Revelation 2:1-7

To the angel of the church in Ephesus write the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands. I know your works, your toil, and your patient endurance. and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen, repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent. Yet this you have. You hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers, I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

The church in Ephesus is a church that we're made fairly familiar with as we read through the New Testament. They were founded through the faithful ministry of Priscilla and Aquila, pastored by men like Paul, Apollos, Timothy, even John, the author of Revelation. They had multiple letters written to them, and in many ways, the Ephesian church was a faithful church, blessed with sound teaching, hard workers, and faithful men and women. but in the midst of seeming to fulfill all the requirements for long and lasting health as a church, Jesus, the great physician, diagnoses a serious sickness looming in the Ephesian church, a sickness so serious that if it wasn't addressed, they were at risk of being removed as a church from the presence of God.

So as we take a look at Revelation 2 1-7 here tonight, I want to encourage you all with Christ's prescription to the deadly illness of lovelessness. Repent of your loveless works by remembering the God who gives life. Repent of your loveless works by remembering the God who gives life. And I wanna use this prescription as a roadmap as we study our passage tonight in two parts.

Repent of our loveless works

So first, Christ's words to the Ephesian church call us to repent of our loveless works. In each of the seven letters, Jesus reveals specific characteristics of himself that directly address the problem facing each church. Here, he describes himself as the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand and who walks among the seven golden lampstands. Revelation 1.20, just above this, gives us a clear interpretation of what this means. It says,

the seven stars are the seven angels of the seven churches.

And at its most basic level, angel means messenger. In those days, messengers would have been sent out from their church to physically go and receive the word of God, to bring it back to their church. So here, as we see Christ holding these angels in his right hand, the hand associated with power and rule, Jesus is tying his authority to the going out of his word.

We also know from verse 20 that the seven golden lampstands are the seven churches to whom his word is going out. As Jesus walks among them, we see that he knows his church intimately. Though he is seated at the right hand of the Father, Jesus is not distant. This means that he knows not only every work that they've ever done, but he knows every thought, every intention. He knows their heart better than they could even know it for themselves.

And this is made clear as Jesus begins the body of the letter. He knows their hard work and struggle. He sees how they wait patiently and faithfully for his return. He sees the way they hold fast to truth, shutting down anyone who proclaims a false gospel, how they promote what is good and right, how they hate the teaching of the Nicolaitans, a teaching that argued sexual immorality was permissible and even encouraged among believers.

Yet in the middle of all of these faithful works, Jesus said something that should be surprising to us after seeing all the good that the Ephesians are doing. He says in verse four,

but I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.

Even though they were doing all of the right things, they abandoned the defining characteristic of the Christian life, love. They were like a husband who does all the right chores and keeps the house clean for his wife, yet refuses to look at her or tell her he loves her. Like a parent who works hard to put food on the table, yet neglects to spend time with their children and know them.

The Ephesian church here wasn't intentionally setting out to rebelliously oppose God by abandoning their love. confusing their own obedience as the end goal of their salvation. They were exchanging heartfelt devotion to the Lord in response to all that he's done for them, for a mechanical rule following that they felt would appease him. And according to Christ, this is a grave sin that must be repented of. He says,

repent and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.

Yes, Christ walks among his churches. He knows his churches, but he is clear that he does not know the one who does not love him. If the lampstand of the Ephesian church does all the right stuff but refuses to emit the light that is the love of Christ, it has no business being a lampstand and will be removed from its place.

And we see in this passage that a life full of following Christ's teaching and commands is not enough to appease God. If you are here tonight and are confident that your works and obedience to Christ's commands will save you, Christ calls you to repent, to turn from your loveless works. He does not want our conformity to laws and rules. He wants our love, our hearts, our life. We see that Jesus takes this issue very seriously and we should too. We need to examine ourselves individually and as a church body and repent of any way that we have abandoned the love that we had at first. I think a helpful place to start is by asking, why do we do what we do? Why do we read God's word and pray regularly? Why do we confess and turn from sin? Why do we structure our services the way we do? It's so easy to respond to each of these questions with, well, because it's the right thing to do. We get so caught up in making sure we're doing the right thing that we forget the reason why we're doing it in the first place.

Jesus Christ came down in love. He died on the cross to take the punishment that we deserve for our failure to love. He rose again and now reigns over all as the king of love. So we read and pray and hold fast to truth because God has spoken for our good and invites us to speak back to him. We confess sin because God is faithful and just to forgive us of our sin. We structure our services the way we do to point us to the perfect love of God so that we would reflect it in the way that we love God and one another.

To be clear, this passage is not an excuse to take a break from obedience so that you can fall in love with Jesus again. I think what you'll find is that as you grow in love, being obedient will actually become easier and more joyful. Jesus calls us out of loveless obedience so that we can enjoy something better. There is no greater object of love than him. He is fully satisfying, fully lovely, and fully loving. He is the one who empowers us to love because we can only love him because he first loved us. So as we consider how we repent of our abandonment of love, that fact must be central. We cannot turn from our lovelessness without the second half of Christ's prescription.

Remember the God who gives life

Remember the God who gives life. In verse five, Jesus calls the Ephesians to remember from where they've fallen and do the works they did at first. And this immediately raises the question, well, what works did they do at first? This passage doesn't tell us directly what those works were, but it does give us clues in how to understand what the Ephesian church is actually supposed to be remembering. In the surrounding verses, Jesus lists all the works that the church was doing. But instead of saying, keep going, keep up the good work, Jesus says, actually turn from those works and turn back to the works you did at first, because they're actually better than what you're doing now.

The key to repentance in the area of lovelessness is not found in further and better obedience. Think what Jesus is doing here is pointing the church back to the early years of their faith. not back to a time when they were necessarily more mature or more obedient, but back to a time where they were more dependent. He might even be pointing them back to their works in Acts 19, when the sons of Sceva were overtaken by demons that they were trying to cast out. Believers in Ephesus saw that Christ was Lord and deserving of their full devotion. At the same time, they saw that he was loving and called them out of their trust in magic and mysticism. At this time, they probably knew very little of what it meant to follow Christ or denounce their life of sin. But they turned to Christ and burned their past pagan practices out of a great love for him.

So as we think about the works that we did at first, look back and see all the ways that God has shown his love for you. All of the sin forgiven, the hope and moments of despair, the promises seen to be true again and again. Even if we had a lifetime to remember all that God has done, time would still fail us because God has shown us, sorry, because God has shown us in so many ways and so many times that he is God and he has loved us.

We are so quick to forget it all though. And because we're such forgetful people, we actually need each other to help remind us of who God is and what he's done. This is why hearing testimonies every Wednesday night is so great. Five times tonight we were reminded that God gives life to those who are once dead.

But we can't just be leaving it up to new member candidates to tell of God's faithfulness and love in the lives of sinners. We need to be encouraging one another to love God with our own testimony of his grace in our life. We should be asking others how they have seen God's love in their own lives. We are all together helping each other to grow up to love Christ. We are all regularly reminding each other of why we love Christ, not only in our words, but showing the love of Christ in the deeds that we do as we love one another.

And I have to say here that I have been extremely blessed by you all. As I've prepared for this devotional, I couldn't help but keep thinking I'm only standing here before you all tonight because God has continued to show me his love through you all. The way that you have loved me unconditionally, the care that you have for outsiders, the humility you have coming before God's word and submitting to it. the desire you have to hold on to what is true. It's all evidence of your love and that you know Christ's love for you. I look out and see a church that loves very well.

So my plea to you all is to help weak believers like me who look at this passage and see that we can't even do what the Ephesian church is doing right, let alone turn to what God calls us to. They'll help each other in seasons of doubt, when affections waver and run dry, when the promises of sin blind our sight. Constantly remind one another of the love we had at first, that we would constantly be repenting of our failure to love him.

Life that will never end

Now, all we're doing is looking back and fantasizing about the glory days of our past love. we cut ourselves short of the full picture of salvation that Christ paints for us here in this passage. He ends his letter with this sweet promise.

To the one who conquers, I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.

There is an end to the current tribulation, an end to hearts that constantly drift from our love for God And to the one who faithfully reaches that end, Jesus tells us there is life that will never end. The tree of life here points back to the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2, where man dwelled with God in paradise. But it also points us forward to the new creation in Revelation 22. when the tree of life will stand in the midst of God's people, yielding its fruit month after month and bringing healing to the nations that will never be defiled by sin or temptation or tribulation or falsehood or lovelessness.

In that day, our love will be perfected because we will gaze upon the object of our love with unveiled face. And in that day, we will receive unending life in Christ. So if we are so nearsighted that we cannot see the end that lies ahead, we will easily allow ourselves to become lost in the mechanical routine of loveless obedience. But if we look ahead and see Christ, we will see that he is not just the one who gives life at the end of the age, He is the one who died to crush the power of our dead hearts that could not love him, who rose to give us life so that we could love him, who right now by his spirit is sustaining your life, is allowing you to hear his word so that you would turn back to love him, who is empowering your every obedience.

So if you walk out of here tonight thinking that you will go and muster up a love for Christ in your own strength, you will end up more discouraged and loveless than when you first started. The heart that loves is the heart that has been given new life in Christ. Your salvation, sanctification, and eternity are dependent on Christ, the source and giver of life. So remember him and let his love for you stir you up to turn from your loveless works.

Will you pray with me? Father, we confess that we have left our love for you and have become fixated on our own obedience as the measure of our relationship with you. Please forgive us in Christ who died for us and rose to give us new life so that we would turn and love you. Help us now to remember and to turn back to the love we had at first while looking forward to the day where we will dwell with you in paradise. In Jesus' name, amen.