Many of you will remember the experience of falling in love for the very first time. You can’t get enough of the other person. Their voice. Time with them. Everything’s wonderful. Your friends comment that you’ve got a fresh spring in your step, a smile on your face.
It’s wonderful. But there’s a problem. It rarely lasts. Not with that delightful, initial rosiness, the fire, the intensity.
Over time, things have cooled off. And those memories of first love are just that: memories.
Of course, not everyone has got those memories. Maybe you’ve never known love in that kind of way. Or maybe you’ve been hurt recently, and the memory of those happy early days has been eclipsed by the darker times.
There are some relationships for which we were all made. Our other relationships are just shadows of our relationship with God, and the relationships within the church. The church is a family. God is our Father. Jesus is our older brother. And we are brothers and sisters. This family lasts for all eternity, and our other family relationships just point to it.
We were made to love God. We were made to love the person of Jesus. And then you discover other people who have experienced what it is to be loved by God, and they love Jesus too – and you find you were made to love them, too. They’re family – your brothers and sisters.
God invites all of us into these loving relationships. Whatever you’ve known of love and sadness with others, God wants all of us to know his love, to love him and to love his people.
Many of us have known that experience of “first love” with God and his people as well. We can remember what it felt like to discover God’s love for the very first time. How you couldn’t get enough time with God, never hear enough of his voice. How meeting with others who know God was the best part of the week.
But here’s the problem. That can fade, too. And it does. Many adults look back to their teenaged years, or their early 20s. That’s when they were really on fire for God and his people. Things have never been quite the same since, and frankly things have cooled off considerably.
Whole churches can go through this cooling as well. The church should be a community of people who are full of love for God, and full of love for each other. Sometimes, a church can look back. People can remember times when things were like that, but at the moment that’s not the culture. It’s not the mood. Things are much cooler. The heart is not in it like it once was.
How does it happen that love can fade like that? And is there a way back from there, back to where things used to be?
Introducing the 7 letters
To answer that, we’re going to listen to the risen Jesus address the church in Ephesus in the first century.
We’re in the book of Revelation. Last month, we looked at the opening chapter, with its breath-taking vision of the risen Jesus. We saw that Revelation is in fact a letter, a circular letter to 7 churches in what is now Turkey. It is dominated by a series of visions, but before the visions start, Jesus has a personal message to each of those seven churches.
He knows them inside out. Today’s reading introduces Jesus as the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand, and who walks among the seven golden lampstands. That’s a reference back to chapter 1, where the lampstands represented the churches, and the stars stood for the angel that represents them before God in heaven. Jesus walks among his churches. He holds them in his hand. He knows everything that goes on. Every strength. Every foible. Every weakness.
And so he addresses each church. To praise. To encourage. To warn. To chide.
Our church won’t need exactly the warnings and the encouragements of any of these 7 churches. We’re different from them. But that doesn’t matter. Each of these 7 churches was meant to listen to each of these 7 messages. Not just the one specifically written for them. Verse 7: Listen to “what the Spirit says to the churches”, not just your church. There weren’t seven different versions of Revelation, each with a different chapter 2. There was one version, to be read by everyone. The number 7 represents completeness. What Jesus says to these 7 churches adds up to what he wants to say to every church, in every place, in every period of history.
We may not be Ephesus. Or Smyrna. We’ve got our own issues. But Jesus wants us to listen to his word to these churches, and to take it to heart as his word to us in our own day.
The issue that was facing the church in Ephesus comes in verse 4: “Yet I hold this against you: you have forsaken the love you had at first.” They’ve moved on from their first love. They’ve cooled down. They’ve lost that passion, that fervour, that zeal for God and his people.
So if we want to know how a church can get to that point. If we want to know the way back – then this is for us.
Strengths: Hard Work
How has the Ephesian church got to this point? Well, Jesus starts by praising them for the things they’re doing well. Inadvertently, those may be the very traits that have led to them losing that first love. So if we have these strengths, we need to watch that it doesn’t lead us the same way.
Their first strength is hard work. Verse 2: “I know your deeds, your hard work.” Your toil. Your labour. People love the idea of self-driving cars. Sit in the driving seat. Look like you’re doing all the work. But actually, you’re just being chauffeured. By a computer. These weren’t self-drive car Christians. Sit back, and let the train take the strain. Being a Christian cashes out in what we do, and these Christians were doers.
The trouble is that activity can be the outflow of devotion. It can also be a substitute for devotion. We’re so busy doing things to serve the Lord that we forget the Lord we’re serving. We’re just too busy to love him.
Hard work.
Strengths: Perseverance
Their second strength was perseverance. Verse 2: “I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance.” Sometimes it’s easy to be a Christian. Other times, the world around makes it very hard for followers of Jesus. These Christians had had to endure opposition from outside the church.
The Ephesians had handled it brilliantly. They’d gritted their teeth, and they’d kept going. Far easier to stop being a Christian. Hide behind the legitimate religion of Judaism. Worship the Roman emperors. But, no. They’d persevered. And Jesus praised them for it.
Having to keep going makes you good at keeping going. But it can also make your bitter and resentful. Bitter at those who are giving you a hard time. Resentful towards the God who’s allowing it. Or it can just dampen your enthusiasm for being a Christian.
Sometimes you meet people who have endured terrible things in the armed forces. They’re experts at endurance. They’ll stick at anything. But they’re cold and cynical. It’s gritted teeth and no more. Just before Jesus died, he warned about a period of persecution that would follow his departure. “The love of many will grow cold,” he warned.
Hard work. Perseverance.
Strengths: Discernment
Their third strength is discernment. This comes at the end of verse 2: “I know that you cannot tolerate wicket people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false.”
There have been some fraudsters in town. They’re related to the group called the Nicolaitans in verse 6, and we meet them in more detail in the messages to some of the other churches. They claimed to be apostles, authoritative teachers, representatives of the risen Jesus, people that Christians could trust and listen to. In fact, they were charlatans.
It wasn’t just the world outside the church that was the pressure. It was the world inside the church. Some of the other churches Jesus writes to didn’t fare so well. But the Ephesian church were discerning. And Jesus praises them for it.
But it’s a small move from being discerning to being sniffy. To trusting nobody. To being so suspicious that love goes cold. You stop loving your fellow Christians. And the latest witch-hunt becomes more important than loving God.
Sadly, I’ve known churches that started out commendably fighting error. But they ended up looking for heresies under every stone, and ended up driving out genuine fellow believers, until they fell apart. Love got lost.
Discernment.
A Serious Problem
They’ve got some real strengths. Hard work. Perseverance. Discernment.
But they’ve lost their first love, and that’s really serious. Verse 5: “If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.” Unless the church addresses this, Jesus will remove the church. There will be no church in Ephesus. It’s as big as that.
All over the country, church buildings are being converted into art galleries, apartments, office buildings. In North Wales, one has become a soft play centre for toddlers.
We take for granted that people have worshipped here for hundreds of years and will do so for hundreds of years to come. Jesus holds the seven stars in his hand. Without love for him, we cease to shine. We cease to be a lampstand. And he would remove this lampstand. No more church in Kemsing. What might this building get used for if that happened? I’ll leave it to your imagination.
Yet Jesus loves them. So he doesn’t remove their lampstand. Not straight away. He speaks to them. He writes them this letter. He calls them back.
So what’s the way back?
3 things.
The Way Back: Remember
First, remember.
Verse 5: “Consider how far you have fallen.”
He invites them to think back. To remember the dizzy heights of the old days. Remember the honeymoon.
Remembering the past is a great way to take yourself on to a better place in the future. It’s why we still dream about the 1966 world cup. As we head into the Olympic Games in Tokyo, we’ll be remembering our successes in Rio this summer. “Let’s recreate that.”
If your love for Christ, your love for his people, has cooled off, think back. Consider the past, how good things were. Remember what it was like in your teens, your early twenties, whenever the zenith was. Wouldn’t you love to be back there.
Remember.
Repent
Second, repent.
“Consider how far you have fallen! Repent.”
To repent means to change direction. To turn around, do an about turn. If you want to recover your love for Christ and his people, you need to point your life in that direction of travel.
Sure, love can feel great. But feelings are like rainbows. If you chase them, you never find them. You mustn’t chase the great feeling of love for God and his people. Commit to the relationships. Chase after God, chase after his people, make them the priority.
And that means repenting of having other priorities – having other goals in life, as more precious to you than God himself.
Repent.
Repeat
Which leads onto the third: Repeat.
“Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first!”
Now, remember this church is an active church. They’re really busy, working hard. They’re feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, offering practical help to those who need it, and so on. At one level, what this church needs is not more activity.
But at the same time, repentance is tied to action. Jesus is not asking them to do more things for him. He’s just pointing out that redirecting your life is not something you do in theory. It’s something that works itself out in life. You’ll need to work out for yourself what it looks like. Disciplines of spending time with God – in prayer, reading his word – time with his people, or whatever it is in your case.
But ask: What was it that fed and sustained your relationship with God and his people in those early days. And repeat.
Remember. Repent. Repeat.
Conclusion
How does a church, how does a Christian, let their first love for God and his people fade? Quite easily, as it happens. Sometimes, the very things that Jesus is pleased to see in our lives can end up displacing him. Hard work. Perseverance. Discernment.
But it’s a very serious issue. Jesus shuts churches down for this.
So we need to find a way back.
This message is addressed to the church in Ephesus at a whole. But it ends by addressing each and every Christian within the church. Regardless of what the church does in response to this, each one of us must make our own personal response.
Verse 7: “Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, [the one who takes on board these challenges, and loves Jesus to the end], I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.”
That’s something very precious that Jesus offers there. Something no sane person would refuse.
And it’s held out to everyone who loves him.