Greetings from many of your brothers and sisters south of the equator, from Brazil. Many of them send their love and greetings to you, and I assume that I can return the favor and take your greetings back to them.
It is so wonderful of our Lord to give us times together. We have already had one of the greatest privileges we could ever have: to come and sit with the sovereign Lord of the universe at His table, at His invitation. May the Lord deliver us from ever taking it as something common and ordinary. It is not common. It is not ordinary. It is the richest experience that we have during our week together—I mean, our week.
I understand that a little later we will be sharing some food together. Is that correct? Okay. I just wanted to be clear about that—how long I could go before some of you start. I know some of you probably do not eat a big breakfast on Sunday morning, and you are probably thinking about the food already.
But in between our fellowship with the Lord at His table and our fellowship with each other, we have this time. I do not know if you stop to think about the reality of what we are about to do.
As I understand it, this same sovereign Lord, with whom we have sat at His table, has now invited us to come and sit at His feet. He loves us with such deep love, and He wants to speak words that we need to hear.
Now, we can be absolutely sure that He will be utterly, totally faithful. He will seek to speak what is in His heart to all of us. And He will speak it in such a way that, if our hearts are receptive, we will not be the same as we were when we came here—not because of any human instrumentality, but because of Him.
He has the words of eternal life. And if we are able to receive it, it means that we will receive more of His life. We cannot remain the same if we receive more of His life.
So this is my understanding of what is about to take place: our sovereign Lord, by His Holy Spirit, using a human instrument, wants to speak to us.
Now again, I do not know how much you have thought about this, but to me it is an amazing thing that God would use any human being, and especially me. I know, because I know a little bit about myself, that I am the most disqualified person to be in this place, somehow being used as an instrument of God to speak His Word.
And I can tell you, in all honesty, if I had my choice, I would not be here. But I believe that, in His great mercy, He has given me something of a responsibility. It is only by the enabling work of the blessed Holy Spirit that this can be accomplished.
But there is someone else who has a responsibility—not only our Lord, not only the blessed Holy Spirit, and not only I. Do you know who else has a responsibility? You have a responsibility.
You need to be able to hear. You need to judge what is being said. If it is only human, forget about it and go home, and say, “Maybe a better day next time.” But if it is the Lord, then you have a responsibility not only to hear, but to obey what He says to you.
So you have to judge. And if you judge that it is the Lord, then the only option we have is to obey Him. We do not want to be just hearers of His Word, because we deceive ourselves if we are. We need to be those who listen carefully for His voice, for His speaking to us, and then take the necessary grace that He supplies for us to obey His Word.
Let us thank the Lord for this time and commit ourselves to being responsible.
Lord Jesus, You are the fairest. There is no one in this whole universe who compares to You. We are so grateful for what little we have been able to see by Your mercy. But Lord, what little we see, our hearts have been captured. There is no place else to go. There is no one else who can help us.
And Lord, we do thank You so much that You invited us to come and sit with You at Your table and to offer just a little bit of what You are so worthy of.
And now we come. We are so grateful that You have placed in our hands a copy of Your written Word. We treasure it, and we thank You for all those who have given their lives that we could have a copy of it this morning.
We want to thank You as well that You and the Father have sent the Holy Spirit here to take this Word, written and spoken, and by Your work alone make it living to each one of our hearts.
Lord, we want You to get something for Yourself during this time of our fellowship in Your Word. Please, Lord, deliver us from coming here and returning home the same as we were when we came. We want Your Word to get inside of us and begin a process of changing us into more of what You want us to be.
So we acknowledge that without the blessed Holy Spirit and His anointing, it will only be human words and have no value. But we are trusting this morning, speaker and hearer alike, that we will be those who hear and put into practice what we hear.
Be merciful to us. Speak, because Your servants are listening. We ask it in Your name. Amen.
I want to read this morning from Revelation 2, some very, very familiar verses—Revelation 2:1-7, our Lord’s letter to the church at Ephesus.
To the angel of the church in Ephesus write:
These things saith He that holdeth the seven stars in His right hand, He that walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks:
I know thy works, and thy toil and patience, and that thou canst not bear evil men, and didst try them that call themselves apostles, and they are not, and didst find them false;
and thou hast patience and didst bear for My name’s sake, and hast not grown weary.
But I have this against thee, that thou didst leave thy first love.
Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent and do the first works; or else I come to thee, and will move thy candlestick out of its place, except thou repent.
But this thou hast, that thou hatest the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches. To him that overcometh, to him will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the Paradise of God.
Brothers and sisters, it is my observation that this is a second letter that our Lord sent to this church in Ephesus. The first one was written by the apostle Paul, and we call it the letter to the Ephesians. It is a somewhat different letter from what we find here.
Maybe you have discovered this wonderful letter to the Ephesians, written by the apostle Paul under the anointing and inspiration of the Holy Spirit. If you have discovered it, then you have discovered, as you find in much of the Word of God, some very precious and wonderful truths about our Lord Jesus.
But here we have a second letter, written by another apostle, the apostle John. This letter was written, as I understand it, thirty years after Paul had written the first letter to the Ephesians.
If you read the first letter that our Lord wrote to the Ephesians through Paul, you will find that the situation is very different. I do not know what your impression is in reading Ephesians, but my impression is that those to whom Paul was writing had a real, deep spiritual capacity.
Next February, I will have known the Lord fifty years. I started reading the letter to the Ephesians very soon after I became a believer. I can tell you this morning, dear brothers and sisters, that every time I read it, I discover something that I did not see before. There is such depth there.
Paul seems to me to begin in the heavenlies:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
He starts there. He does not start on the earth. And as far as I have been able to discern, he does not have to address any major problems, as he did with the Corinthian church.
So it seems to me that these brothers and sisters in the city of Ephesus had experienced a life in Christ that caused them to be able to receive what we have written in the Ephesian letter by Paul.
When you go back and read Acts 19 and Acts 20, you discover that this church in Ephesus had a wonderful beginning. Paul went there under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, and he found twelve men there.
Apparently, as he had fellowship with them and observed various things, he discovered that maybe something was missing in their life. So he asked them a question: “Have you received the Holy Spirit since you believed?”
They said, “We have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” And you know the story: he instructed them, baptized them in the name of our Lord Jesus, laid his hands on them, and the Holy Spirit came into them and upon them. They began to speak in tongues and prophesy.
As far as I have been able to see, this is the beginning of this church in the city of Ephesus. There would be some things helpful to us if we could somehow go into the history of the city of Ephesus, but I do not think it is necessary this morning.
What you discover in Acts 19 and Acts 20 is that Paul spent three years serving the Lord and the Lord’s people in Ephesus and the surrounding area. He says, night and day, for three years, with tears. Twice he mentions that there were tears involved in his ministry.
So it was not just a matter of him doing some religious thing. He was seeking to take the Christ who was in him, and even through great struggles and difficulties, he was able to impart through the ministry of the Word and his service to God’s people a rich measure of our Lord Jesus Christ.
That is, the Lord was able to build His church in a very significant way in this city of Ephesus.
You remember how, when Paul wanted to go back to Jerusalem to be there for the day of Pentecost, he came to the city of Miletus and called the elders from the church. He had a time of fellowship with them and gave them sound advice and encouragement.
He warned them to be aware of some of the difficulties and problems they would encounter after he was gone: savage wolves would come in among them, wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing. Even among them, people would rise up and lead many of the disciples astray.
So, brothers and sisters, here I think we see that a good beginning is not necessarily a guarantee of a good ending.
How could it be, my dear brothers and sisters, that a church with such rich history from its very beginning would, thirty years later, require another letter from our Lord?
This letter shows Him walking among the seven golden lampstands. He is coming there to inspect what is going on. And as you have heard many, many times, I am sure, what is He looking for?
He is looking to see how much there is of Himself in that assembly. Because you remember, back in Ephesians 1, Paul’s description of what the church is:
The church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.
Brothers and sisters, I have not found a greater description of the church of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is to be the fullness of Him. It is going to be so universally, but in every locality, in every assembly, it is the heart of our Lord that He would be able to take the fullness of Himself and make it a practical reality in every assembly.
This was His heart. Apparently, there was a good beginning, and the brothers and sisters were willing to pay the necessary price for the Lord to impart this kind of fullness.
You remember how they took their books on magic and other things, brought them together, and had this great bonfire. These books were worth fifty thousand pieces of silver. What I have been able to discover is that one of those pieces of silver represented one day’s salary.
So it was no small thing. Much money was represented in those books. But there did not seem to be any hesitation on the part of those who had come to know the Lord to pay whatever price was necessary for the Lord to have His way in them and to impart His fullness to them.
So how is it possible, brothers and sisters, that an assembly with such an experience of the Lord could now be judged by our Lord Himself walking among them?
You know He has to be absolutely righteous. He is not looking for things wrong; He is looking for Himself. But He has to be honest. When He does not find Himself, and He finds something other than Himself, what is He going to do? Close His eyes? Put His head in the sand and try to ignore it?
He cannot, my brothers. He loves us too much. So He does not come as someone who is looking for something wrong. He is looking to see how much there is of Himself.
My dear brothers and sisters, I believe this is what He is looking for in every assembly of His people. But somehow, we allow things to happen so that this is not the reality. Something other than our Lord Jesus fills our lives, individually and corporately.
Out of His deep, deep love for us, He has to call attention to the things that are not of Him. He commends wherever He can, for He finds things that are commendable. He does not hesitate. But neither does He hesitate when He finds things that are displeasing to Him and do not have their origin in Him.
Something interesting: when we read our New Testament, the three people the Lord primarily used to write it were Peter, John, and Paul. What you discover, my dear brothers and sisters, is that the very issue our Lord is concerned about in the church at Ephesus is something emphasized by all three of these brothers.
As a matter of fact, it seems to me that every one of the letters in our New Testament has something very significant to say about this matter that our Lord is deeply concerned about.
There was one thing our Lord was looking for in the church at Ephesus, and He says, “I do not find it.” He says, “You have left your first love.”
Remember 1 Corinthians 13. Remember where 1 Corinthians 13 is located—between chapters 12 and 14. Great revelation, huh? But have you stopped to think about why chapter 13 is between chapters 12 and 14?
Because it is Paul’s solution. It is the Lord’s solution to the difficulty in the church in Corinth. They were carnal. They were self-centered. They were preoccupied with gifts. They were overlooking the most important thing that the Lord wants in His church.
That is why 1 Corinthians 13 is there—not as something to be sung at a wedding. I am not saying that it is not okay, but that is not why Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 13. He wrote it so that we could get our focus back to where the Lord’s focus is.
We can have gifts. We can have all of these things. But I think the Lord is saying the same thing in 1 Corinthians 13 that we find in Revelation 2: “I do not find what I am looking for.”
What happens then is that the church becomes something other than the Lord’s church. It just has the outer shell, almost like a fossil.
You know about fossils? I do not know very much, but what I do know is that they started out alive. The shell was produced by something that was living. But then there is no more life. You go to a shop, buy it, bring it home, and put it on your coffee table. But it is just a fossil. There is no more life there.
Seemingly, this was the real danger that the church in Ephesus was facing. Our Lord’s judgment on them seems too severe to some of us, but you can be absolutely sure that His judgment is righteous. What is wrong, in His estimation, is wrong. And His solution is the right solution.
Century after century, generation after generation, assembly after assembly, you would think we would learn our lesson. But seemingly, we do not learn. Somehow we let something other than what the Lord wants come in and become our preoccupation.
It brings great displeasure, and sometimes even His judgment. He said to this assembly, this church in Ephesus, “If you do not repent, then I am going to come and remove your lampstand from your midst.”
That means they would no longer be a testimony to Him. Even with all the things that were going on, they would not be a testimony. He is not going to commit Himself.
He may bless. Why? Because we are God’s people; we belong to Him. He does not bless us only when we are pleasing to Him. This is what is so deceptive, brothers and sisters: we can easily misunderstand and assume that because God’s blessing is on us, He is totally pleased with us.
Now, stop and think about that for a moment. Is the only time God blesses you when you are doing things pleasing to Him? Is that reality?
It is the goodness of God that leads us to repentance. He is pouring out the riches of His love, but we misunderstand. We think, “Oh, the Lord must be one hundred percent pleased. Look at the blessings.”
Do not get deceived. Why is He blessing? Because He wants to draw us back to be what He called us to be, so that He can impart a greater measure—a full measure—of Himself. And the way this is manifested primarily is in this issue of love.
This morning, I feel like there are three things I want us to fellowship about. First of all, what does the Lord mean when He says, “You have left your first love”? What is first love?
Secondly, how can an assembly lose first love? How can it abandon first love? What has to happen? We see a church like Ephesus that had a wonderful beginning and a wonderful history, but something happened along the way. What kind of things can happen?
Do you not think we ought to know? Do you not think we ought to read the warning signs? If it can happen, we need to know how it can happen so that we can try to avoid it.
And if we have left our first love, our blessed Lord extends an invitation to come back, to return. So what do we need to do? If, to one degree or another, we have abandoned it, how do we get back?
What is first love, and for whom is this first love? Well, you know that primarily it is for Him.
But you know what our Lord Jesus says in John 15: “If ye love Me, do what?” What is the proof? It is easy for us to stand and sing songs about loving the Lord. Is that the evidence? Is that the way you prove you love Him—by singing a song or saying it with your mouth?
Where is the evidence? It is in our obeying His commandment.
This is My commandment, that ye love one another.
So I want you to see the connection. Loving Him results in keeping His commandment, and keeping His commandment causes us to love one another.
What is first love? For whom is this first love? It is first for Him and for our brothers and sisters. You do not make the distinction. My understanding is that the way we prove our love for Him is by loving each other.
Brothers and sisters, if we carefully read our New Testament, what we discover is that I am your beloved, and you are my beloved. I know we are the beloved of the Lord. I know that. But sometimes we are not so clear about my being your beloved and you being my beloved.
Did you notice how I began this morning? “Good morning, my beloved brothers and sisters.” This is the way it is supposed to be.
Somehow we try to separate the two things. We say, “Oh, I can love the Lord, but I can ignore loving my brothers and sisters.” You know what John says in his first epistle: “If you say that you love God and hate your brother, you are a liar.”
You cannot separate the two things. Some of you know I have a two-year-old son. It would be like you coming up to me and saying, “Ernie, I just love that little boy. I cannot stand you, but I love your son.” Do you think I would appreciate that?
But this is, in reality, what we do. We say to the Lord, “I love You, but please, Lord, deliver me from Your kids. I do not want anything to do with Your children. They are impossible.”
The only way we make those kinds of statements is because we are totally blind to how impossible it is to love us. You know how impossible it is to love you, humanly speaking. But we somehow excuse ourselves.
Dear, dear brothers and sisters, this first love is love we have for Him and love we have for one another. It is not just some kind of religious language. There are practical ways that this love is manifested, both toward our Lord and toward our dear brothers and sisters.
This morning, I want to ask us: every brother and sister that you know, can you say, “Beloved brother,” “beloved sister,” “my dear brother,” or “my dear sister”? Can you do it?
If you cannot, some changes need to be made. What excuse are you going to give to the Lord? I am not trying to beat up on us, but I want to awaken us to the reality. One day, Ernie Heil has to stand by himself before his Lord and give an account. And so do you.
He wants it to be a time of great rejoicing. He wants us to come and stand before Him, and we want to hear Him say, “Well done.” But my brother, if we have not loved one another, how can He say that to us?
How can He be very clear and say, “This is My commandment,” and we have not kept the commandment, yet expect Him to say to us, “Well done”? I do not think so, brothers. I think we are deceiving ourselves into thinking that somehow He is going to wave a magic wand and all of that is going to be wiped away.
No. He is a righteous, just Lord, and He cannot ignore it.
First love means, yes, I love Him, but it means I love you. And it also means you have to love me—and that is not easy. Some of you know from experience. Some of you have known me for thirty years.
As I say to the brothers and sisters in Brazil, it is like hugging a cactus. Have you ever tried to hug a cactus? That is what it is like hugging me. But the Lord says, “You have to do it.”
You have to find a way to adjust yourself, to get away from those sharp things sticking out of the cactus, and still hug me. What excuse are you going to give? “Ah, Lord, he was too hard. He speaks so loud. He speaks long. He is so hard on things.”
You cannot do it. Maybe, out of your love for me, you need to come and have fellowship with me and say, “Ernie, maybe you need to think about this. Maybe you need to adjust here.” There are many, many, many maybes you could use.
But you do not have any option. You have to love me or be disobedient to your Lord, and I have to love you or be disobedient to my Lord.
So first love means, yes, I love Him, but it means I love you and you love me. What kind of love? This is agape love. This is not something emotional. This is not something romantic. This is not simply family love. This is the very love of God.
It is the very love with which God loves us—the same love. In Romans 5, Paul tells us that the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. It is with that love that He expects us to love one another.
Brothers and sisters, the only way you can faithfully love me is to find a resource beyond yourself naturally. You need to find a kind of love that puts up with a lot of crazy, stupid things, forgives me, helps me, supports me, corrects me—whatever else you need to do to me. But it needs to be an act of love.
You do not have an option. You cannot dismiss your responsibility, and I cannot dismiss mine. The Lord did not ask me if it was okay to save you. But once He did, what did He say? Love them, because that person is your brother or your sister.
I will tell you what, dear brothers and sisters: my observation is that God has saved some very funny people. He saved you. He saved me. He put us together and said, “Love one another.” No excuses. Just do it.
You need to be a Nike Christian: just do it. Just love, because the resource is there. Now it needs to grow. It needs to become more. It does not need to dissipate or somehow slide away. It needs to increase.
But what happens so often in our relationship with each other? Oh, in the beginning it is so wonderful. It is like marriage.
I have to tell you an illustration our brother Christian Chen gave. He was in Brazil a few years ago, sharing with young people about being prepared to get married. This was his statement: “Before you get married, keep your eyes wide open. After you get married, keep them closed.”
He and his wife were going to New York City, to NYU, I think, to take some classes or something there. They were looking for an apartment. They had looked at a number of places and could not find one that they were satisfied with.
But they walked into one apartment, and when they walked in there was this beautiful purple carpet. Both he and his wife fell in love with the purple carpet. You can imagine that while they were looking throughout the rest of the house, they were only thinking about the purple carpet.
They came back and said, “Okay, we will sign a lease to rent this apartment for one year,” or something like that. So they got all their furniture moved into the apartment, and you know what they discovered? No bathroom.
It was outside in the hall. In wintertime, you had to put a blanket around you to go outside to the bathroom. Purple carpet syndrome.
When we first encounter one another, we are impressed with many things. That is like marriage. The purple carpet somehow becomes less significant, and other things become more important. Brothers, the same thing is true in our life with one another.
The Lord did not say to any of us, “I want you to be with this group of people, and I want you to love them as long as you can. Then, when it gets too hard, you can find another way to go.” Is that what He said? Never.
He never gave us that kind of an out. He wants this love, which has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, to be dispensed to our brothers and sisters, and even to people beyond our brothers and sisters, but particularly to our brothers and sisters.
Why? Because the Lord Jesus says, “By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another.” He is talking about the kind of love that He had just displayed to His disciples by washing their dirty, stinking feet, including Judas Iscariot.
Probably there are no Judas Iscariots in your life. But our Lord showed us that if there is, you still have a responsibility to love them, even if you know they are going to betray you.
You have to take that risk. You have to go on and be faithful and manifest that love, regardless of who the person is. There are no excuses. There are no ways to avoid fulfilling this responsibility of loving our Lord by loving one another.
Who is included in this love? Everybody. You cannot exclude anyone. It has nothing to do with their personality, nothing to do with their quirks. All of us have quirks. We do not think we do, but you know why we do not think we do? Because love is blind. We refuse to look at our own quirkiness.
But we have them. If you do not believe it, find somebody who will be honest with you and ask, “Be honest with me. Do you see any quirkiness in me?” If they are honest, they will tell you the truth.
My dear brothers and sisters, the quirkiness is not all gone yet. Do you understand what I am saying? There is still work to be done. I do not care how long you have walked with the Lord or what you have been through. There are still some things in you that are unlike our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Holy Spirit will not rest until He has conformed us to the image of our Lord Jesus Christ. That means some things have to go before He can incorporate more of Christ into us.
So you and I need to be willing to embrace everyone whom the Lord embraces. Think about it, brother. How do we think we have the liberty to decide that we are not going to love somebody whom God loves? We do not have that freedom.
The Lord says, “Your brother, your sister—you need to hug them.” It may mean that, because of certain situations, you may not be able to work with them. You may not be able to walk fully with them. But it does not excuse us from loving them.
Regardless of how deeply they may offend us, remember 1 Corinthians 13: love does not keep a record of wrongs.
Do you have any lists you have made of people who have disappointed you, offended you, or sinned against you? Do you have a list? If you do, you need to get rid of it today.
Do not wait, because I can tell you that the list will only get longer. It will not get shorter. There are certain people among God’s people who are of great irritation to us. Like I said earlier, if the Lord had asked me to save certain people, I would have said, “Absolutely not, Lord.”
But thank God He did not ask me. He just did it and put me together with them. My responsibility is to take that amazing deposit of the love of God and find a way to practically manifest it toward my brothers and sisters.
This love is not a business-as-usual love. This is a special kind of love. We cannot just take it for granted. We have to work at it. It is expensive. It is costly.
You have to give up yourself. You have to give up your hurt and all those other things that somehow become a block in our relationship with each other.
My dear brothers and sisters, can I ask us another question this morning? Why do you suppose the Lord permits people to come into your life whom you find impossible to love? Why?
Sometimes on television there used to be a sign that said, “This is a test.” I do not know if they have it anymore. When the Lord allows someone to come into your life whom you find impossible to love, remember: this is a test.
Why? Because He wants us to learn how to love the way He loves. How does He love you? Perfectly. His love for you never, ever changes. It is never up one day and down another day. It is always constant—perfect.
He accepts you, even though He may violently disagree with what you are doing. He never rejects you. Do you think this is the same kind of love we are supposed to have for one another? I think so, brothers and sisters.
We may violently disagree with what our brothers and sisters are doing. Maybe we need to find a way to communicate to them that we are deeply concerned. But somehow we need to do it so that they do not get the message from us that we are rejecting them.
We can reject their conduct. We can disagree with their doctrine. But we cannot communicate to them that they no longer belong to us. This is an eternal thing that God has done, and you and I cannot decide that we no longer want it to be that way.
So what can happen to an assembly of God’s people that causes them to abandon, forsake, or leave their first love?
First of all, many of you know a dear brother on the West Coast named Floyd Pulis. He has been here and had some ministry among you. Our brother has some unique sayings, and one of them is this: “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”
What is the main thing? What was the one thing the Lord was looking for in the church at Ephesus? What was the main thing? Agape love—sacrificial, laying-down-your-life-at-any-price love. That is what He is looking for.
This is the main thing. When we allow something other than the main thing to become the main thing, then we are slipping away and allowing something else to take the place of what matters most. We need to see it. We need to wake up to it.
When our focus becomes more earthly than heavenly, we begin to lose our way. Sometimes we are so influenced by the things that happen in our lives that we lose focus on who we are.
We are a heavenly people. We are partakers of a heavenly calling. Our citizenship is in heaven. We do not belong here.
You may be like myself. I am a permanent resident in Brazil, but I am not a citizen there. You may have your permanent residence in the United States of America, but that is not where your citizenship is. You are a heavenly people.
When we lose sight of that heavenly calling, of being a heavenly people, then we are willing to settle for something earthly rather than heavenly.
Brothers and sisters, there is only one place we are going to find this kind of love that our Lord demands and is looking for: in God Himself. Somehow, it needs to be communicated from Himself. It is the only place you find this kind of love.
When we lose our focus, when we become more concerned about things here and let them become the main thing, rather than being channels through which He can pour this amazing, life-transforming love, then we are on the way to abandoning our first love.
When we know more than we practice, that is another way we begin to slide away. Do you know what I am talking about?
Think about it, my dear brother and sister. Have you put everything into practice that you know has been revealed to you? If you have, you are a very rare person.
What happens is that our knowledge puffs us up. It makes us think we are somebody, when in reality there is no practical manifestation of it.
Every one of us in this room this morning knows that God is love. We know what God requires of us. No one had to tell you. I did not have to get up here this morning and tell you that God requires us to love one another, even as He loves us. We knew it.
But where is the problem, brothers and sisters? The problem is that we are not practicing what we know. We know more than what we are practicing. When this begins to happen, then we begin to drift away from this matter of first love having its place.
And when we start trying to take shortcuts with God—oh, brothers and sisters, in the United States of America, we love shortcuts. We want a shorter way. We want everything now. We cannot wait to do it God’s way. We have to find our own way.
We do not have enough time to wait on Him and find out what His Word is. We are too busy. Amen? We do not have time.
So we make this decision, and then we make this decision, and then we make a decision to correct that decision, and then we have to correct this decision. It becomes a hopeless situation.
It is like driving a car down the road at high speed. You try to avoid something on the road, so you turn the wheel this way. Then, to correct it, you turn it back the other way. Then you turn it back again. What finally happens? The car is out of control, and you have an accident.
Brothers and sisters, we need to try to avoid taking shortcuts. Remember Joshua and the children of Israel. When they went into the land, God had marvelously opened up the Jordan. They went in and had instruction from the Lord concerning how to take Jericho.
No man would have ever thought of that way: march around that thing thirteen times, blow the horn, shout, and the walls fall down. But they were so excited about the success that they then went to Ai looking for a shortcut.
What did they fail to do? They failed to consult the Lord about Ai. This is taking shortcuts.
When we begin taking shortcuts and making decisions without consulting the Lord, without receiving a word from Him, brothers and sisters, this is His church. It is not ours. We are not free to make decisions about His church.
We are free to hear from Him by the working of the Holy Spirit and to put into practice what we understand He is saying. But we think it takes too long, too much trouble.
You mean we have to spend days, maybe even weeks, waiting to hear from the Lord? Well, if that is what it takes, the problem is not on His end. The problem is with us.
Can I say this to us this morning and you not get too offended with me? The thing most needed among us as God’s people is ears to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches.
Why do we get in the conditions we get in? Because we stop listening, or stop hearing, what the Holy Spirit is saying. We turn it off. It is too difficult—whatever excuse we make—we do not listen anymore.
The only hope we have to be the church, to remain the church, and to regain anything in our life together, is to be able to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit.
That is an expensive process, brothers and sisters. It means you have to be willing to shut off and stop thinking about all your own ideas. Oh, brothers, all of us have our ideas of how the Lord would do things.
But our thoughts are not His thoughts, and our ideas are not His ideas. It is His church, and He alone is responsible for the building of it. The best thing we can do is learn how to hear from Him.
It is the Holy Spirit who communicates from Him to every assembly and to every believer, if we have ears to hear.
But sometimes we are like the proverbial husband who comes home from work, sits down in his La-Z-Boy chair with a newspaper, and his wife is talking to him. He says, “Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.” He is not listening.
Brothers and sisters, we cannot afford shortcuts. There is no easy way.
My wife, Zola, used to get so upset with me because I was always looking for a shortcut. We traveled the East Coast of the United States every way possible, I think, and I was always looking for a shortcut.
You know what happened? My shortcuts became a problem. Usually, it took us at least two hours longer to go my shortcuts. You know what I am talking about, brothers and sisters. So we need to avoid these kinds of things.
Let me share with you some suggestions that have come to my heart about what we can do if we ever get into a place where this matter of first love is not there in the measure it needs to be, either individually or corporately.
First of all, ask the Lord to deliver us from denial.
When difficult things happen in our lives, our first response is to deny it. “It is not there.” For instance, I am going to the doctor next week. If I go to Bobby Greco and he checks me out and says, “No, Ernie, you have a serious problem here,” you know what my first response is?
“This is why I do not like to go to doctors. You have to spend a lot of money to let them tell you there is something wrong with you. Something is not right about that.”
But anyhow, if he says to me, “Ernie, you have a serious problem,” my first response is, “That is not true. You made a mistake somewhere.” But we need to be delivered from our denials. We need to stop denying the reality of things.
If our Lord Jesus had come to the church in Ephesus and spoken to some of the brothers and sisters there individually, asking, “Are there any problems in the church at Ephesus?” what would they have said? “Ah, we are a wonderful church. It is such a blessing to be with God’s people.”
“What about this matter of love?” “Oh, it is wonderful. We love each other very deeply.” But that is not what the Lord saw with those eyes like flames of fire that penetrated all the way down to reality.
What did He see? It was not there. Our denying it does not change it one bit. It does not make it any better for us to deny it. We need to face the reality of it.
The Lord Jesus said to this church in Revelation 2 three things: you need to remember, you need to repent, and one translation says, “return.” This is the process. There is a way to get back.
Is not our Lord so full of mercy? Dear brother and sister, He has every right to say, “Listen, I am finished with you.” He could have said to the church in Ephesus, “I am going to be finished with you.” But He said, “Unless.” What mercy.
“Unless you repent. Unless you change. Unless you go back and remember where it was that you began, the work that I did in you in the beginning, and the history that I have had with you. Remember that, change the direction you are going in, and go back and do your first works.”
Learn how to love one another all over again. Maybe we have to mend some fences. Maybe we need to take a Zacchaeus approach and say, “If there is anybody I have offended, I am willing to go and get it right.”
Whether it is in terms of something you did or something you failed to do, this is the evidence. This is the fruit of repentance, brothers and sisters—not just saying it with our mouth, but putting it into practice.
If somehow it has gotten through to you that you have offended somebody, go to them as a brother in the Lord. Humble yourself and say, “Brother, I understand something has happened where I have offended you. I sinned against you. Help me understand, so that we can be fully restored.”
Maybe we cannot work together. Maybe we cannot walk together as fully as the Lord wants. But, my brother, we can accept one another. We can embrace one another. We can care for one another. We can find a way to support one another, whether we can walk together or work together.
So I am suggesting that repentance includes something very, very practical—something that is not easy.
We need to be delivered from our denials, and we need to face our failures—our own personal failures.
Brothers and sisters, there are no innocent parties in a ruptured relationship. Do you understand what I am saying? Whenever there is a relationship that has been broken, there are no innocent parties.
Everyone has contributed something to the situation, and we need to be willing to face our contribution—maybe even face some of what somebody else has done.
But this is repentance. This is the way back to first love: to get honest with ourselves, honest with one another, and face our failures.
I would suggest that we have a season of seeking the Lord, that we set aside specific time when we ask the Lord.
Let me ask this question: do you think that this letter our Lord Jesus wrote to the church in Ephesus in Revelation 2 is the first time the Lord Jesus ever addressed this issue about first love? Do you think that is the first time?
It is not the first time. You can be sure that all during that time when things were beginning to slide away, the Lord was speaking, but no one was listening.
So now it is a time for seeking Him, of putting ourselves humbly before Him and pleading with Him to speak, to reveal the reality—not what other people are saying, but what the Lord thinks about our condition.
Seek Him. Give Him opportunity. Do not just have a prayer meeting for a half hour, thirty minutes, or forty minutes. Maybe it is going to take days.
Some brothers and sisters need to get together and put this thing before the Lord until it becomes clear what His evaluation is. We sometimes listen very carefully to what other people think. We do not take the time to stop and ask the Lord how He evaluates the situation.
Now, brothers and sisters, I am going to try to bring this to a close this morning. But I want to share with you what I believe is the big issue facing God’s people. I could be wrong, and I am willing to be corrected. If you feel I need to be corrected, do not hesitate. You come, and we will fellowship about it.
But how does the church ever get in a condition where the Lord has to judge it so severely? How? Only one way, brothers and sisters: by not holding fast the Head.
If any assembly is holding fast to our Lord Jesus as its Head—that is, looking to Him for authority, direction, life, and care—if this is a reality and not just a doctrine, then things will be different.
Some of you know that I have gone to different places, as many other brothers have traveled to many different assemblies. If I asked any of those assemblies, “Do you believe in the doctrine of the headship of the Lord Jesus Christ?” what would be their answer? “Absolutely.”
But where is the practice? Where is the evidence? We have evidence all around us, brothers and sisters, that it is not practical.
In Brazil, we have three thousand denominations. This was five years ago—three thousand. How did it get that way? Is this the work of our Lord Jesus? Did He, as Head, govern people and direct them to divide into all these groups? Is this the Lord’s work?
I do not think for one second it is His work. Then how is it possible? Because everybody believes a doctrine, but this is another place where we know more than what we practice.
It is not enough just to know the doctrine, brother. We need to know the practical outworking of it. We need to know this hearing of the Holy Spirit. This is how our Lord Jesus, as Head, communicates to the body: through the Holy Spirit.
What I am saying to us this morning, I think, is that the number one issue facing us as God’s people is to know the practical reality of our Lord Jesus Christ as the sovereign ruler of the universe and as the Head of every assembly.
There is evidence. We can see it. We see the results—not merely the doctrine, but the results.
What is the solution if we happen to get away in a certain area, such as the matter we are talking about here—agape love? The solution is to get back to holding fast to the Head, learning how to see Him, hear from Him, and be willing to obey Him once He communicates to our hearts.
I want to suggest one final thing. I think it is a particular difficulty in the United States.
Some of you know that we have been living in Brazil now for almost six years. When we come back, we are able to see some things that may not be easy for you brothers and sisters to see.
You folks are entirely too busy. So busy, there is no time to seek the Lord or wait on Him.
I have been invited into the homes of brothers and sisters where both husband and wife work four or five days. I never have an opportunity to sit down and have a conversation with them because they are never home.
Are we saying, dear brothers and sisters, that there is not a way for our Lord to build His church in the twenty-first century in the United States of America, in Richmond, Virginia? Has the Lord thrown up His hands and said, “Okay, impossible”?
I do not think so. Our Lord never admits defeat.
I will build My church.
We need to find a way to stand with Him, cooperate with Him, hear from Him, and obey Him. I guarantee you, if we can, we will see very practically the results of that.
Sometimes our idea of the church is only meetings. “I am going to church.” For many of us, we have done it this way so long that it has become our way of thinking. We think the church is going to meet, and we have no relationship outside of meetings.
No time. We do not have time. We are so busy.
I would like to suggest to us that you find a group—eight, ten, twelve people—your brothers and sisters, and start spending some time with them. Look for ways to love them, however that gets manifested: supporting them, encouraging them, even exhorting them at times.
Think about it. I do not want you to raise your hand. How many of you, this last week—or I will tell you, how many of you in the last month—have had opportunity to be together with other brothers and sisters, sitting around a meal, having a cup of coffee, or sitting in the living room?
How many of you have simply talked with one another, gotten to know each other, and fellowshipped about the Lord and His work?
Wonderful if you have. Wonderful. But most of us have to admit it has not happened.
The Lord cannot build His church this way. He cannot build His church just by meetings. Meetings are very important. There are things the Lord wants to do in meetings that He cannot do outside of meetings.
But, brothers and sisters, there is so much work that needs to be done outside of meetings that cannot be done inside of meetings. We need to be careful that we do not allow ourselves to think that having meetings is the end of the Lord building His church.
Brothers and sisters, the thing that characterizes us as belonging to our Lord Jesus Christ is our agape love for one another. May God help us.
Let us pray together.
Lord, we want to ask You to help us this morning to discern what it was that You were speaking to our hearts. We know that the Holy Spirit is here to help us understand and to give us the grace and the courage to put it into practice.
That is our request of You this morning. Do that for us in Your name. Amen.