'll note is you read early in the book of Acts.

Here's Peter and John. They're walking up towards the temple. They come by the gate. Here's this man who is lame by the gate. And they don't say, gee, it'd sure be nice if the Lord would heal you. Or, I'll pray for you and we'll decide whether or not the Lord heals you. Because they had apostolic authority, Peter and John could walk up to the man and just bang, right then, they're healed. You don't see that today. That doesn't happen. Now, the next one.

An apostle had success in evangelism. Several times that's outlined. And you see that carried out and described in the Book of Acts. And then the fifth one, the last one. An apostle has a capacity to suffer patiently or to persevere. They would go through all kinds of circumstances and maintain. And you even see miraculous recoveries from what would otherwise have been expected to kill people. But there was this perseverance that was characteristic of an apostle.

And I'm sure, since it's pretty apparent that the church at Ephesus had probably copies of the letters by these times, and we have several lines of evidence that point to that, that they were looking at these very same requirements and saying, Do you meet this requirement? And they looked at some of these people that had claimed to be an apostle, and they'd say, sorry, you don't cut it. That's it, you're false. Now, the false claim to be an apostle was a problem in the New Testament era.

Can you think of why? Here's an apostle, he comes into town, and what happens? He gets instant authority. He gets instant respect. If he says something, people regard it. So that's why some would come in and say, I'm an apostle, right? Because that would give them some instant claim of authority. And it was an easy in to the churches. And so the church at Ephesus said, wait a minute, we're going to test you. We're going to apply these tests here and see, do you really qualify to be an apostle? Is that really who you are? Here's the way Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 11, 12-15.

I will keep on doing what I am doing in order to cut the ground from under those who want an opportunity to be considered equal with us in the things they boast about. Such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.

Now, one of the things to take a look at there when we think of that, today we have piped into our living rooms a lot of people on the TV who claim to have various sorts of spiritual authorities, and quite frankly, a lot of it is false. A lot of it is terribly misleading, and you need to be aware of that. Frankly, a lot of what is sold in Christian bookstores these days falls short of being fully biblical. And so what the Ephesians were doing here was a good thing.

They were testing situations, especially testing these false apostles, to see are they right or are they not? Are they true apostles or are they not? Discernment was something that was here encouraged. He wasn't knocking them for this. He was encouraging the discernment that they were showing. He said he agreed with them. They're false. You found them false. They're indeed not true. I think it's important when we look at it, we test everything. We test everything.

Now, Christ our Lord goes on to say here, and you have perseverance and have endured for my name's sake and have not grown weary. One of the things that's interesting, these are kind of restatements of what we saw before. A lot of the same words. As a matter of fact, if you look in the underlying Greek, the words are even more repeated than what shows up in the English. because a lot of times it's either the same Greek word or the same root Greek word that's used again. Let me show you what I mean by that. I'm glad you're sitting down. This kind of gives us some indication here. There's a lot of repeated words in this passage. In fact, it's just the first six verses where the words are repeated. See, there's seven two times, lampstands a couple of times. Deeds is shown three times. Toil, twice. Perseverance, twice. Incidentally, it's toil and groan weary are the same root word in the Greek. And then again, where it says tolerate and then endure, that's the same root word in the Greek behind those as well. And then as you go down, first is repeated. And then the notes I have kind of highlighted in yellow, you have a kind of a repeated theme.

He goes back to, here's somebody you're testing, somebody that you're saying, this is false, this is wrong, this we reject. So there's a lot of repetition in this passage. And I think there's likely a couple of reasons. One is just for emphasis. He brings this home. In fact, he's repeating it. He's bringing this point home again and again. There's something to emphasize. There's another reason, I think, why he might be repeating it, and that is the pattern we see.

Now, something I was talking to in the electives class this morning was that in Hebrew poetry and a lot of Hebrew writing, they don't rhyme sounds exactly, but what they'll do is rhyme ideas. They'll continue and they'll repeat an idea. And here's some instances out of Hebrew poetry just to give you an idea. See, I will sing of the Lord as long as I live. I will sing praise to my God while I have my being.

You see the rhyming of ideas there? And so we see that in a couple more passages as well. And this is a common way of writing among the Hebrews, where again, they wouldn't rhyme exact sounds like at the end of a song, or at the end of the lines on a song, or at the end of a poem like we tend to do, and like the Greeks did, but instead they would rhyme ideas. And I think that's a part of what's going on here as well, beyond just emphasis.

Now, then he says the words that are stinging. Brief, but heavy. I have this against you. You have left your first love. These are stunning words. Now, the choice of words here is especially shocking in the Greek, and here's why. That word, as we pointed out a week or two ago, that word left is the same word that is translated four times in 1 Corinthians 7. It's translated divorce. It's also translated in other places, abandoned.

This is serious. Do you get the idea? This is serious stuff. You haven't just sort of wandered off a bit. This isn't just a minor thing. It says you have left, you've abandoned your first love. That's a serious statement. And to underscore how serious it is, we'll take a look in a little bit to see the consequence. But I've got to ask the question, what does it mean to leave your first love? What's that talking about? Is it love for Christ? Is it love for one another?

Well, after looking it over, I've decided that the answer is both. And here's why. The text here in Revelation doesn't specify which one, but we know from a consistent pattern in Scripture that our love for Christ is an essential. It's the first order and sequence and priority. Our love for one another is essential, but it springs from our love for Christ. Both are to be shown.

There are verses, some of these are even written by John himself, that talk about our love for the Lord Jesus. And John himself tells us, we love Him. Why? Because He first loved us. It's a response to His love for us. There's also consistent call, even to the Ephesians, you see this? That you love one another. And finally, loving God means loving one another. And who wrote that? John again, right? It is a consistent thing that loving the Lord translates into love for one another.

That's the pattern throughout Scripture here. It's laid out multiple times. Paul, when he wrote about some 45 years earlier, he'd written to this very same church a generation before these words. In Ephesians 1, 15 and 16, he says, "...for this reason I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which exists among you, and your love for all the saints."

Wow, that's interesting. You see what Paul just did? Paul says, I heard of your love and it's so much that it's famous. I heard about it. They told me about it. And what was Paul's response? He didn't cease giving thanks. That first generation of Ephesians, they had it down. They understood. But they didn't just understand, they lived it. Do you see the message there?

He didn't cease to give thanks while making mention of you in my prayers. It was endless. Thank you, Lord, for the love these people have. Thank you, thank you, thank you for the love these people have. He wrote to them and he told them in chapter 4 that you be built up in love. That's the direction that I want you to go and to grow as a church.

Finally, in Ephesians 6.24, it's kind of like a bookend towards the end of the book, he says, Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ with incorruptible love. You see that? That word love, by the way, you look it up in a concordance, shows up again and again and again in the book of Ephesians, Paul's letter. Now, here a generation later, these Ephesians are being told, you lost your first love, the love you had at first.

You lost it. You left it. You have left your first love. So the first generation had it, the next generation, didn't just sort of drift away, they abandoned it. You see, they had all these good things. They had all sorts of deeds. They were not bearing up with false apostles. They were working to the bone. They were working to exhaustion. They persevered. Those are all good things, aren't they? But they had left their first love. That's horrible.

As Paul had told them in Ephesians 4, You're to be building one another up with love. It's like trying to build a place with bricks without mortar. You have nothing to hold it together. You've got all the bricks, but you've got nothing to hold this thing together. Building one another up with love is essential. It's not optional. And the way Paul has described it here, they started off growing in love.

Now, Christ is asking them I want you to go back." And he gives them three steps. He says, therefore remember from where you have fallen and repent and do the deeds you did at first or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place unless you repent. Now, there's a remedy here and that remedy is threefold and it's the three R's. Okay? The three R's are remember, repent and repeat. Repeat meaning go back and do those first works. Remembering is recalling.

You see what had happened, the Ephesians had started up here in their love and now they were down here. They had fallen from this great height down to this place where they were at now. Something had really gone amiss and they were doing all the right things. But that first love was missing. And it was tragic. Do you see how severe the consequences were? This wasn't, you know, gee, you guys, you're doing a lot of good stuff, it should be nice if you just sort of get that first love back and you'd be fine.

It's severe. The consequence was removal of the lamp stand. You see, they might remain a church in name and organization, They might even hold to some pretty sound doctrine. Who knows? They might even have had an increase in attendance. But that's not the measure. They would have, with the removal of the lampstand, no testimony. No light. Gone. Okay? That's something I think it's important for us to take a look at.

As important as doctrine and moral purity are, it is no substitute for that lamp stand. It's no substitute for that first love. It's no substitute for the priority of love within the church. And the danger in any church, no matter how well they hold to sound doctrine, and sound doctrine is important, no matter how well they hold to keeping moral purity, and by every measure Ephesus had a tough time and seemed to maintain it, If that first love is lost, it's all lost. It's a very perilous place to be.

And that's what he was telling us, is you have this, and you have that, and I know this, and I know you have that, but you're missing this, and it's essential, and you have to have it. And there isn't any substitute, and there isn't anything you can do besides remember where you were, repent.

That is a change of mind. This repenting isn't just, boy, I feel bad about it, It's a change of mind. It's a change of perspective. Metanoia is in the Greek. There's a change going in your thought process. You're going 180 degrees around and changing, not just feeling bad about where you are.

And the third one, you repeat. And I think there's something real critical for us to take a look at. In this repetition, This repetition is not just a matter of doing more stuff. But He's saying, I want you to go back to the way you did those first deeds. I don't want you to just do all the stuff you're doing and then do some more. I want you to go back to what was characteristic of those first deeds.

Do the first deeds which were done with love. Do the first deeds which sprung from a heart of love for the Lord. Do the first deeds which sprung from a response to the Lord's love for you. Not just doing all these things, even to the working yourself to the bone. Not just doing them all because they're on the list of good things to do. But doing out of response of love to the Lord. Notice that the last phrase of verse 5 says, unless you repent.

See, the Lord wasn't looking for an opportunity to take away the lamp stand. He isn't saying, aha, gotcha! He's not saying, I'm just looking for some opportunity to yank that thing. Instead, He is saying, no, unless you repent. If you'll repent, then I don't have to do this. I don't want to. He's giving him warning. He's giving an opportunity to turn around. Go back to your first love. I won't have to take the lampstand away. I don't want to, he says. His goal in all of this was spiritual restoration. Do you see that? He wasn't saying, my goal here is to find some way to nail you. He says, my goal is spiritual restoration. I want you to get back to your first love.

Then in verse 6, he tells them this. Yet this do you have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate." As in each of the messages to the seven churches, there is a statement of something that they do have. What is stated is that each church has something, but it isn't always a complement. Fortunately, Ephesus has one. Here, Ephesus has a shared hatred for the deeds of a group called the Nicolaitans. Now, we've got to ask the question, who are these people, the Nicolaitans?

Because it doesn't explain it here, does it? Alright, so we've got to figure that one out. Let's take a look. Now, I have under here what I've titled, I think you can read it, okay? Uncertain Indications. And the reason I've called these uncertains is because I feel like they're not nailed down, tight cases. But I'll tell you, just in case you might run into them.

The name Nicolaitans comes from two Greek words that break down to Nikau and Laos, and it means conquer the people, or ruler of the people. It's parallel to Balaam, as mentioned here just a little later in the chapter. Right next to that, Balaam means lord of the people, so there's some similarity there. Now, aside from that, Irenaeus, and let me give you the sequence, John, who wrote this book, discipled Polycarp, Polycarp discipled Irenaeus, so it's kind of a great-grandson relationship. Irenaeus and Hippolytus, and Hippolytus was discipled by Irenaeus, that together they put this sort of a description for these Nicolaitans.

But you know what? Neither of those are totally satisfactory to me in terms of saying that I can't stand up here and say, by golly, that's what those are. And so I want you to know about them, but I'm not going to tell you that's what they are. I still have to come back and say, what do we know that these mean? And what we can do is we can go back to Scripture, and while Scripture doesn't give us some description of here's who the Nicolaitans are, we do have enough information to know how to live, and that's this.

We know that Christ hated their works. We know that the church in Ephesus also hated their works. And then we also know from subsequent passage, the Pergamum Church had some that accepted the teachings of the Nicolaitans, and they were rebuked for it, along with their acceptance of the idolatrous and immoral teachings of Balaam, which we'll go into later.

So even though we don't know a lot about this group in many respects, we know enough to do this. We've got some application here. We need to know what's biblical. Obviously, they didn't just come to these Nicolaitans and say, I don't like the way you look. They compared things with, this is what I know is true out of scripture. How do you guys compare to that? And they said, you don't compare well. They tested them.

We have to know what is biblical, we have to shun what is not biblical, and we have to hold to what is biblical. Is that simple or what? So even though we don't have some sort of in-depth description of the Nicolaitans that we can count upon, what we do know is enough to know how to live. We do know enough to know how to apply it. And that's where it ultimately counts. So, getting back to this situation here, we should notice something else. Our Lord's attitude towards the deeds and work of the Nicolaitans isn't neutral or just mildly irritated. He doesn't say, Boy, those guys are a real pain, aren't they? He doesn't say that. What's His response? His response is absolute hatred. Now notice what he says he hates.

It's the deeds or works of the Nicolaitans. Now see, there's two things to bring home from this. One, is a lot of times people will try to paint or describe Christ as someone who's just sort of all tolerant, tolerate everything. No, that's not the picture you get out of this, is there? There is a time for hating the deeds. But the flip side of that is the Lord says, Didn't say, I hate the Nicolaitans. He said, I hate what they're doing. And later on, I hate what they're teaching. But it leaves the door open for the Nicolaitans to repent and change and actually be a part of the flock, doesn't it? They could change.

When Nancy and I were down in Texas, we got to know a fellow who went through two different religious groups, if you will, before he became a Christian. First, he was a Hindu. Next he was a part of a so-called Christian cult. And then he became a believer.

So there is a possibility that someone might start off in something that is hateful and end up being saved. And the Lord leaves the door open in the way he says that here. I hate the deeds or the works of the Nicolaitans, but I don't hate the Nicolaitans. It's not irreparable.

Finally, in verse 7, he says, 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. Now this is the first sentence in verse 7 that was repeated for each of the messages to the seven churches. That is, He who has an ear, let him hear.

It's at or near the end in every case. And it opens the door to allow this and each message to each of the churches to have universal applicability. As we noted last week, this is, if the shoe fits, wear it, sentence. It's basically saying, if the shoe fits, wear it, for you. You as a church, you personally. And that says, if I find that some part of the message fits here in this church, then we'd better wear it. If I find that some part of this message fits in my life, then I'd better wear it. The consequence of ignoring the message, if it fits, is presently critical and eternally serious. So we have to start by asking the question, do we have an ear to hear? Because that's where it fits home with us, doesn't it?

Now we see the first of seven overcomers passages. Remember we had in the handout last week for you to look up those verses if you'd like. And so we want to take a look at that here now. Who are the overcomers of Revelation 2 and 3? One of the things we looked at is the overcomers. This overcomer statement is not intended to give us some means of deciding whether or not we're going to lose our salvation.

But let's take a look at some of the verses that are on this list here. These on the left-hand column were those that are included in the messages to the seven churches, those on the right-hand column are those at the end of Revelation that refers to overcomers. So it gives us a very strong connection between them. Let me read to you just a couple of them.

In the message to Smyrna, which we'll be getting into soon here, in Revelation 2.11 it says, He who overcomes will not be hurt by the second death.

Revelation 20.14 says, Death and Hades are thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. So it gives us the explanation.

In the message to Sardis, in Revelation 3.5, he who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments and I will not erase his name from the book of life and I will confess his name before my father and before his angels.

Revelation 20.15, and if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

And finally, Revelation 20.14, Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter by the gates into the city. And finally the capstone verse, which is quoted here in the bottom of the overhead.

John, the same one who authored Revelation, wrote in 1 John 5.5, Who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? And from these passages I take it These overcomers that we'll keep running into as we look at these messages to the seven churches, these overcomers are not some super-Christian, okay? But it's simply those who have placed their faith in Jesus Christ, as this passage makes clear. If you have placed your faith in Jesus Christ, you have overcome. That's the message. He overcomes. So for each church, He goes and lays out, He overcomes, and then some aspect of that person's salvation. Okay.

Christ says of the overcomers in Ephesus that they would be granted to eat of the tree of life which is in the paradise of God. And you know what's in the middle of Ephesus or was? They had an artificial tree of life. So this had a special significance because they had this artificial tree of life which in fact could do nothing and was not really anything that God had put there. But they all understood, oh, I understand what it's supposed to mean anyway.

Now, the tree of life is mentioned first in Genesis 2.9, where the Lord planted the tree of life in the midst of the Garden of Eden, where the river flowed.

When Adam fell, the Lord drove him out of the garden, and that's in Genesis 3.23-24. The promise to overcomers is that they should eat of the tree of life in the paradise of God. Now, this word paradise, is it a Greek word, paradesos? It is from a Persian word that means a pleasure garden. And that word only shows up three times in the New Testament.

This is one of them. The first one is in Luke 23-43. This is where Jesus is there on the cross and the thief is beside him. And Jesus tells the thief, what? Today you will be with me in paradise. Next time it shows up, the Apostle Paul is describing his time in a revelation going up into heaven, and he says, I went up into paradise. And now it shows up for the third time here in this passage.

Revelation 22.2, 22.14, and 22.19 likewise mention this tree of life here, so it's mentioned again three times. What he's trying to communicate here to the church at Ephesus, he's trying to encourage them.

He says, I know I've given you a hard challenge here. I know that I've given you a strong rebuke. But at the same time, those of you who have placed their faith in Christ, those of you who are the overcomers, here is what I have for you eternally. I have a reward. And it's far better than the artificial one in the middle of your city.

Now, on a final note, Ephesus is one of the two churches that didn't receive a subsequent promise. The other five churches all received a subsequent promise, and we're not told why, but here's one reason. It's a perhaps. Perhaps he doesn't want them to be distracted from dealing with the key and principal spiritual issues that he's laid before them.

This issue of the first love. They had left their first love. I think Paul wrote to the Philippians well when he put it this way in Philippians 1, 9 through 11, and this I pray that your love may abound still more and more. You see, the Lord wants love to grow, doesn't he? He doesn't want love to just sort of flatten out and plateau. He wants a growing love. He's praying that your love may abound more and more in real knowledge and all discernment so that you may approve the things that are excellent in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ, having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God." The Lord is desiring here at Holly Hills that we build one another up in love and He doesn't want it to plateau. He doesn't want it to flatten out.

And as good as all the deeds are, as good as all the doctrine is, as good as all our discernment and all the moral purity we might be seeking, that first love for the Lord and our response to His love for us is critical. It's essential. And He desires that it be lived out among each of us.

Let's pray. Lord, we do thank You that in as much as You had a rebuke here and a warning, to the church at Ephesus. You also showed your immense love and your eagerness to show mercy. And Lord, we pray as we gather here this morning that indeed as we listen to these words, as we think them through, that we would have ears to hear.

And for all that fits, that we would wear it. That we would wear it as a church body together. That we would wear it as individuals wherever it fits. And we just thank You It is the Spirit who has laid this out, and we look to you, Lord, for living it out, that it not be on our own strength, that it not be our own doing, but that it might be, indeed, in dependence upon you. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.